Experiences in Remote Work

As VP of Product & Engineering at Hotjar, I held this webinar to share experiences in remote work with members of HelloFresh & Zenjob in Berlin, as both companies are encouraging their employees to work from home as COVID-19 continues to spread.

Transcript

1. Experiences in Remote Work Mohannad Ali, Hotjar
2. About me • VP Product & Engineering at Hotjar • Previously VP Engineering at HelloFresh
3. About Hotjar Hotjar is Behavior Analytics software that makes it easy to go beyond traditional analytics and understand what users are really doing on your site. We are a fully remote business with employees in 25 countries.
4. Contents 1. Remote work & trust 2. Discipline, Schedule, and Mental Health 3. Thinking in a “Remote” fashion 4. Managing a Remote Team 5. Remote War-Rooms 6. Useful Tools 7. COVID-19
5. Remote work & trust • There are many misconceptions about the efficiency of a team in a remote environment. • There are assumptions that remote opens the door for “slacking”. • You need to park all of these at the door. • Remote work starts with trusting your team. • You don’t have to “watch” your team. • Instead you should think about setting them up for success.
6. Discipline, Schedule, and Mental Health • General theme here is to create boundaries. • Stick to a fixed work schedule every day. Keep core hours. • Whenever possible create a separate work area. • Less obvious - Don’t work in your pyjamas.
7. Thinking in a “Remote” fashion • There is no serendipity in remote - nothing happens by chance. • Don’t underestimate how information cascades organically in an office environment. • Don’t try making up for that fact with meetings! • Instead rely on documentation & async updates.
8. Managing a Remote Team • Be intentional with how information flows. • Keep rituals sacred (standups, 1 on 1s, etc.). • Encourage camera-on participation in meetings. • Prioritize outcomes over outputs. • Make time to be present & accessible (intentional facetime).
9. Remote War-Rooms • Create a single video-chat “room”. • Everyone working on the incident stays on, the entire time. • Anyone who needs to engage with the team adhoc can join and leave the room whenever they want.
10. Useful tools • Zoom: best video call quality, especially for group calls. • Miro: best online whiteboard tool. • Trello: helps put structure to meetings, retros, onboarding, etc. • Slido: accept and organize Q&A. • Loom: quickly record video presentations.
11. COVID-19 • Parents will have their kids at home - Be understanding. • Stay Remote-first until everyone is back. • People have no social outlets - create some.
12. Thank you! Questions?