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Experiences in Remote Work Mohannad Ali, Hotjar

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About me ● VP Product & Engineering at Hotjar ● Previously VP Engineering at HelloFresh

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Thank you! Questions?