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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?