Our CTO's Practical Advice on Working Remotely

Chief Technology Officer, The Concinnity Company 

We’ve seen a deluge of “expert” articles from consulting companies and established firms quickly adjusting to remote work. In my experience, these new-comers are the last people you should be listening to as they are making the same mistakes that companies who’ve done this for years can tell you to avoid. 

At TCC we are moving from 80% remote to 100%, so we’ve had a great head start and are happy to give you some practical advice. 

Practical Advice on Working Remote

  • My dogs really distrust the Amazon guy, and loud barking is very distracting (much more so than the things in peoples backgrounds). If you get as many packages as we do, go ahead and put the pups somewhere out of earshot before you begin.  (@microsoft teams, @zoom please add a bark detecting - auto-mute feature). This also applies to cats on keyboards. 

  • The top complaint of remote workers is that they are never off the clock. When your boss feels that you’re the same distance both on and off hours (just a message or call away!) they don’t hesitate to call. Either embrace the 24 hour work life. If your employee are answering emails / messages at 11pm, you can emphasize how dedicated they are and just accept that they are walking their dogs / doing laundry when you call sometimes. Or be strict and use applications that have ‘office hours’ built in. 

  • Create a nonsense area, such as a “water cooler” chat group, in your messaging application where it’s encouraged and expected people will discuss out of work issues or general nonsense. Just because people are working remotely doesn’t mean they should be all business all the time. They need to build relationships and getting off topic is just natural. 

  • Does your office enjoy sharing lunch time? With video chat, between the time delay, and not always looking directly at the person you are talking too, people often ask questions while you’re mid-bite. If you’ve ever tried to chew through a mouth full of food, while apologizing to everyone for having a mouth full of food, and also being 2 seconds delayed, it’s really awkward (0 stars, would not recommend). Try doing a shared coffee / drinks half hour instead. We like to start off just talking about which type of tea or 5pm beer everyone is trying at home.

And finally, here are some other people to learn from who know what’s up: