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"Udalenka". Notes from yesterday's office developer

When you watch the news on the network about some distant country in which there are some troubles like the outbreaks of another “cholera of the 21st century”, you don’t always realize that one day this can affect you.

So it happened with me - thank God, it’s not about the deterioration of my health, but about the effect of the coronavirus on my, in particular, my work week, namely the transition to “udalenka’.

It would be trite to “discover America” with the words that, it turns out, there is remote work and a remote workplace - especially in our reality when you hear the word “freelancer” more often than “encapsulation”.

Moreover, it would be completely untrue if I began to say that in our company we did not encounter a "remote" in principle. Indeed, in addition to special cases of telecommuting, for example, due to illness, we really already have some kind of tradition - periodically sending developers teams to so-called remote offices to get rid of accumulated technical debt.

Whoever said that, but in my opinion this is a very good story. Especially so that developers have the opportunity to ignore the solution of operational tasks, which now and then burst into our lives from business, despite the scrum and sprints. Abstract and give yourself the opportunity to finally realize the old project plans, which, like a guiding light, shine somewhere in the distance, for all its unattainability.

It is there - at a distance from the Moscow office - that it turns out to produce high-quality magic pills that give dispersal to “crutches” and a healing refactor, or simply try out a new approach to solving a particular problem. The advantage is a good team building, for example, on the seashore.

But it’s one thing to single out a group of developers to implement decently decomposed tasks and interact with them through a “remote” - while the main decisions are made in “live” conversations among office teams. Another thing is to transfer to a remote site all the developers of the company, and even better than all IT specialists, and even practically overnight. For total quarantine does not ask permission.

But with the mass transition, you begin to feel something new ...

At the moment, I understand that I was not the only one who came across the idea that when you work in the office - there are some boundaries of the working day that are between the passage through the office turnstile towards your workplace and the sound signal in the chain of actions by fixing your time to leave the office, which, as it were, hints that “Get it free”;) The

realities of “udalenki” no longer hint at the very “borders”, but simply blur them and the first few days of “new life” begin to thicken clouds over your awareness. Everything from the fact that instead of a conditional eight-hour working day, at least 12 hours land on your head.

As a disclaimer - while writing about 12 hours, Jobs remembered that
you need to work not 12 hours a day, but with your head!

Yes is a fact. The working day will be longer, and the important point here is that you should not overdo it with the establishment of remote work at the start - especially in the first few days, so as not to “run out of steam”. Since while you are adapting to a new approach and often are engaged in clarifying various kinds of issues that require phoning, long correspondence, your head does not notice that the body is beginning to physically and morally exhausted.

In addition, this situation begins to affect the people around you - especially if you are a family person. I will say that in general I like the “udalenka”, but when you start to go too far with work and on the udalenka, then insults begin to appear in the family. And it is justified. For example, why all the time that was previously spent on the road to the office and back (in my case about 4 hours), now it only goes to work?

Hence the first recommendation, especially for those who have not yet fully understood the usefulness of maintaining a working calendar - plan your working day and do not forget to include in it, in particular, lunch and a warm-up. This recommendation is relevant for work in the office, but on the “remote” this question is more acute - if only because, most likely, your colleague will not look at you with the words “drop everything and go for lunch” or “stretch your feet for 10 minutes?” "

In general, do not neglect your work schedule - it’s good, now there is a decent number of calendar tools on the market, for example, from Google and from Microsoft with Apple.

By the way, not so long ago I discovered the old-school convenience of keeping my working day on a smart watch. A convenient thing - people make appointments on calendars, and confirmation is available along with the schedule on the clock. This is my personal observation - on the phone and on the computer it somehow did not enter, but on a smart watch it is a completely different matter.

In addition to the schedule, smart watches began to “tell” me that on the “remote” I sharply began to move less. Still, now everything is close at hand - the same amenities and comfort, but this is only visibility. Do not neglect this - neither you nor the company will feel better if your health begins to suffer, and without movement it will be so. Therefore, I’ll say again about the warm-up, which, if not put in your schedule, then at least set an alarm clock.

If this article was in video format, then now there would be a splash screen in which a granny with pies runs to her granddaughter, who works remotely, with the words “sit, sit - I will bring it. But you're at work!"

It seems to me that the schedule, especially with remote work, accustoms to order in principle. It’s good when this schedule begins with the morning meeting of the team through video communication with the setting of tasks and those responsible. I feel the adherents of scrum smile.

When working remotely, it is important not to lose touch with the team and the morning rally here is only for the good. After all, after the rally, the team has an updated plan for the entire working day, and this contributes to productivity. Who should do what and for whom responsibility is assigned. Of course, there are systems for maintaining tasks and their status, but the point is that tasks are not always planned and often require clarification.

So the next recommendation is the daily rallies of the teams in the morning through video communication. Especially if the company is rather big and there are a lot of teams. There are enough tools for this, both paid and free.

We also use approaches with evening rallies to take into account what happened and what did not. At the moment, this is a non-global story for the company, but we practice in our team. For such meetings, you need to maintain a list of best practices for the day - conditionally, who did what (tracking or worklog). This practice was adopted by the recommendation of software companies, whose employees have been sitting on the "remote" for a long time.

On the rights of recommendation - when working with video conferencing, establish yourself the rules of good form. For example, if you are only listening, then do not be lazy to turn off the microphone. Do not doom the participants in the video chat to listening, for example, the sounds of the building outside your window. If you move around the room, then do not forget to turn off the camera. Indeed, in her field of vision may come something that certainly should not have got there, and the meeting will disrupt the discussion of this “something”.

Total of my everyday life on the "remote" (in addition to work) - take note:

  1. Rallies with the team at 10am. Analysis of tasks for the day with the allocation of responsible.
  2. Mandatory workouts during the day, because at home - comfort and little movement.
  3. Use the calendar to plan your work day. Do not forget about smart watches with projecting schedules.
  4. Good manners for video communication with the team.
  5. Booking time for lunch.
  6. Evening rallies on the work done.
  7. Logging worklog
  8. In the case of a field office. In the evening - sports (for example, skiing / biking) and swimming in the sea

I almost forgot about the headphones. At first, I used good on-ear headphones with good sound for video communication, but I realized that my head ached from them. The headband of the headphones does not seem to put much pressure, but with prolonged use this affects. So, if possible, then do without headphones at all, or use plug-in / in-channel.

I plan to write another note soon about what has changed in the company's everyday life on udalenka ’, and what has become fixed.

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