Dalenka is our native environment, and now we don’t have to be so social

Hello! I am from Sberbank and want to talk about our features of remote work. Do not rush in terror to run away from this hellish combination of words. I'm not going to repeat press releases and talk about the list of software for organizing this whole thing. I want to talk about the fact that a new wonderful world has come. And, it seems, for a long time. I’ll make a reservation right away — I can speak only for a few teams of the unit that is engaged in the automation of everything in frames. Not for the whole Sberbank, because everyone has different approaches and processes, and some of them cannot be taken away, for example, the same operators in the branches. The overall development trend is similar to ours, but the details may vary.

Usually, those who are used to living in the office have problems with the remote. Before Sberbank, I managed projects with a distributed team and I do not see any problems in this. There are features. The first is, well, banal self-awareness and self-organization. Type of rules "they wrote to you - answer", "call - pick up the phone." We have our internal agreement in teams - to respond to messages on a remote site in ten minutes during working hours, but in my opinion, in practice, it turned out to be redundant. It relates primarily to those who work in an embrace with a sofa.

The situation with depression is much worse. At first you cannot go to the cinema, then you have to sit at home all day and work, and then work and personal life are completely mixed. Developers can drive themselves into depression. Previously, I had an important metric of the fact that a person is ready to go into an unplanned binge - an increase in the number of simultaneously developed features, more working time per day and more and more minor nit-picking up to the syntax. Now I follow about the same, so that, if anything, unload.

What is happening now is not a real distant thing at all, it is isolation. The task is more difficult than a regular remote. A person begins to lose the line between work and personal life. The first thing we did in the teams was to agree among ourselves and with our families that a working day is running until 18:00 (and we don’t have to touch us, we are at Sberbank), and at 18:00 personal time begins. It is advisable not to work, unless at all something is burning like a fallen release. By the way, here they roll out on Saturdays, because it is at this time that the load is minimal, therefore it is doubly important to keep the working hours regime.

If a person stops resting, then his mood spoils first, then he begins to worry that he doesn’t have time (though everything is really good), then he is too hyperresponsible to what he does. He begins to find fault with trifles, tries to disperse attention - to be in time everything and everywhere, ceases to delegate, thereby very quickly drives himself.

Why? Because in the first weeks, someone found out that the reluctance of self-development is from laziness, and not from a lack of time. In quarantine, there is a feeling of some missed opportunities, although this is only a few days of stress in the process of restructuring. Well, many have been affected by the informational noise - people who are not used to managing instant messengers encounter it with difficulty.

We have a certain time of silence when you can be alone with your tasks. That is, this SLA in response to ten minutes, we rolled out only for a fraction of the time. We agreed that from 9:00 to 12:00 you can safely code, and no one has the right to demand a response by SLA. You can simply cut down the messenger and that's it. The rest of the time, everyone writes to everyone - group chats for those who have never been away are very difficult. Well, relatives with friends do not always understand that it is probably better not to flood during working hours. Almost all of us have corporate devices, but messengers with personal contacts can still turn on them. But at a time when everyone should be in touch, it’s different - if someone does not answer - a clear problem, then you need to call. The bank, by the way, standardized the communications stack, and at first it was like corporate Sberchat,Polycom, and then Zoom was allowed, which accelerated everything.

The next terrible feature of the new wondrous world is that before you went to clap a colleague on the shoulder (and it was relatively politely to pull him out of the process this way), and now you need some kind of electronic means of communication. And usually this is not mail, but a call. Now any tête-à-tête conversations need to be planned in advance. It turns out that if earlier on the calendar there were two or three meetings a day, now it’s complete, and most of it is to talk and decide. Some meetings overlap. A heavy workload arises - more precisely, such a formal sensation appears. The feeling that communication has become more, although it is nice that you do not need to go anywhere to these meetings and generally go to the office.

The working day is spread. Someone wants to start earlier, finish later, someone the other way around (just do not start later and finish earlier, but move the day relative to the total time). As a result, lunch does not always work out to relax. People who do not adhere to working time protocols “when everything is in touch” write to you during hours that you have non-working hours. Often have to react. Worse still, colleagues can write at a "non-general" time. It seems like you are not working, but standing in the shower. But you can’t get distracted, you think about the problem. And work catches up with you even in the toilet. This all leads to the fact that then someone will go into a bout, unable to stand it. Therefore, if you are a team leader or leader, immediately think about such things with the team. This is all, most likely, for a long time, and such processes and agreements are needed.

Why are people still leaving work processes? In the office, the working atmosphere in itself kicks everyone: you are in sight. And here nobody looks at the remote. This is not bad and not good, you need to work with it. It is necessary to involve those who “bite” in communication, but, of course, this is more time. In the case of team management - it is necessary to divide tasks into smaller ones, try not to give such people large tasks at once. In general, this is a normal rule of a leader for ordinary work - the more minor victories, the better the mood of any, even the most responsible employee. Sometimes you can give a major task, if not crushed. But we need to write down who said something on the Daily: if the same person says the same thing three times in a row, you have to look yourself already. The most important thing now for synchronization is stand-ups and retrospectives to talk, to tell.Many out of habit find themselves in such strange loneliness that they seemed to want to isolate themselves socially, but as if nobody appreciates you. Because there is no habitual attention and minimal transactions that reassure someone. Therefore, you need to talk. Video communication should always be verified by experience: audio alone is not enough, there is no visual and emotional contact. Everything should be with the video, this will allow people to keep themselves in good shape, well, it's easier to read their emotions.Everything should be with the video, this will allow people to keep themselves in good shape, well, it's easier to read their emotions.Everything should be with the video, this will allow people to keep themselves in good shape, well, it's easier to read their emotions.

The remote format makes it possible to start immediately. Previously, someone looked for a chair, someone else ran through a half-office, someone dragged a puff from neighbors. And now everything is so good that, perhaps, even in the office we will do so further - it is strange that we did not often use this remote communication feature. At Sberbank, we generally have Agile (more precisely, Sbergile), and here all his practices out of the box are aimed at a seamless opportunity to switch from office work to remote, because they put communications up.

So far, subjectively, productivity has grown, if you look at the speed of performing standard tasks. During the day, time wasted for all sorts of unnecessary transactions, meetings became shorter. At first there were difficulties with a VPN to a personal segment - it was simply not possible there. For developers, the issue of access to the PD segment was resolved quickly, security guards came up with options. A week after switching to udalenka, we got our own connections, which made it possible to sign documents, manage vacations (although they don’t especially go away now), and helped the guys who are involved in dev-administration to solve some of the hanging tasks. For releases, you still have to come to the office, there IB cannot bypass any one restriction, but it is usually one person on duty on the release. Priority - minimum office income offline.We prepared long before the increase in morbidity. They themselves understood that the measures would be strengthened, the preparatory work went to the official team. They determined how to divide by groups, how to leave for a remote location. The issue with homework was resolved quickly. The first week there were questions about who would sit in the house where, but everyone I know had social issues resolved. I didn’t come across any homework disturbing anyone. Yes, on the chextatus in the background a child will pass - there is nothing to worry about. If the process is manageable, everything is fine. And he turned out to be manageable.I didn’t come across any homework disturbing anyone. Yes, on the chextatus in the background a child will pass - there is nothing to worry about. If the process is manageable, everything is fine. And he turned out to be manageable.I didn’t come across any homework disturbing anyone. Yes, on the chextatus in the background a child will pass - there is nothing to worry about. If the process is manageable, everything is fine. And he turned out to be manageable.

We are already trying to compensate for the lack of communication ourselves by phoning out of work (it turned out that it’s good sometimes to just talk, play CS: GO).

But the real remote is more free time for yourself. I think, after all this, it will just be better perceived. If I personally have a choice, I will always prefer remote commands to office ones, as I consider it more effective. Before the crown crisis, there were no employees working remotely in the current team, only temporary cases due to illness or family circumstances. It is already clear that I want to leave the remote work option for those who are comfortable. Because it can expand the scope of employment, and this is a direct business factor.