Being a good remote worker takes a lot of discipline. We’ve to do everything ourselves without anyone watching.
In this article, we’ll look at some habits we can adopt to become a good remote developer.
Make Ourselves Visible at Work
When we’re in the office, we’re always visible to others. However, when we’re working remotely, then we most likely aren’t all that visible.
Therefore, we’ve to make ourselves more visible so that we know who each other is.
We should update our profiles of whatever communication software that we’re using.
This might be our Slack profile or something like that.
Also, we shouldn’t make people wait for a response from us. This means that we should check our notification frequently.
This may be hard for developers since many people are busy with meetings or debugging. However, we just got to do this since we can’t nudge each other in person.
Therefore, if we don’t respond, then the person on the other end just waits until we respond.
That’s especially not good if there’re any emergency issues and no one responded. Then the person sending the message just waits anxiously for someone for help.
With computers, we can multitask, so we should at least check and give a quick response to stop people from waiting at the other end.
Also, we should share what we’ve done. Otherwise, no one would know what we’ve been doing all day.
Once in a while, we should set up meetings so we can talk if necessary.
Setting our status on the communication software our team is using is also very useful for letting people know what we’re doing.
Make Time For Socializing
Since we’re in the office, we can’t socialize in person. Therefore, we’ve socialized virtually via video conferencing.
Otherwise, we would be very bored and depressed.
Socializing via video conferencing isn’t ideal, but it’s the best way to do it remotely.
We just set up a meeting where people can join in video audio and video and socialize.
Connect With Our Teammates
To keep ourselves connected, we can talk to our teammates. It’s a good idea to check in once in a while so that we stay connected.
It’s harder than doing it in person, but we can still do it.
Also, code reviews and pair programming sessions are also great ways to connect.
There’re plenty of hard problems to solve, so solving them together is better than trying to solve them alone.
Review Key Projects
To improve ourselves, we should review how we did on key projects.
We can review anything good that we should keep doing and what went wrong.
This then will make us improve by learning from what went wrong and what went well.
Review sessions are a great time to be honest and own up to any mistakes.
Build Accountability
We just got to get things done even if we’re working remotely. It’s even more important since we can’t pretend to be doing something as we do in the office.
If we deliver, then we’re good to go. This should be easier so that we don’t have to spend to commute and we can multitask when we do something when we’ve to do something in a hurry.
Once we’re done with our work, then we can do whatever we want. Therefore, it’s better if we just finish what we have to finish and then take longer breaks.
Defining Responsibilities
We’ve to divide our work just like in an office-based team. It all goes back to communication.
We divide our work by communicating clearly what everyone is going to do.
If there’s any confusion, then we’ve to clarify it with a call.
One developer can’t do everything, so we still have to divide up our work as if we’re in the office.
This way, we don’t get people doing the same thing or having something that’s not getting done.
Conclusion
Like an office-based developer job, we still got to divide our work by communicating who does what.
We got to review projects when they’re and review what we did well or not well. Then improve on that based on what we learned.
Making ourselves visible is very important. We’ve to turn on notifications and check that we answered our messages. This way, no one is left waiting.
