Return to office! Everyone, get back to your desk! There's overwhelming evidence that remote devs are all slackers!
But seriously, let's discuss effective remote work.
📄 Auto-Generated Transcript ▾
Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
all right it is Thursday December 12th um yeah I'm not usually at work on Thursdays we had a little holiday thing so and then I had meetings after work so it's like almost quarter after 6 right now on a Thursday which is kind of crap and it says there's a crash on the way home which is perfect but um we're going to head to Reddit for a topic I think this one's interesting and the topic I'm not going to read the comments I'm just going to read what this person's question is so let me let me get it out here it says how do you gauge a promote employee really does need help versus sandbagging or overemployed and just lying so it's not like he they say it's not like you just ask and he tells the truth I've seen this happened already with the
previous one little to no communication not being transparent with progress very rare commits it's Etc and something's going on with my my throat my I don't have a sore throat sinuses are clear but like I keep like today I've been noticing I go to talk and like I get like a tickle in my throat so I apologize um but I think this is going to be an interesting one so like basically effectiveness of of remote employees and I want to kind of look at this in a couple of different ways so we'll dive into that um it says it's going to be an hour to get home but I really I it better not be um Okay so so before that just a friendly reminder for folks if you want me to answer your questions leave them in the comments uh it's you can get
your stuff answered if you comment and I don't have to go to Reddit uh and if you want something more specific answered and it's not going to be good for a comment uh and you want it to be anonymous just message me look for Dev leader on social media on any platform you want send me a message more details means I have more context so happy to answer that and a friendly reminder as well cuz I don't um I don't promote my own stuff enough but uh just launched a soft skills course on dome train uh so this is the third entry for sort of career progression and career related uh development on dome trains so happy to launch that with Ryan Murphy um so yeah if you want to check that out uh it's you know a lot of the stuff that I talk
about when I'm doing these conversations you will see come up in that course and all of the courses that I make related about career stuff it's just that when I'm talking in the car it's a stream of Consciousness and a course it's going to be a lot more um polished and organized so if it's not for you it's not for you that's cool I'm just letting you know it's there so with that said let's talk about remote employees and Effectiveness um prior to Microsoft and so I I got to give you background right so that you can understand my my biases and things like that uh I think that it's unfair if I start blabbing about stuff and try not to give you uh the background so that you understand my biases because as I talk I can't constantly be saying I have this bias
so let me frame it up for you um prior to Microsoft I worked basically with only in-person employees uh the company I was at did have a satellite office that was open for a few years before I left um but it's like not a different time zone and it was a fully staffed office it's not like just remote employees so I never had remote employees prior to Microsoft and when I started at Microsoft I I started with remote employees as well as local employees but the entire team worked remote the entire team right so I even started remote um and technically I am a remote worker still it's just that I some hybrid stuff on on this this current team that I'm on so I have been a remote worker too so I was managing a remote team while being a Remote Manager myself right
so um but that experience for me is only the past four and a half years and the prior eight years of my management experience has been in person so the other bias or thing that I want to call out here is like I was at a small like a startup That Grew into to like a midsize company before Microsoft and Microsoft is infinitely larger so there's this different Dynamic too around like what the company is like so uh if you have only worked in a startup or big Tech or whatever the the thing that I want to call out is like from my own experience uh startup world and small company world is much faster okay and when I say much faster I mean like it feels like there's constantly stuff ongoing and it feels like in big Tech it's not that you're not working
it's just that there are things and other processes that we have to factor in because we're doing things at a larger scale especially with respected development teams so it's it's no longer just acceptable all of the time that you can just push code and have some like one person on your team review it kind of thing you might have to incorporate other teams getting them to sign off on things like there's just things that happen at a larger scale that can take more time I don't think it's a great excuse for everything in big Tech or why some things move slow um so not trying to you know give it a free pass but I think that they there's just things that naturally happen slower in big Tech comparison so these are a couple things I want to call out you know my relative newness
to remote work and the fact that it is in big Tech where the majority of my experience so far in my career has been at a small company okay so what's a good way to start breaking this down um I actually think maybe this is worth like having a bit of a preface here that without having concrete evidence I feel like I've maybe had maybe in my whole career I've had you know could count on one hand with a couple of to spare maybe people that I felt like were sandbagging and like not delivering um in person I used to have this employee and like I'm not going to say his name and I'm going to describe him and I could I could tell you people that if anyone that I used to work with was around when this person was there they'll know who
I'm talking about and it's like I'm not this is just the reality of it this person used to sleep at their desk so they would be at work and just like asleep not and not like not I oh I stayed up all night working on stuff so I fell asleep at my desk but like I wasn't doing anything at my desk and fell asleep so you know I've had a person like that which is uh pretty uncomfortable cuz it's uh it's pretty obvious like something's going on uh and I don't know maybe could be it could be any number of things in reality but the the out the the product of that is like you know not output um it's not it's not good growth for their career it's not productivity it's like not there's a lot of not good stuff happening in that circumstance
um I've talked before about um people focusing on the wrong things let's say so that was a sort of recent video I did um so it's not that they're not working it's just their focus is on the wrong things so productive yeah um I've definitely experienced people that are that do a really good job communicating remotely and some that are very hands off so these are some elements but honestly in terms of like I have this feeling that like people aren't getting stuck done it's uh it's felt like a very rare thing in my experience and the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I'm not here to say it's impossible that someone could just be like great I got this remote job I'm going to slack off it's absolutely possible that people would do this okay but my experience has been that
it's not the common thing and this this is why I find it and this has been my experience so it's why I find it funny that when people are so adamant that like remote work is just like is only going to be people slacking I'm like are you are you really optimizing for what feels like to me like a a very rare case and all of your energy is going into preventing this maybe other people have had the completely different experience maybe there's stats on it that show them talking and like the majority of remote workers truly are uh slacking or something sorry I got to move over Lanes here um so maybe but my experience has definitely been it's rare it's at least rare that I feel like people are slacking or not working or whatever so that's important to get of the way
because I think that when I go into these situations and I'm managing remote employees my my initial like instincts and how I approach this stuff is not hm how do I make sure that I am keeping tabs on them at all times because otherwise they're going to be trying to scam me or trying to pull the wool over my eyes like like that's not what I'm after because it historically hasn't been a thing that I like need to be hyperfocused on and I guess the way that I would frame this stuff up is like when I go to approach these situations in terms of managing remote employees it's like I'm in sync with them so like my goal is not to to put them on the spot to be like hey um you know like I don't think you're working prove it to me but
instead it's more like you know how can I make sure that you're being effective right my conversations with people are I try to make sure are how can I make sure that you're being effective and I think the narrative around that like how it's being said is just a different approach the outcome that you might want is perhaps the same like I want my employees to be productive I want them to be productive I want them to be engaged I want them to do good work but I don't think that for me in the way that I manage people and my experience I don't get that by saying to people like prove to me that you're getting your your work done because they already are doing that I don't need like a one1 meeting for that I'm able to see what they're delivering on because
we have sync meetings I can see what's happening what's being delivered but let's get into some of these other thoughts right so if you like for example if the mechanism that you're using for seeing people kind of deliver on their work is going to be sync meetings maybe you do them once a week or maybe it's a standup or something if the person's not even showing up right so they're just like totally absent and then you're messaging them and you're like hey like we haven't talked in like a week or they're missing their 101s and stuff like these are some signals that I would get where I'm like hm like what's going on here but what's funny I think it's kind of funny um what's funny for me is like my gut instinct is not oh I bet they're just bet they're just slacking I
bet this person is trying to trick me like my first instinct is like is this person okay like should I have a conf like is there something we should be talking about that they got something going on at home or what like is there some way I can help here so maybe that's not how all managers approach this but my go to in that situation is not oh I this person's being a sneaky bastard like no um it's like should we be talking about something going on here um now if we have a conversation right so say I haven't and without getting into details I have observed this type of thing in real life so this isn't uh I am pardon me this been happening all day where I go to say something and then just like start like choking almost um I have had
conversations with people where it's like hey like haven't seen you at the syn meeting or uh one- On's it's like they're they're canceling them like last minute or like while the oneon-one is happening like oh sorry can't make it today so then when I do get a chance and I'm like hey like what's up like you know like is everything okay like anything we should be talking about here um and the response ends up being something like I okay I don't I'm not getting into specifics but it ends up being like kind of dismissive oh no everything's great yeah like you know just whatever like kind of nonchalant I guess is the way that I would describe that um especially given that I feel like any employee that I've spent time working with uh I put a lot of time and effort into building trust
and respect and I feel like I can say this pretty confidently that you know at least the overwhelming majority of employees I've had feel that they can trust talking to me about stuff um because I've had some people tell me some where I'm like not that I'm bothered by it but I'm like I am so amazed that you you actually do trust you know trust me that much with you know personal life and stuff like that which I I think is uh I think it's cool like they they actually trust me so I've had conversations with individuals like this where they're just nonchalant and it's like oh like yeah it's seems like it's not a big deal to them that they're missing the team meetings or that they're missing our 101s and not communicating it it's like uh okay like I start to get a
bit of a bad uh feeling from that and usually it's associated with like things slipping too okay so this has happened it has happened more than once and even though it's a limited number of times it seems like there's been a correlation in my experience where like yeah that feels like maybe this is going on a little bit longer than it should and this person happens to be kind of like kind of dodging some stuff and those are situations where like realistically the um there needs to be a conversation right so it needs to be like level setting expectations because what ends up happening is in those situations especially like at Microsoft when I'm working through uh rewards promotions when I'm coaching people like what is going to be beneficial for people in their career progression is demonstrating impact and if time is elapsing and
people are not delivering anything and they're missing out on the team meetings and the 101s like I don't know how you're going to demonstrate impact and like as a manager I can't I'm not going to make up your impact like my my job is to make sure that you can do your best work possible you still got to do the work and if you're not showing up to things like I just don't know how you expect that's going to happen it's like I can't even help you if you're not showing up so these are situations where I do need to level set expectations and say hey look like in terms of impact like there's uh you know we're missing this right and it's usually pretty clear to be able to say like in terms of what's been delivered there's like there isn't anything to show
for it or very minimal right and it's like the the impact speaks for itself especially when it's completely not there but level setting expectations is important because when we go into conversations like this and I I will tell you that I have had conversations like this with employees and I'm saying hey look like you know we've been chatting for a little while about things getting delivered hasn't really been happening seem kind of absent and I'm trying to have conversations like hey what's up when we start getting pretty real about like like this is affecting your ability to deliver and demonstrate impact like what's up like I'm I'm I want you to know that I'm here to help like what's up I have had people tell me a bunch more where they're like hey like this is what's going on um I've had people like say
completely transparently they're like I I know that I'm not performing at the level that I think is like what I'm capable of and here's why basically like this full recognition of like yeah like I I totally see that like what I've been doing is is not up to par um but it's important to level set the expectations because if I don't someone will just continue doing what they're doing going you know I guess this is okay and the reality is it's not it's not okay but they need to have that conversation with me so that I can level set the expectations and then part of that is not me going and therefore you better be scared or else I'm going to fire you the conversation is like so now you understand the expectations I'm going to be working with you on making this better right
like help me help you I got to move over Lanes here finally okay so for me like back to this person's question on Reddit right it's like there's sometimes signal that people seem very disconnected but I don't jump into I bet they're trying to trick me when I observe the signals I try to make sure I have conversations with them um hopefully I've been doing a good enough job building up the trust and respect so that they're able to have open conversations with me you'll hear me constantly say this not coughing I mean um the trust like building up trust and respect building that rapport with your team as an engineering manager is so so important because it's almost impossible to do anything else effectively if you don't do that and if you're not an engineering manager I want you to think about this too
right like that relationship from a trust and respect perspective that you form with your manager can can do a lot right so if you're feeling like hey like you know it's really hard for me to trust or respect my manager either it's something you want to work on with them or if you're like you know it's impossible with this person I've been trying or you know they don't make themselves available for that kind of working relationship like uh feels like anytime I talk to them they're going to punish me for something like that might be an indicator you're not working for a good manager and unfortunately no matter how hard you try at it it's like kind of going to be a dead end for you so just a heads up because I think that I've heard people talk about you know you know I'll
say things about how my management or leadership style is and people will be like why this car is beeping at me because it thinks everyone's about to pull out in front of me no one's pulling out in front of me car stop it but I've had people say like that's not how my manager is or like that's not how managers are and I'm like I hate to tell you but that's how they should be I think if they're doing a good job so instead of you saying like oh no that's not how managers are what I would suggest you is try to go find one stop settling for working for shitty managers because other people are leaving them other people are going to find people that they enjoy working for I get that it's not as easy as just saying it out loud but I'm
trying to seed the idea in your head that if you're like I hate the person I'm working for and I feel like I'm at a dead end no matter what I try and I have been trying okay maybe it is a dead end right it's something to think about so sandbagging I think is less common from my experience um a conversation I like to have with my employees and this is a bit of a unique thing at Microsoft I I would say at least the space I'm in between my current team and my last team there's there's some changes and things that we we work on that they take significantly longer than like the actual say the code change that has to happen maybe that actually takes someone a day or maybe it's like over two days and like a third day for to make
sure reviews are wrapped up and stuff so like the actual Dev effort that goes into the code part is from like 1 to 3 days or something but in order for that entire thing to be delivered and completely finished that could be on the order of weeks okay so when you have work like this like I'm not a huge fan of stacking up parallel work and I'm not a huge fan of that because I think with too much context switching you really start to get distractions you lose Effectiveness there's a there's a lot of crappy things that happen with too much context switching but if there isn't some context switching in this case what ends up happening is people like get something done and then they have to go roll their change Zod and they're like I don't have anything to do like I already
checked the next you know set of machines I need to be looking at everything's good uh we got to wait a little bit before we go and expand further there's only so many machines I can keep checking like what else to do right so this is a common thing like I said that happens and what gets to be a really interesting sort of challenge is like yeah it would be nice if I could snap my fingers and everyone on the team could triple up how much work they're doing and not feel overwhelmed of course of of course that would be awesome but the reality is we can't just do that cuz people are going to get overwhelmed they're going to get distracted they're going to get overwhelmed or quality is going to drop you know there's going to be some type of compromise so the
conversation I have with people is around their working capacity and it's very situational because not only will it vary from Individual to individual in terms of their actual capacity and style of work their level the current projects they're working on but the conversation I like to have with them is around like hey look like I'm I'm not going to do this properly because I'm trying to do it off the top of my head but it it comes down to like being busy at work is actually a good thing not being overwhelmed but being busy is good because when you have nothing to do at work for those of you that uh are you know haven't entered the industry yet if you have nothing to do at work I can tell you that if you I feel like if you're into software development and you have
nothing to do it's not an enjoyable experience it might sound cool like oh you can get paid to do nothing yeah but you're going to go crazy I would think for most people I've talked to about this being bored at work is not a good spot to be in might maybe some people are bored at work and they're finding other stuff to do to not be bored that's not work related okay um now you're not bored and you're getting paid that's cool but like I feel like you probably want to pick a career that pays you well and you're not bored so the conversation I have with people is around their working capacity and I'll say like hey it sounds like you're at this point where stuff is getting pushed up or you're blocked on this other thing waiting for someone do you feel like
you have capacity for this other thing and I try to make it clear to them that my goal is not to rush them through things it's a pretty rare circumstance that I've had where it's like hey this thing came up and like urgent priority right and if it is I'm having a conversation this other thing like you can you can drop that for now because it's not uh comparatively a priority but in these situations it's like if you have capacity for this other thing like I think it might be a good idea for you to pick it up so that you're not sitting idle and basically this usually pans out in like two ways one way is like oh absolutely yeah like I think I could totally take on a thing like that um and we can balance this is a really nice opportunity to
balance things like design so that thing's going to need a design dock for it you can spend some time doing that or um I know you're already doing some design so this is something that you can actually go land some code quick and like that's going to kind of scratch some other itch um this is something that you can help someone else out with so like here's some different career growth opportunities it's a really cool way to try and carve some of these things out but generally people are either like oh yeah I'm ready for something like that that's cool or they say good point um I need to like let me follow up with you I just want to check this very next step and potentially I'll be ready but I might also find out that this other thing's unblocked now and I can
continue on with that and I have personally found this to be the two common options that come up and it works really well because someone will follow up with me and say yep like that thing got unblocked I'm back to being super busy this is good or that thing is still blocked what was that thing you were talking about that you wanted me to help with and we get them set up or we're in the meeting together and they're happy to jump on the the next bit of work right away so I like those types of conversations around work capacity and making sure that people feel like they're busy with engaging work that's valuable and if they're already at capacity there's no point in trying to overload them now as a manager I've had this funny situation where people have been asking for work right
and they're asking for work uh in some situations because they think the expectation is they need to be doing more things and then we dig into it a little bit more and it's like hey you actually might be taking on too much right now and you you might be rushing through it and my expectation with you is not that you're doing more things but you're doing things with better quality more consistently so like actually no I don't want you to take on more I would like to see you get these things wrapped up so like that's another thing that can come up too but um that's that's like sort of one thing that I like to tackle is around this idea of um your your working capacity um what else were they saying like basically people sitting idle um in general like I think one
part of this question was around like communication and stuff right I think this morning's drive so depending on the order that you watch these in you might have already watched it if not you can go back and watch that too um but I think this morning's drive and other video videos I've talked about this idea where especially with remote work right it's it can be challenging to make sure that people feel um comfortable reaching out asking for help so to give you an example I have dealt with some individuals where I was talking about these signals right where I'm like it kind of like gives me this feeling that someone's not getting stuff done and when I dig into it this is especially the case with uh from my experience at least with really Junior developers or interns so people that don't have a lot
of uh work experience and and they're remote and I'm getting these signals are not getting stuff done and what ends up happening is that it's because they're like keeping themselves blocked so when it comes to communication they're not actually actively communicating so the video that I did on code community this morning was around how can developers sort of help more Junior Engineers uh and the focus on not just giving them answers but like kind of coaching them through stuff so I talk about a lot of this stuff in that video but the idea here being like when I've had conversations with these individuals um I end up kind of uncovering like they're getting stuck a lot and then I'll go oh like did you reach out to so and so and they're like well no okay well why and it's like well you know I
didn't want to bother them and I go oh well you know we've talked about that right like they actually want you to ask for help yeah know okay yeah I should do that I should do it and then great in my head I'm like great okay they're going to correct this behavior and then they don't right and then so you know a couple days go by and I'm like hey like what's what's up oh yeah like I know I still haven't and then I go okay like we got to change something here um so it's hard because part of me wants to demonstrate or prove to these individuals like that their teammates do want to help them right I think people get very concerned about not bothering other individuals um which I can understand they want to be respectful of their time but what's happening
is they're staying blocked for so long and not communicating to anyone so in these cases I try to remind people hey look like if that person is busy or you're you're like hey I don't want to bother them I'm like here's one or two other people that you could be talking to maybe you can rotate between them so you feel like you're not bothering them I'll try to find ways to say you know I can say it a million times like that person said they're they actually want you to reach out um doesn't seem to actually do anything anything I remind them they can reach out to me right like I'm literally having a conversation with you about this now I would be very happy to help you just let me know send me a message right if you're not sure if I'm busy just
send me a message I'll get back to you as soon as I'm out of a meeting I will read it we can talk about it um so I try to create as many options as I can right but ultimately if people aren't acting on those and sometimes this could be a comfort level could be people's personalities and stuff but if they're not acting on them it legitimately starts to hold them back because what's happening is they stay blocked going back to what the signals of that look like is it looks like someone's just sandbagging it looks like they're just not getting work done because that's the outcome of it right they're stuck on something you see no progress even if they show up to the standup meeting or the sync meeting what's your update oh well still working on this well haven't you been working
on that for a week yeah okay well are you blocked well yeah and it's like oh man why why are you still blocked on this like we've we've already talked twice this week about this so it it ends up looking like people are sandbagging or they don't care but it's actually a different root cause so same symptom that you might observe but different root cause and I've actually seen in in some cases where if we can build some momentum with these individuals and they go oh like now I'm starting to feel like I have some productivity things can shift gears a little bit so to give you an example can I move now this guy's flying Past come on buddy um we buil some momentum with these individuals and it it's kind it kind of feels like a step backwards right it's like okay we're
we might have a sync meeting once a week or whatever okay we're going to be doing this every other day we're going to do it every day we're just going to touch base briefly and what ends up happening is that there's this forcing function where it's like look basically I've given you a bunch of opportunities to reach out and ask for help and you're not doing it and there can be any number of reasons including literally just not feeling comfortable I get it okay so my goal is not to say shame on you you should feel bad because that's not my job my job is to try and make you feel effective in your work so cool we got to I need to meet with you every day or your your onboarding Budd is going to meet with you every day if it's not me
great you now have a forcing function that's going to make you at least once a day talk to someone about what you're stuck on and what we found happen from doing this in more than one instance is that these individuals start to realize oh if I just ask for help if I just talk to these people I can make progress and it seems ridiculous right because the entire time they weren't reaching out and now we force them to meet every day right you're uncomfortable reaching out because you don't want to bother people okay every day you're forcefully bothering someone now and the other person agreed to it right or if it's me I've have agreed to it you're not bothering us we're totally okay with it we were expecting that you were going to be bothering us every day right we expected that you were
going to reach out to us every day and you weren't so what's in your calendar now you got to meet with us every day and every day they come with something where they're stuck they've made progress beyond the last point but now they're stuck on something else go great cool let's talk through it and what ends up happening over a period of time is that we don't need to continue that so your mileage may vary obviously like everything in software engineering it depends situational but what we've observed at least what I've observed is that when we do this it gives someone some momentum and they have it proven to them people do want to help it's not like oh I know you say that but it's no you said it and you're living it and it's working okay right it's been demonstrated to me now
so you can kind of uh pull back on the meeting uh Cadence and do it slowly so you can see that they're still reaching out right so they're still reaching out for help they're still keeping up their momentum cool you can keep kind of dialing it back get back to your like if it's a if it was already like a weekly you know oneon-one or sink like that you might be totally fine to get back to that but uh I wanted to share that kind of perspective because like I said the symptom of looking like someone sandbagging or they're underqualified or something honestly I've seen very smart people that are very capable literally screw themselves over because they're getting stuck on something that I would expect them to get stuck on and they just don't ask for help so sometimes people they hear what you're
saying around like it's okay to ask for help but um it could be any number of you know their own personal experiences whatever it happens to be where they have a really difficult time believing that trusting it whatever so they don't act on it so putting some type of forcing function plays can help turn that around um but yeah I think that's been mostly my experience I'm almost home so trying to think if there's some closing thoughts I can add to this but essentially it's like I think more the overwhelming majority of times in my experience is that people are willing to work hard um remote or not right they're willing to do it and um there are some signals I get when people aren't showing up to things or being you know feels like they're very flaky and nonchalant about stuff and I'm not
seeing progress on stuff or I have to start leaning in and saying hey what's up but that's not me default going to I bet they're scamming me it's uh it's hey what's going on outside of work like anything going on and uh the you know that's inhibiting your ability to do stuff and then level setting expectations like this is having a negative impact so we need to talk um and then this other situation of um essentially people getting in their own way because we're not reaching out for help this is why I don't know like this kind of stuff is why when I talk through it literally nothing I said had to do with writing codee I think I mentioned code review sorry I lied um most of what I said had nothing to do with writing code um but it's all software engineering stuff
that comes up and this is the kind of stuff that like in my career like I'm looking at this stuff non-stop it's uh different things like this that when we put time and energy into them we can find ways to make individ ual and therefore teams more effective so I hope that like when I'm talking through this stuff I've I've said this I I got to say it more I think but my goal is not to tell you like this is my experience therefore this is the way it is the goal when I talk to you about this stuff is that you can see a perspective that you might not have had whether or not you agree with it is a different story CU you're absolutely able to live a completely different experience than me and I'm not going to tell you you're wrong for
living that experience this is my experience that's why I share it and I hope that when you hear this kind of stuff again it's not like oh well let me copy what's being done here word for word action for action but what I would like you to do is to be able to think about what the perspective was what the actions were why they were taken understand like hopefully I'm articulating why certain things and that way if you come across similar things in your journey you can be better equipped to say hey like I've you know at least I have some thoughts around this now I tried you know maybe you tried it your way and it didn't work you try it my way it does or the other way around you're like hey Nick talked about this let's try it this way hey that
didn't work okay like cool like you know I'm not promising you everything I say is going to work right it's these are my experiences but having exposure to different perspective and experiences I feel like allows you to create um you know better opportunities at least so that's my goal when I share this stuff with you it seems like folks are appreciating it at least I've uh I've been kind of joking well part of it feels funny part of it feels kind of bad like this channel is crushing my main Channel I have less than 10% of the subscribers on this channel compared to my main one and this channel now gets more watch time per month with less with less than 10% of the subscribers which is nuts so um uh this one's working I guess I can't see anything back into this spot at
night in the rain when there's a car coming down the road man we got to get the TT out that's the the wife's SUV we've been in there together right depending on which videos you've watched but we haven't been in the TT together yet so we got to get that fixed up but when we do oh man you're going to like it you're going to like it um it's loud and it's not the exhaust it's the turbo so stay tuned for that we'll see you later take care
Frequently Asked Questions
These Q&A summaries are AI-generated from the video transcript and may not reflect my exact wording. Watch the video for the full context.
- How do I determine if a remote employee really needs help or is just sandbagging?
- I look for signals like lack of communication, missing meetings, and rare commits, but my first instinct is not to assume they're slacking. Instead, I try to have open conversations to understand if something is going on personally or professionally. Building trust and respect helps employees feel comfortable sharing their challenges, so I can support them effectively rather than just suspecting them of sandbagging.
- How do I manage the working capacity of remote developers to keep them productive?
- I have conversations with my team about their current workload and whether they have capacity for additional tasks. I emphasize that being busy with engaging work is good, but not being overwhelmed. If someone is blocked or waiting on something, I encourage them to pick up other work or help others, balancing quality and consistency over just doing more tasks.
- What strategies do I use to help remote junior developers who stay blocked and don't communicate?
- I remind them that it's okay to ask for help and encourage them to reach out to multiple teammates or me if they're unsure. Sometimes I set up more frequent check-ins or touchpoints to create a forcing function for communication. My goal is to build momentum and make them feel effective rather than shaming them, recognizing that comfort levels and personalities can affect their willingness to ask for help.