A Missing Piece of Remote Work Culture

By Brandt Keller

I will always admit that I love everything that is working for a fully remote company. I’ve battle-tested the 2+ hr commute daily for longer than I cared to admit, and that time feels like a huge part of my life has been wasted. Working remotely has offered me time to focus on the things that matter when they matter.

Focusing on work and the tasks at hand - with zero interruption - while also being able to inject random bouts of family time throughout the day that I would have otherwise not had the ability to do. This is a huge part of my life. Snack time with my daughter when I’ve been banging my head against the wall for hours.

Need I say more?

I could honestly gush about remote work for pages on pages of text on end. Maybe this is because my dataset is skewed towards the less sexy office culture that FAANG may offer. I acknowledge that my time in software has been from small company -> big company but a severely outdated office -> Classified Environment -> Remote. There was no fun and games that others may have been enticed into joining - I would not imagine many other companies in the Defense Industrial Base are much different.

So what is missing?

I have been thinking about this more and more as of late. We pride ourselves on the ability to work on work when work matters most and ensure we are also fulfilling our duties as a family member and friends to others. I’ve really liked the outlook that “work-life balance” is the wrong way to think about how to manage both - and rather when you are passionate about what you do and your values align across the board it can be a mesh of the two. I fall into this bucket and I may plan to discuss this more in the future.

But as such, we continually pride ourselves on disconnecting from work when there is no looming priority to otherwise be using your free time to work extra. I don’t disagree with this stance - we want to prevent burnout - but I believe this has to be a personal choice as much as a responsibility to your own health and wellness.

Instead, what I see is others - with good intent, mind you - looking to pressure others into disconnecting from the virtual workspace… Why might this be a bad thing?

Old norms vs. New norms

I want to look towards norms that I believe have been present in my life and others. We work in an office - interact with the same individuals daily and build relationships with these people. Some become strong, and we see a mesh of personal and professional life blend together. This is no different than remote today - I’d love to hear about people's weekends, hobbies, what they do for fun, and the growth of them and their families.

Disconnecting from work in this in-person culture still meant communicating and spending other time discussing or sharing common interests or even activities. But when we transition to a fully remote company, we see this blend of personal and professional life still present - but without a physical separation of work and personal life and often all through a single chatops platform (Slack etc).

The missing piece

So what happens when your remote culture begins to create a cycle of expecting people to disconnect from the technology as a way of disconnecting from “work”? We - jokingly or otherwise - take actions like “Do not check Slack!” or “Uninstall Slack from your phone to prevent you from working when you shouldn’t be.”

There are many nuances here about properly decompressing from work and the value it can have - but I do believe this is a missing piece of the puzzle. Your actions of well intent contribute to a cycle where you’ve essentially barred someone from the single source of bonding they have with their friends at work. Raise your eyebrows all you want - I do consider the people I work with as friends - I want what is best for them.

Checking in with people or participating in jokes can now be misconstrued as being too connected to work. I believe this is a mistake, and I may very well be wrong here from a philosophical or psychological perspective. But I do firmly believe that it might be something that we evaluate when someone takes some time off yet still engages with others through a known medium like Slack.

What do you think?

There is a lot to argue here potentially - and I just wanted to put an idea out there on the ever-evolving landscape of remote work culture. Is there something I am missing? Other information that augments the argument for or against remote culture relationship management? Please feel free to drop comments on the social media platforms.