Issue #16: How it works for me
Hey Everyone,
It's officially the holiday season, which means the busy season for my business White Elephant Online is in full swing. To allow more time to focus on that over the next month, I'll be taking a brief break from the newsletter for the month of December. I look forward to resuming - and expanding - the newsletter in the new year!
For today, I thought it would be interesting to talk a bit about my personal experience managing that remote-first company White Elephant Online.
How we operate
In this newsletter we talk about the different work-styles of businesses, like in-person, hybrid or remote. Sync or Async. White Elephant Online is actually a combination of two extremes.
On one hand, we are completely remote. We have no office space, instead working out of our homes (or out of our van, on occasion). On the other hand, two of our co-founders live in the same house - myself & my wife Leliah.
Our work with our technical co-founder Andrzej is largely asynchronous, managed through Trello tickets and emails. On the other hand, all of Leliah & my interactions are realtime.
Does it work?
Surprisingly, yes - quite well. When working on product development, we try to employ best practices around transparency and clear written communication. Dev work is largely tracked in Trello (an improvement over last year), and we schedule checkins every few weeks as necessary. The benefits of working async are plentiful, allowing us each to tackle work when it best fits our schedules. But once in a while, it's truly beneficial to jump on a call and brainstorm, talk through the backlog, or tweak visual designs in real-time to get tickets out the door.
There are risks to async however. I learned a good lesson this year when I wrote a (too brief) note to Andrzej about a change I wanted. The bullet read: "Gifts wiggling a little when sitting on table…?" (For those not familiar with White Elephant Online - it's a gift-swap game, so there are 'gifts' sitting on a virtual table).
What I meant was: "I think there's a bug because the gifts seem to move slightly when I come back to the game table from a popup." What I got back from Andrzej was a new feature: every 10 seconds a random gift would 'shake' on the table, creating a cute little interaction on the otherwise static table. It was a beautiful mistake, and resulted in a small detail I love. But it's a lesson in the importance of clear communication, especially for something so visual.
For Leliah & my collaboration, being in the same room is beneficial in countless ways. Our business is very seasonal (as you might imagine). It's quiet 9 months out of the year, and then gets extremely busy 3 months out of the year. Being able to work in concert on marketing, customer service, business management and a whole host of other things without requiring a ton of documentation, written communication and tools lets us move quickly. That's not to say we don't employ various tools to keep us organized: Notion, spreadsheets, and To Do lists. It's also not to say we couldn't manage if we weren't co-located, it would just require a re-imagining of our processes.
The bigger challenge is in leaving work behind at the end of the day. Or the beginning of the day. Or on the weekend. When you're working with your spouse, any moment has the potential to slip into a conversation about your business. And that's fun and exciting! But it can also be draining. Creating time and space that specifically doesn't center around work is an important aspect of preventing burnout.
We're continuing to evolve year to year as an organization, and I'm sure our processes will continue to change as well. We're grateful to have the opportunity to build a business for ourselves, and can't wait to see what this season holds.
Thanks for subscribing, and see you in 2022!
- Dave
In the News & Around the Web
#1 Banking, certainly an old-school industry, is finding it's way to a more flexible work culture - whether they like it or not. Atom Bank - based in the UK, has adopted a flexible work schedule, allowing employees to work 4-days a week if they choose, with no pay cut (though those 4 days would be slightly longer hours). It provides a lot more flexibility for those who want regular 3-day weekends, or a break in the middle of the week. Meanwhile in the US: Wall Street Grudgingly Allows Remote Work as Bankers Dig In
#2 I enjoyed this piece which highlights the power of remote work: COVID-19 has provided more work from home opportunities for those living with a disability
#3 The CEO of insurance-tech firm The Zebra reflects: Our company went all in on remote work. Here’s what worked (and didn’t)
#4 Finally, Ed Zitron, in a rare introspective piece: Work From Home Works Until You Need Time Off. I think it's something many of us can relate to.
"I told myself that I didn’t work in a factory, I didn’t have to be on my feet all day, and I was being a lazy ass if I complained. But COVID and my wife’s intervention made me realize that the flexibility of working from home—something I continue to evangelize—was starting to feel like a productivity trap."
Tips & Recommendations
Interviewing during the pandemic can be tricky for many reasons, not least of which is figuring out whether your remote or hybrid job is really going to be so long-term.
Here are some tips from Wired on how to assess company work culture: What to Know Before You Take a Job in a Hybrid Workplace
...and one more thing
Winter is coming. When life gives you snow, make tiny snowmen.
Have a great holiday season! ❄️
