Remote Control: How Not to Suck at Working From Home
Simple habits that make remote teams better
Let’s be honest, remote work sounds like paradise until you’re three months in, still in pyjama pants at 4pm, having your sixth “quick” sync of the day, and wondering why no one on your team ever updates the damn docs.
Here’s the thing, remote work can be amazing. But only if we’re all intentional about how we do it. So here are some hard-earned tips, tricks, and general life lessons to help your remote engineering team not just survive, but actually work well together.
1. Write It Down or It Didn’t Happen
Remote teams live and die by documentation. If it’s not in a doc, a wiki, or a Slack thread with clear context, it’s just tribal knowledge floating around in someone’s brain... and that someone is probably on vacation next week.
Document decisions. Document processes. Document your weird edge case workaround that took you 4 hours and 3 existential crises to debug. Future you, and your teammates, will thank you.
2. Talk in Public. DMs Are Where Context Goes to Die.
Stop having all your technical discussions in DMs. I get it, it feels easier. No one will judge your half-baked idea or typos. But if your team doesn’t see the conversations, they can’t help. They can’t learn. And they definitely can’t debug that weird issue next time it comes up.
Use public channels. Thread your thoughts. Embrace a little digital vulnerability.
This is even more important for support and requests. Any request to your team should go to a public channel. Why?
First of all: context switch. If people come to you personally when they need something from your team, you kind of have to answer right? That distracts you from what you’re doing and it decreases your productivity. If there is a specific place where you can check all requests at once it’s much easier on you and it can be checked at your own pace and schedule.
Furthermore, you can get metrics on the amount of requests or the most common and so on.
3. Don't Just Say “Hello”. Don’t Ask to Ask.
“Hey.”
“Hi, can I ask you a question?”
Sure. You just did.
This one’s simple. If you need something, just say it. “Hey, I’m trying to figure out why this Lambda won’t trigger from this S3 event. Do you have 5 minutes to pair?” is so much more helpful than a five-message dance around the actual point. Respect everyone’s time, including yours.
Honourable mentions are: https://nohello.net/en/ and https://dontasktoask.com/
4. Meetings: Not Too Many, Not Too Few, Just Enough to Stay Sane
Too many meetings and everyone’s calendar looks like a game of Tetris played by a sadist. Too few, and suddenly people are going rogue on major architecture changes because “it felt right.”
The trick is to tune your meeting cadence to what your team actually needs. Weekly check-ins? Maybe. Daily standups? Only if they’re useful. Async updates? Fantastic, if people actually read them. Adapt, experiment, and don’t be afraid to kill a meeting that no longer sparks joy.
5. Create Accountability Without Creating Fear
Blame culture is the silent killer of remote teams. If folks are afraid to admit mistakes, they’ll just stop talking. And then you’ll be blindsided by the thing they didn’t say when prod goes down at 3am.
Instead, create an environment where owning up is safe. Where “I broke it” is met with “Cool. Let’s fix it together” instead of an all-hands investigation and a passive-aggressive postmortem.
Accountability works best when people feel trusted, not watched.
6. Celebrate Everything. Loudly. Often. Even the Little Stuff.
Got a teammate who finally cleaned up a mess of spaghetti SQL? Celebrate it. Someone fixed a flaky test that’s been haunting your CI like a ghost with bad timing? Shout them out.
Wins aren’t just launch-day fireworks. They’re the tiny victories that keep your team going. And in a remote world, you have to go out of your way to make people feel seen. Post gifs. Use emojis. Go full cringe if you have to.
Because when people feel celebrated, they stay engaged. And happy teammates build better things.
7. Overcommunicate Just Enough
In an office, you get all kinds of passive context. Who’s talking to whom, what project is hot, what’s breaking in real time. Remote? You get radio silence unless someone pipes up.
So yeah, overcommunicate, but with taste. “Just deployed the new version, watching logs” is great. “Taking lunch, had a burrito, mildly regretting it”... maybe keep that to the personal channel.
And please, say when you’re stuck. You’re not annoying anyone. You’re preventing the team from wasting hours guessing why the build’s broken.
8. Async ≠ Ignoring People
Async is powerful. It respects everyone’s time zones, schedules, and deep work. But it doesn’t mean “reply whenever you feel like it.” Especially when you’re blocking someone.
If someone tags you with a clear ask, acknowledge it, even just “got it, will reply by EOD.” Don’t ghost your team. Ghost your high school friends who ask for crypto advice instead.
9. Don’t Confuse Activity with Impact
“Online 9 to 6, green dot always on, Slack replies in under a minute.” That’s not productivity. That’s performance theater. And it burns people out fast.
Trust your team to manage their time. Measure outcomes, not hours. If someone disappears for a day and comes back with a beautifully optimized Snowflake model, you don’t need to know when they took their lunch break.
Micromanagement is just insecurity wearing a manager badge.
10. Rituals > Random Vibes
Remote teams need intentional culture, because you don’t get accidental culture from hallway chats. That’s where rituals come in.
Think: weekly demo day. Friday shoutouts. Monthly “what did we learn?” sessions. Even dumb traditions like “Meme Monday” can help a team bond across time zones.
Rituals make distributed teams feel less like isolated satellites and more like a weird little crew that actually wants to work together.
That’s a Wrap
Remote work isn’t rocket science, but it does require more than just Slack and Wi-Fi. Start with these ten things and you’ll already be ahead of 90% of teams out there.
Got a favorite remote work tip, or a horror story? Hit reply and share it, I might include the best ones in the next issue.
