Our belief in a better tomorrow, rooted in the desire to build a kinder world for our children, friends, and neighbors, led us to build Remote. We wanted to bring more opportunities to people looking for great places to work and enrich organizations with the gift of diversity and distributed talent.

Conflicts do not arise from nothing. They brew over time until something causes them to boil over. The current situation in Ukraine is no exception. Before violence began to escalate, we started working with all people employed through Remote in the area, along with the businesses managing their employment, to ensure everyone was supported for what would eventually become a war scenario.

Remote stands with Ukraine and condemns the actions of the Russian government in this senseless war. 

Right now, our priority is helping displaced Ukrainian workers and their families whose lives have been turned upside down. Through the Remote for Refugees program and our special joint task force with the government of Portugal, we are supporting thousands of people and their families by simplifying the process by which Ukrainian employees can relocate.  

Remote has no legal entity in Russia, and we’ve halted the onboarding of any Russian companies to our platform. We are actively helping companies that are shutting down operations in Russia and relocating their employees to other countries. We are also providing free assistance and resources to vulnerable independent contractors in Russia trying to support their families and relocate overseas if they can.  

We are committed to making the world a safer and more peaceful place for all of us. Through our rigorous compliance and enhanced due diligence checks, we ensure all Remote customers, employees, and contractors globally are screened against lists of sanctioned people and companies. We also have a global policy of not working with any companies involved in the development of military or dual-use technology. 

We will continue to monitor the situation and will work with government and peace-loving partners around the world to support workers of all nationalities affected by the conflict.

No. Remote does not have any active customers in Russia and is not accepting new customers from Russia. While we recognize the difference between the actions of Russia’s government and the will of its people — many of whom have bravely protested against this war — we believe ceasing operations in Russia is the correct course of action at this time.

Because Remote owns our own entities in Ukraine and in several surrounding countries, we were well positioned to help people not subject to enforced conscription to relocate. Remote's mobility team has been working tirelessly for weeks to help people apply for the necessary documentation to relocate and continue to be employed through us in many different countries. Thanks to our great team, many people displaced by war have not had to worry about their ability to relocate quickly — and they can remain legally employed once they have arrived in a new country safely.

We have also put in place specific communication and support channels for people in crisis, including advice around loss of internet access and alternative payment arrangements to ensure access to funds did not become a barrier to safety.

Remote is continuing to work with people and businesses in Ukraine and surrounding countries to bring more people to safety and ensure they have the legal support they need to relocate legally, quickly, and safely.

Our commitment to everyone affected by war

This war has had devastating effects on the people of Ukraine, but they are not alone. Those who had left previously, as well as people in other involved countries who do not condone this war, have suffered and continue to suffer.

We have made the future of work our mission: a future that is more flexible, more inclusive, and more empowering. As part of that commitment, we are working directly with governments, nonprofit organizations, and individuals to rally a support network that allows people to land in safety and, eventually, rebuild their lives.

We continue to build upon what we're doing to support everyone impacted by the war, and our proactive and ongoing support will continue as long as there are people we can help.

If you have been impacted by this war and believe Remote may be able to help you, or if you operate a company or nonprofit and believe you may be able to help, please reach out to us and let us know.

War stands for nothing, but we stand against it. Remote stands with Ukraine.

Remote’s position on the war in Ukraine

Our hearts go out to the millions of Ukrainian people displaced from their homes, their families separated and livelihoods disrupted. 

The government of Portugal has announced a special new program for Ukrainians coming into the country. We are honored to be part of the special task force in collaboration with the Minister of Labor and Social Security, Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Presidency to design a simplified visa and right-to-work process. This initiative will enable Ukrainian citizens to relocate, find jobs, and get back on their feet quickly.

How does Portugal’s special program for Ukrainians work?

Remote is helping the Portuguese government assist with several key tasks:

The introduction of this special program allows Ukrainian citizens to enter Portugal without a visa and seek asylum. This program will apply to all Ukrainian citizens and their family members entering Portugal. Upon their arrival, the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF: Foreigners and Borders Service) will carry out an internal security control to verify their status. Upon successful verification, Ukrainian citizens are allowed to enter Portugal for a duration of one year, with a possible extension of six additional months after the conclusion of the first year. 

Providing important documentation and social services

This program also guarantees all Ukrainian citizens entering Portugal will be assigned a NIF (Número de Identificação Fiscal: Tax Identification Number), NISS (Social Security Number) and SNS (National Health System Number). The allocation of these IDs ensures people coming from Ukraine will have access to all public services in Portugal, including education for children in public schools. 

The Institute for Employment and Vocational Training (IEFP) has created a task force that will focus on identifying job opportunities for Ukrainian citizens. This task force also plans to place a heavy emphasis on creating resources such as language courses to help integrate new Ukrainian arrivals into the Portuguese labor market.

Useful resources for businesses and Ukrainians in Portugal

Here are a few helpful resources for Ukrainians who have recently arrived in Portugal and businesses interested in offering employment opportunities:

Job openings on Portugal’s IEFP: The IEFP launched this exclusive platform to promote job opportunities for Ukrainian citizens. The Minister of Labor and Social Security notes that more than 2,000 open jobs are already listed on this platform, and the government is inviting more companies to list openings. If you are looking for talented folks to join your team, you can submit job openings on the IEFP portal. 

Remote for Refugees:  The Remote for Refugees program is available to help Ukrainians who have been displaced by this conflict. If you’re looking to hire Ukrainians in Portugal remotely, Remote can provide employer of record services to help you hire and onboard refugee talent at no cost to you.

WehelpUkraine.org: WehelpUkraine.org, also called WU, is a platform focused on helping Ukrainian refugees find living support worldwide. WU is part of this special initiative alongside Remote and is working in collaboration with the government of Portugal to list helpful resources for Ukrainian refugees. 

See also: What you can do to help your remote workers in Ukraine

Remote’s mission is to help build a world where every person and every business belongs in the global market. We are fully committed to creating useful resources and working with governments and organizations to help refugees rebuild their lives. If you have questions regarding the current crisis or need help with your Ukrainian team members employed through Remote, please contact your Remote representative.

Remote partners with Portugal to help displaced Ukrainian citizens

As the conflict in Ukraine escalates, companies with workers in the country need to know how to support their people. This article provides actionable information to make life for your team members in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and other affected areas easier and safer.

Click here to view emergency relocation options for Ukrainian nationals.

Click here to view emergency relocation options for Russian nationals.

Click here to view emergency relocation options for Belarusian nationals.

For the past month, we have been working with our employees and customers to prepare for this potential crisis. While we were hopeful the situation would not reach this point, we recognized the need to prepare in case of emergency. The thoughts of all of us at Remote are with our colleagues, friends, partners, and all peace-loving people in Ukraine and the surrounding region during this time.

If you are a customer of Remote and engage workers in the Ukraine through our employer of record or contractor management services, we have set up a special email address to provide immediate assistance. We have also created a phone number to call in case of lost internet service in the region. 

All potentially affected Remote customers and their team members in Ukraine should have received an email earlier this week with more information. Please contact your Remote representative if you did not receive this email or if you have any questions about how to support your team in Ukraine through Remote.

What can you do for your Ukrainian team members right now?

Your team members will be concerned about their safety and the safety of their friends and families while conflict is ongoing. This is not only true for your team members within Ukraine but also for those outside the country with loved ones who are still there. Your understanding and support as they deal with the emotions, anxiety, and uncertainty that will continue throughout this conflict will be vital to their wellbeing as they navigate these extremely challenging circumstances.

"For a manager, it's hard to sure everyone is safe," says Lemon.io founder Aleksandr Volodarsky. "We have a few team members who could not/didn't want to leave their cities that are now under massive attacks. And there is nothing we can do to get them out. But staying in touch, offering support, is very crucial. Even for those who are safe. Everyone is under stress and needs support and empathy."

"One of the main things managers/founders can do is to ensure that the company will save jobs and will keep paying salaries to those who are mobilized, volunteer, are in places that are under attack or just not on their highest productivity due to high stress. This is a game-changer to those team members."

With that important foundation in mind, here are some ways you can help your team members in Ukraine.

During periods of unrest, it is common for means of communication to become unreliable. Your team members in Ukraine may lose access to the internet for a few hours or days at a time. If that happens, your people will need to know how to reach you. Provide a direct phone number so you do not lose contact should a member of your team lose internet access.

Your team members in Ukraine may have to use mobile data or cellular services not covered by their regular plans. Offer to cover any extra communications expenses that may arise.

Banking services, even more so than internet access, can become unreliable during conflict. Your team members may not be able to access their funds, or they may need to receive funds quickly.

Your team members may need funds delivered directly to accounts other than their usual bank accounts. Please keep in mind that paying for services in deemed unsecured cryptocurrencies is currently prohibited in Ukraine. As always, delivering funds outside traditional bank accounts can carry additional risks, so be careful to ensure the funds actually reach the person you are trying to help.

Banking services may be unreliable, so if they are out for a time, you may want to provide advance funding to Ukrainian employees ahead of normal payroll cycles to assist in recovery or relocation.

Facilitate relocation for those who need it.

Many people in Ukraine will choose to stay in their country, but others will want to leave, either during the height of the conflict or after its resolution. Providing relocation assistance for your employees may be one of the most critical pieces of support you can offer.

Keep in mind that any relocation assistance you can offer will likely need to include family members as well. Emergency immigration, special work permits, and emergency visas may all be options for team members wishing to leave the country.

Remote is currently assisting partners and their team members in the region with relocation as new options develop. However, please be aware that relocation will not be possible if your team member has been conscripted. While Remote cannot provide assistance with transportation or accommodations, we can offer recommendations for such services. Please contact us for more information about this program if your Ukrainian team members are seeking relocation assistance.

Getting reliable information from inside a conflict area can be difficult. During the week of the first attacks, many of Ukraine’s government websites were hit by cyberattacks, making it even more difficult for Ukrainians to receive communications through official channels.

From outside the country, you may be able to relay information your Ukranian team members will be unable to discover on their own. Keep an eye out for news that may be helpful to your team in Ukraine, especially if they lose internet access. Share information you come across that may be related to providing food, water, shelter, or transportation in the areas where your team members  live.

Do not assume people want to be left alone.

Obviously, companies should not require workers living in dangerous conditions to perform their normal duties. However, some people may prefer to remain in contact as usual. Allow your team members to decide what makes them most comfortable and accommodate those choices to the best of your ability.

Maintaining accurate records can be extremely important in recovery after conflict or for relocation purposes. Make sure you have the most up-to-date information for all of your team members  in Ukraine, including addresses, bank account information, legal status, citizenship, and anything else that may be important.

Your team members may wish to scan and send you important documents to protect against potential loss or damage. Your HR or people team should handle this duty to preserve any documents sent while maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of your team members’ ’ sensitive personal information.

All of us at Remote grieve for our friends, coworkers, and fellow humans in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and the surrounding region for the hardships they are facing. We will continue to monitor events closely to provide support for our customers and their team members in the region.

If refugee support becomes necessary, our Remote for Refugees program will be available to help companies engage people who have been displaced by this conflict. More immediately, Remote Relocation may be able to help any of your team members looking to leave the country. 

Remote fully owns and operates our local legal entity in Ukraine. We currently support employment of both full-time employees and contractors in Ukraine. If you have questions regarding the current crisis or need help with your Ukrainian team members employed through Remote, please contact your Remote representative.

What you can do to help your remote workers in Ukraine

At Remote, we constantly push ourselves to create the most secure, most flexible, and most dependable solutions for our customers. To accomplish this, we seek out the best tech talent in countries across the globe, no matter where that talent lives. We believe that only an international team can build the solutions the international market demands.

As part of our commitment to excellence in tech, we are delighted to announce that José Valim, the creator of the Elixir programming language and Chief Adoption Officer at Dashbit, is joining Remote as an advisor. José’s expertise and experience will be invaluable as we continue to build the top global employment solution on the planet.

Remote, José, and Elixir: the perfect combination

As Elixir’s creator, José is the ideal representative from the Elixir community to advise Remote on its use. We are excited to work together and tackle the challenges of global employment in the years to come.

“What attracted me to Remote is that they are tackling complex and exciting problems that are extremely relevant to today's world, and they are doing so in Elixir,” says José. “After talking to Marcelo (Remote's CTO), it is clear they are betting on the language in the long term, and I believe there are many opportunities for Remote and Elixir to grow together.”

Remote relies on Elixir to power our backend engineering. Over the last three years, Elixir has grown rapidly in both web and embedded markets to become one of the most respected and important new tools for developers around the world. We built Remote’s global employment solutions using Elixir to meet the highest standards of scalability, concurrency, and resiliency. 

The Elixir community is a wonderful group of people from around the world who are dedicated, welcoming, and highly active in pursuit of our shared tech goals. The learning curve for Elixir is low, which allows us to onboard new engineers quickly and get them working on meaningful projects. By building with Elixir, Remote will continue to move quickly and scale confidently to meet the needs of its customers.

From 2010 to 2014, José was a member of the Rails Core Team, where he received the Ruby Hero Award to recognize his critical work on open source projects. He created the Elixir programming language in 2011 and received the Erlang User of the Year award in 2015 for his contributions to the ecosystem. He has written three books on technical subjects and is a regular speaker at some of the world’s biggest technical conferences. He is an engineering graduate from Escola Politécnica de São Paulo in Brazil, and he earned his master’s in machine learning from Politecnico di Torino in Italy.

José also co-founded Plataformatec, a company acqui-hired by Nubank in 2020. He served as a technical advisor to Base, which was acquired by Zendesk in 2018. Today, he leads the Dashbit team in his role as CAO to help companies adopt and run Elixir throughout the world.

We are incredibly grateful and proud to have José join Remote as an advisor. No one achieves excellence without standing on the shoulders of giants, and José stands tall.

At Remote, we are building the future of remote work to make it easier for companies to employ top talent all over the world. That’s a big task. Building a platform to power that vision means we have to use every tool at our disposal as effectively as possible. Working alongside José and the Elixir community connects us to a powerful group of minds who will help us as we redefine what it means to work from anywhere.

Those connections have already begun to augment our capabilities, but the more we connect with great minds in tech, the more we look to bolster our own team. We are scaling our engineering team quickly, and our standards continue to climb as we meet the best engineering talent from all over the world.

If you would like to join us in our pursuit to democratize access to global talent, visit our careers page to see available openings. You can also follow me on Twitter to hear more about Remote’s approach to building great products and our collaboration with the Elixir community (and a few of my best bad jokes).

As we begin the new year with a growing team and new partnerships, we are excited to share with you what comes next. Please join us in welcoming José Valim as our new connection to the Elixir community and our latest ally in our quest to reimagine the possibilities of global employment.

Welcoming Elixir creator José Valim as an advisor to Remote

Let's call Monday 4 p.m. What time zone are you in?

Wikipedia tells us what time zones do, but it stops short of explaining why they don't make sense.

"A time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it is convenient for areas in close commercial or other communication to keep the same time."

The concept of time zones was introduced by the Italian mathematician Quirico Filopanti in his book Miranda! in 1858. He also proposed a universal time to be used in astronomy and telegraphy.

Apologies for missing the call, just realized you're in PST. Can we reschedule?

By about 1900, almost all inhabited places on Earth had adopted one or another standard time zone, but only some of these used an hourly offset from GMT. It took many decades before all time zones were based on some "standard offset" from GMT/UTC.

Today, there are 37 different local times in use.

37. THIRTY-SEVEN. THIRTY. SEVEN. Not 24, not 12, not 48. 37.

As if this weren't a mess on its own, enter Daylight Saving Time, the practice of advancing clocks during warmer months so that darkness falls later each day according to the clock. DST was initially introduced in 1895 by George Hudson.

If time zones are hard now, what happens when we get to Mars?

If you're reading this, there's a high chance your work is often impacted by the inconvenience of time zones, either because you have to build/work with systems that rely on it or because you have a lot of meetings with people in different states/countries/continents.

Even though time zones are a huge source of wasted effort, frustration, and business failures, no one seems interested in finding a solution.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If we analyze the primary motivation to follow time zones...

Time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it is convenient for areas in close commercial or other communication to keep the same time.

In 1858, this made sense. Most business meetings were conducted in the same time zone, so most people perceived time as a static thing.

However, 162 years later, this isn't true anymore. The world is wide open. It's easy to travel and to communicate, and physical barriers are (almost) no more. Yet we still use time zones to schedule meetings across the world. Isn't it time for something better?

Quirico Filopanti also proposed a universal time to be used in astronomy and telegraphy, which we call UTC.

Gremlins can't eat after midnight?! What if they travel to other time zones?!

"Coordinated Universal Time (or UTC) is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about one second of mean solar time at 0° longitude, and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)."

Advantages of using UTC as your one true time zone include:

No more need to Google other time zones. You immediately know the difference from where you stand to UTC, and that's it.

Not affected by Daylight Saving Time. This advantage speaks for itself.

No more need to ask people where they are. You can focus on finding availability quickly and easily.

You can add it to your calendar by default or use it as secondary time. Most calendar solutions support this.

You can be pedantic about it. Like I'm doing now.

You don't get to brag about where you live with every meeting invitation.

You can't use the time zone excuse to explain why you missed an important meeting.

Why is this such a big waste of time anyway?

Let's take a step back and look at it from a scientific perspective.

Problem: four people, all working remotely, want to schedule a meeting.

Without UTC, everyone on this call must know the time zone specifics of everyone else.

Nowadays when this happens, you deal with a nightmare sequence of frustration:

1. Emailing back and forth to find out when everyone is awake and available to call

3. Eventually realizing there are three people in a call waiting for the fourth, who thinks the meeting doesn't start for an hour.

Ten rejected calendar invitations later, the meeting actually happens. Wasn't that fun?

When you use the UTC model, you always refer to the UTC time zone when scheduling things, even if you're not in it. The only thing you need to know is how far away from UTC, and that's it, forever.

Most calendar apps/services allow you to have a secondary time zone, so you can set it up as such to make your life even simpler.

UTC offers a simple and effective solution for more civilized days. With a shared standard, finding a time to meet is dramatically faster than in outdated models with multiple time zones.

All that is left is to find a time when everyone is available to meet. You always know what time it is, freeing you and your team to focus on what matters.

Just use UTC as your main time zone to schedule calls.

Time zones are the commute of remote work: an unnecessary waste of time.

Using UTC saves you time, emails, and missed meetings, not to mention a lot of money in regained productivity.

UTC is respectful and doesn't force people to Google the time zone where you live.

Why wait? Head to your calendar right now and convert to the One True Time Zone. Your colleagues, clients, partners, and family will thank you for it.

What's wrong with your time zone?

At Remote.com we’re heavy users of Phoenix Framework. As we make good progress to ship the new Remote.com there are a few tips and tricks we’re happy to share.

We’re using coherence as the backbone for our auth system. It’s quite easy and fast to setup.

Soon after you finish all requirements and setup procedures it’ll be time to get going and actually implement some auth flows.

If you already implemented your fair share of web systems, I’m sure the term and/or variable current_user is one you know all too well.

If that isn’t the case, well, in short, it’s typically a variable populated with a data structure or record identifying the user that originated the respective request.

A very common way to access this variable without having to fetch it explicitely from conn in every action of our controller is to override the action plug.

As a first attempt to simplify that, you can do the following:

defmodule MyApp.UserController do
  use MyApp.Web, :controller

  def action(%Plug.Conn{assigns: %{current_user: current_user}} = conn, _opts) do
    apply(__MODULE__, action_name(conn), [conn, conn.params, current_user])
  end

  def show(conn, _params, current_user) do
    render(conn, "show.html", logged_in: current_user)
  end

As you can see we now have a function called action which will override Phoenix’s controller default action/2 plug allowing us to inject custom arguments. More about this here.

Although this is a lot better, it’s still not very DRY as we’d need to replicate this function all over every single controller in which we need to access current_user.

We improved this by creating the following module in controllers/helpers/current_user.ex:

defmodule MyApp.CurrentUser do
  defmacro __using__(_) do
    quote do
      def action(%Plug.Conn{assigns: %{current_user: current_user}} = conn, _opts) do
        apply(__MODULE__, action_name(conn), [conn, conn.params, current_user])
      end
    end
  end
end

This time we applied Elixir’s defmacro to allow us to seamlessly inject the function into our controllers. With this we can access current_user very easily and remove unnecessary, repeated code, like this:

defmodule MyApp.UserController do
  use MyApp.Web, :controller
  use MyApp.CurrentUser

  def show(conn, _params, current_user) do
    render(conn, "show.html", logged_in: current_user)
  end

How cool is that? With a simple, single line of code we can inject current_user into every action.

Do you have any suggestions on how to improve this? We’d love to hear from you.

How to use current_user in Elixir's Phoenix Framework

Why you should be working asynchronously in 2022

Asynchronous (async) work is a way for workers to organize the order in which tasks are executed to align with their own timetable. In asynchronous work, communication is not expected to be immediate, meaning workers can fine-tune work to reduce pressure on themselves and their colleagues. Asynchronous work relies on three main tenets: Multiplexing, Communication and Action.

Asynchronous work refers to the practice of working on a team that does not require all members to be online simultaneously. When you work asynchronously, individuals can maximize their productivity without waiting for others to complete tasks. The key to asynchronous work is creating processes that allow employees to work autonomously and providing employees with the trust they need to do so.

An even, swift and nimble pipeline produces exactly the right quantity of output for its requirements, and all its stages are balanced in terms of efficiency and speed, resulting in no waste of time or resources. This is inspired in the Toyota Production System 3Ms methodology: more about that here.

What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous work?

Asynchronous work maximizes production by decoupling work from synchronous communication. Synchronous work tethers progress to communication, forcing teams to halt progress on projects when one of the team members is unavailable due to different work hours or time off.

Asynchronous work does not require employees to be online at the same time.

Asynchronous work relies more heavily on documentation and transparency.

Synchronous work slows down projects by placing artificial barriers on productivity.

Synchronous work is more common in office environments than in remote work structures, but still not optimal there.

Asynchronous work puts more trust in employees and their ability to perform.

From a results perspective, asynchronous work demonstrates massive benefits compared to synchronous work. Companies that embrace async are able to move projects forward much more quickly than their competition. In addition, businesses with async workflows tend to have higher employee morale, thanks to the trust and increased communication and documentation practices necessitated by an async approach.

Managing async workflows requires companies to rethink what it means to measure productivity and trust employees. To that end, async work relies on three main tenets: Multiplexing, Communication and Action.

Human beings exist in a synchronous world, we are bound by time moving forward one second at a time. However the way we do things (or put things together) has an insane amount of impact on the outcome of our pipeline. It’s all about planning.

Typical (synchronous) planning relies on kicking off things in a bulk fashion. On its own it’s not a terrible thing to do, however, a system will go as slow as its slowest element. In this case any delay will be propagated through the pipeline, as each stage depends entirely on the step that precedes it.

This image represents a three terminal software development pipeline organized with sync planning. To deploy a feature we need tasks A, B and C to be completed. Given the way that these tasks were planned for and distributed we will require a cycle of 9 work hours per deployment. This is great for atomic tasks, but very slow otherwise as we’ll only be able to deploy every so often.

Async planning relies on breaking tasks in smaller tasks as much as possible and releasing Minimum Viable Changes (MVCs) as frequently as possible. This technique relies on the hypothesis that shipping less but more frequently allows you to measure success and counteract any negative feedback as fast as possible. It also allows a more fine-grained control of resource allocation as we’ll be able to perform more tasks in the same amount of time (due to their reduced size).

In this example representation, by separating Tasks A, B and C in (A1, A2, A3, B1, etc.) we achieved three times as many deploys as in the previous example (M1). In this example at the end of the 9 hours we may end up with the same amount of features deployed, however, multiplexing our tasks with async task distribution we were able to release subsets of our tasks, thus being able to validate their impact, and rollback or reassess the next steps. We’ve reduced the iteration time to a third of the original planning.

This methodology allows us to multiplex tasks, combining them to produce results faster.

Good communication is key to the success of any system (human or machine).

There are many types of communication, an email, a message, a voice call, video call or even a “let’s go get a coffee”. Each has a totally different impact on productivity and picking the right one is as important to the production pipeline as any other task we can perform.

Synchronous communication is the one we are most inclined to because it’s easy and more comfortable in a way.

A conversation (usually) requires at least two people. An engaged conversation can take multiple forms:

Messaging someone and expecting an immediate response

All these are great options for things that can’t be done in any other way, or are way harder to do asynchronously. For example, a performance review, strategy discussion, interviews, 1-1s.

Most meetings can be replaced by proper documentation, well-written emails or messages.

Meetings are the most expensive tool your company has, use them properly.

In Example 3, two devs working on their own tasks and needing to complete set of tasks (A,B and C) before deploying:

This example happens so many times, in this case a meeting about a tech requirement interrupts both devs for a fixed amount of time, and soon after another call about what someone should do next.

This is definitely not the best use case for sync communication, the interruptions delayed all work and no deploy was done.

If we think about the efficiency of our pipeline, it was definitely uneven and everything but swift.

Asynchronous communication empowers independence. It focuses on making sure that a task and its effects are independent of whoever planned or executed it.

Asynchronous communication brings/enforces some of the long-sought best practices, such as:

Example 4 with the same two people (as example 3) developing a set of tasks but resorting to asynchronous communication.

In this example, communication is performed through messaging and well written documentation. In these cases, even if the end goal of the message exchange is spread throughout the time, the impact on the work flow is negligible and often means more execution.

Humans aren’t very good at going from a state of total focus on task A to total focus on task B without loss (as depicted in the following image). For example, when you’re deep in a book and get interrupted with something. It’ll take you a moment to get back into the book.

In Example 5 we see a time-based chart, where Time and Productivity are the axes. This example depicts the timeline of a backend developer that gets interrupted twice, first by a frontend developer about the payload of an API request and second time from a new team member about setting up the project’s database locally.

The backend developer spent some time focusing on the task at hand (1) and later transitioned to a state of focus (2). This (2) is what we want to maximize and where we get the best out of our super creative and powerful brains. Then, when interrupted, the developer spends some time to address the question from the frontend developer (3) to then get back to the task (1). Unfortunately as the developer was focusing again (2), a new interruption occurs (3).

If you read this far, I’m sure this is all very familiar to you.

Now, the cherry on top is the concept of ”Flow” (2). Wikipedia’s definition (more here):

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time.

If being totally focused is hard, getting into the Flow is even harder. The more you stay focused, higher the probability of getting into the Flow, however if you have trouble keeping focus, then forget about Flow.

Async communication shines with great power here, as it shields everyone’s time and focus while reducing meaningless time sinks. When you’re communicating async, this types of interruptions happen much less. And the total time that you’re able to do deep work is longer, the chance of achieving Flow much higher.

Always default to action when asynchronous working

This is the very last tenant of going Async. It’s not about procedure, it’s about attitude. It’s about caring about where you’re going as a whole and yourself as a professional.

There are many times when work isn’t ready for us to tackle, tasks aren’t planned, decision makers aren’t online, etc. In these times, successful teams execute, even if they later have to refactor and adapt, they don’t waste time “waiting”.

“Always default to action” is a mantra we keep on repeating at Remote. This means that if you need to do something and no one is there to help you out or to point what to do next, then you use your common sense and pick something up yourself.

Imagine there are 3 tasks, and only 2 are perfectly described, so you need to wait for a product manager be available to define precisely what’s required.

In Example 6 we show that example through Dev 1 being someone that defaults to action and Dev 2 someone that defaults to waiting.

In what we just described as “always default to action”, Dev 1 will pick up something else, even if not as important as the task he was hoping to tackle. Dev 2 however decided to wait for the PM to be back to help describe such task.

This example is anecdotal and I wish I would say it’s an exaggeration, but it’s not, it’s a very common place.

At Remote, if you really need someone to help you with your next task and you really can’t pick up anything else, well, it’s better to use that time to take care of yourself like going to the gym, walk the dog or watching your favorite show (yes even throughout the day).

This implies a bit of better judgement, of course, some tasks are very sensitive and if you’re not sure about those, then you can pick up something else. It’s not about ignoring risk, it’s about taking charge in a controlled way.

Async work is a way to organize how to get stuff done with less interruptions and higher efficiency based on a few ideas:

Async work should be used more often than sync work, it provides better resource management, reduces waste and therefore optimizes productivity

Multiplexing your tasks and reducing scope allows you to deliver faster, test your hypotheses sooner and achieve success with higher confidence

Communication should most of the times be async and only here and there be sync with things that definitely require you to do so. Keeping this as a rule of thumb allows people to focus on their tasks longer and concentrate on best practices like documentation and writing proper procedures.

Always defaulting to action (within reason) helps the whole team move faster, reduce wasteful times and increase ownership.

Marcelo Lebre

Articles published on Remote by Marcelo Lebre