Interesting findings by Melanie S. Brucks and Jonathan Levav:

According to new research one important skill is impacted by the restrictions of video calls: creativity. But why is idea generation negatively affected? And could other skills actually benefit from virtual communication?

Olivier Lacan did an excellent job explaining his process of upgrading his audio and video setup for post-pandemic life. Comparisons and specific gear recommendations included.

It has become quite absurd to argue that remoteness has to mean becoming a less visible and valued contributor to your organization. I hope this post can help you convince anyone who might still believe that communicating remotely still has to be a pain.

Join Mat Ryer for a fun conversation with Kris Brandow, Angelica Hill, and Natalie Pistunovich about how these Gophers get work/life done in this crazy world! Expect to learn about work environment must-haves, communication tips & tricks, developer tool recommendations, and much more!

This the first majorly bearish case I’ve read on remote work:

… remote work makes you vulnerable to outsourcing, reduces your job to a metric, creates frustrating change-averse bureaucracies, and stifles your career growth. The lack of scrutiny our remote future faces is going to result in frustrated workers and ineffective companies.

Let’s tackle these issues one at a time.

No matter how many of these WFH articles I read (or podcasts I listen to), there’s usually still one or two tips and/or perspectives I glean from each one. This is a nice piece on the Taskade Blog that starts by unpacking these three common tips:

1️⃣ Become a (Master) Communicator 📣
2️⃣ Find Your Work Sanctum 🏡
3️⃣ Make Time for Work (And Play) ⏰

We’re talking about all things all-remote with Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab. Darren is tasked with putting intentional thought and action into place to lead the largest all-remote company in the world. Yes, GitLab is 100% all-remote, as in, no offices…and they employee more than 1,200 people across 67 countries. They’ve been iterating and documenting how to work remotely for years. We cover Darren’s personal story on remote work while he served as managing editor at Engadget, his thoughts on how “work” is evolving and ways to reframe and rethink about when you work, this idea of work life harmony, and the backstory and details of the playbook GitLab released free of charge to the world.

Can Duruk wonders if the exodus from our co-located offices will be a good thing in the end:

As software eats not the margins, but the societal frictions now, we can end up with a similar situation for the workplaces too. We can, maybe, stop software eating software before its too late.

This thread from Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify) on Twitter…talks about digital by default, a unified work experience, WFH setup, empathy, company culture, change, and silver linings.

As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.

Until recently, work happened in the office. We’ve always had some people remote, but they used the internet as a bridge to the office. This will reverse now. The future of the office is to act as an on-ramp to the same digital workplace that you can access from your #WFH setup.

He goes on to say…

We haven’t figured this whole thing out. There is a lot of change ahead, but that is what we’re good at. “Thrive on change” is written on our (now digital) walls for a reason.

Are you striving to create a culture of written comms? Maarten Claes writes…

More and more people are being exposed to working remotely. One of the key factors for success in a remote workplace is a culture of written communication. It’s not always obvious how to create such a culture, and it takes at least some level of discipline from the people involved to make it a habit.

I’ve worked with mostly remote teams over the past three years. Here are a few of my observations on what helped cultivate such a culture.

Node 14, Vue’s Vite, and is-promise are in the news. We’ve got some working from home tips and unpopular opinions to share. And… shout outs! 👏

This article argues that workplace camaraderie is possible when teams:

• 🛶 Paddle in the same direction
• 🎯 Share similar goals and values
• 🤔 Have meaningful, focused conversations

But what does ‘camaraderie’ even mean in the workplace context?

Workplace camaraderie means loyalty towards your employer and colleagues. It’s a sense of belonging and commitment that binds a seemingly unrelated bunch of people. It’s the glue that keeps businesses and organizations together.

There are challenges to generating and sustaining camaraderie when people are in the same physical space. It’s even harder when they are not. The linked article has some good advice in that regard, as well.

This is a little outside our normal beat, but I thought you’d appreciate knowing about these high res backgrounds before Monday’s standup. 🤓

To help you succeed as a remote programmer, here at CV Compiler, we analyzed about 1,000 remote vacancies, (~330 job listings for each group), to define the tech skills employers are demanding from remote developers right now.

Frontenders oughtta know JavaScript (duh). Backenders oughtta be able to make their way around AWS.

Today we’re featuring conversations from different perspectives on working from home from our JS Party, Go Time, and Brain Science podcasts here on Changelog.com. Because, hey…if you didn’t know we have 6 active podcasts in our portfolio of shows. Head to changelog.com/podcasts to collect them all!

Given all of the recent changes and adjustments many individuals have made to working remotely, Mireille and Adam discuss some of the relevant aspects of working from home. How do you develop habits that work for you to be the most productive? Which factors make a difference to be successful in navigating challenges that emerge and how can you develop ways of staying socially connected while being physically distant?

I’m pretty sure that, given the state of the world and the focus on Zoom right now, they will rectify this, but until then…“the only feature of Zoom that does appear to be end-to-end encrypted is in-meeting text chat.”

“They’re a little bit fuzzy about what’s end-to-end encrypted,” Green said of Zoom. “I think they’re doing this in a slightly dishonest way. It would be nice if they just came clean.”

Without end-to-end encryption, Zoom has the technical ability to spy on private video meetings and could be compelled to hand over recordings of meetings to governments or law enforcement in response to legal requests.

With most of us working from home for the first time (or for a long time), we thought it’d be a good idea to share our experiences and opinions on how to manage it. We discuss how to optimize your location, your schedule, your communications, and the rest of you life during these stressful times.

Working from home can be challenging, especially amid school closings and everything else caused by COVID-19. In this episode panelists Jon, Mat, Carmen, and Mark share advice and experiences they have accumulated over many years of working from home. They cover separating your work space from your personal space, signaling to your family that you are busy, ways to keep track of the time, and suggestions for getting some exercise in when you can.