Remote Jobs That Promised Async Still Book Back-to-Back Meetings
Remote employees are experiencing a frustrating disconnect between promised async work cultures and the reality of constant meetings, distractions, and a lack of visibility. This leads to wasted time, increased mental fatigue, and a feeling of being micromanaged or distrusted, despite delivering results. The pressure to appear 'busy' in virtual settings is counterproductive.
SOURCES (60)
“If you don’t want to be interrupted (which you shouldn’t be while working) then you close your door. If people open the door then lock it. You’re working during work hours. Like you would be if you were in an office. Unexpected calls can happen…”
“Whiteboard! Have everyone join the Teams meeting and access the Whiteboard app. You can link it to the top tabbed area. Setup a layout of post it notes in the workspace and give everyone 5-10 minutes to write out their ideas on them. Then ask everyone to choose an icon to represent themselves and have them vote on the top 3. Talk through top options with remaining time”
“lol being in HR that definitely is a pet peeve of mine. I do understand there are typos but remote and hybrid are 2 completely different job types”
“Personally, I wouldn’t care because I don’t check my work laptop over the weekends. But I better not have coworkers texting my personal number on the weekends to talk about work stuff.”
“The cat is the critical part. Or in my case, the dog. Who likes to sleep under my desk so that she can bark loudly as soon as I get on an important call.”
“The hard part with movement reminders is that people ignore them after a few days, so I’d make the actions extremely small: 30 sec stretch, stand up, drink water, walk around the room, etc.”
“Hehe thanks for the concern. Company computers are always on, because of the data backups. I am currently working remotely twice a week, and I am using the same approach, because there isn’t any other. The projects are on the server and I need to be on my company computer to have an access to the data. Once I unfortunately turned it off,they automatically reboot during the night, and if that happened during the day, I would just say someone in the office to turn it on :)”
“Hey can can anyone recommend some good company meeting room setups? we’re currently with yealink which is good for the most part except playing videos. gotta go through ppt live share for them to work well. submitted by /u/Senior-Reception-578 [link] [comments]”
“Yes, it‘s a big issue in corporations and many people are struggling to communicate clearly. People tend to over-communicate, assume that everybody knows what they do and often don’t follow a logical flow. Check out the book ‘As we speak‘ by Peter Myers, it is very good.”
“If you knew about the float days then plan for the skipped meeting. you could communicate it and then send an email reminder instead (as agreed upon during earlier meeting). Good Stakeholders respect trustworthy information, money and time back. Money floats on this roster based on stakeholder”
“That kind of alignment is powerful, especially early on. I’d keep the shared call, but give it a clear agenda so collaboration doesn’t slowly turn into everyone attends everything”
“I genuinely loved the part when you said "I got to listen more than I talked." Somebody tells this to my management as well :-D but you are genuinely correct with the approach, we need to align in order to solve the usual challenges we face in our professional life.”
“Slack and a task tracker! Use them together and they work wonders. My team and I Slack each other all day, even if someone forgets to update the task tracker. So it's even useful to create your team into accountability agents too.”
“Nah, don’t do work after hours. We had an epic design meeting all day yesterday that involved the entire dev team. Leadership was cool that nothing was shipped that day.”
“you just described digital presenteeism perfectly. it's the same butt-in-seat mentality from offices except now the seat is your Slack status. the work doesn't matter as long as the green dot is on”
“Deep work doesn't leave a trail of Slack reactions, which makes it invisible even though it's often where the most valuable work happens”
“What happens when someone who is in a higher position over the manager checks in to find one of his employees at the gym on company time?. I'd also be concerned about the workload being super light as well.”
“Do you have any authority to setup a ways of working meeting with key team members and hash out some standards?”
“That constant green dot theater is the worst, feels like you're paying rent on your own attention span just to look busy instead of actually getting anything done”
“And why so many of them? I guess I am not helping by engaging, it just makes me sad”
“Yeah fair. Its a different dynamic because it feels weird reaching out just to ‘hang’ when its a call. The same conversations feel more natural when you’re in front of each other and having lunch. I’m trying to do the same, getting ready to sit at my desk. It does help, its more the isolation and not having reasons to leave the house lol”
“the credit-you-lose-by-refusing-to-admit-the-tradeoff point is smart, the pro-remote side sounds like a cult when it wont concede anything. the deeper issue is the senior is spending down context banked in offices for years and the junior has no such account. remote isnt the villain, but the mentorship that used to happen by accident now has to be manufactured, and almost no company budgets for that”
“I agree in terms of brand new hires - also never even worked before kind of new grads - remote sucks. Nothing beats being able to walk past and have a chat with your boss and colleagues - it leaves a lasting impression. Not so much if u r 10 years deep but brand new could make a huge difference. But to be fair unless a significant portion of workers still are in the office there won’t be that organic networking.”
“Wake up at 9am, immediately login to teams. Then wash up, shower get ready for morning coffee. Check messages and emails around 10am, with YouTube or Netflix on second monitor. Join a meeting or two if needed, but browsing web or game on second monitor. Make sure to turn on auto captions during meetings so that you can go back if you missed something. Go out for walks or gym but bring your work phone in case you get pinged. Buy some accessories on Amazon, such as a mouse jiggler. It will fool yo”
“This highlights that remote work requires deliberate changes that can be suitable substitutes for that kind of interaction. It takes work and action. Remote work is not the same…so if the only thing that changes in a remote work program is the location then it’s being managed wrong.”
“I have devs lead almost all ceremony meetings. We rotate and that helps keep everyone engaged. I only lead core feature set meetings.”
“Agreed. That’s an issue in itself when it comes to project management and remote work. Unless you work for a huge global or heavily matrix company, and you speak to your counter parts across the world in other company satellite or corporate offices, remote engagement with individual contributors who are new hires or in different time zones becomes extremely challenging because fostering a culture to maintain focus on critical milestones, without consistently seeing their human behavior, requires”
“Things I've done that have worked Made devs carry a part of the meeting (ie given them homework to do) - I've often had it rotate so that a diff dev carries a part of the meeting each time. Jokes/cartoons - an oldie but a goodie. Remember these people are humans (i'm assuming they aren't all agents....). I'll often throw random cartoon and jokes in at random slides just to break up the monotony. Personal story vs data - Instead of X% of our users do this, I've gone with &”
“completely agree -i dont hold all meetings. i have already trimmed to the minimum - one sprint planning and other backlog refinement.”
“Has anyone been able to identify the listeners? For example: Juan: xxx, Diego: xxx? This is necessary to keep the team fully engaged.”
“the inperson visibility thing is real, no argument there. but when everyone is remote you have to find ways to carry that same energy through other channels or it just falls apart. slack messages, calendar blocks, whatever keeps you on their radar without being annoying about it. not the same as walking up to someone's desk but it gets close enough”
“yeah the 1:1 is probably the move but half the time they reschedule it twice and you end up just sending a slack message anyway”
“The decision log with a default path if they go silent is the part I hadn't thought through. That changes things because now silence has a builtin consequence, not just another followup email from me. My hesitation is getting them to actually agree to that structure upfront. This person treats async updates like optional reading. Getting buyin on the framework before it's needed feels like its own battle.”
Ah, check. It still seems pretty overkill for me but I'm just me
“Real talk: I flinch every time Slack makes that sound. Before I even read the message, my stomach drops. If it's my tech lead or EM, it's worse — chest tight, heart racing, brain going "did I break prod? did I screw up that PR?" Usually it's nothing. "Hey can we sync at 2." That's it. But my body doesn't know that yet. I think it's this unwritten rule: reply fast or people assume you're not working. So I try to code heads-down, notifications off, a”
“Listen to audio books or podcasts while writing reports. Makes work feel less punishing. Had to work up to it though. Was too distracting.”
“I have one to two week periods where I can't get anything in order. I can run meetings, take notes, make decisions and do the routine stuff on calls, but i'm in so many meetings I can't get weekly status out the door. Fortunately I get some leeway from management but still feels bad. When i finally get a nice day without 8+ meetings then my brain relaxes and won't let me push through to finish everything anyways. I end up doing it on Sunday or first thing Monday morning. So yes,”
“Block time to reduce context switching. Compare blocked time categories to reality (shit changes) every couple of weeks to ensure you’re prioritizing effectively. Communicate and delegate where you’re over-extended. To some extent I think a career like this will be mentally draining regardless tho.”
“The hardest part about remote work is family not understanding when you're in a focus block. A physical indicator is a must”
“I usually interact with the resource in-person. This is where remote work hinders timelines. Being able to casually approach a person and stay in their line of vision, reminds them they have shyt to do or pay attention to. It’s a regular habit for me regardless of employee role or title. From the bean counter to the C-Suite…it works.”
“Without knowing the detail, consider a 30 minute one-on-one catch up, a few days out from any important meetings, for them to air their grievances. If they decline thats on them. That lets you get on the front foot, and during important meetings like SteerCo, play the “as we discussed recently” card, or “let’s take this offline” card, where you have a separate meeting cadence. which gives the impression to the broader audience that you’re in control and managing stakeholders. Which is what they”
“been WFH for two years and my "do not disturb" system is literally a post-it stuck to my door. my partner still walks in during calls anyway. I started using a small desktop divoom screen that shows my meeting status and it actually keeps people out. is there a more normal way to handle homeoffice status or am i just stuck with screens and paper? submitted by /u/ke1lle [link] [comments]”
“Curious how you handle internet in spots like that? I'm always stressing about connectivity.”
“I’ve been remote for as long as I can remember. A wireless headset is a must have, and I make sure that I am doing housework while on conference calls. Sitting at my desk while listening to calls that don’t require taking notes cause me to multitask and then I miss half of both!. If I’m let’s say doing laundry I don’t need to think to do laundry so it’s a win-win. I get my laundry done and I pay better attention at work.”
The most accurate representation of my meetings at work with real humans
“I used to be on hour long management meetings where I'd have to give a verbal report for 3-5 minutes at some random time. My neighborhood doesn't have much traffic so I started walking the dog during them. Like you said, I could pay attention to the other parts better and the Jabras I used had good enough noise cancellation that no one ever noticed I was outside.”
“It's a challenge to be brief and to the point. It's nice that they warned you. I've worked with people like this. I have also taken long emails I've received and asked copilot to summarize. Save the novels for AO3.”
“It is clear to me that if you base your assumptions on what happened during the first year of the pandemic you'll see a slight decrease in productivity. In 2020, people were scared, people were not used to work online all the time, plus a lot of organization had to figure it out on the spot which obviously created some moments of wtf are we doing, I think the best would be to look at mid 2021-2022 when working remotely was wide spread and people got used to it.”
“We have these like once a quarter usually at the end after the new hires are more comfortable. When I started my team was like 30ppl and now almost a year later we're pushing 50. So it's kind of nice to just yap for 20min, find out what we have in common and go away. But you can not mandatory schedule fun, it just sounds evil at face.”
“I need to vent because I am exhausted with how remote work gets sold as this tidy, focused, flexible thing, and the reality is nonstop context switching. My day looks like: answer pings, update a doc, jump into a meeting that could have been an email, get pulled into another channel because someone says they "just need a quick thing," then spend an hour trying to figure out what the quick thing actually is because nobody wrote it down. By the time I get back to my real work, my brain f”