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Comment by kzisme | Hacker News Reader

I've been working fully remote for a little over a year now. I enjoy the freedom it grants me to live where I want, but the main issue I have is feeling like I'm not meeting enough co-workers and having some sort of network while I'm still new in the industry (and fear of not learning enough).

It's also quite annoying to have a laptop that doesn't even have an SSD in it, and having to email IT or someone from a different group and never hear back without sending 3+ follow up emails. It would be easier to walk and go see them if I were just working there.

One thing I learned from my first remote job was to examine how your direct manager treats remote work, and that will quickly tell you how your experience might turn out. My boss communicated with me hardly ever (even to relay requirements for new projects), and frequently stayed up all night to finish stuff.

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Rather than sending that third email, why not call them? Even in my company, where I don't know any remote workers, people webcall each other all the time, since we're often on different buildings.

Calling doesn't show or track attempts to get a hold of these individuals. CC'ing managers on emails being sent to other groups/IT is what I've been told to do now since I'm not the only one having issues with this.

Also I would be lucky for them to pick up the phone.

This is where the follow up email to your attempt comes in handy. You try to speed things up by the phone call, but if you don’t get an answer, then you send an email and mention that you called as well. In the cases where you do speak with someone, then you can adjust the content to reflect your appreciation for them speaking with you and then outline the issue(s) still remaining, assuming they weren’t resolved. There are obviously various iterations and combinations but the gist is to be persistent and try to take more control of the situation by incorporating a follow up into the mix.

Yes! This is something that took me longer to learn than it should have. Even if the call went well, send a followup email briefly summarizing the discussion and end with actionable things.

I find phone or in person much better to gauge tone and emails can more easily be dismissed.

Anytime I talk with someone either on the phone, video chat, or in person and we agree on some thing (work, decision, etc...) I follow up with an email confirming that my understanding matches theirs. This isn't CYA as much as making sure we both walked away from the conversation with the same understanding. Many times, the email follow up has brought to light misunderstandings.

>This isn't CYA as much as making sure we both walked away from the conversation with the same understanding.

This. Thank you for being this person.

Hah. I tried only doing it at the end of a conversation. "Just so we are all clear, this is what we are agreeing to do.", and that still was not enough. Plus, having it written down makes it so much easier to revisit past decisions. I spend a lot of time trying to understand why an old decision was made so we can make changes with confidence.

>Also I would be lucky for them to pick up the phone.

So lucky it's not worth the time? I'm still learning the how who when and what to overcommunicate when remote. Can you suggest to schedule time for remote meeting/screen share with this person?

I suppose, but most of the time the answer I receive from this department is "We don't know" (ie: why a server is turned off)

I'm about to add our first remote hire to our team, where 4 will be based out of office and one will be remote. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and get some feedback as to how I should best plan for this on our side, if you're willing to share? My contact info is in my profile.

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