The tools and tricks that let Ars Technica function without a physical office

- Macbooks

- Email, via the G-Suite

- g-suite spreadsheet with what everyone is working on

- realtime analytics via Parse.ly

- Polycom phones and OnSIP

- Wordpress for Content Mgmt (CMS) purposes

- 2FA via Duo for everything, if feasible

The "flow of work" stuff is more interesting, IMO. What's also mentioned -- but I think is critical and needs repeating -- is the ground-up remote approach, which means structuring things like that from the start, as opposed to a lot of orgs which are slowly turning remote, but still stuck in their old ways. I've been remote for five years now, and only one company had that approach, which was great. (their pay was not, however, so I jumped)

In particular this point:

> "Making a remote office feel like a remote office requires a sense of presence. For most people, feeling like you’re at work, even if your bedroom is just down the hall, makes a big mental difference."

When the world is over, the last sysadmin on Earth is going to do three things: shut down the Wordpress install, shut down the email server, and turn off the lights.

There’s a distinct lack of things nowadays that make working with group email nicer, I wonder why that is. I have a horse I bet on this one, https://aether.app, so I’m not exactly unbiased — but I seriously don’t get it. Chat covers a lot of things, but there is so much it doesn’t, and just looking at their ready-for-editorial channel makes me wonder why they’re not also using plain old email for that.

I've also found that face-to-face is necessary sometimes. I work with clients, and sometimes things can get hairy on a project. Over email or even on a phone call, sometimes it's easy to forget that the person on the other end is a human being with their own hopes and dreams and life and desires. Getting to see them in real life, having little moments of downtime where you're on a coffee break and just chatting about life, those are important. That's easy to miss in a remote job, and it leads to a lot of stress.

Also something I didn't think of when I started working remote... the constant letters from my electric company about how I use more electricity than a normal house. Because normally people aren't home all day with lights and heat/AC and computers running.

oh god yes. separate desks in separate rooms if at all possible, sometimes my SO and I go out to the same cafe and share a table, sometimes we very explicitly go to different places...