"Remote is about getting things done asynchronously."
Not necessarily. Consider a call center or help desk, or any form of customer service done remotely. Asynchronous and remote are different.
Not necessarily. Consider a call center or help desk, or any form of customer service done remotely. Asynchronous and remote are different.
Async issues related to timezones or personal preferences are in no way unique to remote working.
Remote working is about location, not about time.
Over this past couple of decades, the only times that I have felt the need to announce my absence from the keyboard are when it is something out of the ordinary and unexpected. I never announce to the world that I am eating lunch, nor do I feel obligated to respond to IMs or other interruptions during any time that shows busy or out-of-office on my calendar.
Just like when I was in the office, if I need to step away from an active conversation for a few minutes for whatever reason, I'll let people know I need to step away and the estimated time of my return.
I've never heard companies say they're async though, only remote. The two seem to be conflated most of the time.
Anyway, all of that is a red herring; don't just tell me you're remote, tell me if you're prioritizing asynchronous work or not. The places trying to recreate the office, just now remote, are not places I want to work at.
Maybe if all you want to do is code. I get the sentiment. If you're working on a product, getting input from team members and stopping bad ideas from making their way to the hands of the "don't bother me with meetings, I only want to code" person is important.
We've all had that "this meeting could have been an email" experience. Make it an email. Start re-evaluating every meeting; any sort of unidirectional informational meeting can be offloaded onto a doc or recorded presentation just as efficiently. Bidirectional decisional meetings can often be done more effectively by writing up a problem statement, the various options, and a 'due' date for input. Allow people to read over it, comment, propose new suggestions, etc, then at that due date, hold a vote (can be done sync or async). Voila, a decision is reached that allowed for greater amounts of discussion, and was arrived at as democratically or 'loudest voice in the room' (if only a select few people's votes count) as you care to have it, rather than whatever organically happens in your meetings. Etc. In my experience what I'm left with are the meetings where it's the 'personal connection' that matters; these are things like the occasional AMA/Town Hall style meetings, and 1-on-1s. 90% of my pre-COVID meetings turned out not to need to be meetings.