Q: Help! I'm a tech lead and my whole team is remote. What are practices I can introduce to help us work more efficiently?

Since the pandemic made remote work far more common, I’ve received several questions like this. Another common one is; “I didn’t sign up to manage a remote team! What should I do?”

I turned to James Stanier whom I’ve known since he released his excellent book Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager, which I reviewed and recommend. James is the Director of Engineering at Shopify, a fully remote company. He’s been working remote for 4 years, leading engineering teams of varying sizes throughout. He recently released his latest book, Effective Remote Work and I could think of few better people to give quality practical advice on remote work, than James.

This article aims to inspire you with some tools for your team’s toolbox, as we transform the biggest remote working experiment in history into – dare I say it – a ‘new normal.’

In this issue, James covers:

Everything and nothing has changed since the pandemic.
Treating everyone as remote.
Setting team norms.
The spectrum of synchronousness.
Practical tips for remote collaboration.

Over to James:

The Pragmatic Engineer

Efficient Remote Work for Tech Teams

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