Full Remote

Overview

Full Remote refers to working entirely from a remote location.

There are no office visits or business trips, or if they do occur, they are rare. Even when they do happen, they are planned as needed rather than on a regular basis. While there is no strict frequency, think of less than once a quarter as a guideline. If office visits or business trips occur more frequently than this, it is not considered full remote.

Your workplace should ideally be your home. However, if your company allows it, you could work in cafes or co-working spaces; regardless, you must have complete freedom to choose where you work. If this requirement is not met, it is not full remote. For example, if you are ordered to commute to a nearby satellite office, this is not full remote (it's merely a dispersed location).

Advantages

• Reduces the consumption of time, mental energy, and physical stamina associated with commuting, allowing more of these resources to be spent on work
• Allows for a work style that suits each individual's life rhythm, leading to improved (or at least non-deteriorating) performance
• Frees employees from the Relationship Obligation of building deep relationships with coworkers so that time and energy can be devoted to work

The advantage of full remote work lies more in the reduction of negatives rather than in gaining positives.

Requiring everyone to commute at the same time is exceptionally demanding. Think critically: in a modern era where technology and methods are well-developed, why should we be tethered to both a specific time and place? I feel a sense of urgency regarding the lack of understanding of this mindset. This issue is not confined to Japan; it's a global phenomenon affecting Western countries, Asia, BRIC, and beyond.

Full remote work serves as a means to liberate us from the constraints of a single time and place. Through full remote work, we are first free from the burdens of commuting and relationship obligations, gaining significant time, mental energy, and physical capacity. These resources can then be spent on work, including studying, practicing, introspection, and rest.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of full remote work are as follows:

• 1: Needs fulfillment. It becomes difficult to satisfy social needs
• 2: Sabotage. In the absence of environmental or group pressure, lazy individuals who lack self-discipline find ample opportunities to slack off
• 3: Loss of work environment. Those whose private lives are not well-organized, such as being unable to work at home, may find it impossible to work at all

Meeting these needs through full remote work is challenging. Issue 2: sabotage can be addressed, but 1: and 3: are problematic.

Therefore, we must realistically embrace Workstyle Diversity. In other words, those who go to the office and full remote workers must coexist. Consequently, all employees must master remote work by default. There must be no information gap between on-site and remote work.

Implementation

How should a full remote setup be implemented?

In summary, it requires "communication tools," "writing tools," and "seamless meeting tools."

Communication Tools

First are the communication tools. Recently, I wrote about QWINCS, but you must use tools other than chat as well.

How many of QWINCS tools are you familiar with? Are you using them? Many people, even engineers, only use chat for daily communication tools, which is unfortunate. It's akin to saying "I can only code in C language"—this was acceptable in the past, but it's woefully outdated today. You should be concerned about this.

Since full remote work means not going to the office, communication must be conducted remotely. Solely relying on chat is evidently insufficient. Just as cooking involves using a variety of small tools, and engineers use various small commands (following the KISS principle), communication is similar. Therefore, it's crucial to know and be able to use various communication tools.

Frankly, you should be adept at using tools like QWINCS. Not just limited use during development processes, but able to use them for everyday communication purposes.

Writing Tools

Next are writing tools.

Whether an editor, an IDE, or a web app, you need a means of reading and writing language. In full remote settings, instead of face-to-face non-verbal communication, you use language for remote communication. Literacy—literally, the ability to read and write language—is absolutely necessary.

Tools support this process. As engineers, we tend to be meticulous about the tools we use for coding, including editors. The same applies to communication. We must be particular about tools that allow us to read and write natural language.

To be more specific, it's about the skills to read, write, and share plain text. Can you write without using heavy apps like Excel or Word? Can you read such formats? Do you understand Markdown? Do you understand the concepts of "headings," "links," and "code blocks" in writing? Can you differentiate between paragraphs, bullet points, and line breaks? Can you type (or use voice input and correct that input), for example, can you write more than 5,000 characters a day?

While I won't delve into writing etiquette or linguistic aptitude here, the bottleneck is always the tool. If you're poor or slow at reading and writing language, it's almost always due to immature tools.

Here's a killer question for you:

"When it comes to writing rather than coding, do you have a preferred editor?"

If not, you are likely inexperienced with writing. Full remote work may not be feasible for you. Try giving as much attention to writing as you do to coding.

Seamless Meeting Tools

Lastly, consider tools for seamless meetings.

Seamless meetings are those that transition smoothly, moving effortlessly into meetings. For example, Slack offers huddle meetings where you can start a conversation with one click. It refers to meetings you can begin this effortlessly. Similar features are available in Lightweight Virtual Offices.

Though we want to minimize meetings even in a full remote setting, that's not always possible in reality. Therefore, it's crucial to minimize the effort required to start meetings.

※ However, I do not recommend dense work styles like pair programming or mob programming, as they undermine "Workstyle Diversity." Of course, it's fine to engage in such activities temporarily as part of a meeting when necessary.