Ask HN: How can technical writers be proficient working remotely
I have significant experience building and managing remote teams, including across time zones. In my experience, much of the online discourse (HN comments, Twitter, and other ephemeral platforms with popularity-based upvoting) about remote work is a mixed bag. It&#x27;s almost taboo to point out the significant problems, inefficiencies, and overhead of remote teams because everyone wants to believe that &quot;remote work is the future of work&quot;. To that end, don&#x27;t be afraid to make hard decisions where necessary to make your department work properly, even if that means moving away from remote work.<p>Remote work takes a special set of skills that not everyone has, and not everyone can develop effectively. Ideally you&#x27;d hire people with a demonstrated track record of successful remote work, but that&#x27;s hard to find. Next best option is to hire people with experience at distributed companies with many offices around the country or the world. Those distributed, multi-office companies are halfway to remote work. If you can&#x27;t find either type of employee, your third best option is to hire diligent employees and train them for successful remote work. Remote work attracts a wide range of employees from high performers who want more flexibility to low performers who want a job where they can blend into the background and do the bare minimum. Be prepared for some turnover as you identify the low performers.<p>Remote work requires more deliberate communication than in-office, in both directions. If you don&#x27;t feel like you&#x27;re overcommunicating or repeating yourself to the team, you&#x27;re probably not communicating enough. Likewise, set expectations for more frequent updates and more detailed communication from your direct reports. Share a simple spreadsheet or document with all shared targets, status, assignments, and priorities so everyone can clearly understand the targets.<p>Encourage transparency. It&#x27;s tempting for remote workers to descend into private messages, single-person phone calls, and privately shared documents where no one can see what they&#x27;re doing. In my experience, it&#x27;s better to set the expectations for where shared discussions and documents are handled. Create channels, document templates, and processes that encourage openness and information sharing. Unless you have specific secrecy requirements, everyone should be able to see examples of great documentation, feedback, process, and final products in a shared location. Practice mentoring the team in parallel in public rather than privately in 1-on-1s.<p>Develop processes that work best with one-off calls with engineering teams instead of letting the documentation teams ping engineers as questions come up. People tend to have better manners in face to face offices where interrupting someone to ask a question is visibly disruptive. Remote workers have a tendency to fire off Slack messages randomly throughout the day, generating massive interruptions and annoyance everywhere. Drive the teams to collect their questions into batches that can be answered asynchronously. E-mail over Slack whenever possible. Other teams will appreciate the effort and will be more likely to help out.<p>Minimize the number of scheduled weekly meetings. When you have a recurring meeting on the calendar, people tend to wait until that meeting to bring up important topics that should be addressed more quickly. Daily async check-ins can help, but set the expectation that everyone manages their own time and communication without waiting for scheduled meetings.<p>Performance management: Be strictly clear about what&#x27;s expected, what good vs. bad documentation looks like, and don&#x27;t be afraid to performance manage the under-performers. Keep an eye out for the sandbaggers who are taking weeks to accomplish what another person can accomplish in 1-2 days. Remote work is a magnet for people working multiple jobs, working on a side hustle, freelancing, watching children, or otherwise minimizing their working input. You don&#x27;t need to force everyone to work 40 hour weeks, but you do need to clamp down on any temptation to sandbag.<p>Make life as easy as possible for the teams you work with. If you&#x27;re coming in late and nagging the teams with interruptions and questions all day for weeks on end, people will loathe working with you. Instead, engage with teams early and often. Share a publicly-available process document that sets expectations for how other teams can work best with you. Emphasize the benefits of working with your team early to save time later. Put in extra effort to make it easy for the other teams. Avoid anything that pushes the real work on to other teams. Make it easy and enjoyable to work with your team.