Why Remote Works

Article: https://cerebralab.com/Why_Remote_Works

Notes

My favorite part:

Management dynamics change a lot, and recruiting or “growing” new managers become very different. Office environments should select social-butterfly managers with pitch-perfect verbal communication and an ability to organize and lead meetings, as well as micro-manage in certain cases.

The ideal remote company manager is someone whose face is never seen, potentially just an AGI somewhere in a Swiss bunker, who’s an excellent writer and reviewer, able to react to questions and ideas on Slack with the lightning-fast speed at any hour of the day, able to hold and build accurate, in-depth models of the product or even whole business.

I’d say remote managers are hard to find; They probably look (and smell) a lot more like engineers than suits.

This clicks with me on many levels. I used to think that Remote just doesn’t work for lazy managers who can’t write down their vision clearly. But now I see that calling them “lazy” is harsh and, also, wrong. Being a remote manager is a separate skill that is not taught much anywhere. It’s also hard to master, and a very tiny percentage of managers know it.

It’s pretty easy for engineers to become remote. To take an existing enterprise and train all managers to be productive in remote is almost impossible.