My notes from the last two weeks of Twitter spaces I hosted. These are not all my ideas, and I might not agree with them all. But, I wanted to share what we talked about.

Community + Career

Why should you be a part of a community?*

• Helps with career guidance
• Supports you as you grow
• Allows for networking opportunities
• Creates a safe space for exploring new ideas and industries

• Provides opportunities to help others

• As always, this depends on the community you join. Not all experiences will be the same for all people.

Find the community that supports its members

When you’re looking to join a community, here are some signs that the community supports its members:

• Authentic and vulnerable relationships and interactions,
• Investment in helping each other to grow -> look at how people are answering questions or if help and support posts are mostly answered,
• Openness to new ideas and experiences -> are members testing out new ideas or actions? Do you see people saying they’ve done something for the first time as part of that group?
• Supportive communities can provide a space for you to try new things. For example, maybe you’re interested in speaking at a conference, but you’re afraid. If you have a supportive community, it’s easier to try out the experience. Give your presentation to the community and ask for feedback. When you have a supportive community, it’s easier to be open to feedback, to learn from the experience, and to work towards your goal of giving a presentation.

How to find the right communities

• Make sure they have a code of conduct, esp if you’re part of an under-represented group
• They all you to be a passive member of a community -> soak up the knowledge and experience

Signs of a positive community

• There’s a Code of Conduct
• For non-discord platforms, when people use their real names
• Members of under-represented groups

Remote Work

• Some companies did even better when they were forced to go remote
• You can do the same thing from home that you can do in the office
• PPl are forming networks and relationships outside of the office as a result. There’s less glue, holding you to stick in the current position.
• You don’t have the opportunities to network outside of the office
• Remote and COVID-remote are two very different things. There are a lot of extra outside stressors. Remote was being thrust on ppl rather than a decision people made.

Why work in a physical office?

• Some people prefer to work in the office
• Extrovert!
• Clear physical lines of communication: You can walk to the person’s office if you have a question.
• Sometimes a challenge of getting work done
• There’s a different type of productivity -> talking with the people around you allows you to develop relationships more quickly.
• You build teams much quicker in the office
• Community building is easier.

Positives of working remotely

• Flexibility, especially for parents
• Allows parents to take breaks and spend time with their kids
• Don’t have to commute
• Allows for productive breaks -> You can start the laundry, dinner, do errands

Navigating challenges of working remotely

• If you don’t have a designated office space, it can be a challenge, but if you set boundaries
• Set rules for yourself: when to log off. Turn off the computer and don’t touch it
• Do a full shutdown every night
• Separate work and “home” computer, so there’s no drive to work after work hours
• Set a hard limit for work hours
• Dealing with stress and the easy access to food

Miscellaneous

• Normalize kid noises in the back of every meeting
• Productivity: there’s kind of no middle ground. There’s ppl who are super productive and not productive at all. This might speak to the type of office-environment that works best for you.
• We shouldn’t be micromanaging. Daily standup, project tracking, and milestones are enough to evaluated the productivity of the team.
• Forcing extra steps to force ppl to report progress, that’s toxic.
• If there’s an issue with a person, approach it as “How can we support you? Is there a challenge I can help you with?”
• Developers should have autonomy and support
• Over-communication > under-communication
• Don’t do remote work on vacation!!!
• Team-building remotely: Depending on the team, turn on the cameras, hear the voice of the other person
• Whole set of problems returning to office spaces now with mice, etc.

Bonus

• blog post idea: how to structure your team to be productive