The tools and tricks that let Ars Technica function without a physical office

The tools and tricks that let Ars Technica function without a physical office(arstechnica.com)

111 points by cattlefarmer 6 years ago | 8 comments

blaser-waffle 6 years ago |

- Slack

- Macbooks

- Email, via the G-Suite

- g-suite spreadsheet with what everyone is working on

- realtime analytics via Parse.ly

- Polycom phones and OnSIP

- Wordpress for Content Mgmt (CMS) purposes

- 2FA via Duo for everything, if feasible

The "flow of work" stuff is more interesting, IMO. What's also mentioned -- but I think is critical and needs repeating -- is the ground-up remote approach, which means structuring things like that from the start, as opposed to a lot of orgs which are slowly turning remote, but still stuck in their old ways. I've been remote for five years now, and only one company had that approach, which was great. (their pay was not, however, so I jumped)

In particular this point:

> "Making a remote office feel like a remote office requires a sense of presence. For most people, feeling like you’re at work, even if your bedroom is just down the hall, makes a big mental difference."

rolleiflex 6 years ago |

Couple things that stand out to me is the continued use of Wordpress with 2-factor via Duo, and email as a part of the core flow.

When the world is over, the last sysadmin on Earth is going to do three things: shut down the Wordpress install, shut down the email server, and turn off the lights.

There’s a distinct lack of things nowadays that make working with group email nicer, I wonder why that is. I have a horse I bet on this one, https://aether.app, so I’m not exactly unbiased — but I seriously don’t get it. Chat covers a lot of things, but there is so much it doesn’t, and just looking at their ready-for-editorial channel makes me wonder why they’re not also using plain old email for that.

freehunter 6 years ago |

I've worked on a fully-remote team for over 5 years now and everything in this article is exactly on point. Constant communication (we also use Slack) is important. So is voice communication, since text breaks down really quickly if things are getting heated. Wearing appropriate clothing also helps... I found it hard in the beginning because I'm still wearing my pajamas and my Xbox is right over there. Getting dressed and having a dedicated work space really helped get me into the mindset. If you don't have space for a fully separate office, a separate desk or even separate tools can provide that little bit of mental differentiation. I have a work laptop and a personal laptop, and my work laptop has a keyboard and mouse that are only used for my work laptop. The two computers share the same desk, but I know when my work keyboard is sitting in front of me, it's professional time. I have to move my work keyboard out of the way to get to my personal laptop, which signals the ending of professional time.

I've also found that face-to-face is necessary sometimes. I work with clients, and sometimes things can get hairy on a project. Over email or even on a phone call, sometimes it's easy to forget that the person on the other end is a human being with their own hopes and dreams and life and desires. Getting to see them in real life, having little moments of downtime where you're on a coffee break and just chatting about life, those are important. That's easy to miss in a remote job, and it leads to a lot of stress.

Also something I didn't think of when I started working remote... the constant letters from my electric company about how I use more electricity than a normal house. Because normally people aren't home all day with lights and heat/AC and computers running.

durbatuluk 6 years ago | |

This "office feeling" is something still strange to me as someone who like to work with less cloth as possible. Maybe is my background in biology which we did everything in same place, research, sample, drink and eat. In fact working in office make my production drop even with 35h/week.

Maybe is related to programming as hobby turning to job.

Analemma_ 6 years ago |

This is sort of a sobering response and wake-up call for all those people going, "You don't need Slack, just use IRC!". Well, here's a company that was using IRC and had to switch over, for reasons they articulated pretty well. IRC needs to fix the checklist in this article before it can claim to be a serious Slack alternative.

egypturnash 6 years ago |

"If you and a spouse/partner/housemate both work from home full-time, make sure you have separate spaces, both physical and mental," adds Kate Cox. "It can be really easy to get too much in each other's faces if you're both squatting on the same sofa for the day."

oh god yes. separate desks in separate rooms if at all possible, sometimes my SO and I go out to the same cafe and share a table, sometimes we very explicitly go to different places...

luord 6 years ago |

How they use their dashboard spreadsheet reminded me quite a bit of the kanban flow I've seen in most projects I've worked on. So I wasn't shocked to read that at least one of their editors uses trello to manage his stories.

bilekas 6 years ago |

This is really cool actually, some nice advice and tip even for startup enviornments.