Hybrid work and its benefits

2019 Covid pandemic disrupted my work life quite a bit. For the first time in my career I was forced to do a complete remote job. The short work commutes, social work life,  in-person 1:1 conversations, show and tell presentations and the afternoon walk through Carmax's beautiful campus trails at Richmond, Virginia were very much part of my work life. The unexpected break to all of that and sudden confinement to my home office room was not at all something I was prepared for. 

Like most of my colleagues, I also invested in organizing my office room to match the look and feel of my office space. I got the best standing desk in the market, fancy double monitors, wireless keypads, wall mounted white boards and indoor office plants. Back of my mind I always hoped that I will return to office one day. There were many false starts for going back, but eventually it was clear that there is no going back. Suddenly everything became so overwhelming for me. What used to be short in-person conversations during a coffee break turned into 15-30 minutes meetings on the calendar. How many 30-minute slots one can find in a day ?, I used to wonder.

Fast forward 3 years to 2023 and after 2 job switches, I landed on a new work modal - the hybrid modal. This is a combination of in-office and remote work. I moved to the beautiful city of Chicago as an engineering manager and take train to commute to work. I go to office 2 to 3 days a week. Having experienced all three types of work modals, I strongly feel hybrid is the most effective one. Following are the top reasons why hybrid works for me.

1. Work-life balance : I love the autonomy hybrid brings to the table. I can work from anywhere I want, all it takes is a laptop and a stable internet. I am able to clearly draw the boundary between my work life and personal life. This was difficult during the pandemic days as most of the work hours were taken by meetings leaving no choice but to take extra time to finish the work. My office days are during the first half of the week so that I still get to keep the flexibility of working from home rest of the week. I don't miss my kids' halloween parade or their regular doctor visits anymore! 
2. Team building & Mentoring : The best part of being an engineering manager is that you get to nurture young talents. The junior developers, in the beginning phase of their career needs guidance and training, which is challenging in a remote set up. It is critical to build the confidence and trust during the initial phase of these junior developers, which is more effective when done in person. More senior individual contributors in the team do not need this in-person attention as much as junior developers and new hires. I encourage my team members to be in office while I am there and make the best use of their time through collaborative sessions such as code/design reviews, pair programming and technical debt analysis. 
3. Relationship building : Hybrid brings back the social work life that I missed during the pandemic days. I choose the days in office carefully so that I make the most out of the in-person time I have with my team and co-workers from extended teams. Most of my crucial meetings are done in person while I am at office. I also meet my internal customers from sales and product department and discuss pain points and roadmaps, which goes a long way in building relationships and trust. 
4. Productivity on the rise : I put my weekly goals in two main categories - in-office goals and independent goals. In-office goals are the ones that needs some in-person interactions. Independent goals are the ones that need focus time without any distractions. I block small capsules of focus times in my calendar especially during later half of the week to dedicate time to address my independent goals. One argument I always hear against going back to office is the time wasted in work commutes. For me commutes have never been more productive. I get to focus most of my personal goals during my commutes. Most of my reading and writings are done in train commutes, including this article. I also do my weekly planning during my commutes. I know friends who listen to podcasts during their drive to office. 

Hybrid work has its own challenges too. 

• Teams are scattered more than ever before with minimal local candidates. It takes good coordination of meetings and schedules to figure out how to run hybrid meetings effectively with part of your audience online. We make it a point during hiring to give preference to local candidates, especially for junior roles. We also prioritize a full team on-site quarterly event and fly down our remote candidates, which has been very effective. 
• The collaborative tools such as Microsoft teams and slack is at the center of work life post pandemic. I use Slack today at work and it does a fantastic job in making collaboration easy and efficient through huddles, conversation threads and private channels. But it can get overwhelming if you don't manage the async conversations properly and can be a major distraction. If a slack thread gets into 20+ conversations on the same day, it is better to get into a meeting and discuss further. 
• Team management is challenging when part of your team is remote. For engineering management and leadership it is critical to put extra efforts on the right tools to track appropriate metrics that points to employee morale and motivations. I leverage the Code-Climate velocity metrics on a weekly basis and use them in my 1:1 conversations with my team. We need to be more deliberate than ever before in building trust and fostering a sense of community. Virtual lunch & learns, team building happy fun time hours and retrospective sessions are even more critical these times. 

Conclusion

Empathy is key while navigating the virtual work environment these days. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and personal situations, so it is important to allow flexibility in their work schedules. Empathetic listening goes a long way in building an inclusive and healthy work atmosphere where delivering values and honoring commitments come as second nature!