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
  • 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