I wish I could reach the correct audience to suggest to that, if you are going to work full time remote, especially for a mostly remote company for the first time, it is absolutely crucial that you learn how people communicate and actively participate in it. Not just how work information is disseminated. Join your “random” and hobby Teams or Slack channels. Meet people not on your direct team. Join a social group if your company sponsors one you find interesting. It indeed takes effort as an introvert - but while working remote you are not building relationships organically like in an office, at all. Those work relationships are important to getting stuff done in business, being noticed when opportunities come up, emotionally feeling part of a team and mission, and staying mentally healthy. We spend a big chunk of our lives working!

Over the last 5 years of working and managing a team FT remote, this social interactivity is one of the top indicators I’ve observed of whether someone will succeed and be balanced and happy, long term - or whether they will burn out and be left behind. The people who often vanish the fastest never chatted except when prompted to do so for business, never turned their camera on, nor set a profile image.

I’m not telling you to step way outside your comfort zone. I’m not saying there aren’t situations where it’s necessary to turn off the camera. I’m not saying you’ll automatically fail if you never socialize. I’m just giving you some advice based on hard life lessons of watching people thrive versus be unhappy.

@hacks4pancakes scheduled breaks with folks are great too. "Hey lets have a coffee break at 2" kind of thing, cross team/level/org/etc
@rho @hacks4pancakes But if workers are remote, we need to be creative and inclusive here... The worst might be if many are in the office and some are remote. Would those in the office naturally begin to leave off those remote, just because "they are not there?"
@locksmithprime @rho @hacks4pancakes we had a lot of discussions at my last company about being “remote first” versus “remote tolerant”. Remote tolerant is what you described. A company allows remote workers, but really it’s business as usual in the office. I’m in this situation now. The prior company had everything built around remote employees. In office or not every meeting had a Zoom link, async work was the norm, and so on. That experience taught me it’s really a culture decision.

@bitwisedan @rho @hacks4pancakes Agree.

I just had a company meeting this Friday. On site. There are about 12 people on site and 6 completely remote. I did have to press that the meeting and presentations be put through the conference so that people could log into it. And press more than I thought I had to at this point.

We need to be mindful and remind ourselves over and over to be inclusive, if we want to reach very talented people anywhere. In the future we lose these professionals who are remote, they quit, and then we will be asking ourselves "why oh why did they leave for other companies..."