In this episode of Remote Rants, I break down a recent article on Poynter titled, "How to deal with micromanagers in a COVID-19 world."

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/how-to-deal-with-micromanagers-in-a-covid-19-world/

Specifically, I cover:  

If you want an easy way to share your work without your boss micro-managing you, check out Friday: https://www.friday.app

In this episode of Remote Rants, I'm going to break down a recent article I read, titled "Why remote work makes people less productive, and what to do about it":  

https://www.fastcompany.com/90488625/why-remote-work-makes-people-less-productive-and-what-to-do-about-it

I loved this article as it highlights a deeper issue when working remotely. When your daily work is more private vs. public, it creates the potential for accountability to go down unless you create thoughtful systems for sharing your work.  

If you're looking for a tool to help increase accountability when remote, check out my company, Friday. We help you automate routine updates, so people share their work in public and stay accountable: https://www.friday.app/

This video a response to a recent Planet Money article, titled "Why Remote Work Sucks, According to Science." 

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/04/28/846671375/why-remote-work-sucks-according-to-science

In this episode, we discuss why this article is a poor take, including:  

- How NPR is cherry picking data to build a case against remote work 

- Why surveying HR professionals is not indicative of the employer's experience 

- Why PWC's research is a counterpoint to NPR's #science

- Why productivity will go down if someone stares at you on a video call for weeks on end

I recently came across this fun tweet by Hiten Shah:  

"On Zoom fatigue, here’s a shocker: Remote work does not require video."  

Source: https://twitter.com/hnshah/status/1254549044929519616

In today's episode of remote rants, we break down if it's possible to work remotely without constant Zoom calls.

In a recent article using data from the Covid-19 crisis, Microsoft research indicates that managers are spending way too much time in meetings (10% more than before) and micro-managing their team in workplace chat (115% more messages).

Read the Microsoft Study here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/04/22/how-remote-work-impacts-collaboration-findings-team/

If you'd like to work better remotely, feel free to check out Friday. https://www.friday.app

In this first part of the Rise of Remote Work Series, we talk about the state of the economy and how low unemployment and fierce competition are pushing scaling companies in major metros to start hiring people from outside. This is a major contributor to the growth of distributed work.

You can read about the other factors in the rise of remote work blog post.

We spend 1/3 of our life at work - it has a huge impact on virtually every aspect of our lives. Most people don't enjoy work, so how do we make it better?

That's why the reDistributed podcast exists. We're going to talk to successful entrepreneurs and founders, researchers, and anyone who forces us to think differently about the workplace of the future.