{"id":289,"date":"2020-03-16T11:57:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T18:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/?p=289"},"modified":"2020-03-16T11:57:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T18:57:01","slug":"working-from-home-at-mozilla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/working-from-home-at-mozilla\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping each other at Mozilla"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coronavirus has the world redoing how it works and meets. Conferences have been cancelled<\/a>, many organizations are ceasing travel, entire countries are on lockdown, and schools are going into month-long closures. Work won\u2019t be the same for a while.<\/p>\n

For about half of the people working at Mozilla, this may not feel dramatically different than usual, except for the need to now share the space with the whole family (kids included). That\u2019s because Mozilla has been geographically distributed since we started out as an open source project. Today<\/a>, nearly half of our staff work outside of an office (we call them \u201cremotees\u201d) and we continue to collaborate with others<\/a> globally.<\/p>\n

For the rest of us, this is a completely new set up with new routines taking shape. As the world is figuring out how to handle the current situation, remote-first Mozillians are helping out their newly \u201cnon-officed\u201d colleagues with some tips.<\/p>\n

Things started off with a co-worker posting this in a company-wide Slack channel:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those working from home that aren\u2019t used to it, there\u2019s no easy technology to replace the random in random kitchen conversations \u2014 and those conversations are what I miss most about offices as a remote worker. I\u2019ve put a lot of thought into an experimental social idea that I haven\u2019t prototyped with anyone yet, but with the recent circumstances forcing a lot of surprise WFH on folks who prefer otherwise, I\u2019m offering it up untested in case it helps make things more bearable.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Given the times we are in, we paused at the \u201cexperimental social idea.\u201d Drawing off her many years of working remotely, she elaborated: \u201cConsider scheduling random kitchen conversations \u2014 with your team, with people you\u2019ve talked to in the kitchen before, with remoties you only see at All Hands, whoever you like. Be clear in the invite that it\u2019s a social-time invite and it\u2019s okay if they bring food, step away to make coffee, don\u2019t respond or no-show. Tend towards a smaller group, to keep the kitchen casual conversation flow intact. Keep expectations low: sometimes the kitchen is empty.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Another colleague chimed in: \u201cEven just scheduling a thirty minute lunch chat can help a lot in my experience! My normal lunch crew is just Zooming every day.\u201d\u00a0 And another: \u201cWe’ve had a weekly ‘social time’ every Friday set up for a while and it’s great! 30 minutes of no work talk and it’s so nice just to chat considering the majority of the team are remote, and only two of us are in the same office!\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 <\/i>25 more suggestions for how to optimize our Zoom-and-Slack-centric existence emerged (including this chatroulette one<\/a> for spontaneous platonic meetings that we thought was worthy of a call-out).<\/p>\n

\"PhotoMozilla remotees IRL in Berlin this January<\/i><\/p>\n

Clearly, different things work for different people \u2014<\/i> all that to say YMMV<\/a>. But we\u2019re seeing how the experiences<\/a> of many of us over the years are helping others of us here out, and we think they may be helpful for others who are newer to the remote working thing, too.<\/p>\n

For example, the way we\u2019re allocating our time is changing. Kids are home, and homework and real work is getting done in new physical and chronological ways. And that\u2019s leading to all kinds of hacks and resourceful accommodations. One parent was clear:<\/p>\n

“Provide stability and predictability for your family and colleagues. Start by creating a schedule for the kids that mimic their school day\/regular routines. Using the kids\u2019 schedule, work with your partner to find large blocks of time for each person to focus on work. Spreadsheets are your friend. Share your schedule with your colleagues.”<\/i><\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t kidding about “spreadsheets as friends,” either (real sample):<\/p>\n

\"Spreadsheet<\/p>\n

This screenshot only goes to eleven<\/i><\/p>\n

Some of us are using this as a time to share<\/a> how we\u2019ve done some of this already. And of course, it\u2019s a great opportunity to share not only what\u2019s on our minds but on our plates. We\u2019re really digging the #lunch-pics channel any time of the day. From Berlin: \u201cMy lunch for today, tomorrow and probably Saturday too” <\/i>(we’re hungry now):<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n

Finally, we also won\u2019t underestimate the power of GIFs<\/b> (and letting off a little steam) in our new social architecture. \u201cSent this to my friend who complained about feeling disconnected from work while doing wfh.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\"GIF<\/p>\n

Of course, this stuff is evolving every day and we imagine our moods and advice will too. Don\u2019t hesitate to tweet us about how you are coping at @MozillaCareers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Coronavirus has the world redoing how it works and meets. Conferences have been cancelled, many organizations are ceasing travel, entire countries are on lockdown, and schools are going into … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":932,"featured_media":290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327152],"tags":[],"coauthors":[264701],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/932"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}