🦄 I actually started a version of this post over a week ago, but instead ended up with So... This Was Just a Test - You Made It a Thing. And no – I can’t even begin to explain how I started writing about teamwork and ended up with a mostly-coherent explanation of my general thought process over the past 2 months...
Just trust the process – sometimes I take the scenic route, but I promise I’ll get us there eventually. Plus, I always have fun on the way! 😇🎉🎈
Background 📝
The original thought was "we never really learned how to do remote..." Not well anyway. My job is 100% remote with distributed teammates from the Pacific US to India. We’re a relatively small team — fewer than 10 devs — split into three different dev roles. But I’m regularly chatting with other teams and posting in random channels (mostly the AI ones — not surprised? 😏).
Since then, the original topic morphed thanks to a conversation with a friend, then expanded a little at work, and finally snowballed into a full-on get-it-out-of-my-system rant with my sister. Now? I’m sealing the deal with this post and moving on (metaphorically, anyway) 🪄✨
The dream (and the reality that showed up)
For a lot of us, remote work was always the dream. Morning meetings in PJs (or the occasional stand-up in bed — ✋ guilty!), zero traffic, quiet when you need it, and the freedom to yell at the code as loud as you want without getting weird side-eyes. Best of all: SFW only applies if the mic is on. ✨ Pretty spectacular!
When COVID first hit, it was chaos:
- Corporate jobs flipping to remote overnight.
- Scrambling for tools to connect.
- Bandwidth collapses when everyone in the house tried video calls at once
☎️ Or my personal back-to-DSL nightmare that never had a chance from the start...
We got through it, though. We basically went from “how do I unmute this thing?” to running three apps, two VPNs, and a custom Slack bot before breakfast. We found new best practices. Some went back to the office and thrived there (👋 to all my polar opposites), others stayed fully remote, but we all learned a little something along the way.
The "Generational Gap" Problem 🌍
This isn’t about age — it’s the fundamental expectations at work that highlight certain stereotypes (for me, anyway). I'm talking about the generalized ones we deal with daily and are hard to navigate for everyone.
We're in the beginnings of what I call the Gen Z–style of work: a focus on mental health, work-life balance, and meaningful projects that are about more than just a paycheck. We have health plans with mental health baked in by default, a push towards flexible schedules, more lenient maternity leave, and parental paid time off. Work supports personal projects and dedicated hack time for tinkering or learning new things that you're actually interested in.
The Boomer-era mindset is hard to leave behind, though — you know, the "work hard, stay late, forego overtime, do whatever it takes to get the job done, because the job provides for your family" version of success. The Baby Boomer generation officially ended in 1964, so it's well past time for the unattainable "always push harder" and "yes-man" mentality to stop. The problem? Most of us were raised with this model guiding the way. So, it takes a little more deliberate effort to let it go. 🤏
🦄 Yes — I looked it up. If you're like me and went for the calculator, that's exactly 61 years ago.
What this post is really about 🎯
Remote teamwork isn’t just being online at the same time or getting through stand-up in one piece. It’s about setting the right expectations — for yourself, for your teammates, and for everyone else who interacts with you. These next sections are the things I do daily to keep projects moving, avoid burnout, and make sure I’m not accidentally the reason someone else’s day gets derailed. 🚂
So, whether you're a new dev, been at the job a while, or are just dev-adjacent — here's my simple list of impactful ways to manage your time across time zones, without disrupting your team in the process.
1. Your time is golden ⏱️🥇
No one can do their best work when they’re exhausted, overworked, and stuck on a “five-minute fix” for four hours. Your calendar can save you from both burnout and rabbit holes — especially as you get promoted and meetings start eating into your dev time. If it’s not scheduled from start to finish, you’re probably underusing it.
- Set and share your work hours. Whether you’re 6 AM–2 PM or 11 AM–7 PM, make it visible in Outlook, Slack, and anywhere else your team interacts.
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Be selective with meetings. Accept what’s essential, mark the “maybes” as tentative, and decline what’s not worth your time.
🦄 Got FOMO? Outlook has a setting to keep declined meetings visible so you don't need to worry about missing something.
Block recurring time for routine tasks. Email/Slack replies, code reviews, lunch (don’t skip it else you’ll end up eating chips over your keyboard and pretending it was a meal!). Group them in one or two daily slots instead of scattering them across the day.
Protect deep work time. Use your largest open blocks for development (that's why we're here, right?) If those time blocks are missing right now, then go out a week or two in the future and schedule them now, before your calendar fills up again.
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End meetings early by default. If you’re the organizer, set them to finish 5–10 minutes before the hour. That buffer is gold for clearing quick messages before diving back in!
🍳 Or, if you’re like me, raiding the cabinets for something that will cook itself in under a minute.
The goal here isn’t to be rigid — it’s to set boundaries. Once your workday is over, shut it down. Literally! Save your spot, leave a note-to-self for tomorrow, and log off without the guilt and go do literally anything else!
💡 ProTip: Have trouble walking away with things still to do? At least activate your built-in selective-ignore feature (aka status = away) at quitting time, and respond only to messages that truly can’t wait until tomorrow.
2. Everyone else’s time is golden, too 🫶
It’s the cat-herding golden rule — you can’t demand respect for your own schedule and ignore everyone else’s.
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Schedule messages when possible. If the recipient isn’t online and it’s not urgent, time it for their working hours.
💬 Bonus: you also avoid becoming the coworker whose name triggers phantom Slack notifications in people’s dreams.
Use optional meeting invites. If someone’s attendance is a “nice to have,” mark them as optional and tell them why ahead of time.
Confirm availability before scheduling during a blocked time — if they’re already busy, don’t double-book them without at least asking. Send a quick message or call it out in the invite itself. Either way, be polite and acknowledge you’re really asking for more than a meeting.
🦄 This is the magical golden rule in action — people are more likely to respect your time if you respect theirs first.
3. Keep your promises (or at least track them) 📌
Have you ever had one of those “oh no” moments, when someone follows up on something that you completely forgot. Yeah — me too and it's not fun! Stop relying on memory. Use Slack’s “remind me” feature or /remind command to create instant follow-ups. Then make checking those reminders part of your daily routine.
🪅 This also keeps your desk from looking like someone busted a piñata of post-its above your head. Win-win.
4. Make code reviews conversations by default 💬
No, this doesn’t mean treating PR reviews like a tyrant — but it also doesn’t mean consistently ignoring bad code.
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If you notice it, call it out as a learning opportunity if nothing else. A quick FYI or FFR with an example, if you have one. Not 10 consecutive requests to change the code to
warninstead oferror. - Honest questions go here, too. Sometimes you’ll see an interesting implementation that deserves a “what made you decide this option?” to start the thread.
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Ask your team for pushback — they should challenge some things, and sometimes they’re right!
Sometimes I’ll notice something, ask Copilot, and it turns out we’re both wrong. Post those, too!
If it’s time-sensitive? Call it out and post anyway — then immediately move the thread to a discussion or set up a post-review to talk it through after the deployment.
Long list of notes? clearly call out any true blockers in your main review comment. Give permission for others to resolve non-blockers, or simply ask for a quick thumbs up 👍 and do it yourself — no need to drag it out.
🦄 Remember the goal is to improve code quality — make code reviews a friendly yarn-ball toss, not a hissy fit of who’s code is the most right 🧶😼.
5. Make AI part of your toolkit 🦾
AI isn’t just for generating code. It can also:
- Plan work before you start building
- Offer ideas when you get stuck on a problem
- Be your rubber duck if you can’t decide which option fits better
- Confirm your approach ahead of time or offer alternatives
- Analyze logs for tricky prod issues
- Rewrite important communications for clarity or tone
- Brighten your day with a Yoda-style code review
Be sure to follow your company’s rules on which tools are approved and never share private or internal data with unapproved tools.
🦄 Trust me, you don’t want your next LinkedIn update to be “fired for feeding prod secrets to ChatGPT”. If your company doesn't approve it, sanitize the content first.
It's Not Easy — Share How It Goes 🏁
No, it’s not an instant solution — change takes time. Habits can take months to form (according to this post) And it's not just your habits it's multiplied by every person on your team.
You won't succeed if you're not ready to back this up with a little force. Explain it to the boss ahead of time, if you need to, but you're the only one who's looking out for you!
Seriously — just try it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. Post back here with any pushbacks or questions — I’ll be watching for any shifts that make you less of a cat herder and more of a teammate. 🐈⬛
🦄 And if you think of anything else to add to the list, call that out, too!
🛡️ This post was written by me —
and fact-checked by a very opinionated ChatGPT.
Zero cats were harmed in the making of this post, but a few yarn balls were thrown for science. 🐈⬛🧶