Detailed Notes
In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche dive into the remote vs in-office work debate—one of the biggest workplace discussions in recent years.
💡 Topics we cover: • What actually boosts productivity: remote or in-office work? • How leadership can build culture in any environment • The pros and cons of hybrid models • Real stories from the field: meetings, automation, and management tips • Why some teams thrive at home—and others don’t
🎯 Whether you’re a business leader, manager, or remote worker, this episode will help you rethink how your team works best.
đź“Ł CHALLENGE: Make a list of the pros and cons of remote vs in-office work for your team. Where are YOU most productive?
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đź‘Ť Like, Comment, and Subscribe for more on building better teams, businesses, and developers.
📬 Questions or ideas? Email us at:[email protected] Visit: https://develpreneur.com/
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0:00 – Behind the scenes 1:54 – Introduction 6:40 - What does “upgrading your business” really mean? 27:00 – Challenge 30:50 – Bonus Material
#BuildingBetterDevelopers #RemoteWork #InOfficeWork #HybridWork #TeamProductivity #BusinessCulture
Transcript Text
[Music] there. I hit record as far as as far as you know. Um virtual versus physical. I like that. I think they're like especially now because there's people that are like everybody's like let's bring them all home. um you know, we got to get back there and we got to be able to see him in the office. And there is I Yeah, I can I can argue all day long on either side of this. Uh although obviously there's a certain place that I personally land u but well I'm concerned most I think of the arguments and we didn't discuss this but I think 90% of the arguments are um land value or office value. It's like you don't want your office real estate to lose value because no one's there. Well, I mean there's that, but there's a lot more to it than that as far as like just really like do I have a do I you know do I bring it do I does it make sense to have employees here or not? Particularly there's rent and there's all those kinds of costs that are involved. It's like maybe I can take that overhead and swipe it away which is what we do. I mean, that's what that is a a value ad for RB Consulting is that we don't have, you know, a 60% markup rate basically or whatever it is that you're normally going to see. We're going to have something lower because we don't have all of that expensive crap. We don't have the RB consulting building that costs us tons of money. Um, you know, or even renting it, which is, you know, probably even worse. All right, let's do virtual versus clinical with a little three. A two, one. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing and yes, we are almost wrapping up our season on building better businesses. This is the building better developers podcast, also known as developer. It actually stars developer and has worked his way into building better developers. At any case, I have always been for the longest time as I can remember my whole life, Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of developer, also a founder of RB Consulting, where we help you figure out how to leverage technology to do business better. And not just in general, your business. We're going to sit down. We're going to talk to you about what do you do, what makes you special. This is going to feel very good because part of it is going to be us saying, "Wow, that is quite a value that you bring. Wow, that is something that I can see your your customers loving. And that is exactly what we're going to do as part of that discussion. And then we're going to say, all right, let's figure out what you can do. What is what can technology do for you based on where you're currently at, what your team is at, where you want to go, and then help you through that technology assessment. We're going to figure out, you know, do you have tech sprawl? Do you have integration? Do you have simplification? You have automation, do you have innovation needs? And then we're going to build a road map and then we're going to help you implement that technical roadmap or show you how. Whether it's we implement it for you whether we help you build the right team. We're here to help you find the best path forward with technology or without telling technology with us or without us. Our goal is to just make everybody better wherever we can just like we do with this podcast. Good thing bad thing? good thing. Um, I've got like a bunch of side projects that I've worked on for years and they like they're in varying states of a lot of them. I use them. I scratch my own itch. So, I've got all these applications and things and solutions that I've built for myself. One of them I have not touched in a while because I've been in my business instead of on my business way too much for the last couple of years. And so, as I'm like digging myself out of this, I'm refreshing one of these tools. and it was basically dead. I hadn't like looked at it in years and now there's like there's very and now I'm like finally like turning stuff on and activating connections and pulling data out and pushing data and things like that like didn't exist. It feels like one of those like movies where you've got some like old rusted technology that now is being like you know brought back to life and so it is very much a good thing to be like oh wow this will actually still be useful to me. bad thing is uh in general old code is you're sitting there and it's something that you haven't touched for years or that your company hasn't touched for years. Uh and I'm thinking about this not related to what I just said as my good thing but actually a company that I a customer or potential customer I just talked to that they are 10 years behind the curve. they've got something and this is not the first time I've had one of these where it's a a customer potential customer that their stuff was built 10 or more years ago. Uh sometimes they still have the developer, sometimes they don't. Usually they have zero or close to it documentation and it's basically a matter of like okay we've got to figure out how to make this work but make it work better because as we talked about in our prior episode they basically let things grow to a point where now it's taking too long to do the most basic tasks and they need to do an upgrade. I am going to keep it quick and not have to upgrade myself even though I am because I'm going to pass this over to Michael the other host. Introduce yourself please. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malashsh. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the founder of a company called Envision QA where we help businesses focus on the quality of their business. It can be helping them upgrade their current software stack, getting things working seamlessly, helping them fix current bugs in their current software. It could even be helping them understand that hey, their software is outdated. We need to upgrade them or build a custo solution. Our whole business model is around the customer. We are focused on improving the quality of your business, be it through custom software or helping you figure out what it is that you actually need to run your business. Good thing, bad thing. Uh, good thing this week. Um, we're past allergy season. I'm feeling so much better. I can get off all the freaking algae meds. Get rid of the medicine head. Uh bad side. Um still dealing with a little bit of bad weather around here and having to adjust uh vacation plans based on the weather. So going to have to kick some things around. Back to you, Rob. So this episode I want to talk about this is like this is one of those like hot topics right now. Virtual versus physical employees. as in are we in the office or are we going to be remote? And we can go a little further around this, but that's where I really want to focus in on because this is something that is near and dear to my heart. It's something I I can argue both sides all day long. I can I could sit there and say that everybody needs to be in the office and here is the value of being in the office. I can also argue everybody needs to be remote and here's the value of being remote. Honestly though, I'm not going to argue everybody in either case because there are people that work. Whatever your business is, whatever your employees are doing, there are going to be those in a lot of cases, if not most of the cases, there going to be those that work better remote, assuming it's possible. Now, there's some things like, you know, if it's your checkout clerk, they remote probably isn't going to help. Or maybe it will. That's one of those things that maybe you should think about. But there are going to be those that just it needs to be it makes most sense for it to be in person. But there are going to be those that are actually better or more effective at at least sometime if not all the time being remote and vice versa. There are going to be some that just some people as we saw during co there are some people that just not good at working remote. They they just they don't have the drive. They don't have the focus. They got too much crap going on. They got kids bothering whatever it happens to be. It's just not their cup of tea. Also, and this is where I want to get into a little deeper into this instead of just the straight up like, you know, what's the cost of your office space versus and the time and the um, you know, the commute times and what's the difference between somebody that, you know, gets dressed and goes to work versus they just sit around in their, you know, sit around in their boxers and a t-shirt all day and then they put a developer shirt on at some point to do their little podcast or stuff like that. You know, there's a lot of ways that you can look at this and and be uh cynical about it. Uh but then there's also those you can be very optimistic and say, "Well, hey, at least you're not going to get killed in a car accident or you're not going to waste your time talking to everybody in the office." There is like so many things. It is not black and white. It is not that cut and dry. There is there are a lot of factors that are involved in remote versus in the office. And that's what I want you to think about. uh particularly if you're in a situation where um two things I guess one is if you are chasing one or the other of those and then the other is do you have employees and are they are you considering what do I do with my employees what do I do uh in this situation how do I like how do I address the remote versus uh in-person work kind of things or do I do a hybrid which is honestly it's sort of like a it's a little bit of a copout but I don't know that it necessar really is sometimes the hybrid is actually the best. You get the best of both worlds and you get to make things, you know, get to work things out that way. Now, one of the things I want to I I think that I want to focus on and I I think that is lost way too often in that whole this whole discussion and those that were particularly I think those that went through the 2020 2021 COVID stuff, I think they felt it, but I'm not sure if they remember it. So, I'm going to like, you know, sort of brush some of that off and and remind you when everybody is in the office, particularly if you are in something that is uh has intellectual uh banter or value, whether you're a developer, whether you're in sales, whether you're in marketing, because those are, you know, these creative types of things. Um even honestly depending on what you do like if you're in accounting and definitely HR and things like that when you are all in the office there is a level of one osmosis that everybody gets because you're hearing these conversations you get drawn into conversations that you probably will not get if you are remote because you're like walking down the hall and you have a conversation with somebody or you're you're sitting next to somebody and you just throw something out to them and say well what do you think about this which you wouldn't do if they're remote. Now, maybe you do if you've got Slack or something like that. Maybe you've got somebody you've got very chatty chat people, but that that really I've seen that happen in some cases, but it's just too hard to follow. It is much easier to have like that conversation with somebody sitting next to you than it is to have a bunch of people entering stuff in like a Slack channel or something like that. The other thing is culture. Uh although we have we have had conversations we have had interviews if you go back a couple seasons there have been times that we have talked at length about culture in a fully remote environment. How do you do that? How do you address that? How do you make that happen? And I've talked to some people that were phenomenal at doing that that they realize that that is something that you want to take you know move forward with your company but you're going to be remote and so you have to you have to solve that problem. That is a struggle that you're going to have to go through that you're going to have to win out on. And culture is I think is huge particularly if you have any sort of uh partnering teaming up things like that is like if you have a team and they are desperately across the world you can be a very tight and very well functioning well machine team but there is a lot more work I think into doing that and when I have worked with it it almost always has required face to face at some point. There's some point where you need to be able to sit down with your co-workers and break bread together and have a meal or go out and have drinks if that's what you are or go have like a team building activity where you go, I don't know, golf or laser tag or skydive or whatever it is that your team does. There is value in being together in community and you know having those social interactions just as there is value in not being distracted by those very same things. This is why some people that are, you know, maybe you've gotten back to it where you're an office dweller and you get to work early or you stay at work late because you know that either if I get there before everybody else or if I stay after everybody else has left, I can get some serious work done because I don't have distractions, I can go heads down. I you know or maybe you're like you're one of those you put your headphones on and you can just focus and get some crap done instead of being distracted by listening to what Martha next to you is talking about for her weekend or something like that. I'm going to stop there and throw that over to you like what are your thoughts today? I've kept this pretty broad but let's see where you want to go with this one. So, it's really funny because you and I have been virtual or working from home precoid like we we have been in many situations where we have worked from home years before COVID, we've been in the office, we've been out of the office. Uh I've worked for companies that during COVID where I had to be in an office environment like once a quarter. Um the interesting thing about this whole conversation is virtual versus physical is a lot of times I feel management wants to see what's going on. They need to physically see people in desks doing things but I've actually seen the counter to that. I see more time wasted being in an office and work not getting done because people are socializing, people are in meetings. Um whereas in a virtual environment you're focused on productivity. You're focused on getting things done. One good example of this is a job I had a couple years ago where I was the senior um automation tester and it because of our infrastructure I had to run our automation test on a Thursday night and it literally took 60 hours between Thursday night and Monday morning to complete all the automation tests because I had to run them on so any environments where it was mainly tasking for me to do it. Now, I could be in the office that week, Monday through Wednesday, but by the time I hit Thursday, Thursday through Monday, I would work another 60 hours. So, it made no sense for me to be in the office doing that or even to come in the office Monday through Wednesday. So, we worked it out where, hey, it was more productive for me to be virtual that week, not even come into the office. kick off the test Thursday night, run them, manage them, and then by Monday morning, I'm already done with most of my week for the following week. By Wednesday of the following week, I was done because I was able to do more work from home than physically being in the office. This is where the funny conversation, I think Tim Ferrris talked about this years ago. It's like, are you being busy or are you being productive? Are you running around the office with the phone in your head? Hey, I'm doing Oh, you look busy. Hey, I'm up for a promotion, but are you actually doing anything? Are you able to actually do your job? And that's kind of the whole virtual versus physical. If you can do your work from home, if you can focus, sit down, get crap done, and not be distracted, great. But not every position or every job kind of works with that. So there are times where being in the office is beneficial and I have found where once a quarter I am not totally against being in the office. I am more than happy to go in once a quarter, every other week or once a month to sit down with the team to build that culture like Rob mentioned, but it is anti-productive to me to be in an office and be in meetings for 10 hours a day and nothing gets accomplished. Is a waste of time. Um, so what are your thoughts on that, Ro? I saw you kind of well and I think that's that is the challenge is that you've got to I've been in situations where I have been in meetings back to back to back to back and there have been actually a couple of cases where I've been in those situations where they actually are all productive meetings for the most part. There's always going to be a bad one here and there, but I think that's part of it is that when we there's this tendency when we're in an office is like, okay, we're here, so we've got to do something. We've got to take advantage of the time. And you have to be aware of like there is you've got to have time to actually get the work done. This is sometimes you end up meeting to death and you end up in a situation where we're talking so we're spending too much time talking about getting something done instead do the thing and it's like and this is where you will get me on a soap box if you don't watch out because this is where things like agile manifesto and things like that start to come into play where it's like yes there are processes and procedures and documentation and all these things that we want to do and these are not bad things but if you cowtow those if you're worshiping at the alter of those things of those processes and procedures, then you probably are not going to get your work done enough. And now you can't just focus on getting your work done because then there's other things that need to be done. But you've got to find that balance. You've got to find the ability to balance those things out and make sure that there is time to get the stuff done. So when you're meeting, you can actually talk about things that were accomplished and not just say, "Why aren't we getting crap done?" And the worst part is this is a problem in both virtual and physical environments. I have seen I have been with companies where they literally had meetings scheduled for 10 hours with no bathroom breaks, no breaks in between. You can't physically run a company that way. Even if you're in the office, if you schedule meetings like that, people aren't doing their jobs. You have them tied up and they're busy. Are at the end of the day this whole argument of virtual versus physical is are you looking for busy work to make sure that your people are doing something or are you actually giving them work that is meaningful that is moving the bar forward that is like Rob mentioned with scrum that you're doing small task that you're always moving forward or are you stuck in the loop of meeting hell and nothing's getting done meaning if if you're virtual or physical, it's a waste of time period and you need to revisit your business model. I think that's this is something that gets into gets in there areas and really go beyond the whole as you mentioned they do go beyond remote versus in person because you can as I said I can argue both sides. You can pretty much argue whatever your argument is in defense of either side of it. So you could say that, you know, well, if you're in an office, you're always going to have meetings. But then you can say, well, well, no, if you're in remote, then you have to have more meetings because you have to keep up with people. And I'm I have lived this as part of my company as that I have been virtual for a long time. I've been remote for a long time. I have uh even when I was not full-time remote, I was pushing remote. I had employees that remote. We had certain days a week that we would show up and it's like, "Okay, we're going to meet this day a week. we're going to show up at the office and then the rush time we're going to go away and we're going to get some crap done. And I have done this and I have hired employees and I have worked with them in varying schedules and things like that to say, okay, you know, and it it goes to everything. It's like how much freedom do you give versus how much do you you know, do you need to like make sure that you're like poking people and saying, "Hey, are you getting that done? Are you can't you the accountability side of it?" You want to say something. Yeah. But it to me it only makes sense to physically be in an office if everyone is able to be in the office. If your whole point of bringing your com your employees into the office is to have them sit at a desk and be on Zoom calls all day because their people are all over the country, that is a waste of time in my opinion. That's actually funny because that's something I just have experienced in a place that I was at where um it was part-time remote. There was a it was one of these hybrid kind of things. So on any given day, somebody was working remote. It wasn't like, you know, you come in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then you can go. It was you, you're adults, you're, you know, you get your crap done the way you get your stuff done. And that actually worked out really well because what could happen is you could have somebody that is like, I need to just go focus on this thing, but I also need to like be part of the team and I need to give back. So you could have days where you're just like, "Okay, I'm going to go do this." It also allows your life to intrude a little bit more. You're like, "You know what? I'm going to be sitting at home today because I've got a delivery coming in or I've got to take go to doctor's appointment or whatever it is." So it is actually more effective use of my time to be home to go do this stuff and then be able to, you know, work. And then there's the whole whole like you end up being more connected and and things like that from a to the work side of it a lot of times because everybody does it. Everybody's just used to it. And we did have Zoom calls where you would have, you know, half the team would be or half the meeting people would be sitting in the room and then you'd have a screen up and you'd have some people on a Zoom call. Um there is definitely there are definitely ways to approach those things that you need to be you need to learn how to do them the right way for your team. A lot of times it's as simple as just there needs to be camera on. Uh there are some things like you know I the first time I saw somebody this was now years ago. We were sitting there and it was a was a big call and this was like with customers and there was a developer type person and in one of the like five or six little Zoom boxes that were there and this guy's sitting here vaping while we're all talking and it's like you're sitting there and it's like a little v there's like smoke blowing into the screen and you're like actually I remember like me and the the manager that I work for like is that cool or like is that something is that a thing now? We're not even sure like this is back, you know, closer into the the the whole co things, but it's like I don't know that that's quite right. And and it it is it's like you need to make sure that your employees understand that if you're on a meeting, then you should, you know, expect to be camera ready and that you should like look like you didn't just crawl out of bed and some things like that. which kind of falls into the fact that, you know, if you're virtual as a business, you need to make sure you have rules defined as to how you need to act. And a lot of companies, I think, don't have that. So, it's like more it's easier for them to say everyone back to the office because we don't want to deal with the virtual because we don't want to establish policies or protocols for being in virtual meetings. That is that is actually a pretty good point is that if you do like I said that you know maybe you want to do hybrid because you get the best of both worlds but if you do then it actually adds more rules and regulation or potential for rules and regulations than if you are both now I am like just laying it out you know just as open thing my company my employees are 100% virtual but we generally speaking we we actually meet face to face we have a lunch even though there's some people that drive a couple hours, you know, every couple of weeks. Uh, and then we do have, now we have some employee, there are customers that we have never met face to face. Uh, there are some that we have never seen a picture of that customer, but we will, you know, depending on what they do, we will be cameras on. We will, you know, we have talked to our employees about things like, hey, make sure you dress appropriately. make sure that you, you know, blur the background so that you don't have some like, you know, gaming system that you're playing while you're sitting there supposedly on a call or whatever. You know, there's just or just really tasteless poster or something like that. Who knows what you could have, but it's the basics of this is how you work in a remote world. And it's just like an office. There are there's a dress code. There's things like that. You do need to do that for remote as well. And you have to be a little more Uh depending on how you do it, you probably have to be a little more intentional about it. Just understand like where are people going to maybe think, okay, this isn't a big deal. Like coming to office, when do you show up at the office? How do you denote that you are at work? How do you denote that you are where you need to be? Um you know, without when you're not in an office, it was things like you know, is there a status on your Slack or something like that that you need to keep up with. So, um, all of those things are major considerations I think when you do it. Um, I'll give you sort of some some closing thoughts. We jump into the, uh, the challenge for this one. Yeah. So, my final thoughts are if you're virtual or physical, regardless of your dynamics, look at what makes sense for your business. If you are more like if you're a bank, if you need tellers, if you need to make sure someone's physically there to talk to a customer, which makes sense, uh, when there's a problem, then yes, you need to have people on premise. Now, if you have people building the back-end systems that have no customer interaction, why do you need them to be in a branch or in a business to talk to the customer? That is to me when you need to be virtual versus physical. Yeah. I think there's a it really is like and sometimes it's going to be we're only we are virtual until we don't need to be until we can't be virtual. You know, things like that and like sales people it may be that sales people are going on sales calls. They don't really need to have an office or anything like that. Um and then you have office hours. You have all these other things that that come into play. The challenge I want to dive into is think about you and your job. And maybe this is like this is probably a good one to have like a little list of pros and cons. Where where is there value in you being in the office with your co-workers and where is there value in you being at home working in a you know especially now this assumes that your home office is effective an effective place to work. If you're sitting there and you got your laptop on the kitchen table and you got kids and pets running around all over the place, that is not very effective. There's going to be a lot of distractions and things like that. You know, now granted, your workplace may be completely full of distractions as well, but these are the things to consider is I the challenge is like go through and figure out just whether your boss, you know, agrees or not, whether you are your boss and whether you agree or not is like just sit down and like sort of tally out what are the pros and cons for me, my job, what I do. Am I likely more off, you know, more productive if I am in an office in the office or if I work remote? And this could I'll throw some like little, you know, curve balls at you as well because this could be something that is going to be seasonal or like regular seasonal or seasonal in life. It may be something that's like, you know what, I'm far better working at home during the summer because otherwise I leave work early so I can go hang out at the pool. Uh, it could be something I went through for a while where I was actually in an office because it was easier. I had to take my had to take my daughter to school and it was easier to get an office. A remote office is like right across the street from the school so I could drop her off then work pick her up and so I didn't have as much back and forth time. There's things like that that may be uh life situations that are very specific to you. But I think it's whether you have the option or not, I think it is very useful to know what truly is the value of you working remote or working in an office because when you get to the point of having that choice, it's good to have like, you know, have that in the back of your mind. It's like really what is it? You don't want to be like the person that's sitting there in a restaurant and they say, "Well, what do you want to eat?" And you're like, "Ah, give me five more minutes. I want to think about it." you this is something where it's I think worthwhile for you to say you know this is what and I this is what I want and this is why and this is you know the reasons for it so that you can if you need to choose and defend that position that being said I'm going to give you one more because it looks like you had something else you wanted to say yeah within that challenge are you busy or you're productive think of that within that challenge foolish material. I I'll go to that one afterwards. I was going to go deeper, but we're going to wait. So, if you're here, if you see these mugs, then um yes, you will be able to talk about that in just a minute. The rest of you, go check out Developer on YouTube and the Developer channel, and you'll be able to see maybe some of the bonus material here. That being said, uh as always, we would love feedback from you in any way, form, or fashion. I'm not even going to go through all this stuff [email protected] and all of the myriad of ways that you can reach out to us because we are virtual. We're not sitting there in your living room or anything like that unless you want us to. If you want us to come there and do a live recording, then we'll figure that crap out because hey, why not? Go out there. Until then, don't look for us behind your shoulder. We're not going to be sneaking up. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. bonus material. All right, you first now I Yeah. is then what? Oh gosh, what did you say? Now I just lost what my bonus material. Oh, come on. Um, so be productive or you Oh, productive versus Yes. Um, this is the bonus when you're thinking through it on the challenge is it really is it can be a lifestyle improvement, a life improvement thing to work remote if you understand how to do it right. And I will give you an example that for one, I was as a single parent of kids, I did not really have an option because dealing with all the crap that I needed to with kids, I didn't have an option to go to an office and to go do that as well, unless the office was like two minutes two minutes away. So, I've been through this. But a bonus that you get if you do it right, if you understand how to like work the remote is there are things like like dishes and laundry and yard work. There's all these little things that you can work into your day. Now granted, it may extend your day, but it's things like instead of like running out to lunch, going to an office and going to lunch for an hour, you can grab something and go spend an hour working on the yard or you can like between like I don't know how often instead of like doing, you know, bathroom breaks at work where you're like, "Okay, I got to go get bathroom and I got to refill my coffee." The same thing with you add almost zero time and you can like kick off a dishwasher or kick off laundry or move. There's like a lot of little things you can do. So the bonus here is if you think if you can work remote then own it is look at how you can take the time that you don't spend in a you know getting ready for work and on a commute and going out to grab a lunch and all that kind of stuff. Take that time and turn it into something that works for you preferably that also works for your employer. And now I will toss it over for you for bonus stuff. All right. So, I will take the Tim Ferrris approach. One of the biggest things years ago before I read the 4-hour work week was I paid my bills every week. I dealt with mail weekly. If you can automate a task, set up an auto bill or set anything to eliminate something you have to go do every month. You get time back and that's something you don't have to worry about. do it. Wipe out whatever it is that you were doing repetitive that you can automate. Automate. Get it done. Get off your plate. Maybe review it once a quarter, but wipe out all the crap you're wasting time on. Do a deep dive into what are you doing in your day job, in your personal life, whatever. Eliminate it. Automate it. Make your life easier. Get back to getting what what is it? Getting stuff done or get it done. Getting things done. Get it done. Focus on that. If you're not focused on getting it done, you're focusing on the wrong thing. I think that's I'm going to wrap that one. We'll wrap it up with that one because I think that's probably a good as good as as we're going to get as far as you know that's really the bottom line is get your crap done. That is your work. And this I will be honest like hopefully she's not going to listen to this but I have I have conversations with this about my wife about this with my wife where it's just like sometimes you need to focus. You need to get your crap done so that you can go do other stuff that you can go live your life. There are certain things that are like these are the things that are being a responsible the adulting thing to do. You got to do this crap. Now, I am not the best person at doing all the things that adults do. I still, as you could probably tell, I have a little bit of that child in me, but there's that crap that's got to be done, and work is one of them. There's like certain things you got to do to keep your business going, to keep your job, to do all that kind of stuff. Those are the things that like you need to know what are the priorities, what are the things that need to be done, and get that crap done. This is what getting things done is all about. The GTD approach is all about like I need to get my crap done. I need to know what I need to do next so that I always have like whenever I'm sitting there I'm like I know what the next thing is to do so I can get things done. It is much less time sitting there thinking about what do I have to do next or how do I make myself look productive and you just skip ahead to the end and say I don't care if I looked productive or not. I got it done. That is going to be the bottom line that you're going to need to do. Now you may have a boss that's like well you didn't look productive enough. But then you just point back to that bottom line and say look I got it done. And if they don't like it, go find somebody that does because that is the biggest value you can bring to your employees, to your employers, to your customers, to your clients, however that relationship goes. So that then you can go out and live your best life because now you got the crap done that you needed to get done and now you get to do the stuff that you want to do. And if you get to do both of those at the same time like me, you're a very blessed individual. And you might be at the wrong company. If you are if you're employer is focused on busy versus productive, find a new business or find a new employer. I think of the Simpsons episode where he was found that the best way to go work from home was that he got super super fat and then he found out the way to get his work done is he had a little uh one of those little like uh water birds that would just like hit every so often so it' hit the like the yes key or whatever it was and he's like look I suddenly got productive. He didn't have to do. Don't be. But if you're being paid to be that person, that is on them. They shouldn't have done that for you. That is why I think if any of my employees are listening, that's why, you know, is that I'm like, what did we get done? Let's get stuff done. I don't really care how long you worked on it as much as I care like let's get the crap done. Same thing for myself is like I'm not looking at that's why I hate billing hourly because there is a value in it. It's like, okay, you're getting paid your work for those hours. But there is a, you know, and it's it has to be done because, you know, fixed bid just usually isn't going to work. That's a whole different conversation. However, the thing you have to worry about is like getting the thing done. At the end of the day, it's not about billing the hours. It's not about putting the putting the work in. It's about getting the thing done. That is really where you need to be. That being said, I'm going to get this thing done because I'm like getting down there on my drink a little bit, but not too much. So, I've got a little bit more to do and uh I got like crap to do before I run off to hockey tonight. So, that being said, you go there and have yourself a great one. We will come back next episode. This is the last episode of the season. We'll be next one around. We have one more after that. Look at that. One more after that. So, we will do one more. That's right. We will do one and then we will do like the we will have like a little wrap up and then we will try to figure out what the next season's going to be. Okay. The next one's a wrap up. All right. This is why you don't outsource to other people. I used to know all this stuff. No, this is because I like I used to know all this stuff. I knew every single episode number. All that kind of crap. I moved on. I outsourced it. Now I don't have to think about it. To be fair, I am a happier person for it. However, now I have to actually rely on other people. He outsourced it to me to be fair. Exactly. Hey, but then you got elevated to co-host. So, there you go. Yeah. You get like you get your name in the credits because you write the credits. There you go. All right. This has been this is totally off the rails now. Go out there and have yourselves a great day. Hopefully, as much fun as we're having right now, and we will talk to you next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
there. I hit record as far as as far as
you know. Um virtual versus physical. I
like that. I think they're like
especially now because there's people
that are like everybody's like let's
bring them all home. um you know, we got
to get back there and we got to be able
to see him in the office. And there is I
Yeah, I can I can argue all day long on
either side of this. Uh although
obviously there's a certain place that I
personally land u but well I'm concerned
most I think of the arguments and we
didn't discuss this but I think 90% of
the arguments are
um land value or office value. It's like
you don't want your office real estate
to lose value because no one's there.
Well, I mean there's that, but there's a
lot more to it than that as far as like
just really like do I have a do I you
know do I bring it do I does it make
sense to have employees here or not?
Particularly there's rent and there's
all those kinds of costs that are
involved. It's like maybe I can take
that overhead and swipe it away which is
what we do. I mean, that's what that is
a a value ad for RB Consulting is that
we don't have, you know, a 60% markup
rate basically or whatever it is that
you're normally going to see. We're
going to have something lower because we
don't have all of that expensive crap.
We don't have the RB consulting building
that costs us tons of money. Um, you
know, or even renting it, which is, you
know, probably even
worse. All right, let's do virtual
versus clinical with a little three. A
two, one. Hello and welcome back. We are
continuing and yes, we are almost
wrapping up our season on building
better businesses. This is the building
better developers podcast, also known as
developer. It actually stars developer
and has worked his way into building
better developers. At any case, I have
always been for the longest time as I
can remember my whole life, Rob
Broadhead, one of the founders of
developer, also a founder of RB
Consulting, where we help you figure out
how to leverage technology to do
business better. And not just in
general, your business. We're going to
sit down. We're going to talk to you
about what do you do, what makes you
special. This is going to feel very good
because part of it is going to be us
saying, "Wow, that is quite a value that
you bring. Wow, that is something that I
can see your your customers loving. And
that is exactly what we're going to do
as part of that discussion. And then
we're going to say, all right, let's
figure out what you can do. What is what
can technology do for you based on where
you're currently at, what your team is
at, where you want to go, and then help
you through that technology assessment.
We're going to figure out, you know, do
you have tech sprawl? Do you have
integration? Do you have simplification?
You have automation, do you have
innovation needs? And then we're going
to build a road map and then we're going
to help you implement that technical
roadmap or show you how. Whether it's we
implement it for you whether we help you
build the right team. We're here to help
you find the best path forward with
technology or without telling technology
with us or without us. Our goal is to
just make everybody better wherever we
can just like we do with this podcast.
Good thing bad thing? good thing. Um,
I've got like a bunch of side projects
that I've worked on for years and they
like they're in varying states of a lot
of them. I use them. I scratch my own
itch. So, I've got all these
applications and things and solutions
that I've built for
myself. One of them I have not touched
in a while because I've been in my
business instead of on my business way
too much for the last couple of years.
And so, as I'm like digging myself out
of this, I'm refreshing one of these
tools. and it was basically dead. I
hadn't like looked at it in years and
now there's like there's very and now
I'm like finally like turning stuff on
and activating connections and pulling
data out and pushing data and things
like that like didn't exist. It feels
like one of those like movies where
you've got some like old rusted
technology that now is being like you
know brought back to life and so it is
very much a good thing to be like oh wow
this will actually still be useful to
me. bad thing is uh in general old code
is you're sitting there and it's
something that you haven't touched for
years or that your company hasn't
touched for years. Uh and I'm thinking
about this not related to what I just
said as my good thing but actually a
company that I a customer or potential
customer I just talked to that they are
10 years behind the curve. they've got
something and this is not the first time
I've had one of these where it's a a
customer potential customer that their
stuff was built 10 or more years ago. Uh
sometimes they still have the developer,
sometimes they don't. Usually they have
zero or close to it documentation and
it's basically a matter of like okay
we've got to figure out how to make this
work but make it work better because as
we talked about in our prior episode
they basically let things grow to a
point where now it's taking too long to
do the most basic tasks and they need to
do an upgrade. I am going to keep it
quick and not have to upgrade myself
even though I am because I'm going to
pass this over to Michael the other
host. Introduce yourself please. Hey
everyone, my name is Michael Malashsh.
I'm one of the co-founders of developer
building better developers. I'm also the
founder of a company called Envision QA
where we help businesses focus on the
quality of their business. It can be
helping them upgrade their current
software stack, getting things working
seamlessly, helping them fix current
bugs in their current software. It could
even be helping them understand that
hey, their software is outdated. We need
to upgrade them or build a custo
solution. Our whole business model is
around the customer. We are focused on
improving the quality of your business,
be it through custom software or helping
you figure out what it is that you
actually need to run your business. Good
thing, bad thing. Uh, good thing this
week. Um, we're past allergy season. I'm
feeling so much better. I can get off
all the freaking algae meds. Get rid of
the medicine head. Uh bad side. Um still
dealing with a little bit of bad weather
around here and having to adjust uh
vacation plans based on the weather. So
going to have to kick some things
around. Back to you, Rob. So this
episode I want to talk about this is
like this is one of those like hot
topics right now. Virtual versus
physical employees. as in are we in the
office or are we going to be remote? And
we can go a little further around this,
but that's where I really want to focus
in on because this is something that is
near and dear to my heart. It's
something I I can argue both sides all
day long. I can I could sit there and
say that everybody needs to be in the
office and here is the value of being in
the office. I can also argue everybody
needs to be remote and here's the value
of being remote. Honestly though, I'm
not going to argue everybody in either
case because there are people that work.
Whatever your business is, whatever your
employees are doing, there are going to
be those in a lot of cases, if not most
of the cases, there going to be those
that work better remote, assuming it's
possible. Now, there's some things like,
you know, if it's your checkout clerk,
they remote probably isn't going to
help. Or maybe it will. That's one of
those things that maybe you should think
about. But there are going to be those
that just it needs to be it makes most
sense for it to be in person. But there
are going to be those that are actually
better or more effective at at least
sometime if not all the time being
remote and vice versa. There are going
to be some that just some people as we
saw during co there are some people that
just not good at working remote. They
they just they don't have the drive.
They don't have the focus. They got too
much crap going on. They got kids
bothering whatever it happens to be.
It's just not their cup of tea.
Also, and this is where I want to get
into a little deeper into this instead
of just the straight up like, you know,
what's the cost of your office space
versus and the time and the um, you
know, the commute times and what's the
difference between somebody that, you
know, gets dressed and goes to work
versus they just sit around in their,
you know, sit around in their boxers and
a t-shirt all day and then they put a
developer shirt on at some point to do
their little podcast or stuff like that.
You know, there's a lot of ways that you
can look at this and and be
uh cynical about it. Uh but then there's
also those you can be very optimistic
and say, "Well, hey, at least you're not
going to get killed in a car accident or
you're not going to waste your time
talking to everybody in the
office." There is like so many things.
It is not black and white. It is not
that cut and dry. There is there are a
lot of factors that are involved in
remote versus in the office. And that's
what I want you to think about. uh
particularly if you're in a situation
where um two things I guess one is if
you are chasing one or the other of
those and then the other is do you have
employees and are they are you
considering what do I do with my
employees what do I do uh in this
situation how do I like how do I address
the remote versus uh in-person work kind
of things or do I do a hybrid which is
honestly it's sort of like a it's a
little bit of a copout but I don't know
that it necessar really is sometimes the
hybrid is actually the best. You get the
best of both worlds and you get to make
things, you know, get to work things out
that way. Now, one of the things I want
to I I think that I want to focus on and
I I think that is lost way too often in
that whole this whole discussion and
those that were particularly I think
those that went through the 2020 2021
COVID stuff, I think they felt it, but
I'm not sure if they remember it. So,
I'm going to like, you know, sort of
brush some of that off and and remind
you when everybody is in the office,
particularly if you are in something
that is uh has
intellectual uh banter or value, whether
you're a developer, whether you're in
sales, whether you're in marketing,
because those are, you know, these
creative types of things. Um even
honestly depending on what you do like
if you're in accounting and definitely
HR and things like that when you are all
in the office there is a level of one
osmosis that everybody gets because
you're hearing these conversations you
get drawn into conversations that you
probably will not get if you are remote
because you're like walking down the
hall and you have a conversation with
somebody or you're you're sitting next
to somebody and you just throw something
out to them and say well what do you
think about this which you wouldn't do
if they're remote. Now, maybe you do if
you've got Slack or something like that.
Maybe you've got somebody you've got
very chatty chat people, but that that
really I've seen that happen in some
cases, but it's just too hard to follow.
It is much easier to have like that
conversation with somebody sitting next
to you than it is to have a bunch of
people entering stuff in like a Slack
channel or something like that. The
other thing is culture. Uh although we
have we have had conversations we have
had interviews if you go back a couple
seasons there have been times that we
have talked at length about culture in a
fully remote environment. How do you do
that? How do you address that? How do
you make that happen? And I've talked to
some people that were phenomenal at
doing that that they realize that that
is something that you want to take you
know move forward with your company but
you're going to be remote and so you
have to you have to solve that problem.
That is a struggle that you're going to
have to go through that you're going to
have to win out on.
And culture is I think is huge
particularly if you have any sort of uh
partnering teaming up things like that
is like if you have a team and they are
desperately across the world you can be
a very tight and very well functioning
well machine team but there is a lot
more work I think into doing that and
when I have worked with it it almost
always has required face to face at some
point. There's some point where you need
to be able to sit down with your
co-workers and break bread together and
have a meal or go out and have drinks if
that's what you are or go have like a
team building activity where you go, I
don't know, golf or laser tag or skydive
or whatever it is that your team does.
There is value in being together in
community and you know having those
social interactions just as there is
value in not being distracted by those
very same things. This is why some
people that are, you know, maybe you've
gotten back to it where you're an office
dweller and you get to work early or you
stay at work late because you know that
either if I get there before everybody
else or if I stay after everybody else
has left, I can get some serious work
done because I don't have distractions,
I can go heads down. I you know or maybe
you're like you're one of those you put
your headphones on and you can just
focus and get some crap done instead of
being distracted by listening to what
Martha next to you is talking about for
her weekend or something like
that. I'm going to stop there and throw
that over to you like what are your
thoughts today? I've kept this pretty
broad but let's see where you want to go
with this one.
So, it's really funny because you and I
have been virtual or working from home
precoid like we we have been in many
situations where we have worked from
home years before COVID, we've been in
the office, we've been out of the
office. Uh I've worked for companies
that during COVID where I had to be in
an office environment like once a
quarter.
Um the interesting thing about this
whole conversation is virtual versus
physical is a lot of times I feel
management wants to see what's going on.
They need to physically see people in
desks doing things but I've actually
seen the counter to that. I see more
time wasted being in an office and work
not getting done because people are
socializing, people are in meetings. Um
whereas in a virtual environment you're
focused on productivity. You're focused
on getting things done. One good example
of this is a job I had a couple years
ago where I was the senior
um automation tester and it because of
our infrastructure I had to run our
automation test on a Thursday night and
it literally took 60 hours between
Thursday night and Monday morning to
complete all the automation tests
because I had to run them on so any
environments where it was mainly tasking
for me to do it. Now, I could be in the
office that week, Monday through
Wednesday, but by the time I hit
Thursday, Thursday through Monday, I
would work another 60 hours. So, it made
no sense for me to be in the office
doing that or even to come in the office
Monday through Wednesday. So, we worked
it out where, hey, it was more
productive for me to be virtual that
week, not even come into the office.
kick off the test Thursday night, run
them, manage them, and then by Monday
morning, I'm already done with most of
my week for the following week. By
Wednesday of the following week, I was
done because I was able to do more work
from home than physically being in the
office. This is where the funny
conversation, I think Tim Ferrris talked
about this years ago. It's like, are you
being busy or are you being productive?
Are you running around the office with
the phone in your head? Hey, I'm doing
Oh, you look busy. Hey, I'm up for a
promotion, but are you actually doing
anything? Are you able to actually do
your
job? And that's kind of the whole
virtual versus physical. If you can do
your work from home, if you can focus,
sit down, get crap done, and not be
distracted, great. But not every
position or every job kind of works with
that. So there are times where being in
the office is beneficial and I have
found where once a quarter I am not
totally against being in the office. I
am more than happy to go in once a
quarter, every other week or once a
month to sit down with the team to build
that culture like Rob mentioned, but it
is anti-productive to me to be in an
office and be in meetings for 10 hours a
day and nothing gets
accomplished. Is a waste of time. Um, so
what are your thoughts on that, Ro? I
saw you kind of well and I think that's
that is the challenge is that you've got
to I've been in situations where I have
been in meetings back to back to back to
back and there have been actually a
couple of cases where I've been in those
situations where they actually are all
productive meetings for the most part.
There's always going to be a bad one
here and there, but I think that's part
of it is that when we there's this
tendency when we're in an office is
like, okay, we're here, so we've got to
do something. We've got to take
advantage of the time. And you have to
be aware of like there is you've got to
have time to actually get the work done.
This is sometimes you end up meeting to
death and you end up in a situation
where we're talking so we're spending
too much time talking about getting
something done instead do the thing and
it's like and this is where you will get
me on a soap box if you don't watch out
because this is where things like agile
manifesto and things like that start to
come into play where it's like yes there
are processes and procedures and
documentation and all these things that
we want to do and these are not bad
things but if you cowtow those if you're
worshiping at the alter of those things
of those processes and procedures, then
you probably are not going to get your
work done enough. And now you can't just
focus on getting your work done because
then there's other things that need to
be done. But you've got to find that
balance. You've got to find the ability
to balance those things out and make
sure that there is time to get the stuff
done. So when you're meeting, you can
actually talk about things that were
accomplished and not just say, "Why
aren't we getting crap done?" And the
worst part is this is a problem in both
virtual and physical
environments. I have seen I have been
with companies where they literally had
meetings scheduled for 10 hours with no
bathroom breaks, no breaks in between.
You can't physically run a company that
way. Even if you're in the office, if
you schedule meetings like that, people
aren't doing their jobs. You have them
tied up and they're busy. Are at the end
of the day this whole argument of
virtual versus physical is are you
looking for busy work to make sure that
your people are doing something or are
you actually giving them work that is
meaningful that is moving the bar
forward that is like Rob mentioned with
scrum that you're doing small task that
you're always moving forward or are you
stuck in the loop of meeting hell and
nothing's getting done meaning if if
you're virtual or physical, it's a waste
of time period and you need to revisit
your business model.
I think that's this is something that
gets into gets in there areas and really
go beyond the whole as you mentioned
they do go beyond remote versus in
person because you can as I said I can
argue both sides. You can pretty much
argue whatever your argument is in
defense of either side of it. So you
could say that, you know, well, if
you're in an office, you're always going
to have meetings. But then you can say,
well, well, no, if you're in remote,
then you have to have more meetings
because you have to keep up with people.
And I'm I have lived this as part of my
company as that I have been virtual for
a long time. I've been remote for a long
time. I have uh even when I was not
full-time remote, I was pushing remote.
I had employees that remote. We had
certain days a week that we would show
up and it's like, "Okay, we're going to
meet this day a week. we're going to
show up at the office and then the rush
time we're going to go away and we're
going to get some crap done. And I have
done this and I have hired employees and
I have worked with them in varying
schedules and things like that to say,
okay, you know, and it it goes to
everything. It's like how much freedom
do you give versus how much do you you
know, do you need to like make sure that
you're like poking people and saying,
"Hey, are you getting that done? Are you
can't you the accountability side of
it?" You want to say something. Yeah.
But it to me it only makes sense to
physically be in an office if everyone
is able to be in the office. If your
whole point of bringing your com your
employees into the office is to have
them sit at a desk and be on Zoom calls
all day because their people are all
over the country, that is a waste of
time in my opinion.
That's actually funny because that's
something I just have experienced in a
place that I was at where um it was
part-time remote. There was a it was one
of these hybrid kind of things. So on
any given day, somebody was working
remote. It wasn't like, you know, you
come in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and
then you can go. It was you, you're
adults, you're, you know, you get your
crap done the way you get your stuff
done. And that actually worked out
really well because what could happen is
you could have somebody that is like, I
need to just go focus on this
thing, but I also need to like be part
of the team and I need to give back. So
you could have days where you're just
like, "Okay, I'm going to go do this."
It also allows your life to intrude a
little bit more. You're like, "You know
what? I'm going to be sitting at home
today because I've got a delivery coming
in or I've got to take go to doctor's
appointment or whatever it is." So it is
actually more effective use of my time
to be home to go do this stuff and then
be able to, you know, work. And then
there's the whole whole like you end up
being more connected and and things like
that from a to the work side of it a lot
of times because everybody does it.
Everybody's just used to it. And we did
have Zoom calls where you would have,
you know, half the team would be or half
the meeting people would be sitting in
the room and then you'd have a screen up
and you'd have some people on a Zoom
call. Um there is
definitely there are definitely ways to
approach those things that you need to
be you need to learn how to do them the
right way for your team. A lot of times
it's as simple as just there needs to be
camera on. Uh there are some things like
you know I the first time I saw somebody
this was now years ago. We were sitting
there and it was a was a big call and
this was like with customers and there
was a developer type person and in one
of the like five or six little Zoom
boxes that were there and this guy's
sitting here vaping while we're all
talking and it's like you're sitting
there and it's like a little v there's
like smoke blowing into the screen and
you're like actually I remember like me
and the the manager that I work for like
is that cool or like is that something
is that a thing now? We're not even sure
like this is back, you know, closer into
the the the whole co things, but it's
like I don't know that that's quite
right. And and it it is it's like you
need to make sure that your employees
understand that if you're on a meeting,
then you should, you know, expect to be
camera ready and that you should like
look like you didn't just crawl out of
bed and some things like that. which
kind of falls into the fact that, you
know, if you're virtual as a business,
you need to make sure you have rules
defined as to how you need to act. And a
lot of companies, I think, don't have
that. So, it's like more it's easier for
them to say everyone back to the office
because we don't want to deal with the
virtual because we don't want to
establish policies or protocols for
being in virtual meetings. That is that
is actually a pretty good point is that
if you do like I said that you know
maybe you want to do hybrid because you
get the best of both worlds but if you
do then it actually adds more rules and
regulation or potential for rules and
regulations than if you are both now I
am like just laying it out you know just
as open thing my company my employees
are 100% virtual but we generally
speaking we we actually meet face to
face we have a lunch even though there's
some people that drive a couple hours,
you know, every couple of weeks. Uh, and
then we do have, now we have some
employee, there are customers that we
have never met face to face. Uh, there
are some that we have never seen a
picture of that customer, but we will,
you know, depending on what they do, we
will be cameras on. We will, you know,
we have talked to our employees about
things like, hey, make sure you dress
appropriately. make sure that you, you
know, blur the background so that you
don't have some like, you know, gaming
system that you're playing while you're
sitting there supposedly on a call or
whatever. You know, there's just or just
really tasteless poster or something
like that. Who knows what you could
have, but it's the basics of this is how
you work in a remote world. And it's
just like an office. There are there's a
dress code. There's things like that.
You do need to do that for remote as
well. And you have to be a little more
Uh depending on how you do it, you
probably have to be a little more
intentional about it. Just understand
like where are people going to maybe
think, okay, this isn't a big deal. Like
coming to office, when do you show up at
the office? How do you denote that you
are at work? How do you denote that you
are where you need to be? Um you know,
without when you're not in an office, it
was things like you know, is there a
status on your Slack or something like
that that you need to keep up with. So,
um, all of those things are major
considerations I think when you do it.
Um, I'll give you sort of some some
closing thoughts. We jump into the, uh,
the challenge for this one. Yeah.
So, my final thoughts are if you're
virtual or physical, regardless of your
dynamics, look at what makes sense for
your business. If you are more like if
you're a bank, if you need tellers, if
you need to make sure someone's
physically there to talk to a customer,
which makes sense, uh, when there's a
problem, then yes, you need to have
people on premise. Now, if you have
people building the back-end systems
that have no customer interaction, why
do you need them to be in a branch or in
a business to talk to the customer?
That is to me when you need to be
virtual versus physical.
Yeah. I think there's a it really is
like and sometimes it's going to be
we're only we are virtual until we don't
need to be until we can't be virtual.
You know, things like that and like
sales people it may be that sales people
are going on sales calls. They don't
really need to have an office or
anything like that. Um and then you have
office hours. You have all these other
things that that come into play. The
challenge I want to dive into
is think about you and your
job. And maybe this is like this is
probably a good one to have like a
little list of pros and cons. Where
where is there value in you being in the
office with your co-workers and where is
there value in you being at home working
in a you know especially now this
assumes that your home office is
effective an effective place to work. If
you're sitting there and you got your
laptop on the kitchen table and you got
kids and pets running around all over
the place, that is not very effective.
There's going to be a lot of
distractions and things like that. You
know, now granted, your workplace may be
completely full of distractions as well,
but these are the things to consider is
I the challenge is like go through and
figure out just whether your boss, you
know, agrees or not, whether you are
your boss and whether you agree or not
is like just sit down and like sort of
tally out what are the pros and cons for
me, my job, what I do. Am I likely more
off, you know, more productive if I am
in an office in the office or if I work
remote? And this could I'll throw some
like little, you know, curve balls at
you as well because this could be
something that is going to be seasonal
or like regular seasonal or seasonal in
life. It may be something that's like,
you know what, I'm far better working at
home during the summer because otherwise
I leave work early so I can go hang out
at the pool. Uh, it could be something I
went through for a while where I was
actually in an office because it was
easier. I had to take my had to take my
daughter to school and it was easier to
get an office. A remote office is like
right across the street from the school
so I could drop her off then work pick
her up and so I didn't have as much back
and forth time. There's things like that
that may be uh life situations that are
very specific to you. But I think it's
whether you have the option or not, I
think it is very useful to know what
truly is the value of you working remote
or working in an office because when you
get to the point of having that choice,
it's good to have like, you know, have
that in the back of your mind. It's like
really what is it? You don't want to be
like the person that's sitting there in
a restaurant and they say, "Well, what
do you want to eat?" And you're like,
"Ah, give me five more minutes. I want
to think about it." you this is
something where it's I think worthwhile
for you to say you know this is what and
I this is what I want and this is why
and this is you know the reasons for it
so that you can if you need to choose
and defend that position that being said
I'm going to give you one more because
it looks like you had something else you
wanted to say yeah within that challenge
are you busy or you're
productive think of that within that
challenge
foolish material. I I'll go to that one
afterwards. I was going to go deeper,
but we're going to wait. So, if you're
here, if you see these mugs, then um
yes, you will be able to talk about that
in just a minute. The rest of you, go
check out Developer on YouTube and the
Developer channel, and you'll be able to
see maybe some of the bonus material
here. That being said, uh as always, we
would love feedback from you in any way,
form, or fashion. I'm not even going to
go through all this stuff
[email protected] and all of the myriad
of ways that you can reach out to us
because we are virtual. We're not
sitting there in your living room or
anything like that unless you want us
to. If you want us to come there and do
a live recording, then we'll figure that
crap out because hey, why not? Go out
there. Until then, don't look for us
behind your shoulder. We're not going to
be sneaking up. Go out there and have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next time. bonus
material. All right, you first now I
Yeah. is then what? Oh gosh, what did
you say? Now I just lost what my bonus
material. Oh, come on. Um, so be
productive or you Oh, productive versus
Yes. Um, this is the bonus when you're
thinking through it on the challenge is
it really is it can be a lifestyle
improvement, a life improvement thing to
work remote if you understand how to do
it right. And I will give you an example
that for one, I was as a single parent
of kids, I did not really have an option
because dealing with all the crap that I
needed to with kids, I didn't have an
option to go to an office and to go do
that as well, unless the office was like
two minutes two minutes away.
So, I've been through this. But a bonus
that you get if you do it right, if you
understand how to like work the remote
is there are things like like dishes and
laundry and yard work. There's all these
little things that you can work into
your day. Now granted, it may extend
your day, but it's things like instead
of like running out to lunch, going to
an office and going to lunch for an
hour, you can grab something and go
spend an hour working on the yard or you
can like between like I don't know how
often instead of like doing, you know,
bathroom breaks at work where you're
like, "Okay, I got to go get bathroom
and I got to refill my coffee." The same
thing with you add almost zero time and
you can like kick off a dishwasher or
kick off laundry or move. There's like a
lot of little things you can do. So the
bonus here is if you think if you can
work remote then own it is look at how
you can take the time that you don't
spend in a you know getting ready for
work and on a commute and going out to
grab a lunch and all that kind of stuff.
Take that time and turn it into
something that works for you preferably
that also works for your employer. And
now I will toss it over for you for
bonus stuff. All right. So, I will take
the Tim Ferrris
approach. One of the biggest things
years ago before I read the 4-hour work
week was I paid my bills every week. I
dealt with mail weekly. If you can
automate a task, set up an auto bill or
set anything to eliminate something you
have to go do every month. You get time
back and that's something you don't have
to worry about. do it. Wipe out whatever
it is that you were doing repetitive
that you can automate. Automate. Get it
done. Get off your plate. Maybe review
it once a quarter, but wipe out all the
crap you're wasting time on. Do a deep
dive into what are you
doing in your day job, in your personal
life,
whatever. Eliminate it. Automate it.
Make your life easier. Get back to
getting what what is it? Getting stuff
done or get it done. Getting things
done. Get it done. Focus on that. If
you're not focused on getting it done,
you're focusing on the wrong thing.
I think that's I'm going to wrap that
one. We'll wrap it up with that one
because I think that's probably a good
as good as as we're going to get as far
as you know that's really the bottom
line is get your crap done. That is your
work. And this I will be honest like
hopefully she's not going to listen to
this but I have I have conversations
with this about my wife about this with
my wife where it's just like sometimes
you need to focus. You need to get your
crap done so that you can go do other
stuff that you can go live your life.
There are certain things that are like
these are the things that are being a
responsible the adulting thing to do.
You got to do this crap. Now, I am not
the best person at doing all the things
that adults do. I still, as you could
probably tell, I have a little bit of
that child in me, but there's that crap
that's got to be done, and work is one
of them. There's like certain things you
got to do to keep your business going,
to keep your job, to do all that kind of
stuff. Those are the things that like
you need to know what are the
priorities, what are the things that
need to be done, and get that crap done.
This is what getting things done is all
about. The GTD approach is all about
like I need to get my crap done. I need
to know what I need to do next so that I
always have like whenever I'm sitting
there I'm like I know what the next
thing is to do so I can get things done.
It is much less time sitting there
thinking about what do I have to do next
or how do I make myself look productive
and you just skip ahead to the end and
say I don't care if I looked productive
or not. I got it done. That is going to
be the bottom line that you're going to
need to do. Now you may have a boss
that's like well you didn't look
productive enough. But then you just
point back to that bottom line and say
look I got it done. And if they don't
like it, go find somebody that does
because that is the biggest value you
can bring to your employees, to your
employers, to your customers, to your
clients, however that relationship goes.
So that then you can go out and live
your best life because now you got the
crap done that you needed to get done
and now you get to do the stuff that you
want to do. And if you get to do both of
those at the same time like me, you're a
very blessed individual. And you might
be at the wrong company. If you are if
you're employer is focused on busy
versus productive, find a new business
or find a new employer.
I think of the Simpsons episode where he
was found that the best way to go work
from home was that he got super super
fat and then he found out the way to get
his work done is he had a little uh one
of those little like uh water birds that
would just like hit every so often so
it' hit the like the yes key or whatever
it was and he's like look I suddenly got
productive. He didn't have to do. Don't
be. But if you're being paid to be that
person, that is on them. They shouldn't
have done that for you. That is why I
think if any of my employees are
listening, that's why, you know, is that
I'm like, what did we get done? Let's
get stuff done. I don't really care how
long you worked on it as much as I care
like let's get the crap done. Same thing
for myself is like I'm not looking at
that's why I hate billing hourly because
there is a value in it. It's like, okay,
you're getting paid your work for those
hours. But there is a, you know, and
it's it has to be done because, you
know, fixed bid just usually isn't going
to work. That's a whole different
conversation. However, the thing you
have to worry about is like getting the
thing done. At the end of the day, it's
not about billing the hours. It's not
about putting the putting the work in.
It's about getting the thing done. That
is really where you need to be. That
being said, I'm going to get this thing
done because I'm like getting down there
on my drink a little bit, but not too
much. So, I've got a little bit more to
do and uh I got like crap to do before I
run off to hockey tonight. So, that
being said, you go there and have
yourself a great one. We will come back
next episode. This is the last episode
of the season. We'll be next one around.
We have one more after that. Look at
that. One more after that.
So, we will do one more. That's right.
We will do one and then we will do like
the we will have like a little wrap up
and then we will try to figure out what
the next season's going to be.
Okay. The next one's a wrap up. All
right. This is why you don't outsource
to other people. I used to know all this
stuff.
No, this is because I like I used to
know all this stuff. I knew every single
episode number. All that kind of crap. I
moved on. I outsourced it. Now I don't
have to think about it. To be fair, I am
a happier person for it. However, now I
have to actually rely on other people.
He outsourced it to me to be fair.
Exactly. Hey, but then you got elevated
to co-host. So, there you go. Yeah. You
get like you get your name in the
credits because you write the credits.
There you go. All right. This has been
this is totally off the rails now. Go
out there and have yourselves a great
day. Hopefully, as much fun as we're
having right now, and we will talk to
you next time.
[Music]