Workplace

How to keep remote workers from falling behind in their careers

We're all disembodied faces on Zoom, and we write on whiteboards with invisible hands.

Rendering of LinkedIn's new headquarters in Sunnyvale

LinkedIn's new headquarters in Sunnyvale will be outfitted with design solutions for hybrid work when it opens in January.

Image: LinkedIn/NoTriangle Studio

For all the lofty predictions on the future of work, the future will probably just look like this: some people working in an office all of the time, some people completely remote, everyone else somewhere in the middle.

Companies around the world have either been preparing for this scenario or are already living it, and one question's been nagging them. How do you avoid creating two classes of workers: those who are in the office, getting face time with executives, and those who are just Zoom boxes on a screen, locked away from all the excitement?

This question isn't purely theoretical. New research from Citrix revealed that 38% of a thousand U.S. office workers surveyed believe remote employees will be at a career disadvantage for not working out of a central office, and 47% think they'll be less likely to be considered for a promotion.

The solutions run the gamut. On one end, there's simple norm-setting: Here's how to set up a meeting, here's how to communicate before and after a meeting. On the other end, there's redesigning entire office features, from whiteboards to furniture.

Set some ground rules for norms and behaviors.

The first ground rule: Everyone joins a meeting as an individual box on Zoom. No more conference room cameras pointing down at a group of people giggling around a desk with one remote, disembodied face watching from afar. In the hybrid world, we're all disembodied faces.

Evernote, whose largest office is in Redwood City, used to broadcast its all-hands meetings from that office's cafeteria, with CEO Ian Small standing at a podium in front of rows of bleachers. According to Susan Stick, the company's SVP of people and general counsel, that format was a terrible audiovisual experience for remote employees.

Today, Evernote's policy is that every medium and large meeting takes place virtually, with Small's face on a screen side by side with every other employee's. "We want everyone to have a common and equal experience," said Stick.

When a virtual meeting takes place, a few steps can go far in leveling the playing field, things as simple as calling on people who are remote first, said Traci Palmer, VP of people and organizational development at Citrix.

Another ground rule according to hybrid work experts: If you are in the office together and engage in side banter, perhaps coming up with another plan of action in the hallway after everyone else has hopped off Zoom, it's your responsibility to update remote colleagues on what was decided in the hallway.

Rendering of LinkedIn's new headquarters in SunnyvaleA rendering of LinkedIn's new headquarters in SunnyvaleImage: LinkedIn/NoTriangle Studio

Some companies are trying to mimic that "running into someone in a hallway" feeling through Slack integrations like Donut, which pairs random people from across a company and sets up short Zoom meetings for spontaneous, casual chats. "People love them," said Brit Malinauskas, VP of people & workplace at Hover, a 3D data and tech company that has been using Donut. That being said, not everyone likes forced socialization.

Even language can play a part in eliminating the class divide between in-office and remote workers. PagerDuty has eliminated the word "headquarters" from its company lexicon, as well as the word "international," instead opting for "global," according to Chief People Officer Joe Militello. (International denotes there's one country that's "national," with the others merely orbiting around it.)

Redesign your office.

All this Zooming in physical offices brings with it a design challenge. Modern open-plan offices weren't designed for everyone to be taking video calls within earshot of each other. Conference rooms weren't designed for everyone to be in the same meeting from individual laptops either.

A range of solutions has cropped up to address these new problems. But workplace design experts agree: Nothing has risen above the pack yet, and companies are testing out a range of solutions at a small scale to see what sticks. "The desire for this kind of technology is somewhat outpacing the actual availability of gear or software," said Stick.

Brett Hautop heads up the workplace design team at LinkedIn, which is buying and testing out hybrid work gear across its 33 global offices. He called the traditional conference room setup — the long rectangular table — "an artifact of medieval times," hierarchical and awkward to sit around, as well as not inclusive of remote meeting participants.

One thing that LinkedIn is trying: partnering with a Steelcase designer to create something that looks like a campfire, four seats around a center square. Within the square there would be four monitors and a 360-degree camera capturing the faces of those seated. Everyone who's in the meeting physically can talk to each other naturally and see their remote colleagues on their individual monitors, while the camera captures their faces so that virtual participants see them as individual boxes on a screen as well.

Whiteboards are another key area of testing and potential innovation. LinkedIn has invested in one that allows users to use a regular whiteboard alongside camera capture technology that picks up what's being written, but which is able to — get ready for this — make the writer's hand disappear and instead capture the text behind it. The new company headquarters in Sunnyvale will have five rooms outfitted with these whiteboards alongside other new design solutions when it opens in January, according to Hautop.

"What we want to avoid is the experience of haves and have-nots," said Stick in regards to Evernote's investments in furniture and tech to bridge the in-office and remote work divide. Although they haven't pinned down the solution quite yet, she believes the key lies in simply being intentional about it.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins