What are /r/remotework's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I have my work computer and personal computer setup side by side. I use a kvm software to do the switching between them. It is seamless, like you are using two monitors together. That way you can use both computers at the same time without violating their rules.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

It definitely depends on the person, but one-on-ones tend to be pretty standard practice even at remote companies (in my experience!). For example, GitLab has weekly 1-1s (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/).

100% agree that telling people they have to have their camera on during meetings is bizarre and I can understand why he refused the return offer!

Honestly noise cancelling headphones really don't cut down on background noise and if they do they can get really pricey. I work for a remote company and some of our team use https://krisp.ai/ to reduce background noise on calls and it seems to work pretty well, so might be worth a try.

1) I think there will be a lot more trust: employees operating independently, with trust from their employers. Focus will be on quality output > hours spent.

2) Globalized teams will be the norm, but default to English won't be. Multilinguality will be a requirement on applications.

3) Support for physical and mental health will be a given, not an added bonus.

4) Communication technology will be much, much improved, and communication will be largely asynchronous, except for social occasions.

At least, these are my idealistic hopes! If you're at all interested in 4), my team at Slite is working on building something for improved async communication. You can join the beta at slite.com/next.

That's so cool, surely gonna try this out. Even we recently launched the 2nd version of our employee engagement app on product hunt.
You should check it out in your leisure time!

23 people in 1 team? That seems like a lot.

With my team I have 3 weekly optional coffee mornings.

Thursdays are GSD (get shit done) no meeting days.

Occasionally we'll bunk off retro and just chat.

Every second Friday we hang together, play a game, if people are caught up, they finish up early.

https://skribbl.io/ is a team favourite.

Don’t be the first/only remote worker on the team. Non remote people tend to be terrible at communication if they don’t have a lot of team remote or someone very important as remote and they tend to waste more time in meetings and water cooler talk than they realize. IMO office workers get a false sense of their own productivity and think anytime remote people are away from keyboard, they are slacking. They don’t realize how much time they aren’t actually effective or how often they take breaks. Remote isn’t for everyone, but some of us are much better at remote than in person. Check out the remote manifesto https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/

Sounds interesting and I can see an increasing market for this kind of thing. Worth looking at things like A-ha though as I think it’s already offering a pretty comprehensive version of what you’ve described (or pretty close to it).

I use NordVPN and it's good except you have to keep turning it off and on again every couple of hours.

It helps me log into Facebook business manager (which gets blocked sometimes when logging in from India or Thailand) but BBC and Netflix have become wise to it and it doesn't work for me.

Also, I can't get it working when I tether to my phone. Not sure if it's my network (UK) or a problem with Nord.

Hope that's helpful

There's probably a more technical sub for this, but I think you could just use a hardware VPN along with a VPN subscription.

something like this sounds like it would work.

Good luck. I haven't done this myself, just trying to point you in the right direction I hop.

My company provided wired headphones which were awful during Zoom hostage situations. They were uncomfortable and magnified every background sound.

I replaced them with JLab Go Work Wireless Headsets... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09674F2X6?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I personally use these bulbs for my desk lamps, rated at 95+ CRI.

For the rest of my house fixtures I use GE Reveal HD+ bulbs rated at 90+ CRI.

Waveform lighting products are expensive, but if money is no object I am sure they are the best thing next to incandescent.

The visible spectrum the only thing that matters. There is literally no way for you to perceive infrared or UV light, and these EM bands are unwanted due to heat (IR) or eye damage (UV).

Go for incandescent if you don't care about heat, electricity usage, or limited lifespan. Honestly, you won't be able to see any difference between them and highest CRI LEDs.

>invest in a home office /

insert here google ad of specialised furniture shop eager to sell crap and 100 SEO words repeated constantly like "ergonimics", "functoinal furniture", "office"

> develop a hobby

insert here google ad of meetup.com or similar.

> have a strict schedule

insert here google ad of meetup.com or Vitabiotics

>exercise daily

insert here google ad of the most expensive gym no more than 1km far from you.

>work away from home at least once a week

insert google ad of The Trainline

> socialise regularly / join communities with common interests / more such stuff

meetup again or singles.com

Yep...the internet is fucked by ads, all articles (specially from Medium) have gone downhill in credibility. All that matters is to write shallow stuff that contains specific words to get specific ads from google and make a fortune on google Adsense (which should be called google Nonsense).

I suggest this book - family village tribe

Split those 14 into two smaller ‘squads’ of 7 and catch up with them - meeting will be quicker and you will get more detail.

I would definitely recommend improving the bandwidth issue with a service like Starlink if at all possible. Otherwise video is going to be bad no matter which service you use. I believe Starlink actually work best in low density areas.

As far as ease of use, long duration video calls, security, guaranteed service, and the ability to work on many devices , I would look at Googles Paid offerings. They detail flexible price schedule here and if this is non profit oriented there may be even better pricing. https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

I also really like how Google’s collaborative documents work from my own experience.

Honestly there doesn't seem to be a good way out. I recommend getting a mouse mover: https://www.amazon.com/HONKID-Undetectable-Drive-Free-Simulate-Automatically/dp/B08M388N7N/ref=sr\_1\_1\_sspa?crid=3ROV5QXSVPJUL&keywords=MOUSE+MOVER&qid=1660161083&smid=A34LTQPREPTZRG&sprefix=mouse+move%2Caps%2C215&sr=8-1-spon...

I don't know what they're checking when they say secure, as that's weird. Guess it would depend on what you're doing.

I use NordVPN for my stuff and haven't had a problem. When I worked for Amazon Logistics they had me logging in through a vpn anyway.

You should be taught how to use any software they need you to use and you should find out what they mean about checking if you're internet is secure. I've had them check the connection if it's good and fast, but not secure.

Look for a 'Dual Display KVM Switch', something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/MLEEDA-Extended-Switcher-Computers-Controller/dp/B09XWSBTBV/

I would recommend that you buy the best you can afford.

You will probably have better luck with newer model Monitors with HDMI output, or will possibly need adapters if you have VGA, DVI or Display Port. I am always hesitant to utilize adapters because each additional link in the chain could prove another point of failure.

Hope that helps!

Investing in a really good chair is essential. Don't go budget and spend $40 on a department store thing. Seriously consider somewhere in the $200-$300 range for something that works. Look for chairs with a good return policy in case you don't like it. I got this one from Amazon and it's been truly amazing and it'll last quite a while: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JHLPGZ8?psc=1&ref=ppx\_yo2ov\_dt\_b\_product\_details

we don't use Scrum, but Shape Up framework https://basecamp.com/shapeup

based on the book, there is no manager, each person should able to manage their own selves

maybe I've chose wrong team management framework

we don't use Scrum but the Shape Up framework, split into two teams

Yeah, people don't like being told they need to use a particular app to reach you, especially when those people don't know you very well. While living in Mexico I always used Whatsapp or the free Telcel calling but I didn't need to have a Canadian number and only communicated with friends and family. If you want something that fits your needs and is simple, dependable, and affordable, get MagicJack. I know many many people (expats, snowbirds) who use it and say it's the best solution for what you want to do.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07S1HKJY6

I am guilty of this. Sometimes I simply do not quit Slack, and then mindlessly check it in off-hours, and notice some of my colleagues are also online. Whether people are on Slack intentionally or not, it doesn't make sense to ban weekend use as a top-down approach. Personally, I have co-current obligations with work (as most everyone does) and appreciate some weekend time to get ahead, especially because it's so quiet in terms of chat. When my work tools are open, Slack is open, and I often revisit conversations or threads.

Had an interesting chat with some friends this weekend about choosing to observe the Sabbath, Jewish-style, aka avoiding all technology, being one possible solution to the expectation that we're always on, always available. It's an old solution to a new problem (or perhaps, an old problem as well, just in a new, intensified style).

Anyway, not to promote, but my team is working on healthier communication habits and tools for remote teams - we recently wrote a Slack manifesto, and our tool for decision-oriented discussions is launching very soon. Would love to know what other folks think about improving communication at work (besides not talking on the weekends ;)

Private Internet Access

I've had it for over a year and had zero speed issues and they offer dedicated IP option. I tried Proton VPN as well and their speeds were problematic and I reached out to their support team who looked into and claimed they would be implementing rolling server updates and restarts but I still had speed issues some time later.

Yes there is :)

- You will have to find a new internet provider in every country if you don't want to rely only on co-working.

- Often employers make your salary dependent on where you work remotely.

- Your residence permit is always temporary

- Food prices vary greatly. As an example: you will have to pay 7 usd for a can of tomatoes in the Caribbean ;)

- Be careful when you sign out in your country of residence: If you are self-employed, your business may be cancelled. Your bank account may be canceled....

​

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I'm working in a fully-remote SaaS company that's doing business since 5 years, so it may not apply to your case:

• Hiring is insanely tough. You're looking for skilled people in their area, that are drivers, and good writers
• Work promotion is challenging too. Self-promotion doesn't come naturally to a lot of people, especially those who love to work in a team, and that's a good thing. But without visibility and transparency practices, tons of work will go unrecognized in an async team
• Managing payroll & benefits. In our team, we employ people across 21 cities and 4 continents, and we don't aim at bringing San Francisco salaries to the world. Juggling with the employees, contractors or EOR status brings a lot of complexity

​

Good luck!

I'm working fully-remotely in a company that doesn't have any office. So it's a bit the "all-in" situation that you may not looking for.

In all cases, the one new skill you need to learn/develop is writing. From my own experience (I'm not in supply chain but I doubt there are big differences here), what makes great remote position in great companies is how they work. How is not only "remote", but also asynchronous.

Writing is your most important instrument. Use it wrong, and you'll spend your time explaining, rather than expressing. Use it well, and you'll inspire the people around you, even from a distance.

A colleague of mine has written a lot about that, and I can recommend "A great managers is a great writer" to start.

Good luck!

>[...] but 95% of our written communication is by Slack
>
>The only time I shouldn’t be checking my Slack during the day is when I’m heads-down in a project. It’s a necessity to getting work done.

I believe communication happens where work happens. And work doesn't get done in Slack. Developers discuss issues in GitHub, Product teams discuss them during the shaping phase, Marketers in their documentation or Sales in their CRM.

​

>My worst nightmare is having a conversation on one topic in 3-4 different DM tabs.

You named it, all what you need is to discuss work in context, that's something quite critical. Good overall article, just highly dependent on what type of work you do.

​

It seems you're super aware of the communication issues and challenges, you may like what we're building for that.

Thanks again for the great feedback on my post!

I have something similar but from sitting position. This is it.

Hi there u/abitunggal! we finally launched our product for remote teams. Would love to have your feedback there. Here's the link - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/thursday

My bad, I should have elaborated a little bit more on this lol

The reason I think async is the future for remote (and therefore a big part of the future of work) is because of how rampant zoom fatigue has become.

Every day we hear millions complain about zoom fatigue, meeting fatigue and so on. A lot of people right now tend to believe that turning off cameras, switching to phone calls or even going back to in person meetings is the solution here but in reality, it is a band-aid solution.

The real problem here is meeting frequency; virtual meetings rose by 613% and one-to-one meetings rose by 1,230%.
https://doodle.com/en/resources/research-and-reports/state-of-meeting-report-2021/

Async has proven to reduce meetings but completely eliminate wasteful meetings and is therefore the proper solution. With people attending less meetings they can actually get their work done.

In fact, out of all the meetings in a month, around 32hrs of the total meeting time is found to be wasteful. If businesses right now are functioning totally fine even with 32 hours being wasted, then imagine if we could completely eliminate those unneeded meeting hours with async. Most jobs that hold meetings are basically giving us a free pass to transitioning to a 4 day work week and that's just by eliminating the wasteful hours WITHIN meetings.

If we could eliminate meetings as a whole leaving only the important meetings like team building, culture building, personal 1-1 meetings etc. then we would be able to save so much time and spend it on our families, hobbies, friends, etc.

Thank you so much! Yes, I’m maintaining my US address, it’s just a trip as one of my family members is ill and I want you be closer for a few months maybe no more than half a year while keeping my apartment in the US. Would you mind explaining a bit more about how to emulate my home location please? I know I can pay for like NordVPN and access servers from big American cities but no idea how I could access the server from the mid size town that I live in, none of the VPN providers have it on their servers list. Thank you in advance!

Hey u/jonomeetsworld, you might want to check out my product Remotion. Fits your bill in that:

• Fully native macOS app; building natively makes us more efficient than Electron-based apps.
• We're built for the "feeling of being together" that you describe.
  • Remotion puts selfies of your team on your desktop—which will create presence even when you aren't in a call
  • You don't need super high video quality to feel together, so we use lower resolution video and save bandwidth & CPU. We use about half of Zoom's CPU.
  • The video UI is small and on the side so you can talk while getting your work done.
• We're free for teams.

We just launched on Product Hunt so it'd be awesome if you could check us out there, but you can also download straight from remotion.com.

I actually hosted a game of pictionary at my current work place to encourage team building not too long ago. We used https://skribbl.io/ as our platform.

You can even input your own custom list of words. Highly recommended!

Many companies (including us at Remotion.com) have compensation practices heavily influenced by Gitlab. It might be worth going through their compensation calculator formula and tweaking variables to get an idea of what a blue chip company will pay. (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compensation/)

For smaller companies, adjust down.

Circles for Zoom - much better interface for my zoom calls

Slack - team text communication

Loom - record videos, tutorials, screencasts to explain things and share with your team

You're awesome! However, I don't see your sign-up. Did you sign up for a time here? https://calendly.com/uxdesignstudent/app-for-remote-workers

You can check out oneteamapp.com that will simplify team communication and collaboration between remote teams so that productivity and engagement are never compromised.

As specified by a survey, employees who work from home are found in a better mental and physical state than those who have to travel long distances to work. When people have more control over their work schedule, they manage their time more efficiently which reflects in an improved work-life balance with low stress.

Check out one such team communication tool which will be best suited for remote employees https://scalefusion.com/team-communication-app

When you hire remote workers, you will definitely need a communication app to stay connected with your remote users. For this, I have launched a an app called Oneteam https://scalefusion.com/oneteam

You can use Oneteam for:

Communicating with your teams over instant messaging and group chats
Sharing files and voice notes with your teams
Creating custom group chats called as ‘channels’ for inter-team communication
Sending and receiving quick updates and notifications

That's So cool!!

I have also recently launched an Application called Oneteam. Oneteam allows audio-video calling, instant messaging, Group chats via channel management, Sharing files, docs, images, etc over a secure platform.

You can use Oneteam for:

Communicating with your teams over instant messaging and group chats.
Sharing files and voice notes with your teams.
Creating custom group chats called as ‘channels’ for inter-team communication.
Sending and receiving quick updates and notifications.

Try this out@ https://scalefusion.com/oneteam

Thankyou for sharing the list of remote work tools, I have gone through the list but you might have missed one Tool to list in your article. It is secure Oneteam team communication tool helps you send business docs, files, pdf's, allow audio-video calling, you can also send instant messages to your collogues. https://scalefusion.com/oneteam

Hey that's great aap, you have come up with a innovative idea. This lockdown and covid really makes up apart from our family members. So by presenting with such an app can give better engagement and productivity for businesses.

ThumpsUp for you!!

If you want you can also check out my team communication app which can also provide audio-video calls, send text files, docs, pdf's over a secure platform.

Do check out once@ https://scalefusion.com/oneteam

Remote working is here to stay. Even after the impending threat of COVID-19 is over, several companies will continue to work from home and some positions will be remotely permanent. The HR and the IT teams together, of course with the direction of the organizational management need to bring forth and uphold a cultural change to be future ready. With the right remote working tools, communication tools and a mobile device management tool, it is achievable.

Also check this app for more info regarding team communication- https://scalefusion.com/instant-messaging-application

Hi, Yes. there are many,

To begin with or gain some experience, doing customer service remotely. I'd suggest start with upwork.com and look for freelance gigs. It would be easier to get a long term remote job, if have adequate remote working experience.

I'd recommend to check out sites like Udemy.com and Lynda.com they have hundreds of courses which are great for teaching yourself skills which translate to remote work.

​

Udemy has courses on sale for $10 all the time, and Lynda is like $30 or so per month for unlimited courses.

Hi, thank you for your feedback!

We made our layout with very flexible and popular framework - https://tailwindcss.com/

There are plenty of examples so it should be a good starting point.

Good luck with your board!

I totally understand you, it is an exciting field.

I take the freedom to add to the tools (below) some methods I would advise on:

start with an icebreaker to get everybody speaking at least once. in an ideation process, you want to generate a large number of ideas that you then can filter. People tend to speak more and bring in their ideas if they spoke at least already once in a meeting (same for online and offline meetings).

​

Get somebody from outside of the team, so somebody that is not occupied during the ideation with brainstorming and discussing, to facilitate the workshop for you. This can be somebody from another team or a professional facilitator, just make sure they have experience with facilitating an ideation session because it can be a challenging task and the online environment makes it even more challenging (but not impossible; I had great online ideation sessions).

​

And for the tools, I use Mural.co in my workshops. But I also heard good things about Miro.com. Don't know for Miro but Mural offers plenty of prepared whiteboards dedicated to different meeting topics, plenty of choices for design thinking sessions.

https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/

Completely free and anonymous. So you don't need user registration, just share your meeting link that you create on the fly.

Encrypted end to end, and as long as you use a URL that can't be guessed (see this online UUID generator) and use a password, should be secure enough.

jitsi has been working well for us, you might try it out, its just a webpage.

https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/

If you have a techie on your team they can host an Ubuntu server at home as long as they have a fat enough pipe for the traffic if you need more than 15 people on at once.

Sorry for the delay — admittedly, I'm not very up on reddit. Who knew two months went by. OK, so our blog is slab.com/blog. We write two categories of articles — straightforward articles that address specific issues (Work Smarter) and then more elabroate think pieces (Write Louder).

As far as details for the piece — super early on here, but I want to talk to a handful of companies and share their journeys. One agency I'm talking with, for example, was on the verge of telling their team they'd be going 100% remote forever, so getting to understand that experience (how they shared the news, how the news was received) is super interesting and likely quite different from other companies' remote journeys.

We had to go remote pretty much overnight. We wrote an article about the challenges [and solutions] managers and their teams are facing.

Although we are a tool designed for remote teams - Corona has forced us to add other tools to do what you mentioned - keeping the team happy, motivated, and talking about more than just Corona.

We also use Zoom for video but what's really help us is Discord. It's a really cool tool that I had never even heard of. Apparently it was designed for Gamers but really adopted by working teams. It makes having conversations, and just having fun really easy...

So, of course, I recommend Gmelius but for this weird situation that we're all in - I would add other tools that help you stay connected - like Discord.

Disclaimer: I'm working for <em>Slite</em>, a Communication Software for Remote teams.

&#x200B;

Having joined a fully-remote team since beginning of 2021, I can relate on my personal experience:

1. Long-form writing is to me the greatest communication tool to get people share ideas in a thoughtful & inclusive manner. We basically write notes enriched with sketches, cover videos (quick video like on this note to guide readers through your content) and blocs.
2. When we eventually have sync meetings, most of the work is done beforehand on a note. For example, when I'm running a 1:1 with someone in my team, we make sure to prepare it async. We do comment on each point on the agenda until everything's clearly set.
   For the meeting itself, it's either on Zoom or Around. Maximum 45-min or including a break if any longer.
3. Slack or Teams are great, for small talk.

&#x200B;

Async communication is hard yet so enjoyable when your company sets the right environment.

Hope it helps!

Cool list! I noticed you didn't have lots of examples of writing/doc apps. Slite might be interesting to add to the list, they're a remote team building a tool for remote tools to write and work on docs together, and keep up with everything happening across their team.

A great tip to keep remote team members connected is to utilize visual online media such as GIFs and memes. Because it's much harder to convey personality and characteristics when you don't see the person face-to-face on a regular basis, using GIFs and memes can get your team connected in a way you wouldn't expect. Just keep everything SFW of course.

Remote team work can increase productivity, but there are a few things to consider if you want to do it successfully.

This article written by my colleague highlights a few pointers: https://zenkit.com/en/blog/10-remote-team-management-mistakes-to-avoid/. Great read for anyone looking for insight on the topic.

There are fancy time loggers online or as an app, where you can simply enter what you are doing (e.g. "project A", "answering mails", "break", etc.) and then press start to start a timer.

Some of them even allow you to attach certain clients to tasks, mark hours as billable or not or show weekly/monthly overviews.

The one I am using that can do all this is

https://clockify.me/

but as I said there are a lot around, just pick which one works best for you.

Oh, and you maybe don't want to give your boss the really detailed one, including your restroom breaks and all, but rather a daily overview or daily/weekly report on your work.

Thanks for your comments and feedback, It is great to hear that you see benefits in the timezone view.

- About BoostCollab vs Slack, we think distributed teams are more effective when they use asynchronous over synchronous communication. From our research, after studying how successful distributed companies communicate internally, we learned that all of those companies use async communication first and sync communication second. (blog posts from: zapier, gitlab). And from the distributed teams we talked with, when your team has 10+ people working in different timezones using Slack only, then teammates start to miss important information because Slack become too noisy.

- About storage plans, you can upload images on comments but it is true we can do much more. We are currently working in the ability to upload images inside a post too and also any kind of file.

For remote work, I use a lot ofproductivity apps. (link for the list) I don't work for them but Quire is one of my favorite tools on the list. They're free, work greatly, no lagging, and also has a mobile app version. My favorite thing about them is that they have a dark mode, perfect for me since I stare at computer screens non-stop as a developer.

You never know what could happen to a physical raspberry pi, so wouldn't the cloud be better? If you have any links please do share.

Alternatively, couldn't I use a commercial VPN like NordVPN or some other one and have it on a vpn router? Would that do the same thing?

I agree, we should be loyal to our company and respect that they take care of us by offering a remote work. But when starting to work from home, we faced few problems, for example, how to access some files. So we needed to search for a solution. And luckily that one of our colleague found on a twitter ( a useful app for us, which is called NordVPN Teams. So now, when we work from home, they allow us to connect by exit and use all the info, which we can only access at our workplace. We are really small company, so we used other programs for safety reasons, but didn't had some programs which would allow us to work from home safely. So this is something new for us. if someone has more great remote access programs to offer, that would be nice.

Sane is focused on personal journaling. You can share it with your team for sure but it's not designed like that.

If you're interested you can check out the app - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=betafocus.app.sane

A new version - with a lot more features ( mood tracking, gratitude journal, future Self journal or reminders) will be available in about 2 weeks