Wellbeing in remote engineering teams

Leading a remote team of 14 engineers across three squads at Heard taught me that remote work amplifies both the best and worst aspects of engineering culture. Without intentional design, isolation and burnout become default states.

The Remote Work Paradox

Remote work offers flexibility and eliminates commutes, but it also blurs boundaries between work and life. For engineers who already struggle with work-life balance, remote work can make it worse.

Building Connection

We implemented several practices to maintain team cohesion:

Daily Standups with Personal Check-ins Not just "what did you do?" but "how are you doing?" This simple shift made space for people to share when they were struggling.

Virtual Coffee Chats Random pairings for 15-minute chats. No agenda, just connection. These became some of the most valuable interactions.

Asynchronous Communication Not everything needs to be a meeting. We used Slack threads, Loom videos, and documentation to reduce meeting fatigue.

The Active Lifestyle Component

I noticed that engineers who maintained active lifestyles-running, cycling, hiking-handled remote work better. There's something about physical movement that helps with mental clarity and stress management.

Metrics That Matter

We tracked:

• Meeting hours per week (target: <20)
• Response time expectations (not everything is urgent)
• Vacation usage (encouraged, not discouraged)
• Team satisfaction scores

"Remote work isn't about replicating the office-it's about creating something better."

Technical Infrastructure for Remote Wellbeing

Asynchronous Communication Tools:

• Slack for real-time chat (with clear response time expectations)
• Loom for async video updates
• Notion for documentation and knowledge sharing
• GitHub Discussions for technical conversations

Code Review Best Practices:

• Async code reviews (no blocking on reviews)
• Clear review guidelines and SLAs
• Automated testing to reduce review burden
• Pair programming sessions for complex problems

Monitoring and Observability:

• Comprehensive logging and monitoring
• Alert fatigue reduction (only actionable alerts)
• On-call rotation with clear handoff procedures
• Incident post-mortems focused on learning, not blame

Engineering Practices for Remote Teams

Documentation Standards:

# Every PR must include:
- Clear description of changes
- Testing approach
- Rollback plan
- Monitoring considerations
- Documentation updates

Knowledge Sharing:

• Weekly tech talks (recorded for async viewing)
• Architecture decision records (ADRs)
• Runbooks for common operations
• Pair programming sessions

Code Quality:

• Automated testing (unit, integration, e2e)
• Code review guidelines
• Linting and formatting automation
• Security scanning in CI/CD

Metrics for Remote Team Health

Technical Metrics:

• Deployment frequency
• Lead time for changes
• Mean time to recovery
• Change failure rate

Team Health Metrics:

• Meeting hours per week (target: <20)
• Response time expectations (documented)
• Vacation usage (encouraged)
• Team satisfaction scores

Communication Metrics:

• Async vs sync communication ratio
• Documentation coverage
• Knowledge sharing frequency
• Cross-team collaboration

Lessons Learned

The teams that thrived had:

• Clear boundaries around work hours
• Regular physical activity
• Strong social connections outside work
• Managers who modeled healthy behavior
• Comprehensive documentation
• Automated testing and deployment
• Clear communication protocols
• Focus on async-first workflows