Meet Lubaina - a product marketing manager for one of our products, and a working mom. She’s worked from home for over two years now, so remote work isn’t new to her. This way of working has enabled her to focus on her profession, while taking care of her baby. Her team is spread across three different time zones, so remote work makes perfect sense. Yet as an extrovert, she’s derived energy from in-person interactions during her office visits. 

 Lubaina had to switch to 100% remote work a few months ago. To help with the transition, she aligned her work hours to sync with her colleagues’, giving her time to do a few chores, and take care of her infant - Ambar. Incidentally, Ambar accompanies her on several calls and Lubaina’s colleagues have built a bond with the little one too! 

When collaborating with each other, Lubaina and her team make it a point to set up a shared document or workspace to build up their outputs as a team. This way, they mostly work asynchronously and strategically use their time together to pair on critically important items. She’s organised her communication channels well; email for decision making and IM for quick asynchronous conversations. On the other hand, the team uses GitHub for product feature related discussions. 

To make up for the lack of in-person socialising at the office, Lubaina has started having coffee conversations with colleagues outside her team over Zoom.

Her advice for people working remotely, is to be compassionate with yourself and others when things don’t go according to plan. She recommends being agile and finding a way of working that works for you while being sensitive to others in the team. And always pick empathy over perfection.