 What I have learned is that I need much less to be happy right down to the clothes on my back You know I came here with ski clothes And I wear like the same clothes every day because I ordered a pair of shorts because it got hot, you know like But it's it's just it's simple. It's back to basics and it just feels like this kind of Crust that gets imprinted on your brain. It can be like shaken away by all of this if you if you let it become that for you Hello and welcome to universal remote a webcast from get lab where we invite very interesting very Insightful people in the remote work community to share their tips and tricks on remote. I'm Darren Murph I'm the head of remote at get lab and on this episode We're going to be talking about maximizing the reset Rethinking everything now that the genie is out of the bottle and the great remote migration has started So I could not be more excited to welcome Megan Dilly Managing director of the remote work Association on the show today. So Megan. Thanks so much for joining us give the folks an overview Of what you do and how long you've been working remotely Awesome. Thanks so much for having me Darren. This is such an exciting conversation. I'm so passionate about So Megan Dilly. I'm the director of the remote work Association and we are a professional association for leaders and remote work So these are thought leaders and advocates Who are really working hard to push the industry forward providing best practice to ensure that we're setting up? Remote work businesses for sustainable remote work models that have positive impacts on economies and the environment And so on so that's a little bit about the remote work Association and and what I do there I've been working remotely myself for the past two and a half years So a relative newcomer to the space I would say But you know with everything that's gone with COVID. I guess that makes me a Veteran and compared to a lot of people as of late But yeah Well, it seems like your work has never been more important And actually one of the topics I wanted to talk about today is the evolution of cultures and especially how it how it's going to Impact cities and what the second and third orders of this great awakening will be How it's going to impact workforces how it's going to impact how people think about Cities and their relationship to cities, especially if they're not from a city And they don't necessarily have any ties to that and we were actually talking off air that you've spent a lot of time in San Francisco, but now that you've been remote and you've been in a more rural region of the world you're thinking about is Going back to a city Possessorily the most healthy thing for me is exact. Is it what I want? Is there something else out there? So how's this going to impact you and how's it going to impact broader society? Yeah, it's a great question So as Darren mentioned, I've lived in San Francisco for the past seven years I'm originally from Southern California and I worked in startups in San Francisco And then and when I was working remotely I was working out of my home in San Francisco But prior to COVID My fiance and I came up to the Lake Tahoe area Just to have a couple weeks of skiing with his mom because she rents a house up here And this was prior to everything hitting the fan with COVID and as shelter-in-place orders were starting to come down We kind of looked at each other and said do we go home to San Francisco? You know, we've we sure we only have like our ski clothes and You know, but we have our dog dog Nellie back there. She's here, you know So like we don't really have to go home to get anything we can put our mail on hold We can ask our neighbor to water our plants like what's really stopping us from staying here And so we found a house to rent. We're actually quarantined here with a couple of our friends And we were just in this process of like continually extending how long we stay As we were, you know looking down the barrel of okay, we either stay here pay double rent Which is unfortunate, but there's plenty of benefits to being here or go home, you know to San Francisco And be in a place that doesn't have currently all of the benefits for for why you would be there and just be stuck in our apartment We've always kind of dreamed about having a more rural lifestyle Living on a farm And being out in nature And we loved San Francisco because it afforded us the ability to get to nature really quickly And so we'd always had this idea of in an ideal world Let's live in our San Francisco apartment during the week and we'll hopefully buy a piece of land You know just outside the city and we'll build a tiny house on it and we'll go visit it And we'll have our garden there and we'll come back to the city during the week This was even as both my fiancee and I are remote workers We still just felt like our life was in the city All right, and then you know everything happened and we've had this experience of being able to live in Tahoe the past three months and we start looking at each other we say like Why don't we flip that on its head and instead of saying let's drive to the mountains on the weekend Or let's get out of the city on the weekend Why don't we go to the city on the weekend, you know Why don't we live the majority of our life in a place that really fills us up with nature and exercise and better health For five out of the seven days and be more intentional about going to experience those culture building activities The great restaurants we love And just be okay with a slower lifestyle For example, our dog hasn't been on a leash in the last three months and We're thinking we're going to be going back to san francisco in the next couple of weeks To like get our mail and kind of reset And then we're going to probably go on a little adventure to explore The western us and find some places that might be good for us to buy land and maybe build this dream farm But i'm like, how can we live in san francisco? This dog can't be on a leash like this just doesn't match Right. Yeah, like once once unchained always unchained. It's uh, it's it's difficult to think of going back and I think that's one of the things that's so fascinating about What has happened through covet which is millions of people have had their eyes open to what it's Like to do things differently even in suboptimal conditions. This isn't everyone's ideal way to work remotely But they've at least had their notion of I'm tied to this rigidity. I'm tied to this commute. It dictates five out of the seven days of my week Now that that isn't the case everyone can collectively Unlock their imaginations and ask themselves similar questions And I was just curious in your work Especially now, what are you hearing from people in terms of empowerment? I think one of the the biggest things for me is this is a democratizing experience um How can we think about the shelter in place? impacting people in a positive way like what are the empowering things that are going to come out of this For both people and small towns and big cities. It's all interconnected Absolutely, and I think it's a really good point that you bring up that this experience has been so different for everybody You know, I I personally don't have children, right? So I'm not I'm not balancing my work day and homeschooling my kids and all of the other things I've been able to really focus in on my work Um and focus in on those hobbies that really fill me up um And so I think it it definitely looks very different for everybody But it's just been an incredible opportunity for people to really reflect and say What's kind of like the minimum viable needs right to be happy? and how do I just like cut all the clutter out of my life and I I had a conversation um with with our our friends that are here with us and It felt weird to admit that I was like I like not having social engagements on the calendar and I don't know how i'm going to transition Back into that world of we can socialize again Like am I going to be that person who just says no all the time because like no I don't want to be that but what I have learned is that I need much less to be happy Um right down to the clothes on my back You know I came here with ski clothes and I wear like the same clothes every day because I ordered a pair of shorts because it got hot you know like But it's it's just it's simple. It's back to basics and it just feels like this kind of Crust that gets imprinted on your brain It can be like shaken away by all of this if you if you let it become that for you I completely agree. We were discussing earlier that uh If you if you convert life into a series of tally marks You can fit every tally mark that would encapsulate all of the weekends and the average Life on one sheet of paper. It's the point there is if you're living life For just those weekends life gets real short real fast and remote enables you to not only Pay attention to what isn't really important that may have been marketed to you as being really important from an identity standpoint from a facade standpoint But also it just enables you to do a lot more living when you don't just have to live your life two days at the time Essentially and you touched on this a bit, but i'm curious if you have any tips on maximizing the time That we are sheltered in place. I know i've spoken with a lot of people and they've said I'm more exhausted than ever. I feel like i'm working more than ever Even though i'm trying to prevent myself from burnout The computer is already always there and so i'm working more when I feel like I really should be spending this time Doing something else even if it's just reengaging with my significant other Or reading or meditating or resting more What tips do we have for people that just feel like they can't quite Disengage even if they know they should yeah, it's such an important Point and something that should definitely be solved for and I think You know it's different for everyone and I think we all have to design our lives Around the things that are most important and then kind of make work fit into that And for me, I'm definitely one of those remote workers that enjoys a pretty structured Business day I'm not the person who's gonna sleep until 11 and work late at night Like I like to get up in the morning and I like to get my work day started And I like to finish work and I like to go make dinner and like wind down Um, so that's very structured for me But what I do fit into that is like some of the most important things for me on a daily basis Are you know, I I set my alarm every day at like 6 30 or 7 a.m And I stick to that structure and then the first thing we do my fiancee and I is we we take the dog out for a walk Right and she is such an incredible Impetus for doing that and holding that routine But we go out on like an hour long walk in the morning Um, and that's just such an amazing way for us to connect talk about our day talk about life Um, and that's not something we were doing with as much diligence at home in san francisco We definitely had to take the dog out for a walk in the morning Um, but we've both structured our day to say like no matter what like we're not going to take a call At 7 30 a.m Unless we really absolutely have to and in those days we absolutely have to instead of all right I'm gonna set the alarm for seven rush have some breakfast in my coffee and get on that call It's like, okay, if I've agreed to a call at 7 30 The thing that I have to do to make that work for my life is get up at 6 And go for an hour long walk from 6 to 7 So it's like the walk has to happen. We come together for lunch in the middle of the day Like we put our laptops away. We eat at a separate table from our workspace We talk to one another even if it's only 10 minutes between a call Yep And then you know, we check in when we can um and ask each other how the day is going We always plan to come back together for dinner. It's like a walk before dinner. So Um, you know, I'm doing a lot more. I'm I love food and cooking at home. And so I've been doing a lot more Of like homemade truly homemade foods, right? Like I'm making my own bread as so many people are But things like going to feed my sourdough starter or like, you know need my bread Like I have these little breaks in the day um to do those things that Provide some balance and and make me feel good and really help me maximize that time And then I think the other tip I would give to people besides just really being diligent about that structure is Make sure that you're replacing that commute hour that you might do in the morning and the evening Was something for you like don't use that hour to do more work That's going to put you on the path to burn out so so fast um So really utilize that beginning and end hour of the day Um to do something for you It's a great point and it's I can see how that would be tough to go back to because you just said we were able to take this dedicated hour-long walk in the morning And for a lot of people that's in place of the commute So if you've been able to enjoy the spoils of that walk for the last two or three months the thought of Deleting it from your life and replacing it with a commute something that's not very enjoyable is going to be Quite daunting and hard to swallow for a lot of people and I think that's a great thing I want people to look at that and question it and say Do I really need to reabsorb that commute because now I'm but I'm taking a step backwards from a health standpoint And what am I really getting I was able to accomplish my work Uh during this time off Speaking of that, I'm curious if you have any thoughts either working with your clients or just some peers that you've talked to on What the world's going to look like when we can reopen and some businesses For whatever reason do say like we want some amount of the employees back in the office And maybe some employees do want to go back into the office, but I think we're going to be left with a more Hybrid type of world a more flexible and fluid type of world. So what's vital to success? What considerations should be given there on both sides of the fence and What's that going to look like from a cultural standpoint? What changes should we expect? Yeah, it's a really good question And I think you're absolutely right that we're going to see a lot of adoption of hybrid remote work models You know, we've already seen A lot of companies make and san francisco companies in particular, which makes me very happy To see them starting to leave the way there because I think san francisco companies have been behind the curve For a long time, especially in terms of remote So, you know companies like twitter saying hey, we're going to reopen our offices But if you don't want to come back to the office ever again, you don't have to So that is the opening up of that hybrid model that I think can be really effective But hybrid is also really dangerous, right? Because you know, you know this darin as a 100% distributed team, right? Like hybrid brings a lot of challenges That need to be managed and you know, it's it's sort of ensuring from a remote work standpoint that you are Still remote first, right? Like when one person's remote, everyone's remote So you really have to design your operations and your business strategy to ensure That everyone is operating in a remote first way, even if they are in the office But it's it's great. I love that there's the flexibility the inherent flexibility because Not everyone wants to work in their home, you know, not everyone is Fortunate enough to have enough workspace at home that would make them feel comfortable, right? So many offices have lovely beautiful spaces and it's consistent and it's safe and secure and we just don't know You know the experience of everyone at home And so I think it's really wonderful to be able to offer that opportunity to people who Just prefer that space or really really need that structure It's such a good point and it puts into perspective that this isn't a us versus them type of argument It's not like remote is trying to win the world here We're just appreciative that there's more flexibility and it's a more open conversation than it has been in the past You brought up a great point that I think is worth reiterating, which is San Francisco for a long time. It's been this weird juxtaposition where it's one of the most progressive places in the world in almost every way Except for the remote way You would have these companies that their their entire product was enabling people to do things in a more virtual way But they would not be amenable at all to the thought of someone being employed there and not coming into the office every day And it always struck me as a very strange juxtaposition and I am heartened by the fact that some companies there are finally using this as the moment to kind of Embrace it and we at get lab. We've we've actually been sharing some of our advice and tips and tricks with the folks at twitter And they have an amazing team very progressive team even as far back as last year in 2019 Their CEO jacked this one tour or one team tour around the world and he said our next office is going to be remote We're going to figure this out and this was pre kovat. I think kovat has accelerated that And I I give them a lot of kudos for taking that step and saying this is what We're going to do we're going to be flexible and we're going to allow our employees to make that choice Because they are being a pioneer for how hybrid can be done at scale At get lab. It's one thing to do things with no offices. We've been all remote since the start but as you've pointed out it's much more challenging to do it from a hybrid standpoint and Everyone else seems to be waiting for one company to go first and with twitter going first. I think a lot of other companies will feel safe Falling behind them because they'll see that hey, we're in this together as a cohort of companies Let's figure this out in the best way possible and I think A few years from now. We're going to be really appreciative that that step was taken Because I think it will advance remote and advance inclusivity in the workplace in a in a significant way 100% and we've already even seen you know just the other day square made a similar announcement So the dominos are are really starting to fall and it's it's exciting to see that I think absolutely a hybrid model is better than no remote model, right and It's it's going to be really interesting with san francisco specifically to see how the landscape changes And to see how soon people are going to start leaving the city for their hometowns or new places and and what happens there I completely agree and I think it's actually going to be a boon for these big cities that were a bit oversubscribed to begin with Maybe had a few too many people there already their public services were really strained It wouldn't be the worst thing to have some of those people relocate out And it may even actually make room for those that have been displaced Move back into their own home cities, whether that's seattle san francisco or new york and contribute back to the city Which had been populated frankly with people that were only there for work. So I think it's a win all the way around it may take a few years to see the effects of that I wanted to ask you for those that Want to continue working remotely, but maybe the leadership Is a bit more hesitant to Commit to that maybe they're going to say look as soon as we can reopen everyone back to the office. No exceptions What would you recommend in terms of people that want to pursue or maintain a remote lifestyle? But they need to build a case To the leadership short of finding another company where Leadership is more amenable. Obviously. That's the ideal situation, but not everybody has that luxury Absolutely. Um, it's a great question. And I think as you started to allude to it is important to Speak to your management and your leadership in business terms You know and really make the business case for why remote is a benefit, you know A great back that you can throw around is The latest research has shown that On average for every part-time remote worker you have for the business you save $11,000 an overhead a year So you do the math on that for a full-time employee. That's about $22,000 per full-time employee per year just saved on overhead and office expenses Supplies, you know, all of those sorts of things So that's real dollars that people are saving and in this time where you know business continuity has been up in the air You know a lot of businesses have remained successful, but a lot of businesses have been hit hard You know, these are the kinds of things that your leadership is going to be thinking about I'd also say, you know, just get curious, right? Like everyone's talking about remote right now So absolutely your managers and leaders have been thinking about it So ask them what their take is, you know, ask them what they think about remote And if they think there's a place for it in your company long-term get them talking about it here where they're coming from And I think you can engage in a More effective conversation about what it looks like moving forward and there's tons of resources out there Um about remote best practice, you know, GitLab is a perfect resource for this Um, and there's plenty of experts and people who are willing to help companies make that leap People who are willing to help you make that business case and provide some of that data Um, so yeah, I'd start with the business case, but get really curious Great advice. So I like to end with uh two common questions The first of which is give us a uh tour around your workspace. I know it's a temporary workspace for you, but I'd love to see it Okay, cool. Let me unplug here I'm not trip over my chair. Okay. Well first, this is my dog Nellie. She's taken a nap Um, so in my temporary workspace, this is my my desk area here. It's actually Um, much larger than my desk at home, which is wonderful Um, I yeah, that's going to be hard for me to go back to my San Francisco tiny office Um, I'm going to take you guys out into um, like the living area where you can see where I come and Play with my sourdough starter I think the awesome thing to remember here is Remote enables you to potentially have a new office like every day every week every month Absolutely. Yeah, sometimes I'll work here at our kitchen table got a nice view of all the pines in the backyard All the pines are amazing. That's awesome. This is our fireplace. We have fires there every night This is our kitchen. This is my sourdough starter Very nice. Yeah, and I'll just take you over here We've got extra bedrooms. It's just incredible. We are very lucky right now This is what we call the boys room up front. That's my fiance steve Big bearded man is a lot of guys are without beard tremors these days You do what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do. That's an amazing workspace That is essentially the size of an entire san francisco city block So I'd say the upgrade is obvious and I can now get a full appreciation of why it would be very very hard to go back Oh my gosh I know it's those little things like space that you take for granted and I was saying and I'll have to share this with my parents but We have an experience having such like a large space to ourselves outside of being like at home in our parents home And I think this is the first time for us or we're like, oh space does matter, you know, like it's really luxurious to have A master suite or it's really nice to have a backyard and all of these things that you don't I never thought were important to me And they're not the most important thing. I'm grateful to have them, but um, they they're pretty great It just goes to prove that there's no putting the genie back in the bottle And you have people like you that are experiencing this for the first time But you have millions of people that are having similar experiences And I think that's going to do wonders for the stickiness of remote going forward All right, so last question. You've been very gracious with your time. What's one good thing you've seen heard or experienced this month Yeah, awesome. Um, okay, so I think My my big theme, you know with this Tahoe experience has really just been access to nature and I'm surprised almost every time we go outside to go on a hike and explore the area And we're fortunate to have a lot of space and be able to do that really safely here Um, so I'm very grateful. Uh, but just the other day we went and parked the car all this trail We hadn't been on we didn't know much about and we literally walked like maybe 10 minutes and You can start to hear like this roaring river behind you and you're wondering what's between the trees And you know, it's absolutely a river, but you don't have a sense of How magnificent it might be or what that view might look like and we literally came through the trees on this bluff To a roaring river With nobody around and green pastures and beautiful trees and bird singing and it was just like one of those Moments were like, what is this? I just walked out of my car For 10 minutes and I won this river with nobody else and wild nature It was invigorating and I'm very grateful for those opportunities I'm hopeful that you'll get lots of experiences like that once you find that perfect piece of land somewhere on the west coast Megan, thank you so very much for joining me. Uh in the show description We're going to put all the relevant twitter handles so people can find you and remote work association and engage For anyone watching be sure to check out the rest of our episodes on youtube and follow us At gitlab on twitter and linkedin until we see you again be excellent to one another aloha and mahalo