Remote asynchronous work using NeetoRecord

Neeto has been 100% remote since the very beginning. After the pandemic's onset, we saw many more companies go remote. Some of these companies navigated through the challenges of running a remote company, and some companies struggled.

Based on our discussions with our friends, one common pattern we saw was that companies struggling with remote work were not using an asynchronous (async) working style.

Getting work done in a remote environment

When everyone is working from the office, it's very easy to ask questions of your team members and resolve issues. We are talking about things that will take a few minutes of discussion.

In the remote world, to do the same discussion, we will have to ping the other participants and then start a Zoom call. Share the link and then wait for them to join. Then, have the two-minute call. This assumes that your team members are at their desks at that time. They might be away for lunch. In that case, the meetings need to wait.

Even if all the team members are present, getting on a call for every small matter throughout the day can cause "Zoom fatigue."

The other issue with these Zoom calls is that there is no record of who said what and what the final decision was. What if one of your team members is on leave? What if you need to bring in another team member from a different project? Without any record of previous discussions, bringing them up to date takes a lot of effort.

There is a better way, and that's an async style of working.

What is the async style of working

The async style of working is like handling emails. You don't jump on the email when you receive it immediately. You finish whatever you are doing. When you are on a break or done with your current work, you go and check your email.

Similarly, in the async working style, you don't jump on a call anytime you have a question. You post your questions in Slack or any communication tool. The other person will reply to that question whenever that person checks the message.

This causes the least amount of disruption in the workflow.

Tools needed to do async work

We already mentioned that you need Slack or any communication tool. For building Neeto, we primarily use Slack and GitHub.

When posting messages earlier, we used to post all the messages using text, and writing long messages used to take time. So, we wanted a fast screen recording tool that recorded our screen and voice.

We built NeetoRecord to solve the screen recording problem. Now, all Neeto team members record multiple videos daily, thus removing the need for a meeting for minor matters. We still conduct meetings, but those are for big-ticket items.

We have been using NeetoRecord internally for a while now. Here is a real-world example  where we discussed the website revamp. As you can see, six videos were posted on this issue. It means we had six fewer meetings regarding that issue. Adding up all the hours saved amounts to quite a lot in any given month.

Another real-world example is this video.

Competent engineers can work remotely or from the office in the current environment. Companies need to adopt this reality and make necessary changes to avoid alienating remote workers.

We believe that NeetoRecord is a valuable tool for making remote work happen.