Blog

July 29, 2020

Greg Thomas

Losing a Team Member

If you thought losing a team member who was sitting right beside you was hard. Wait until you lose one that you have been working with remotely for the past four months. To be honest, it doesn’t matter the timeline, what does matter is a member of your team is moving on. There are a lot of things probably running through your head – who are we going to find to replace them, how will we train them, what knowledge is going out the window, how do we get their equipment, etc, etc. These are all logical questions but the

July 28, 2020

Greg Thomas

Keeping your Team Motivated

Keeping your team motivated while they are remote is going to require you to get creative. When you’re in front of the room, when you have the company’s facilities behind you, you have a swagger that you can bring to the party. Right now, it’s you, a laptop and a camera. So what do you do? They aren’t robots – if they are, validate some captcha phrases just to be sure. But they aren’t so don’t treat them as such. Yes you need to manage your burndowns and delivery schedules, but you don’t need to overdue it. Now is not

July 27, 2020

Greg Thomas

Managers Need Not Apply

If you’re a Manager, what you really are is a Leader. This was my favourite section title from Code Your Way Up. Why? Because it sums up precisely what we need now, today, this instant – leaders, not managers. Your title might say Manager but you are anything but, it’s time to raise your game and realize you can be more and your team needs you to be more. The saying isn’t – “Take me to your Manager” – it’s “Take me to your Leader”. Don’t get one confused with the other.

July 24, 2020

Greg Thomas

Burnout is on the Rise

It’s been almost four months that people have been working remotely – many from the unfortunate locations of their couch, coffee tables, basements with no windows, the list goes on and on. These aren’t ideal workplace scenarios for many – they didn’t volunteer to be work remotely on the flip of a coin, they were told not to come in. On Remotely Prepared, we do our best to help you navigate this new environment and like many things, it doesn’t happen overnight, it takes weeks, months, many months to get good at it (and that’s with the best equipment. We

July 23, 2020

Greg Thomas

Everyone Can Learn

I’ve been coding for over 20 years – YIKES – where did the years go. No matter what my job title is, I always find myself coding and learning. I’ve recently taken up the #100DaysOfCode challenge to push myself to get back to learning something completely brand new outside of my normal wheelhouse, to push and challenge myself. It’s a challenge. I stop the tutorials more than I thought I would, but I’m enjoying the time spent learning. I try to get through a tutorial or so a day, if I can do that, I’ve made progress. In every project