Introduction
Hey, can you please introduce yourself?
Jane Geddes, I’m a marketing communications manager and project management professional. I studied environmental design and have a Bachelor of Architecture, but friends invited me to help with their software startup. First, I got into software product marketing, then into digital marketing agencies.
Motivation for Remote Work
What motivated you to choose remote working?
I grew up in Cupertino when Apple was an apricot orchard and witnessed the transformation of Silicon Valley. I lived near the beach in Santa Cruz, California, a Silicon Valley bedroom community. After my daughter was born, I found spending nearly 3 hours/day commuting to my job in Santa Clara was no longer acceptable. I transitioned from software companies to smaller creative agencies in Santa Cruz.
In 2007, we took an opportunity to escape the growth and traffic and moved to the Pacific Northwest to give our family a better quality of life. We wanted a more wholesome place for our daughter to grow up, where community was more important than status. We moved to a small town and bought a bigger home on acreage, a big upgrade from our tiny California home. I had the opportunity to take a year off with our daughter before she started school, then began to wonder what I’d do for work here. That was when my previous employer contacted me with a new project that I could do remotely.
Initial Months and Expectations
What were your initial months like? Did it live up to your expectations?
Initially, I needed to find a groove from being a full-time mom to being a full-time employee. My daughter had just turned 5 and was used to having my undivided attention. It took me time to find that balance between parenting and working, especially when she was young. I found having other kids over to play with her helped a lot. She quickly taught them that they couldn’t disturb me when I had a meeting. Another strategy was scheduling client meetings in the morning, then we’d go places like the library, park, or skating rink, a place with wifi where she was safe and I could work.
Finding Remote Work Roles
How did you find remote working roles?
We decided to move after I was laid off due to a lack of work at the creative agency I’d been with for a couple of years. After a year of being a mom, my former employer contacted me to see if I had any time available. They had a new project but saw an opportunity to develop it into an ongoing program that ultimately continued for 9 years.
The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Remote Work
What have been the best, good, and worst aspects of remote working for you?
We can live where we live, on a beautiful island with herons in the yard and a view across the water to the Cascade Mountains, and I’ve been so close to my daughter as she’s grown up. I didn’t spend her childhood sitting in traffic during a long commute, working in a distant office, only seeing her in the evenings and on weekends.
I had more autonomy than before and was able to grow as a team leader and account manager. After a few years, I did yearn for more professional growth but learned that remote work was really rare. Most everyone I talked with said their organization didn’t allow it, and the few that did only granted it to a few trusted employees. So, I stayed where I was, willing to accept limited growth for the opportunity to work remotely. I was well appreciated by clients and my employer which helped retain my job satisfaction. It was the best choice for my family; I have no regrets.
Your most exciting/ hilarious experience since you started working remotely.
We always talked about it, but never did get the corporate-branded bathrobes!
The worst was the doorbell ringing and the dogs going ballistic while I was on an important client call.
As my kid learned to read, she learned the difference between “Holly, the Client” and “Holly, Fiona’s Mom”, and when it was ok to answer Mom’s phone. The unexpected effects:
1) The kid developed a very mature phone presence at an early age.
2) She decided that a professional desk job is not for her; she’s going into the trades!
Remote Work Tech Stack
What tools do you swear by while working remotely?
Unlike businesses today, we didn’t rely on video calls. Facetime was a novelty that we’d use once in a very great while because it was fun.
In the time since I’d moved away, the physical office had been closed, and the entire team - which had previously been partially dispersed went completely virtual. For the agency owner, he gained huge cost savings in not having a physical office and all the operational costs associated with it.
When I rejoined the team, they had already transitioned and had systems setup using Google Office Suite, DropBox, Harvest timekeeping and Forecast project management. Our most important tool was Instant Messaging (IM). Read more about why IM is the key to our connectivity.
We used DropBox for shared access to documents with version control and used Google Drive for collaborative documents. The most important one was our ongoing Task List.
Summary of how we stayed engaged without daily video conferences:
- Monday morning phone call to layout the week ahead
- IM for work and social communication
- Phone calls for work and social connection; we would take a ½ hr walk and chat work & life
- Facetime for social connection such as have lunch together
- WebEx for screen sharing, but usually not needed
Advice for Remote Workers
What is your golden advice to a new remote worker?
1. Reach out to your team members and make those social moments; I hear a lot of people aren’t sure how to do that remotely. For us, it was so easy to do with IM.
2. Make a way to end your day
3. If you’re a manager, let your team have flex time, especially while parents are dealing with remote learning.
Looking Ahead
How do you see your career shaping up and your goals?
I didn’t expect there to be a silver lining in Covid, but for me, it’s the acceptance of remote workers. After 9 years, our program had a successful conclusion but remote work still wasn’t readily available. I found that being a stay-at-home mom was almost more important with a teen than with a pre-schooler. Now that the kiddo is driving and independent and remote work is finally more available, I’m finding a wide range of opportunities to continue my professional growth.
How do you expect remote working to evolve in the future?
Tapping back to my education in environmental design, I really hope that we make this an opportunity to evolve our built environment. In areas like Seattle and the Bay Area, demand for prime real estate has driven up property values into unaffordable ranges.
There’s not enough housing available, driving up housing costs and clogging highways with commuters traveling longer distances to get to physical offices. People who need support services can’t afford to live anywhere close to the city centers where they’re needed.
Commutes are slowed by ongoing construction projects to build wider freeways and more efficient transportation options that never seem to be enough. The massive energy needed to move these people twice a day, to build the infrastructure needed to move them, and to operate the buildings that mostly sit empty nights and weekends—and the associated emissions—could be significantly reduced.
Remote workers are a sustainable way to impact many of our housing and transportation issues, but it will take significant time and effort to change. If organizations come out of Covid with an ongoing strategy to allow remote work, downsize facilities and only bring teams together as-needed, we’ll be on our way to achieving that goal.
Where can we follow you?
You can follow me on LinkedIn.
