In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about daring to WFH without losing your mind during the COVID-19 crisis.
With the Coronavirus epidemic going on, a lot of companies are being making their teams to work from home. This will inevitably lead to some challenges especially if a company culture and the way it has been set up is not designed for remote work.
In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how there’s been an increase in remote working since the virus broke out, the biggest issues about working from home, why your company culture and how your team is set up matters now more than ever and much more.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
00:00 About today’s topic.
00:21 why this topic was chosen.
01:12 How there’s been an increase in remote working.
02:15 One of the biggest issues about working from home.
02:52 The biggest concern companies have about WFH.
04:08 Hiten big tip for companies dealing with the current situation.
05:10 How Hiten’s team is handling the current situation.
06:19 Why your company culture and how your team is set up matters a lot.
08:35 How the current situation is not normal.
10:21 How the current situation will reveal what’s broken rather that breaking it.
3 Key Points:
I don’t think there has ever been more companies going remote in the history of the worldBeing distracted is a big issue when you work from home.All it takes is for someone you know to get the virus and everything changes.
[0:00:01]
Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.
[0:00:04]
Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.
[0:00:06]
Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about how to work from home without losing your mind as the world is melting down right now. So it’s been an interesting decade. Over the last week or two, Hiten, a lot is happening-
[0:00:23]
Hiten Shah: Pretty much.
[0:00:23]
Steli Efti: … Has happened and will probably continue to happen. But one relevant thing for people that are listening to us is that you and I have been championing working remotely for many years. We’ve been teaching anything we learned as we’ve been running remote teams and companies for many years, but I don’t think there’s ever, in the history of the world, been more businesses going remote than in the past three, four weeks. And so now there’s this surge of demand for all these companies, and we’re going to focus on startups, that were used to going into an office and working, collaborating, and communicating with each other in person, that are now forced to do that from home. Which is also a slight different flavor than working remotely, since many people who work remotely might go to a coworking space or a coffee shop, now you’re full-fledged, you’re working from home, all your colleagues work from home. How the hell do you do this? How do you coordinate this? How do you kind of manage this transition? I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen with our customers last week, the number one worry was, “How the hell do we work from home?” This week it’s 50%, “How do we work from home?” And 50%, “Oh my God, how do we deal with the financial crisis?” And I assume in a week all people are going to care about is, “Do I have to let people go? Customers are not buying anymore.” They’re going to be moved on from the working from home problem. But right now it’s still really, really large. So what is the advice that you give to people that are like, “Shit, Hiten, we had to send everybody home, we have to work from home now and what the fuck? How do we do this?”
[0:02:08]
Hiten Shah: It’s interesting. One of the biggest issues right now working from home is the amount of distraction you can have if you’re just reading and looking into this stuff.
[0:02:21]
Steli Efti: Yeah.
[0:02:24]
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple
