Technical debt can kill your remote spirit

The increasing trend to work remotely

More and more companies understand that the concept of having employees present in an office all day is outdated. Thanks to technology, companies are now adapting to remote work as they can see the many benefits that it brings. Remote workers have the autonomy to structure their workday so they can be at their most productive level, get their tasks done efficiently, and make time for activities outside of work. That's why they cite better work-life balance as the top benefit of remote work.

According to the Owl Labs survey, companies also have a lot to gain from offering remote work positions - higher employee loyalty and retention rate, cost savings, a global workforce to pick from, improved employee morale, motivation, productivity, and many more.

What is the success behind remote work

Generally speaking, technology has allowed for more effective communication, thanks to the variety of channels it offers - scheduling, video calls, document collaboration, voting, etc. According to a GitLab study about the future of remote work, nearly 90% of those surveyed are satisfied with existing tools and processes that enable remote team communications.

Nevertheless, communication is not the only characteristic that matters. There are many tools that you can choose from to help you with other activities such as version control, bug tracking, cloud storage, support ticketing, and smooth project management. Let us also not forget about the importance of a good specification and task management tool (for example JIRA, Asana, Trello etc.) There is a wide range of options allowing you to pick the tool that best fits your teams` needs.

However, using every tool available does not guarantee immediate results. Based on our experience at Codeac by being fully remote from the beginning, in order to be productive and sustain it, in the long run, it is important to master these three underlying principles:

1. Code Review matters even more when working remotely

One of the biggest struggles while working remotely is learning coding standards and code review as you have to learn to communicate your feedback in a written format, especially if you are reviewing your code manually. However, what could save you time is some degree of automation.

Codeac automatically identifies all the low hanging fruits so that you can focus on those issues that really matter. Therefore, by using our tool, you can save both time and money that you can invest better. Moreover, based on our users' experience, Codeac also helps new team members learn coding standards faster. This is because they get instant and continuous feedback on their work and do not have to wait for someone’s review.

2. Code Quality vs. and Development Speed

The time you will save implementing low-quality code will be lost ten times over when everyone else starts to use it. If you want speed, you need quality. According to the ActiveState study, the biggest portion of surveyed respondents (38.8%) spend only 2-4 hours a day programming . The rest of the time is spent on reviewing, testing, maintenance, investigating and solving bugs and security issues, etc.

Faster development while keeping the code quality standard high is a challenge we can help you with as Codeac warns you about your mistakes allowing you to fix it right away. By doing so, you are saving yourself (or someone else) the pain and time of correcting it in the future.

3. Coding standards are crutial for employee onboarding

For remote-first companies, it’s quite a challenge to onboard new team members and teach them the company’s own coding standards. Codeac helps to educate the newcomers as it automatically gives them feedback and suggestions on how to align their coding standards to the rest of the team’s one. This not only speeds up training but also helps with negative feedback since it is less emotional to receive criticism from a machine than from a person.

Remote work is changing how the global workspace operates. It is rapidly growing across many sectors for which the location of workers is not relevant anymore, but their knowledge and experience is. Remote work offers plenty of benefits for both the employees and the companies, and though there are many challenges along the way, with appropriate tools like Codeac you can easily overcome them and fully focus on your goal.