Remote Work Actually Works

Our CEO was convinced remote work would kill our culture. Six months later, productivity is up 40%, turnover is down 60%, and we just closed our best quarter ever. Here's what we learned.

The Transition Nobody Wanted

We didn't choose to go remote—we were forced. Our lease was up, and the new office space was triple the price. We had two options: pay the premium or go fully distributed.

The leadership team was skeptical. "How will we maintain culture?" "How will we know people are working?" "What about spontaneous collaboration?"

Valid concerns. Also, completely wrong to worry about.

What We Got Wrong

Initially, we tried to replicate the office online. Daily standups became video calls. Casual hallway chats became scheduled "virtual coffee breaks." We even had "virtual lunch rooms."

It was exhausting. And it didn't work.

Productivity dropped 20% in the first month. People were burning out from video call fatigue. Our "always-on" culture had become literally always-on.

The Breakthrough

Everything changed when we stopped trying to recreate the office and started designing for remote.

1. Async by Default

We made asynchronous communication the default. Need an update? Post it in Slack. Have a question? Write it down. Real-time meetings became the exception, not the rule.

2. Document Everything

No more "you had to be there" moments. Every decision, every discussion, every meeting gets documented. With TellMeMo, this happens automatically—AI summaries mean everyone stays in the loop without attending every meeting.

3. Trust Over Surveillance

We stopped trying to monitor if people were working and started measuring what they delivered. Crazy concept: adults can manage their own time.

"The best part about remote work? Nobody cares if I do my deep work at 10 PM or 10 AM. They care that I ship quality code."

— Senior Dev, Employee Survey

The Unexpected Benefits

Some wins we didn't see coming:

• Deep work actually happens: No more "quick questions" every 15 minutes. People have uninterrupted time to think.
• Meetings have agendas: When scheduling a video call requires effort, people make sure it's necessary and prepared.
• Documentation is searchable: "What did we decide about X?" used to require hunting down someone who was in that meeting. Now it's a search query.
• Diversity improved: We hired people from places we'd never recruit from before. Turns out, great talent doesn't all live in expensive cities.

The Challenges We Solved

Onboarding

New hires get access to every meeting summary, every decision doc, every discussion thread. They can "read themselves in" instead of relying on people to remember to tell them things.

Collaboration

The office didn't create collaboration—meetings did. We still have meetings, they're just more intentional. And when someone misses one, the AI summary keeps them updated.

Culture

Culture isn't ping pong tables and free snacks. It's how people work together, how decisions get made, how information flows. That works just fine remotely—arguably better, because it's more inclusive.

What Actually Makes Remote Work

After six months, here's what matters:

1. Communication tools that work: Not just Slack and Zoom—tools that capture context, create searchable records, and keep everyone informed.
2. Clear expectations: People need to know what success looks like. Hours logged ≠ value created.
3. Documented everything: If it's not written down, it didn't happen. AI makes this sustainable.
4. Intentional connection: We still do video calls—for things that need real-time discussion. Not for things that could be a Slack thread.

Would We Go Back?

Hell no. Even if office space was free, we wouldn't.

Remote work forced us to build better systems. Systems that scale. Systems that include everyone, not just people who happened to be in the right room at the right time.

Our productivity didn't increase despite remote work. It increased because of it.