Gloria Ramchandani, who joins to talk about Surviving As a Remote Tech Employee, is Atlanta WIT UG Leader, Dreamforce Speaker, Product Manager at Copado.
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Main Points
- How long has Gloria been remote working for?
- Is there a difference between remote working and pandemic lockdown?
- How to keep working routines?
- Gloria’s tip to have kids involved in the working time
- The importance of physical boundaries
- The challenge of working overtime
- The importance of small breaks
- How to keep and maintain the working energy?
- The requirements for hardware devices
- The social desire in remote working
- How does a company maintain the culture?
Links
Video Teaser
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Transcript
AI-generated, unedited.
[00:01] I'd like to welcome our sponsor, Form Assembly. Form Assembly's all-in-one web form platform lets you create forms for just about any use case. From contact forms to donation forms, all while taking advantage of useful features such as notifications, e-signatures, and more. Not only that, but you can also connect data to systems you already use. FormAssembly integrates with Salesforce, Podio, PayPal, and many other common solutions. You can find out how form assemblies help Salesforce customers optimize their data collection in a free ebook that we've linked in today's show notes. Whatever your data collection needs are, you can be sure that Form Assembly keeps your data secure with encryption at rest and in transit on all plans. Plus compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and more regulations. At the end of the day, form assembly helps you save time, money, and effort while getting the maximum benefit out of the data you collect. And I'd remind you, when you support our sponsors, you support the show. Hey
[01:31] everybody! This is Xi Xiao. This is yet a new episode of Salesforce Way podcast. Today I'm sitting with a new guest with me. Her name is Gloria Ramchandani. Hello, Gloria. Hi, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So Gloria, would you mind to introduce yourself? So my name is Gloria. I'm a product manager here at Copado. I have been in the Salesforce ecosystem for about ten years now, and so it's it's good to be here. I am happy to be having a conversation with you because I've followed a lot of your previous podcasts. Oh, thanks a lot! I didn't know that. So now it's April 2020. I've been actually staying at home, remote working for about a month. Yep. Mainly because the the virus situation here in Finland. So, how long you have been remote working for? So I have been working remote for seven years now. Ever since I got into, I would say I started my career as a Salesforce admin. But when I moved into consulting, that is when I took my first work from home job, which included very little travel. Okay. The first question, actually, I want to ask is, do you see there's a difference between a real remote worker like you did in the past and this pandemic
[03:01] lockdown situation in many countries? I, you know, I this is a really tough question. I do see a difference, and I think the difference is being a remote worker in the past. It was. It was a it was a different experience because I was also able to go out to coffee shops right and socialize and I am very involved with our local community so I lead a women in tech user group here in Atlanta. And so for me, I love to be face to face with people. You know, feel connected with others, and so I feel like I took that for granted right before. But I would go to coffee shops, I would meet up with colleagues, um, every now and then. I think what's hard about now with the pandemic is having everyone at home, right? So I have two kids myself. Um, my I'm very fortunate that my husband takes care of them while I work. But it is hard, you know, having them at home as well, and then being, you know, at work all day and not being able to spend as much time with them because they do notice being at home versus being in school. Hmm. Definitely, I really miss these kind of social feelings. Yes. So you know, it's it's really a little bit tough for me. And I actually I never remote working for a long period of time because I'm based in Finland and the travel time for me it's about
[04:31] thirty minutes. It's quite manageable. So I can go to the work by public transportation. I can listen to music, podcasts on the way. So I I really enjoy going to the office and meet people. But now I have to stay at home. So it really make my life changed a lot during the working period, especially. And one of the biggest thing I want to ask you actually is the routines I used to have in office. That's definitely lost. You know, I can go there at eight a.m. I reach the office eight thirty. I start a coffee and then I get to my computer. When to take lunch? When to stop? Everything is a routine, but I don't have that anymore at home. Do you have this kind of challenge at the beginning? I I did in the beginning, and it was a very it was a very fine balance, right? So, one thing that I do, you know, my heritage is Indian, so I actually make tea every morning from scratch, chai tea, and it's a very time consuming process where you put. The tea leaves in the pot, and you add the water, and you add ginger and cardamom and all these spices. But it's a routine for me, and it's almost become a habit. And similar to others that go to work, you go to the coffee break room, right, to get a cup of coffee. For me, my routine is waking up, making my tea from scratch that I've spent fifteen minutes on
[06:02] that I will drink in five minutes. But it adds something to my morning that that helps give me that feel of being in in the office. Okay, yeah, I also have two kids, two young kids at home. They are in the daycare age, but now they don't go to the daycare because in the past I'm always the one in the morning to deliver them to the daycare. And it opens in seven thirty, so I get there in time, and then after that, I go to the office. That routing is lost now. Everybody's at home, so yes.
[06:38] And you mentioned that now, because your husband is able to take care of the kids, so you have your working area. Yes, yes. I have my working area. I have my own office. Right now, we are in the middle of moving, so we've we've moved into a new house actually two days ago. So my office is in my bedroom for now. But I do have a dedicated space. I you know lock my door to make sure the kids don't walk in. And um, it's it's really important if you are working from home because you need you need your head space, right? You need your space to focus and and really focus on work. Hmm. So, because I'm really in a short period of working at home, I don't have my own room. So, actually, my standing table is in the living room. My two kids are running next to me. Well, my wife is there as well. I have a headset. I'm talking with you with the the noise canceling headset, but it's totally not enough. Yeah, so it's it's a bit challenging for me. I still try to keep you know the working time separate, and my my wife does the best to help me and arrange the kids, but. I do think this kind of physical boundary is important when we do the. Yes, yes, it's really important. I think one thing that I've changed, you know, since the kids have been home, is I will pick one call that I have during the day.
[08:08] That is a internal call that is laid back, doesn't have an agenda, right? Where I will allow my daughter to come and sit next to me and be a part of that call. And it sounds very ludicrous to other people. How are you going to let your kid on a call? But it does make her feel included. And she will sit on the bed, you know, color, you know, have her workbook. But it's a great way for us to spend time together while I'm on a call with an employee, and for her to be a part of that. So, so I try to do that every now and then, just to make it more interesting for the kids and give it a little bit more work-life integration versus balance. That's that's a great tip. I think I I will learn that. I will try it out with my older kid, at least the five year old. I think he's able to listen to me now. And you'll be surprised how much they learn, right? So my daughter has asked me about DevOps. She's she knows that I work for Capato. She knows my boss's names. She knows my coworkers' names, and so it's it's actually quite great for me because when I come downstairs, she'll say, "Hey, were you on a call with Andrew?"
[09:26] Talking about this physical boundary, you know, I also did some research in the internet. There are people they kind of do this mental tricks to themselves. For example, when they go to the working time, then they really put some shoes on, put some clothes on, just you know, change the feeling and make them feel that now is my office time. Do you have that kind of? Habit as well. Yes, I do have that habit. I will admit I'm guilty that I do not do that every day, and that's because I've been working from home for so many years. But I will say till this day, after seven years of working from home, any time I have a presentation. Or a you know a webinar something that I'm a part of where I'm presenting myself, I will uh change into work clothes even though I'm not going to work. I will do my hair, makeup, and it will feel like I'm going into an office so that I'm presentable. And that does not change, you know, from the past to being quarantined. I still do that to this day. Hmm. I see. Because I do think it's important to let the brain know when I'm working, when I'm not working. Yes. I try to get that clear boundary between my personal life. Yes. And another thing, actually, I do have is that I tend to work overtime now, comparing to going to the office. One of the reasons that I wake up on seven around, and I used to need to
[10:56] go to the office, but that traffic time is saved. So, what can I do else than just open the computer and start working? Yes, that is a common misconception, and I think it's it's been this way. You know, for me, it's been this way. For seven years now, and I'll say I'm I'm a I think I'm a workaholic. Um, and I know and I know that I am because I feel like when you are working from home, it is very hard to disconnect, and so you do tend to work more hours than you would work in an office. Um, to your point, you save time on the commute to to work, and then you save time on the commute coming home. And so I do find myself like I work with a team in Madrid, and so I am actually up at six a.m. and I am taking calls at six a.m. Eastern time, and then I'm working until maybe you know five p.m. I do take small breaks throughout the day just to give myself a mental break, but I am working longer hours than I would be in in an office. Hmm. You mentioned you started from six a.m. because you said that you could start our conversation from seven a.m. I was feeling a bit guilty. I said, Let's do it at seven thirty. And the reason I said that is because I had calls before this. So yes. Okay. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. But you mentioned that you take some small breaks
[12:26] during the day. Yes. Do you have like a clock alarm set? Yes. When to take the break? So I have a rule of thumb for meetings that I schedule. If I have a meeting that is. You know, let's say it's supposed to be an hour long. What I will do is I will schedule it for forty-five minutes, and so this way there's always a fifteen-minute break before the next meeting starts. If it is thirty minutes, I you know when I'm going through my content, I I would prefer to wrap up early, and so those are the small breaks that I'm talking about. You know, ten minutes to go downstairs, get coffee, say hi to my new coworkers, which are my two kids and my husband, and then come back up to my office. Hmm. Okay, that's also something I need to learn because I'm a programmer. I tend to really focus the into the coding part, and a lot of the time it's just to go over an hour or two hours nonstop. So. Hmm. All right, but how how about the working efficiency during this month? Because I'm consciously to monitor my own working efficiency comparing to the office time. Sometimes it's I feel guilty because I just don't feel like working in some days. And then I I lay in the bed, or you know, sometimes just watch TV or talk with my wife. So I don't always get that high
[13:56] energy to to work. Yeah, and and. And that's very common. I would say that's you know a lot of people feel that way. I I think it depends on what you know what drives you, what gives you that motivation. And so for me, there's a couple of things that I think help. Efficiency and being productive. Number one, which sounds very simple, is if you are a coder or a programmer. You know, I myself, I'm actually, I have a, I'm a product manager, but instead of coding or programming, I write user stories all day. And so for me, I need to. Find a way to get in the zone, right? And that's once you're in the zone, it's very easy to carry on. So for me, what helps is finding music that you really like listening to. So if you have you know different playlists that you listen to on Spotify, that can help you know keep you going during uh you know in the zone time. Um, that's very helpful. The other piece that I would recommend is take a look at the tools that you're using at your company. So we. We use Copado ourselves, so we eat our own dog food, and Copado is built on the Salesforce platform. So for me, it's very easy to stay productive because. Everything's on Salesforce, so we can use Chatter to collaborate. It's you know almost real time, and so when someone is tagging me right in a post, I'm able
[15:27] to get that notification on my phone through the mobile app. I'm able to also communicate with them. We use Google Chat here internally, and so the tools that we use really enable that real time collaboration that you would typically get in an office.
[15:45] And and and then I would say the last thing that I have is, uh, make sure you're staying social, right? You your your mind always needs a mental break throughout the day, um, and you can't be work work work 40 hours a week, so. One concept that I have adopted more recently is I have my personal Gmail address, right? And similar to for those of us that may have grown up in the eighties or early nineties, we used to have messenger tools like AIM and MSN Messenger, right? And bringing back some of those basics into your work life during this type of phase where we have social distancing. I actually have gone back to the basics, and I message my friends, and I have some you know old colleagues that I stay in touch with, and it helps give me that five minute mental break that I need in between calls or in between long hours of work. Okay, I think people, most of people nowadays are using WhatsApp. WhatsApp. Um, you can download the. They have a desktop client for WhatsApp. Um, you can use. You know, I use GChat. Right, I have my my personal Gmail. Um, iMessage is. You know, you can put that on your Mac. But stay connected with your friends, and that helps you stay in touch with others. But it also helps you get a break throughout your workday. Okay, I think at least one thing I do want to pick up is the music.
[17:15] There's a lot of good programming music that to keep the high energy flowing. Maybe that can help you a bit. I think one thing I learned during the life is I tend to know people are different. For me, definitely going to the office, I I enjoyed it. I've been doing this for more than ten years, and now switching for just one month, still you know it's a changing period. So that's why I try all these different methods you just mentioned to see which fits me the best. But still hope the period is is gone fast, and then I can go back to the office. Yeah, yeah, and you know, use the agile methodology for your personal life. Right, things change. Everyone is different. So, what may work for you may not work for me. But I think, I think trying a few different things and seeing how you feel after them is a great way. And then you can always iterate and try something else. Definitely, yeah. I always say with my guests as well, do not afraid to try new things, right? If you don't like it, that you just drop it, then life still continues. Yes, yes. And we talked about a separate space for working. How about some other hardware devices? Do you think like the headset, microphone? Is that also important? Yes, so I have noise canceling headphones as well. This is I have two kids at home; they're screaming all the time, and so for me, it's great because I can stay focused.
[18:46] I have a MacBook, and I think my mic is great, my built-in mic. But for those of you that need a more heavy-duty mic, you can get something like this. And and I would say, other hardware always have a backup, right? And so I always have a backup. You know, set of headset or set of headphones or AirPods, something because you never know when you're going to run out of battery during a call, or you know when you need to switch to something else. So always have a backup option. There is something I will recommend that you can get on Amazon, and I'm not. I'm not. I'm not a salesperson, I promise. But for those that are working from home, um, it looks something like this. So it's a great organizer for you to organize all of your dongles, headsets, um, any type of hardware that you have. And I usually keep it in a backpack right next to my desk. Just for the listeners who can't see us in the podcast, is that you have. Like was it a a organizer that can help you to organize all the devices or the dangles? Yes, right. Yes, it has little elastic bands, so it will hold them in place. Okay, that's cool. One more thing I personally found it important is that a lot of us we do have a headset at home when we do remote working, but the headset quality is different. Yes, some of them, even most of them, are using USB.
[20:16] But you can totally hear the difference. Like we, we tried before our podcast show. Is that you use the headset? You use the Yeti? Use the the the the built in the Mac ones? And I totally see the the headset is worse. The the sound quality is worse than the the mic. Yes, and the headset is quite expensive. It's about three hundred dollars or something. But the mic, it is not necessarily mic the best. Exactly. Exactly, but it's an investment, right? You're if you're working from home, it is an investment. We do need those investments. Make sure people who are listening to us they have a easy life, right? Yes, yes. And we also talked a bit about the desire for the social interaction. That's natural for all the human beings, so. I've been at home for a month. I feel that I have this desire, but not so strong. But I know again, people are different. So I do chat with my friends. I do chat with my colleagues. So, do you have any tips around this? Yes, so I I'm a very social person, and so this you know this is very hard on me because I do enjoy seeing people and keeping in touch with friends. There are so many online resources and you know ways to you know be social during this
[21:46] time. In fact, I think it's a really great way. If you're not on Twitter, get on Twitter. Right, see what's going on in the Salesforce ecosystem. If you're not on Trailblazer Community, great time to get get on the community, join some chatter groups. But also start to think about you know personal branding. You have a brand, I have a brand. But some of our listeners may have not sat down and done that. Exercise for themselves, right? So while you're, you know, being social and you know signing up for all these things, start to, you know, think about how you want to create your own personal brand while you're keeping in touch with others. Hmm, that's cool. And also, I remember you mentioned that you tend to go to a local cafe, right? Sit there to maybe just listen to the ding of the people electric flowing. Yes. Yes. I. You know. I actually. There's a YouTube. There's a YouTube channel that will up. They upload sounds of coffee bars, and. I love going to coffee shops. Like I could sit in a coffee shop all day, and there could be people yelling and them stamping on the espresso machine, trying to get the espresso out. But I love the sound of that, and it helps me focus with work. So I actually will play videos of a coffee shop, and you can you feel like you're actually there,
[23:16] which is really great with the headset. And that is my escape to reality. Would you mind to send me the YouTube channel link? I can put it for some listeners. Yes, I never tried that. I tried the you know if I can't not sleep well, then sometimes I use the white noise like the the rain or the the or the natural sounds. But I never tried the coffee.
[23:47] For you, you also mentioned that you can use the chatter to talk with your friends, to talk with the the colleagues, and that's most important thing when you want to have this social desire. Yes, yes, and that's you know that can be at work. You know, most of your friends are at work. Your coworkers, you get to talk about work. You know, what meeting have what happened in a certain meeting, and so that's all social engagement, right? And so I am very active internally. Here we have Google Chat. I stay in touch with people. We have chat rooms for fun topics. But also when we're talking about work, Chatter helps me collaborate and feel like we're in a meeting room together, collaborating on a piece of work. So I think there's a social aspect in. In you know in work life you know personal life but I think work life more so Salesforce really helps us and enables us to to get that feeling of being face to face even if you're in a virtual environment. I see. So we talk a lot about from individual point of view how we handle the situation, how to do the remote working. But from the company point of view, now they have a lot of remote working because of the situation as well. So how can the company really maintain its culture? Is it also a challenging period for the companies? So I think it's a challenge, right? I spent many, many years at Apereo, and I will say hands
[25:17] down, Apereo was probably one of the best places I've ever worked. Right? It's they were built on this foundation of remote work, and their executive team did such a good job with making that process so easy. I think for companies, it's really investing in your leadership team and having a really strong CIO, CTO. CIOs, I would say, are the heart of you. Know technology and so they are going to be deciding what type of tools you use for collaboration. Do you want you know gamification engine internally? How are we going to? What is going to be the best method to communicate? And so I think making sure that you have a strong CIO is really important as a company. Also making sure that you're valuing your employees' time. So. You know, back at Apereo, when I did remote work, we actually would do a stipend for remote workers. So we had people that were working in Indianapolis, which were actually in an office, and then we had the other set of Apireans, which were at home. Outside of our India team, and for us that were at home, we actually got a stipend for our internet and phone. That really helped take care of the cost of you know being able to work from home. So something small like that I think goes a long way for your employees compensating them for the internet usage
[26:47] and the phone usage for the work that they're doing. But most importantly, the tools that you're using and and the tools you know tools like Slack, tools like Salesforce that are going to help your employees collaborate better. Excellent, Gloria. I think I've asked all the questions I had. It's a really great chat with you, Gloria. So I hope you well and be safe. Thank you. Thank you.
