Empathy across Remote and Distributed Teams

A presentation at Austin DevOps Meetup April 2020 by Laura Santamaria

The world is a bit topsy-turvy right now, and those of us still fortunate enough to have jobs to report in at may suddenly be working remotely for the first time or working with teammates who have never worked remotely before. It’s a lot harder to socialize with teammates in a remote setting, and empathizing with others’ needs is harder when we can’t speak in person. Remote work itself is a lot like being on-call: It feels neverending and can grate on your nerves. Let’s talk about how to create and maintain empathy on remote teams, from using communication frameworks to helping others learn how to empathize with you.