How Alignable Accelerates the Remote Comfort Curve
In a society where prior job experience is valued higher than ever, it’s becoming increasingly important that students get their feet wet in their respective industries before graduation. One of the best ways to get ahead in the game is a co-op experience, where they can essentially become temporary full-time employees to develop their skills. As a student at Northeastern University, a huge proponent of “experiential learning,” I have been taking advantage of my opportunity to complete 3 6-month long co-ops throughout a 5-year engineering program. Alignable is the last of the three for me, and my experience here has solidified my understanding of just how unique and valuable co-op experiences can be.
At Alignable, there is one key element of my experience that has set it apart from the others: working remotely. Before the onset of COVID-19, I never would have thought that my interview could be the first and last time I set foot in the Alignable office. Now, remote work seems to be the norm for almost everybody in the industry. While getting used to working from home certainly has its challenges (even more so than I had ever anticipated), the measures that Alignable has taken to mitigate them is nothing short of impressive.
In many circles relating to working during the pandemic, I’ve been seeing the term “impostor syndrome” being thrown around a lot, meaning that people are feeling a general anxiety about their effectiveness in the workplace and feel like an impostor or fraud among their coworkers. Shortly after beginning my Alignable co-op in July, it became obvious why people were feeling this way, including me: it’s incredibly hard to build relationships and share experiences with others when you only know your coworkers through a screen. When communication with coworkers is limited to a professional tone in Slack and organized meetings, there can be a severe lack of genuine connection. Without communal lunches and friendly hallway conversations, the ability to form relationships with coworkers becomes increasingly difficult.
As a result, at least in my case, it was tough to get a sense of how I “stack up” among my team, from professional, personal, and technical perspectives. I would complete a project and think “Would someone else have done this better, or faster?” I would leave a meeting and think “Did I speak enough there?” Or “Did I ask the right questions?” I would take a short break and think “Am I the only one not working right now?”
Luckily, Alignable had adapted some measures to combat these feelings that did wonders for my mindset. For example, during my onboarding, multiple people from all levels of the company took the time to give detailed presentations about processes and best practices relating to engineering at Alignable. Whether it’s a recent co-op who became a full-time engineer or the CTO, it’s extremely comforting to know that your colleagues are there to lend a hand and share their wisdom.
I also have weekly meetings with my manager. In a recent meeting, I was shown a digest of feedback from people I’ve worked closely with during my few months at Alignable. Feedback can be scary, but few things ease my mind like knowing I’m on the right track. And it’s especially awesome to hear it from such a large spectrum of perspectives, including some of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
From a company culture standpoint, I have learned that it is crucial to form genuine connections with coworkers to kick those feelings of inadequacy. At Alignable, there are a couple ways we make it easy. The first is what we call “virtual coffee chats,” where a bot in Slack will match a few people up at random to schedule a meeting to talk about pretty much anything that isn’t work related. The same goes for my team as a whole, which schedules weekly “virtual hangouts.” From these conversations, I’ve swapped stories with many of my coworkers (even ones I barely encounter when working), learning about their favorite shows, cocktails, sports teams, and hobbies. They get to hear the same from me, and it’s a ton of fun.
I learned that feeling more comfortable with the faces in my virtual work meetings also makes me feel more confident as a whole in both conversation and in my abilities, and overall makes me a better employee. I would recommend these types of exercises to all remote workers. In my case, the goal of my co-op is to learn, and between this realization and all of the technical knowledge I’ve accumulated, I couldn’t ask for anything else from my experience at Alignable.
