Working Remotely as a Product Manager: What Works (And What Doesn’t)
Working Remotely as a Product Manager: What Works (And What Doesn’t)
Earlier this month I spent time working from a client’s office in London, which gave me a chance to reflect on something I haven’t had to do since 2019: work in an office full-time. I’ve been working remotely, currently from Spain, for over six years now delivering Product Management work from multiple time zones. The trip wasn’t just social. I was there to demo AI prototypes, present research to senior leadership, and catch up with stakeholders. Real work, just in a different location.
The London trip brought back memories from earlier this year. When I first arrived in Spain, I rented a flat without space for a proper home office, so I worked from a coworking space for six weeks. Professional environment, meeting rooms, free coffee. I even brought my own monitor, keyboard, and eventually my chair. I’ve been meaning to write about that experience since.
What both experiences confirmed: remote work isn’t just a preference for me. It’s how I deliver better results. I was significantly more productive once I moved to a proper home office setup.
I tested coworking because I wanted to be certain: was it remote work that made me productive, or specifically my remote setup? Turns out, it’s the latter.
There’s a productivity tax that comes with office environments. A systematic review found that open-plan offices reduce performance levels and impose a cost that outweighs the real-estate savings. Recent analysis from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that industries which increased remote working between 2019-2022 showed a positive association between remote work and productivity growth.
Environment control seems minor until you lose it. Someone else set the coworking space temperature and I spent weeks in extra layers. Street-level windows meant privacy blinds stayed closed all day which resulted in no natural light for six weeks. In my home office, I control everything. That’s not about comfort. It’s about removing the small frictions that break concentration throughout the day.
Noise management becomes constant. The coworking space was generally quiet, but people talk. At the client’s office it was worse where a big open-plan space where one conversation carries across the entire floor. Recent experimental work simulating open-plan soundscapes shows that multiple simultaneous talkers degrade performance on focused cognitive tasks. Complementary lab studies find irrelevant speech raises physiological stress during cognitive work.⁴ When you’re working through complex product decisions, fighting your environment isn’t ideal.
Meeting logistics add overhead that doesn’t exist remotely. At home, if I need to talk to someone, I just have the meeting at my desk. In the office, I have to find meeting rooms that match everyone’s diaries. In the coworking space, I had to book rooms, move my setup, take the call, reverse the process. None of this made meetings better. It just added friction.
The commute is dead time. According to UK government statistics, the average British commute is 29 minutes one-way, approximately 58 minutes round-trip daily, which works out to roughly 28 working days per year just getting to and from work. For Londoners the journey is longer. A Zones 1–4 annual Travelcard costs £2,568, whilst Zones 1–6 costs £3,264. I haven’t had a regular commute in six years and I genuinely don’t miss it.
Within a week of working in the coworking space, I picked up a nasty cough from someone who’d come in sick. It lasted for months and significantly impacted my ability to work. I have kids, so I’m not immune to catching things at home. But what I don’t face is people deliberately choosing to come into an office whilst unwell.
A Danish study found that open-plan offices had a 62% higher rate of sickness absence compared to single-person offices. The lost productivity isn’t just the days off sick. It’s the weeks afterwards working below capacity whilst recovering.
Spontaneous conversations and being approachable, the supposed benefits of office work, turned out to be one of my biggest productivity drains. Colleagues could come and talk whenever they wanted. Constant interruptions prevent the focused work that product management requires.
I hear the argument that spontaneous conversations prevent teams working in silos. I’ve not found that to be true. If I communicate with the right people, ask the right questions, and stay in touch through the right channels, I generate ideas without needing to be physically present. If a team is working in a silo, that’s a communication and process issue, not a remote work issue.
Interestingly, Harvard research tracked two companies as they moved to open-plan spaces. Face-to-face interactions decreased by approximately 70%, whilst email and messaging increased. The open-plan office didn’t foster collaboration. It triggered people to withdraw socially.
Remote work isn’t automatically better just because you’re not in an office. It requires deliberate setup and discipline.
I’ve structured my home specifically for remote work. Dedicated office room separate from the rest of the house. Kids at school during working hours. Professional office hours. Proper equipment: monitors, decent chair, good lighting, reliable internet.
This isn’t possible for everyone. If you’re working from your bedroom, managing childcare during work hours, or dealing with poor internet, remote work becomes significantly harder.
This is what I’ve built over six years of remote Product Management. If you’re evaluating whether a remote PM can work for your organisation, these are the basics that need to be in place.
Some people prefer offices, particularly junior staff who benefit from working closely with experienced colleagues. Recent research found that hybrid models, two days working from home per week, led to improved job satisfaction, approximately one-third lower turnover, and no measurable drop in performance.
But as a remote contractor with six years of successful delivery, I’ve built systems that work for Product Management. Working from Spain with UK clients means I’m in a similar time zone, available during normal business hours, and able to travel to the UK when needed.
I use Slack and Zoom to communicate with teams. I jump on calls with developers to answer questions and work through problems. I schedule regular check-ins with stakeholders. I document decisions and share context proactively. These interactions are intentional rather than random, and they don’t interrupt everyone else’s work.
The most common concern about remote PMs is communication. The difference between remote working well and remote working poorly is entirely about intentional structure. I’ve spent six years refining how to stay connected, visible, and responsive without needing to be in the same room.
Plenty of organisations are asking for office time these days. I’m remote-first and show up on-site when it changes the outcome.
For the work I do, controlling my environment and working without constant interruption directly improves what I deliver.
If you’re considering working with a remote Product Manager, this is how I approach it. Questions or thoughts? I’d be interested to hear how other PMs handle remote delivery.
1. Masoudinejad, S., & Veitch, J. A. (2022). The productivity tax of new office concepts: a comparative review. Management Review Quarterly. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11301-022-00316-2
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024). The rise in remote work since the pandemic and its impact on productivity. Beyond the Numbers. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm
3. Yadav, M., et al. (2023). Effects of multi-talker soundscapes on cognitive performance in open-plan office environments.
4. Radun, J., et al. (2024). Irrelevant speech and physiological stress during cognitive tasks.
5. Department for Transport (2024). Transport Statistics Great Britain 2023: Travelling to work. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-statistics-great-britain-2024
6. Transport for London (2025). Travelcard and Bus Pass prices. https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/caps-and-travelcard-prices
7. Pejtersen, J. H., et al. (2011). Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 37(5), 376-382.
8. Bernstein, E. S., & Turban, S. (2018). The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 373(1753).
9. Bloom, N., et al. (2024). Working from home and the office: Effects on work-life balance and retention. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07500-2.
