Remote Work Tools: What Actually Matters After the Hype

Remember 2020? Suddenly everyone needed remote work tools. Vendors rushed features. Teams scrambled to adapt.

Now the dust has settled. We’ve learned what matters and what was hype.

Here’s what distributed teams actually need.

The Core Stack

Most remote teams need exactly four things:

  1. Video communication
  2. Async messaging
  3. Document collaboration
  4. Project visibility

That’s it. Everything else is optional.

Let me break down each one.

Video Communication

You need to see faces. It builds connection, enables nuanced discussion, and replaces the “quick chat” that happens naturally in offices.

What Matters

Reliability. Calls that drop, audio that fails, video that freezes. These kill meetings. Pick a platform that works consistently.

Guest access. Your team might use one platform, but you meet with clients, vendors, and candidates. They shouldn’t need accounts to join.

Recording. Async distributed work means not everyone can attend every meeting. Recording lets people catch up.

Sufficient quality. “Sufficient” means clear enough to see expressions and hear clearly. 4K video isn’t necessary.

What Doesn’t Matter

  • Fancy virtual backgrounds (nice, not essential)
  • AI meeting summaries (helpful, not critical)
  • Breakout rooms (unless you run large workshops regularly)
  • Webinar features (unless you do actual webinars)

Recommendations

Zoom remains the standard. Best reliability, best guest experience. Business tier is worth it for recordings and longer meetings.

Google Meet is fine if you’re on Google Workspace. Simpler, integrated, good enough.

Microsoft Teams is fine if you’re on Microsoft 365. Clunkier for external guests but acceptable.

Pick based on your existing ecosystem and stick with it.

Async Messaging

Not everything needs a meeting. Async communication lets people work in focused blocks while staying connected.

What Matters

Searchability. Six months from now, you need to find that decision about the project. Search has to work.

Channels/organization. Discussion needs structure. Team channels, project channels, topic channels. Without organization, everything becomes noise.

Integration. Messages about things happening in other tools (CRM updates, deploys, customer alerts) should flow into channels automatically.

Mobile access. Remote work happens from phones too.

What Doesn’t Matter

  • Endless emoji reactions
  • Custom GIFs
  • Status animations
  • Most premium features

Recommendations

Slack sets the standard. The free tier works for small teams. Paid is worth it once you need search history.

Microsoft Teams combines chat with the rest of Microsoft. Fine if you’re in that ecosystem.

Discord works for smaller, less formal teams. Not professional enough for many businesses.

Pick one. Enforce that it’s the channel for team communication. Email becomes external only.

Document Collaboration

Remote teams can’t gather around a whiteboard. Documents become the shared space for thinking together.

What Matters

Real-time collaboration. Multiple people editing the same document simultaneously. Comments and suggestions. This is non-negotiable for remote teams.

Linking and organization. Documents need to be findable. A structure that makes sense. Links between related docs.

Accessibility. People should be able to access docs without hunting through folders or requesting permissions.

Search. Like messaging, you need to find things later.

What Doesn’t Matter

  • Advanced formatting
  • Complex templates
  • Desktop applications (browser is fine)

Recommendations

Google Docs/Sheets/Slides work well. Collaboration is natural. Part of Workspace.

Notion combines docs with databases and structure. Great for wikis and knowledge bases. Less great for pure documents.

Microsoft 365 web apps have improved but still feel behind Google for collaboration.

Again, pick based on your ecosystem.

Project Visibility

Remote teams can’t walk by and see what’s happening. Work needs to be visible in a system.

What Matters

Clarity on who’s doing what. Tasks, assignments, due dates. Everyone should be able to see the team’s work.

Progress tracking. Where are we on the project? What’s blocked? What’s done?

Low friction. If updating the system is annoying, people won’t do it. Keep it simple.

Integration with how you work. Syncs with calendar, connects to communication tools.

What Doesn’t Matter

  • Resource management features (unless you’re large)
  • Portfolio views (unless you’re managing many projects)
  • Advanced reporting (usually)
  • Time tracking (unless you bill for time)

Recommendations

Asana, Monday, ClickUp all work. Pick based on team preference and existing tools.

Linear for software teams specifically.

Notion can work for lighter project needs.

Keep it simple. The best tool is the one people actually update.

Tools You Might Not Need

The remote work boom created solutions looking for problems.

Virtual Office Platforms

Gather, Teamflow, and similar. Virtual offices where you see avatars move around.

Reality check: Novelty wears off quickly. Most teams find them gimmicky. Unless you have a specific use case, skip.

Async Video Tools

Loom, Vidyard, etc. Record video messages instead of meetings.

Reality check: Useful for some things (demos, walkthroughs). But most communication works better as text (searchable, skimmable) or sync video (interactive).

Worth having Loom for occasional use. Not essential.

Surveillance Tools

Activity monitoring, screen capture, keystroke logging.

Reality check: If you need these, you have a trust problem that software won’t solve. They breed resentment and don’t improve productivity. Avoid.

Collaboration Overload

Miro, Figma/FigJam, Lucidchart, and dozens of others for visual collaboration.

Reality check: Have one whiteboard/diagramming tool for when you need it. You don’t need three.

The Anti-Pattern

The worst thing you can do: adopt twelve tools because each is “best in class.”

Twelve tools means twelve places to check. Twelve integrations to maintain. Twelve logins. Twelve notification streams.

Consolidate. Fewer tools, well integrated, consistently used.

The Minimum Viable Remote Stack

For a 20-person remote team:

  • Communication: Google Workspace (email + calendar + meet + docs) or Microsoft 365
  • Messaging: Slack
  • Projects: One PM tool (Asana, Monday, or ClickUp)
  • Optional extras: Loom for video walkthroughs, Miro for workshops

That’s it. Four to six tools total. Anything more needs to justify its existence.

The Priority

Tools matter less than practices.

A team with excellent communication habits using mediocre tools will outperform a team with bad habits using the best tools.

Get the basics in place. Focus on how you use them. The tools are just infrastructure.