Meet Sumeet Moghe, a voice of the future of work: Principal Product Manager at Thoughtworks, passionate about agile work, product management and design. He has worked with clients across various industries, helping them build digital products and improve their engineering effectiveness. In 2024, he was recognized as "The Voice of the Future of Work" at Crossover's Remote Work Leadership Awards, highlighting his vision for redefining collaboration and productivity in distributed environments.
Sumeet received this award for his book The Async-First Playbook, which promotes asynchronous communication as the key to effective and sustainable remote teams, fostering inclusive and productive workflows.
We invite you to read this interview with Sumeet, where we explore his recent recognition, the key insights from his book, and his approach to remote work.
What does it mean to you to have been recognized as "The Voice of the Future of Work"?
It shows that the conversation about asynchronous collaboration is essential for distributed work. Regardless of your work pattern, someone is always remote in relation to you. It's important to agree on collaboration patterns that are inclusive and productive for everyone involved. Crossover’s recognition tells me that as companies find their post-pandemic work equilibrium, embracing asynchronous practices in their collaboration workflows is becoming critical.
What inspired you to write The Async-First Playbook?
I’m an Indian technologist, and the operations of Thoughtworks in India serve clients across almost every geography. Distributed work is at the heart of what we do. But while we have years of experience working in a distributed setup, you must be well aware of the meeting mania we’ve inherited from the pandemic era of remote work.
In an offshore setup, where time differences across locations can be as large as 10-14 hours, this meeting-centric approach burns people out and becomes a barrier to inclusion and deep work. I wanted to address this problem, hoping that distributed agile can be fun, inclusive and effective.
"Thoughtworks provided me with remote work long before the pandemic, allowing me, as a single parent, to balance personal and professional commitments. This flexibility and support also enabled me to write my book, with invaluable feedback from Martin Fowler and several colleagues—one of the greatest benefits of my Thoughtworks career." - Sumeet Moghe
What key practices from the book are essential for remote teams?
The title should say it all — “async-first”, this means that when we collaborate remotely, we must default to asynchronous tools and approaches. The provocative way of saying this is that “meetings are not the first option; they’re the last resort.” How does that work?
Writing becomes a first-class mechanism for communicating in teams.
Everything isn’t urgent; most things can wait. Speed and productivity are not the same thing.
Writing is the central practice of asynchronous collaboration. It’s scalable and easy to create and edit. Building shared understanding and sharing knowledge becomes easier when you have a writing culture. Modern tools, AI included, make the experience of producing and consuming text less effortful.
One word of caution, though—async-first is not async-only. There is value in synchronizing with your team members and even meeting them face-to-face once in a while.
What challenges and opportunities do you see for remote work in the next five years?
Remote work isn’t for everyone or every company, and I’ve written extensively about this. Companies that embrace location and time independence will have several advantages over their competitors. Firms more attractive to top talent are likely to outshine their competitors. Remote and asynchronous work allows you to hire people from anywhere and gives them the flexibility to work at times convenient to them.
For example, the ability to include women in the workforce.
A flexible work arrangement triples the chances of job acceptance amongst mothers from 15% to 48%.
Work-from-home arrangements double the chances of job acceptance for mothers.
⅔ of people with disabilities want to work remotely all the time.
Remote working arrangements reduce the income penalties for mothers by 21% and the weekly work hour penalties by 9%.
Source: https://www.asyncagile.org/blog/the-end-of-remote-work
Understand how async offers a better way to collaborate as software development has become increasingly distributed in a post-pandemic world.
What trends do you expect in remote work as technology and management practices develop?
Tech is evolving fast. If you look at the share of patent filings for technologies supporting remote work, they’ve doubled since before the pandemic. Little innovations like Zoom’s AI companion, which documents your meeting or Gemini, which can help improve your writing, can become quantum leaps in the distributed work experience.
Managers must rethink traditional office practices and embrace technology for better ways of working. The C-suite should consider how location and time independence enable growth. What tech investments are needed? How should practices evolve? Should new rituals, like periodic face-to-face meetings, complement these changes? What defines a post-pandemic employer value proposition? These are key questions for business strategists.
How has Thoughtworks’ global culture shaped your approach?
Working in Global IT services exposed me to several new collaboration technologies. It helped me construct a network of collaborators outside the company from whom I could learn a thing or two. These experiences have helped me have a “distributed by default” mindset towards my work. I wouldn’t have learned the things I learned or the experiences I gained without the remoteness of those early roles and the exposure they gave me.
In my first nine years at Thoughtworks, I worked exclusively in global roles, collaborating across cities, countries, and continents. Back then, we built effective habits using tools far less advanced than today’s. For me, global inclusion, courage, and autonomy are key to fostering effective distributed teamwork.
In my first nine years at Thoughtworks, I worked exclusively in global roles, collaborating across cities, countries, and continents. Back then, we built effective habits using tools far less advanced than today’s. For me, global inclusion, courage, and autonomy are key to fostering effective distributed teamwork.
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.
