Suddenly Remote: Hardware Development During COVID
When the pandemic hit, our hardware development process had to adapt overnight. What we learned about remote hardware work.
Two weeks ago we were all in the office. Today everyone is home, and hardware development is not a discipline that naturally works remotely.
The Immediate Challenges
The problems arrived all at once. The sensors, prototypes, and test equipment live in the office while we're at home. Hardware debugging often means two people looking at the same scope trace, which has no obvious remote equivalent. Not everyone has a home setup capable of running our toolchains. And proprietary hardware can't just go home with people.
Emergency Adaptations
Lab-at-Home
We shipped development kits to every engineer who needs them: prototype devices (with tracking), basic test equipment like USB scopes and reference cameras, and development boards. Not everything, but enough for most development work.
Remote Lab Access
For equipment that can't leave the building, we stood up VPN access to lab machines, remote desktop to oscilloscopes, and webcams pointed at setups for visual debugging. The most useful invention has been "lab hands" - a designated on-site person who can physically manipulate equipment while the rest of us watch over video.
Collaboration Tools
Video calls became the default, cameras on. Screen sharing gained annotation, design discussions moved onto virtual whiteboards, and demos turned into asynchronous video updates that people watch on their own schedule.
Security Protocols
Hardware at home meant new procedures: asset tracking, physical security requirements (locked room), data handling guidelines, and return procedures for when this ends. Whenever that is.
What Works Better Than Expected
Focus time, for a start. Fewer interruptions at home make deep work genuinely easier. Global coordination barely changed, since we were already distributed across the US and Israel and adding "home" as a location wasn't that different. The async-first structure I wrote up last June is the one part of the operation that barely needed touching. The forced reliance on written communication has improved our docs. And meetings have agendas now, with less wandering.
What Got Harder?
Informal knowledge transfer, mostly - you can't learn by overhearing conversations anymore. Two people staring at a bug together is harder over video than at a bench. New team members miss the casual context-building that onboarding used to provide for free. And hardware troubleshooting hit a wall the office never had: "Have you tried power-cycling it?" has a 30-minute shipping delay.
Team Wellbeing
Beyond productivity, people are struggling. Isolation, childcare challenges, anxiety about the pandemic itself, work/life boundaries that have dissolved entirely. On the management side we've moved to more frequent 1:1s, explicit permission to flex schedules, mental health resources, and virtual social events, which are awkward but better than nothing.
Long-Term Implications
This won't be temporary. We're learning which activities truly require co-location, how to structure work for distributed effectiveness, what tools and processes need investment, and how to maintain culture without physical presence. The playbook we're writing now will outlast the pandemic.
Six weeks ago, "remote hardware development" sounded like a contradiction in terms. Now it's just how we work.