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Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#41

Post by dhd415 »

dvcc wrote: post #36
dsp1234 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A concrete example of this is if someone stops by your area to ask a "quick question" then culturing an environment where an answer of, "Why don't you bring that up in the global chat so everyone can contribute?", is welcomed rather than brushed off as being unfriendly.

Would anyone else find this tiring though? I feel like I am omitting the use of basic communication skills in favor of something less than ideal. I guess I am just not a huge fan of remote work in general though, so I have a hard time coming around to the idea that quick questions must go through a chat at all times.

The problem with that approach is that it inevitably favors the input of people who are physically present even if they are not the ones with the best answer to the question. As a remote development lead in a company without a remote-first culture, I find this happens a lot. The end result is that I end up having to fix a lot of problems that were caused by technical discussions that did not include the people such as me who had the most product context and technical expertise to correctly answer the question.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#42

Post by LargeWu »

brador wrote: post #38

I tried remote developers and couldn't get it to work efficiently. Remote devs start to have mental health issues from the loneliness and lack of supervision in down times. Regular employees can start to feel jealousy towards them, and organizing teams and talks becomes hell with a random face showing up. My advice - have a core team in house and out-source what you would have given to a remote dev. You're going to b…

"lack of supervision"

If you need to "supervise" your employees, you have either hired the wrong people, or not given them agency to just do what needs to be done. In either case, remote isn't going to work, but it's not necessarily because they're remote.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#43

Post by mariojv »

Pretty much the whole team works remotely.

We use IRC for everything, which has the good side effect of preserving knowledge for later. Everyone has a bouncer like ZNC setup so they don't miss anything while they're offline. Managers, directors, and VPs all encourage work from home, and a lot (including my manager) work from home themselves. We have an internal video conferencing system that we use frequently. We have a sync twice per week via video, a weekly 1-on-1 with the manager, and people hop into a dedicated engineering room whenever they want high-bandwidth communication with someone or just want to hang out there.

We also have a non-work IRC channel we use to talk about anything, in terms of social / team spirit related things. We have monthly tech talks that anyone can give. Once a year, we meet up for a week in person to get high priority things done. The company also sends us to open source conferences, so we see each other there a couple times a year. A couple folks play video games together like CS:GO. We are thinking about making an optional weekly gaming event with people, maybe something like LoL.

A totally optional thing that I like doing to preserve some record of my work is IRC standups. We have a web form where you can submit what you did yesterday, what you're doing today, and any blockers which gets posted to a separate IRC channel to avoid spam. Other teams with whom we collaborate on a daily basis also use IRC heavily. My manager doesn't like having this, but I like having an IRC highlight with my name that beeps whenever someone mentions my nick or asks me a question.

With this, we're able to collaborate across quite a few timezones, including one dev in the UK. It's worked out really well. I live near the HQ and sometimes go into the office, but generally working from home has been really efficient for me and a lot of our team.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#44

Post by dsp1234 »

dvcc wrote: post #36
dsp1234 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A concrete example of this is if someone stops by your area to ask a "quick question" then culturing an environment where an answer of, "Why don't you bring that up in the global chat so everyone can contribute?", is welcomed rather than brushed off as being unfriendly.

Would anyone else find this tiring though? I feel like I am omitting the use of basic communication skills in favor of something less than ideal. I guess I am just not a huge fan of remote work in general though, so I have a hard time coming around to the idea that quick questions must go through a chat at all times.

It's a matter of culture.

It may be tiring for some people, but having what I call 'dark meetings' all the time encourages a policy where remote workers are shut out of the process.

This is pretty much the same as a default policy of "Don't IM me one-on-one, IM us all in the group chat", with exceptions for personal issues. I feel it's a good policy in general for two main reasons, first it increases the possibility that an issue is seen by the exact person who can respond to it, and second it discourages the formation of cliques of people who are doing their own thing which no one else knows about. Business requirements can get lost all the time with reasons like "Oh, I PM'd Jim about it, and I though he would mention Helen".

So relating that back to remote workers, most meetings (and at least in my office, most meetings means basically every single one) are not formal meetings where everyone is involved. It's one-on-one's in someone's office, or talking offhand at the break room, or passing in the hall, and almost never officially recorded. That's perfectly fine (and it works with us as we have no remotes), but it hurts when you bring in remote workers because, by definition, they are attending less 'meetings'. Previously working remote, and having supervised remotes, this is one of the greatest issues that they face.

So if the original question is 'How do you integrate remote developers?', then whatever solution that is presented will need to deal with these 'dark meetings'. My personal suggestion, and the one I've seen work the best, is just to try to encourage a culture where people recognize that they are talking about work, and to table that discussion until everyone is present (which in remote workers case is IM). It may sound dumb, but if everyone just said something like, 'Hey, this sounds like an issue Bob or Jane could help with, why don't we discuss that in dev chat', and that was considered Ok, then it flows smoothly.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#45

Post by flurdy »

First, all remote developers must first work on site for a few weeks/months. That way people know what they mean between the lines and vice versa, and what their personality is like etc. So communication becomes much more fluid once remote again.

I also would insist on tools equivalent to screenhero and floobits to facilitate pairing, whether remote or inhouse.

I would also have a convention of not switching off webcams in meetings. People often do that, thinking why do people need to see my face, but it is essential that they do so that visual communication/presence also works.

I also like the idea of having a skype/hangout running all day long so remote people are aware what happens in the office, who is around etc. At one startup I hurt my leg and was WFH for 3 weeks. They left an ipad running skype all day on my desk. It was great as people would walk up to my desk to ask quick simple questions / water cooler comments etc, instead of most likely not send a hipchat/slack message as not important enough.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#46

Post by dorfsmay »

princehonest wrote: post #3

In office and working remotely will never be the same experience. I worked remotely for three years at my previous job, where I was part of a team of a dozen or so that was headquartered in a central location. The majority of the team participated at the HQ, and I was remote. We had IRC, video conferencing, and all the necessary technology set up. Regular visits to HQ helped. However, the thing that made the biggest…

This is a huge thing. If you're not mainly remote, let locals work from home, with the same standard as remote workers:

- be available during core hours on chat

- mark your calendar when not available or in meetings

- do video and phone meetings from a quiet space (no dishes, drill, vacuum noise, no kid crying)

This will do two things, it'll reduce the jealousy and tension towards remote workers, and it will increase the local workers understanding of remote working (eg: they'll start to make sure they're always on chat even when in the office).

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#47

Post by bdarfler »

ollifi wrote: post #15

Not good general advice maybe, but I had good success working remote with more like telepresence setup. I had small monitor in the corner of the office and people could walk up to it and speak to me. I could also overhear quite a bit of the chatter in the room. It was very important that people could see me on the screen. Although I missed many of the perks of working remote I felt pretty connected socially. What I d…

I keep meaning to try out https://perch.co/.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#48

Post by dorfsmay »

ollifi wrote: post #23
JangoSteve wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like this idea for our office, but I'm afraid if instituted, it'd be perceived as just a way to ensure remote workers are butts-in-chair during the day. How useful do you think this would have been as a one-way stream (i.e. remote workers can see the office, but the office can't see the remote workers)?

I understand what you mean. For me it was not a problem. If you are working in office people can count the hours you are sitting as well. I didn't view working remote different. And you can still turn the stream off if you want to concentrate. I can't do that in open office. If the monitor was turned off for some reason it immediatly turned into eavesdropping as people simply won't feel that you are there. So I think…

What about being available on chat and being able to quickly do a video conf whenever needed?

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#49

Post by riledhel »

princehonest wrote: post #3

In office and working remotely will never be the same experience. I worked remotely for three years at my previous job, where I was part of a team of a dozen or so that was headquartered in a central location. The majority of the team participated at the HQ, and I was remote. We had IRC, video conferencing, and all the necessary technology set up. Regular visits to HQ helped. However, the thing that made the biggest…

That's a great point. When onsite people start/try working from home they start paying more attention to the small things that make remote actually work.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#50

Post by maxxxxx »

dsp1234 wrote: post #29
dhd415 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point about a remote-first culture is 110% true. It has to be in the DNA of the company or else remote workers end up as second-class citizens. While it does not have to be the case, it does seem to be true that if a large portion (~50% or more) of the team is not remote, the culture will rarely end up being remote-first. If the culture is not remote-first, you end being just that guy who comes into the office e…

A concrete example of this is if someone stops by your area to ask a "quick question" then culturing an environment where an answer of, "Why don't you bring that up in the global chat so everyone can contribute?", is welcomed rather than brushed off as being unfriendly.

Personally I would not like that. There are times for putting something on global chat but a direct conversation is often hard to beat to figure things out.

I second the "remote-first" culture. Mixing on- and offsite developers is very hard.

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