We are a team of 12 developers in our local office plus five to six remote guys. How do you integrate remote developers? On a technical level (video conferencing, IM), but also on a social/personal level (team spirit etc.).
Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
1–10 of 93 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#2Hmm, how do you integrate local developers? Everyone is unique. Bob may not be too excited about the Sweet Sixteen beer fest that Jane and Jim are so pumped over. I'd say developers are most integrated when they have important tasks or areas of responsibility that they handle well, and everyone acknowledges their competency. In other words, they are a solid contributor. So have them work on something important, that's within or near their capabilities. Or if they're more junior, give them tasks that require them to ask questions of more senior, local developers. Remote developers have to be driven and independent, hopefully the kind of people that read the docs and code before asking too many questions.
Then you just have to worry about communication. But the onus of communication is on the remote worker, IMO. The most successful remote people I've worked with were all excellent at written communication. You may think that having extra meetings and video chats are a way to integrate the team, but it could be better to let remote workers leverage the quietness of their remote setting in order to knock out code that requires focus.
That said, chat is huge! But it's like texts, in that it's socially acceptable to answer anywhere from immediately, to an hour later.
For team building, I find it's good to fly everyone in a couple times per year, for product planning and social time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#3In 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 impact was everyone else on the team started to work from home on occasion. This made communication happen in a remote-first manner so it was level playing field for all members. I would suggest reading the book, Remote, for more ideas of how to make it work.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#4I'm one of a few remote developers on a team of 15.
Daily standups, dialed in on planning meetings and the odd visit for project kick off meetings all help to make me feel a little more integrated into the team. In saying that, I'll never be as integrated as the people that are in the office everyday, but I can live with that for the flexibility remote working gives me.
I should also note that I don't work from home, but rent a desk in a coworking space.
I truly think that this is the future of the work environment. People go to an office to work, but one that is local to them, rather than relocate.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#5Hmm, how do you integrate local developers? Everyone is unique. Bob may not be too excited about the Sweet Sixteen beer fest that Jane and Jim are so pumped over. I'd say developers are most integrated when they have important tasks or areas of responsibility that they handle well, and everyone acknowledges their competency. In other words, they are a solid contributor. So have them work on something important, that'…
> Then you just have to worry about communication. But the onus of communication is on the remote worker, IMO.
As a remote worker, I'm glad that you brought this up. I think that the communication must be good on both sides. That being said, I think that remote workers have already much better communication skills than "local" workers. It should be the duty of the local team to pass on the information about what they do. I faced the situation when the whole "local" team went to a meeting not saying a single word. It was very disappointing for two reasons: I didn't feel like a part of the team and I didn't know what happened. We slowly developed good communication practices.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#6I'm one of a few remote developers on a team of 15. Daily standups, dialed in on planning meetings and the odd visit for project kick off meetings all help to make me feel a little more integrated into the team. In saying that, I'll never be as integrated as the people that are in the office everyday, but I can live with that for the flexibility remote working gives me. I should also note that I don't work from home,…
I like you're thought about the future of the work environment. Can you tell me, from your experience, how easy was for your company to accept for you to work remotely? I work for a startup in the UK, with a very small team, and can't find an easy way to apply for that.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#7With difficulty:
1) Use as many visual techniques as possible e.g. Screen sharing and drawing pictures and sketching examples of what you're talking about.
2) open chat channels all day
3) ability to build rapport e.g. During standup calls look at what the weather is like in their country or share something about what's happening in your area at the weekend. Ice breakers if you will
4) if possible get them to visit you so they understand the culture in your office and understand the people. the most success we've had is when people visit the local team soon after joining
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#8Hmm, how do you integrate local developers? Everyone is unique. Bob may not be too excited about the Sweet Sixteen beer fest that Jane and Jim are so pumped over. I'd say developers are most integrated when they have important tasks or areas of responsibility that they handle well, and everyone acknowledges their competency. In other words, they are a solid contributor. So have them work on something important, that'…
> But the onus of communication is on the remote worker, IMO.
I may be misunderstanding you, but, if I'm not, I mostly disagree with this. Remote workers need to communicate well, but if all 12 local developers are in a shared office/working environment, then it's really easy to exclude the remote devs. If your remote devs are treated as second-class citizens (intentionally or otherwise), they'll never be integrated in your team. Lots of things you get "for free" with local teammates (as far as communication, camaraderie, etc.) you have to be more deliberate about with remote ones.
Part of the benefit of being remote is the ability to be even more self-driven than you are when you're in an office. That shouldn't come at the cost of being left out of the loop and/or not being included in discussions that you could contribute to.
This may not work for everyone, but the way we do things where I work is we use remote-focused communication (chat, video conferencing, Wikis, etc.) as our primary communication. We try to limit any in-office conversation to the relatively trivial or the extremely time-sensitive. However, the way our company is distributed, most of our team leads, internal stakeholders, etc. aren't local, which helps "enforce" that mindset.
As far as specific tech solutions here's what we use:
HipChat Zoom (video conferencing) GitHub Confluence + Jira Jell (distributed/asynchronous standups)
At the end of the day, the tools make remote working possible, but the mindset we approach remote working with is what makes it viable.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#9Hmm, how do you integrate local developers? Everyone is unique. Bob may not be too excited about the Sweet Sixteen beer fest that Jane and Jim are so pumped over. I'd say developers are most integrated when they have important tasks or areas of responsibility that they handle well, and everyone acknowledges their competency. In other words, they are a solid contributor. So have them work on something important, that'…
> Then you just have to worry about communication. But the onus of communication is on the remote worker, IMO. As a remote worker, I'm glad that you brought this up. I think that the communication must be good on both sides. That being said, I think that remote workers have already much better communication skills than "local" workers. It should be the duty of the local team to pass on the information about what they…
Yeah, that's a good point. If you don't know what's going on at the office, you may waste a bunch of time doing something that's been done, or is not needed. My point was to focus on remote work integrating in the context of writing code, and let it evolve.
Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?
#10Hmm, how do you integrate local developers? Everyone is unique. Bob may not be too excited about the Sweet Sixteen beer fest that Jane and Jim are so pumped over. I'd say developers are most integrated when they have important tasks or areas of responsibility that they handle well, and everyone acknowledges their competency. In other words, they are a solid contributor. So have them work on something important, that'…
> But the onus of communication is on the remote worker, IMO. I may be misunderstanding you, but, if I'm not, I mostly disagree with this. Remote workers need to communicate well, but if all 12 local developers are in a shared office/working environment, then it's really easy to exclude the remote devs. If your remote devs are treated as second-class citizens (intentionally or otherwise), they'll never be integrated…
Yeah, I agree. Everyone should be on chat when you have remote workers (in a similar time zone). Important communication should happen or be tracked in email, slack, code review comments, issue/bug discussions, etc.