We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams • Hacker News Board

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#71

Post by crispyambulance » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:40 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #58

flukus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't tell how many countless times many emails were exchanged before simply speaking face to face solved the problem. I can't tell you how many times being able to look something up to respond in a more concrete way has solved countless meetings.

I totally agree! I hate being stuck in a meeting and thinking, "If I could hit Google right now, we'd have this answered already." Luckily, this company doesn't have many meetings, so it isn't a big deal.

I sort-of agree that meetings are often a waste of time BUT if you have to google something _during_ the meeting, you haven't prepared sufficiently or the meeting organizer hasn't provided a clear agenda before the meeting.

Meetings can be valuable if people take them seriously (and if there aren't too many).

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#72

Post by agibsonccc » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:46 PM UTC

dasmoth wrote: post #70

agibsonccc wrote: post #62

I've thought a lot about this. I am posting this in an attempt to give an example of what's worked for 1 company, not as a "guide" or "best practices". I post this in an attempt to give people ideas on what may work for them. I operate an engineering team as a seed stage startup across 2 coasts of the US, multiple parts of APAC, and europe. We are around 13 full time with a few part timers. We started as 2 people. Ou…

>>> We do a weekly google hangout across 5 time zones that amounts to being a standup. >>> For scoping engineering work, we tend to have longer projects people are working on, usually a minimum of a week. This leads to less context switching. This sounds like a pretty nice granularity -- glad to hear that it seems to be working out. Most of the trouble I have with standups is the "daily" part... Are there any downsid…

In the midst of this we communicate quite a bit throughout the week on what we call our "dev channel".

We try to keep most communications there so other people see what's happening too.

For business development we have "growth channel" that does the same thing, but for cross functional marketing and sales.

The week long projects do 2 things or us - it gives us the ability to reassess if someone needs help, and it forces people to plan a little bit.

Other than that, async communication throughout the week has helped a lot. That usually replaces the "walk up to desk" thing people do.

The key here is you're not expected to reply right away.

Of note is we do the hangout on Tuesday of the week.

This means you can get your act together on monday and prepare, tuesday we have the 1 meeting and

try to cluster other meetings around that (usually another hour at most) and then the rest of the week is free to get work done.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#73

Post by fitzwatermellow » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:47 PM UTC

I believe the real dichotomy is "async/sync" rather than "remote/local". There are individuals who require constant micro-coordination on every decision and others who get the big picture immediately and can implement details without specific instruction.

My best decision was probably offloading team coordination to a dedicated "community manager". Even an undergrad working part-time and using mobile Slack / GMail can be trained in an afternoon and be 110% effective. The amount of bandwidth it frees up so you can focus on strategy and product is a Godsend ;)

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#74

Post by DrNuke » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:48 PM UTC

I would be very happy to join a remote team as a data analyst / scientist but, whatever reason (skills, fit, pay, age, time zone), I am falling short. For what I see, many still consider employing remotely as a way to assemble a cheap sweatshop, preferably drones.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#75

Post by zaphar » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:55 PM UTC

FuNe wrote: post #14

I'm partially remote working (RW) at an organization that is slowly rolling back its RW culture(1). The motto for this goes like 'teams work better if they are collocated, yada, yada'. The real reason is that managers want to feel in control (plus they want to drive away a lot of people by taking RW away). "Culture" is used as a smoke screen for more sinister incentives. (I can say that with confidence because I can…

I'm a remote worker and love it. That being said it's important to keep in mind that face to face communication and collaboration is unquestionably higher bandwidth.

It's gotten much easier since Video Conference became ubiquitous but there is still no contest when comparing face to face communication to a Video Conference or Conference call. Now I happen to think the benefits of remote working outweigh that loss of bandwidth but I don't think you can make the case for it without acknowledging that loss of bandwidth.

A remote team is good at maximizing those benefits while minimizing the costs. But some people are just incapable of managing remote teams. I'm dealing with one right now and the pain is real on both sides.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#76

Post by MyNameIsFred » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:57 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #29

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #16

> In remote team, we get to experience the culture at its most naked form. There is no catered lunch or a hip office with table tennis table. Everything artificial is stripped away. I totally disagree with this. The most naked form of communication is (and IMHO always will be) face to face. I can't tell how many countless times many emails were exchanged before simply speaking face to face solved the problem. Working…

Not in every case. It was often an excuse for my last manager to not do anything like write down requirements. "I thought we talked about that." "Yes you changed your mind three times and I can't remember what the final outcome was." Personally I like having things done in writing as you have something solid to refer to afterwards.

Sure, instead he'd just change his mind three times distributed across hundreds of Slack messages, and you'd still have no tracked resolution.

When you have a decision born of a conversation, the only useful thing to do is to write that distilled, focused result on some median other than the discussion itself.

This problem ultimately has little to do with remote vs colocated; The same applies whether the discussion happened in verbal discussion, a meeting, an email chain, messaging, etc.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#77

Post by gotrecruit » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 1:01 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #42

NumberCruncher wrote: post #38

It is somehow ironic that not so long ago we could send ships on a 4 month trip around the word, could manage the construction of amazing buildings or sent armies to fight wars on the end of the word without being able to communicate with the people doing their job/duty. Nowdays we can barely let change the font size of a button on a webpage without having a stand up meeting or a conference call.

I'm pretty sure that, if Queen Izabella could have daily standups with Chris Columbus, she would.

lol thank you! what a ridiculous notion that just because people in the past COULD NOT communicate efficiently, that it was a preferred or better way to do things. any good manager/boss/supervisor/leader/etc will want to be updated regularly, or at least maintain access to information.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#78

Post by dasmoth » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 1:03 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #59

collyw wrote: post #40

"Communicating with co-workers while working remotely is not as simple as going up to their desk and starting a conversation." Probably the main reason I want to get a remote job. Constant disruptions.

A recent high-priority project allowed me to tell people they couldn't bother me for 6 of my 8 hours in the office. It's been awesome for my morale and my productivity both. I love helping others, but being interrupted constantly is incredibly frustrating. It can wait until tomorrow.

Are you able to keep this going once $high_prio_project is over?

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#79

Post by zaphar » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 1:04 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #24

FuNe wrote: post #14

I'm partially remote working (RW) at an organization that is slowly rolling back its RW culture(1). The motto for this goes like 'teams work better if they are collocated, yada, yada'. The real reason is that managers want to feel in control (plus they want to drive away a lot of people by taking RW away). "Culture" is used as a smoke screen for more sinister incentives. (I can say that with confidence because I can…

Yes. There is a pernicious group of candidate employees lurking outside of every organization all of the time, and if you let these people in, this is the kind of output you get. People who've made their careers as "non-technical people managers" have no. freaking. idea. what to do when you put them in a "remote office". They've gotten by with their free donuts twice a week, their wry smiles, their nice suit, their g…

I'm watching this unfold right now at my current RW job. I'm trying to get out before it all comes crashing down.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#80

Post by gotrecruit » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 1:08 PM UTC

agibsonccc wrote: post #67

random42 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your interview process look like for such candidate?

Usually it's a just a quick phone conversation to talk about interest. The technical interview actually happens the second you enter my open source channel and contribute code or show off something cool you built. This demonstrates a few things to me: 1. You know our codebase 2. You can build things we need 3. I've already collaborated with you 4. You're proactive and interested in solving problems we would have for…

interesting - this seems like perhaps a "good enough" solution for the age old problem that many creative-type career often encounter these days where employers don't want to pay to hire someone before knowing if they can work, while employees don't want to work before knowing they'll be paid. your method seems to basically say, we won't hire you unless you've already done work for us, and we expect that you are self-motivated to do that work and not at our behest so you can't blame us if we don't consider your work good enough to hire you. that's actually pretty clever, although i wonder if this is something that can be applied for other companies.