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

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

#111

Post by DrNuke »

dexterdog wrote: post #86
DrNuke wrote: post #74

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.

Those are mostly first-timers with remote. If they've tried that they know that the only way for it to save money is to throw a boatload of management at it and in the end it costs the same or more. People who can reliably work remotely are worth attracting because there are many more of them than there are good employees in your local commute range.

Main problem is micromanaging time instead of targets and milestones. No trust, remotely? Fine, just don't fake it.

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

#112

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

cephaslr wrote: post #83

I love this topic. On one hand, many tech giants spent an exorbitant amount of money hiring and bringing their technical talent to one location. Easy examples such as Google and especially Amazon come to mind. On the other hand, any studies on the subject strongly imply anyone farther than 50 feet rarely speaks anyway so you are better off with remote teams as they are setup with better tooling (slack, et tal). https…

I'm all for being remote (been working from home for about 8 years now for 3 different companies). Two scenarios where face-to-face wins:

1. "Onboarding + noob training". Sure, this can be done remotely but it's vastly more effective face-to-face especially when the tech isn't limited to the computer and there are "real life" gadgets involved in getting set up for development.

2. If the team isn't 100% remote it takes extra effort for those in the office to be "inclusive" so that remote folks are 100% up to speed. Just like with any extra effort in an already busy environment this doesn't always happen. Can't really blame them either - if a decision is made on the fly between two busy devs hacking their asses off and they rely on you seeing their PR to derive what they decided on that's just how things go sometimes.

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

#113

Post by resmote »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
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…

> 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). Sorry, but I've got to be the party pooper in this thread. I have worked with teams over the years that indeed DO work better co-located, and who ARE more productive when forced to communicate in an open office…

> who ARE more productive when forced

The key word there is "forced".

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

#114

Post by forgetfullest »

k__ wrote: post #39
Domenic_S wrote: post #17

My team just started a large project; a few of us work remotely and a few are in an office. For the project, we opened a Zoom video channel, and all sit there with video chat running on our second monitors. It's working out great . We very much have the be-able-to-pop-in-for-a-question thing going on like you would in a project war room. I'm thinking of making it a standing thing one day weekly to work this way. Ther…

lol, this sounds even worse than working at the office. I became remote worker to get rid of all that synchronous crap, to work at my own times etc. none of these constant "pop-in-for-a-question thing"s If something is really important call me, otherwise email/chat is enough.

If youtube still had video replies, you could do something useful, with that I guess. But, alas.

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

#115

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

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…

Actually having worked remote for a while now, what I do observe quite a bit is there's way less office politics on the remote teams. One of the reasons is my coworkers "are" their code, emails or talking heads on google hangouts :)

Less face-to-face interaction == less politics.

Emails vs. "face to face" - there's no need to actually be in a physical proximity for that conversation to take place.

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

#116

Post by soundwave106 »

dasmoth wrote: post #44
ljf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard - when that model (leave people to do the right thing) works well - it is amazing. It needs skilled and engaged people. The problem comes when you have people that don't work well under that model, and who need continual check points to ensure they really are doing the right thing, and that you haven't just wasted a bunch of time. Getting these two groups to work together is hard, when sadly, getting great…

Agreed. But there doesn't seem to even be much willingness to try the "autonomous people" model.

There is unfortunately a bias against introversion in many companies, which explains why some don't bother to try. (Recent article: http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21706490-...)

Having said that I agree also that there are also trust issues. Forming trust is a hard thing.

It's a shame, because programming (from at least my perspective) is one discipline, where the quality of work is so much higher when you are "in the zone" and can concentrate on a single task without interruptions.

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

#117

Post by tbrownaw »

chrishynes wrote: post #104
tbrownaw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There mostly isn't any sort of objective measurement of effectiveness (if there was, everyone would use it).

You can't go based on something purely objective like lines of code, but a good code review will tell you if someone is working or slacking.

And when I spend the day planning ahead, or helping other team members research things, or bug hunting, or...?

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

#118

Post by sctb »

MrPatan wrote: post #54

> In remote team, we get to experience the culture at its most naked form. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

We detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12512379. I'm sorry, but these sorts of comments don't belong on HN. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#119

Post by vertex-four »

bad_user wrote: post #94

I work remotely. I'm from Romania and we have a team that's distributed across the country, with some members from other European countries as well. We do have a small office where I live, but it is provided just as a place to come to in case you don't like working from home and I do go to our office almost daily, but most of the team is on the other end of a Gmail/Skype/Slack connection. Today I got tired at 1 PM, g…

That is generally not compatible with the American way of working - especially in the startup scene - where ever second you're not working is considered a second that your competitor companies have over you.

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

#120

Post by robinhowlett »

Does anyone work in a remote team with an always-on video conference?

I really, really prefer being able to shout out a quick question but the friction costs (and fear of interrupting deep thought) about calling someone, sometimes even a Slack message, prevents communication at times.

The times where I've been pairing or on a long call "in the background" have been great I thought. Any downsides for those who do this regularly?

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