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Working remotely with 150+ people

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Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#21

Post by k__ »

maxxxxx wrote: post #11
joeguilmette wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe in more detail what really strong leadership looks like in a remote work environment?

For example someone needs to decide how issues are tracked and define a process. That process then has to be followed by everybody. There can't be exceptions. In general I think remote teams benefit a lot from a central person who has final say and had the ego to push things through. Somebody like Linus for Linux. You can't have people like you see in a lot of companies that need endless meetings to make decisions.

This.

I worked in a few remote teams and most had bad leadership.

No process or it changed every month or it wasn't really used by anyone etc.

No single source of truth. Some people write in slack, some in quip, some per mail, some in trello, some in github...

I think people are trying to run remote teams like "local" ones and can't understand that they are different.

"People have to sit in one room to be more productive" - "we need water cooler talk to get the word around" - blablabla

They just want to be "managers" in title, but not do the work...

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#22

Post by Inthenameofmine »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13

After completing my CS master's degree, I was hired by my advisor as a full-time software developer. My job was to coordinate the efforts of the students contributing to his main project, keeping everything moving forward. For that job, I found that keeping things asynch was crucial. But so was keeping things lock-free . My basic premise was to never assume that any grad student would get any particular task done. So…

That sounds very interesting. Could you go into more depth what techniques you exactly used?

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#23

Post by Inthenameofmine »

BurningFrog wrote: post #15
maxxxxx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to be independent but still flexible and not stubborn. In short you need high quality people.

Sounds expensive.

In my experience having any other type of people is generally more expensive because you are wasting higher level people on actively managing lower value tasks to get done.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#24

Post by huherto »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13

After completing my CS master's degree, I was hired by my advisor as a full-time software developer. My job was to coordinate the efforts of the students contributing to his main project, keeping everything moving forward. For that job, I found that keeping things asynch was crucial. But so was keeping things lock-free . My basic premise was to never assume that any grad student would get any particular task done. So…

Generalizing this idea. Interdependences are big source of problems and delays in projects. Many people don't realize it, but you have to actively work on eliminating them. You see it in the form people waiting for other people. Every team should be organized in a way that they can we do their work without waiting for other teams.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#25

Post by codingvelocity »

exDM69 wrote: post #14
codingvelocity wrote: post #8

While i'm not 100% remote (i'm part of a small regional office that has a massive head office in another part of the country, but I can work from home). Something i've found incredibly important is jumping on video chat. There's something about seeing someone in a video while you talk to them that reminds you "hey i'm working with other humans, i should respond with a level of empathy i'd expect in return"

Are these individual or group chats? What kind of solution do you have? I work in a small office of a big company and have a 10 hour timezone difference to my most important co-workers. We chat on the phone but I don't really enjoy it. I'm not sure video chat would help, but I might be willing to try. But it would be slightly inconvenient because of the timezones. We might have 10-20 people from 5-10 locations around…

They are both types of chats. We use a combination of skype for business and zoom (zoom supports external people far better than skype, and actually works better in all regards).

Our time zone difference isn't as extreme as a 10 hour difference. We have offices -1 and +1 from our current time zone so it makes it easier.

A talk I attended earlier this year had a similar setup to yours and what they did was record all meetings and had a culture of always doing the meeting regardless of wether people could join. Then if you missed the time you chimed in later after you watched the video. Decisions were handled in a similar async fashion.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#26

Post by weatherstorme »

k__ wrote: post #20
neebz wrote: post #9

We focussed a lot on async collaboration and unfortunately we get issues of team associations. You just miss out on any water cooler talk and struggle to build relationships with individual employees. This impacted our employee turnover massively even though we gave competitive salaries, flexible work hours and work-from-home.

I have the feeling this water-cooler talk thing is mostly an issue if there is no focus or the management is bad. If everything is fine, I don't talk much "privately" with people at work and some "more social" individuals talk about their private things, when "at the cooler". If there are problems in management, we talk about these "at the cooler".

Water-cooler talk is a way to bond with others. Some of my greatest friends were made at work, and this talk happens when we want a break. Usually getting food, coffee, or going to work out. Water-cooler talk isn't only there to bad mouth management, but to make connections/friends.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#27

Post by vas123 »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13

After completing my CS master's degree, I was hired by my advisor as a full-time software developer. My job was to coordinate the efforts of the students contributing to his main project, keeping everything moving forward. For that job, I found that keeping things asynch was crucial. But so was keeping things lock-free . My basic premise was to never assume that any grad student would get any particular task done. So…

sounds a bit like functional programming and minimizing side effects

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#28

Post by fsavard »

91bananas wrote: post #16
exDM69 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these individual or group chats? What kind of solution do you have? I work in a small office of a big company and have a 10 hour timezone difference to my most important co-workers. We chat on the phone but I don't really enjoy it. I'm not sure video chat would help, but I might be willing to try. But it would be slightly inconvenient because of the timezones. We might have 10-20 people from 5-10 locations around…

If you're ok with the Google machine and spending way too much money on a computer that does basically nothing, there are these from Google[0] which have been great for me and my team. We have a Hangout open all day in the office, displayed on a 60" TV. Anyone that's working remote can jump in whenever and it's somewhat like they're in the office. Audio is my only complaint. Sometimes it is difficult to be heard [0]:…

That's interesting. Are you aware of other teams using video chat like this, ie. all day long?

Do you know what the Google monthly fees are? Is the bandwidth consumed a concern?

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#29

Post by k__ »

weatherstorme wrote: post #26
k__ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the feeling this water-cooler talk thing is mostly an issue if there is no focus or the management is bad. If everything is fine, I don't talk much "privately" with people at work and some "more social" individuals talk about their private things, when "at the cooler". If there are problems in management, we talk about these "at the cooler".

Water-cooler talk is a way to bond with others. Some of my greatest friends were made at work, and this talk happens when we want a break. Usually getting food, coffee, or going to work out. Water-cooler talk isn't only there to bad mouth management, but to make connections/friends.

Hm, okay. Maybe I'm special, in a bad way? I don't know.

I never really got along with people that I was "forced" to be together with. School, University, Work. I mean, people liked to work with me and I'm mostly really polite and inclusive and all. But I didn't find many people I considered interesting at these places.

I got all my friends from meetups, online communities, parties, etc.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#30

Post by nradov »

huherto wrote: post #24
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13

After completing my CS master's degree, I was hired by my advisor as a full-time software developer. My job was to coordinate the efforts of the students contributing to his main project, keeping everything moving forward. For that job, I found that keeping things asynch was crucial. But so was keeping things lock-free . My basic premise was to never assume that any grad student would get any particular task done. So…

Generalizing this idea. Interdependences are big source of problems and delays in projects. Many people don't realize it, but you have to actively work on eliminating them. You see it in the form people waiting for other people. Every team should be organized in a way that they can we do their work without waiting for other teams.

Yes this is one reason why with large software development programs it's generally best to organize around feature teams instead of component teams. In other words, a single agile team should be able to build an entire feature on their own through the full stack instead of having one team for the database, one team for the back end, one team for the service layer, one team for the UI, etc.
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