GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down • Hacker News Board

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#301

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Feb 10, 2017, 11:03 PM UTC

kartickv wrote: post #255

scruple wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I believe you must be. I'm referring to where the OP said that as a remote employee I feel out of the loop on a lot of things. So, I tell my manager that I'm missing important information about the projects I'm working on because people have these infrequent, but important, impromptu meetings and those details don't exist outside of those spoken words and their heads and his response is to tell me to come to the…

You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll mis…

> You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around.

No, he was asking that already when he asked if he could work remotely. And the company said yes.

> Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll miss out important information, which will be to your detriment, not theirs.

Then they shouldn't have agreed to let him work remotely. Majority or minority doesn't matter after that decision has already been made.

Maybe they should revisit that agreement if apparently they can't make remote workers fit in the team.

"No, we believe we can't make it fit with the way our teams are currently communicating" (and do not want to change that) is a perfectly legit answer to the question if remote work is an option.

However, once the decision is made, of course effort is required from all sides.

Otherwise, why even bother asking about it.

It's like applying for a job on the condition that you can't work Wednesdays because of allergies. The boss is perfectly fine with this, you can work the other 3.5 days, you're hired. And then it turns out the most important crucial meeting of the week, of which no minutes are kept, is on Wednesday. Now this is your problem, somehow. Who messed up here?

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#302

Post by budman1 » Fri, Feb 10, 2017, 11:44 PM UTC

mi100hael wrote: post #116

mschuster91 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, all Atlassian products have terrible UI. JIRA is just as bad. The individual UIs are not that bad. The problem is that people tend to use not only e.g. JIRA, but also Confluence, or more. And then the (massive) differences between their products in UX appear. As a sysadmin, there's one thing that really annoys me: all that Atlassian stuff is written in Java (which means: on every problem one has to dig th…

> The individual UIs are not that bad. I've still gotta disagree. Jira's UI is horribly inconsistent and haphazard. Some actions are buttons, some are links, some are hidden until you mouse over, everything feels like it was just tacked on wherever there was (or really wasn't) free space. It's probably the worst UI in a modern, commercial web application that I've encountered.

but it's agile, so it has to be good.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#303

Post by budman1 » Fri, Feb 10, 2017, 11:51 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #152

ernstvn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely not our intent to pay below market in any location. If our calculator shows a large negative adjustment from your current compensation, please send me an email (ernst@gitlab.com) so I can review the data. We don't promise to make overnight changes to the calculator, since changes need to be robust and simple (i.e. no cherry picking city by city numbers), but we do gather data and make edits as we lear…

No one makes a salary calculator that robust without intent. I think paying twice as much, and cutting your work force in half would do you a greater service, than playing around with these cost of living calculators.

And be net cheaper because of 1/2 the benefit / supervision load.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#304

Post by kartickv » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 3:04 AM UTC

BlackFingolfin wrote: post #259

kartickv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll mis…

I think you still missed the point: If he is there every now and then, then he still has missed all the water cooler discussions that happened while he was not there. It's not as if they will see him and say "ah, right, now that I see you, we discussed this and this last week when you are not here.". The only way to fix this is with some concious effort to reproduce the results of water cooler discussions explictly -…

It's not all or nothing. If he shows up every once in a while, he's better connected than if he never showed up. People tend to forget people who they don't see.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#305

Post by kartickv » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 3:06 AM UTC

Illotus wrote: post #298

kartickv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll mis…

Usually the modifying of behaviour in these cases just means writing down stuff more, which is usually beneficial to everyone. On another note, having remote employees without supporting that type of working company wide is just silly squandering of resources. Sadly that is fairly common anyways.

I agree that writing down stuff more is usually beneficial to everyone, but at times, it has felt like rehashing things that everyone who was present in person already knows, just for the benefit of remote people. That's a cost at times.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#306

Post by kartickv » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #301

kartickv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll mis…

> You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. No, he was asking that already when he asked if he could work remotely. And the company said yes. > Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for y…

This all seems to boil down to unstated expectations from both sides, which is a no-win situation. My last boss's attitude to people who wanted to work remotely was "You can do whatever you want as long as your work doesn't suffer or you don't end up disconnected", making it explicit than the onus is on the remote worker to fit in to the team.

scruple's boss should have told him that right at the interview stage, before a job offer is made. Maybe say that he expects scruple to turn up in the office for a few days every month. Or whenever a major decision needs to be made and scruple is out of the loop. Or have regular one-on-one meetings over video-conference with everyone in the team to remain connected, making up for his physical absence.

Whatever the details are, scruple's boss should have told me he'll need to make an extra effort to make up for his remote work, and both sides can then decide whether to go ahead with the job.

In the absence of that, both sides end up holding the other responsible for the problems, which is a no-win situation.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#307

Post by kartickv » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 3:17 AM UTC

scruple wrote: post #287

kartickv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll mis…

I'm not for one second suggesting they don't talk to each other and have impromptu meetings. That is absolutely ridiculous. I'm just asking that important details from those discussions find their way to the rest of the team members. I don't think that's asking a lot. And, going to the office, those conversations will only happen to include me if they happen (they're impromptu, somewhat random) and when I'm there for…

To be clear, I didn't say that you shouldn't care, or that you shouldn't ask people to keep you in the loop.

Three other people have responded to my last post. Please see those responses, since they address your points.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#308

Post by scruple » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 5:23 AM UTC

kartickv wrote: post #306

tripzilch wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. No, he was asking that already when he asked if he could work remotely. And the company said yes. > Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for y…

This all seems to boil down to unstated expectations from both sides, which is a no-win situation. My last boss's attitude to people who wanted to work remotely was "You can do whatever you want as long as your work doesn't suffer or you don't end up disconnected", making it explicit than the onus is on the remote worker to fit in to the team. scruple's boss should have told him that right at the interview stage, bef…

> scruple's boss should have told him that right at the interview stage, before a job offer is made.

Well, this is awkward. I don't think you even read my original post. I literally said that I transitioned from on-site to part-time remote to full-time remote. I've been with this company for many years, it's gone exceptionally well until very recently.

> Maybe say that he expects scruple to turn up in the office for a few days every month.

We've had the working agreement ever since I went full-time remote, back when I was on a different team, that I am unequivocally full-time remote with no obligations to turn up in the office. *editing this to add: If that needs to change because of new team dynamics, that's fine, but it's going to be awfully hard on my colleague in Mexico.

> Or whenever a major decision needs to be made and scruple is out of the loop.

Major decisions should NEVER be made in isolation or with team members who aren't even sure what is being tabled. Why do we need to play "catch up the other 3 team members" when we're having a discussion about a major decision? Oh, because another team member keeps having side conversations with product people or customers and not relaying the information back to the rest of their team? Hmm, sounds like a personnel problem to me -- and not with the "out of the loop" team members, either.

> Or have regular one-on-one meetings over video-conference with everyone in the team to remain connected, making up for his physical absence.

Myself, my other full-time remote colleague, and my other 2 team members who are on-site meet every single working day. We scrum, we go our agile rituals, we pair remotely, etc... We meet with our product people over video conference twice a week. We meet with our managers infrequently but I personally talk to my manager over the phone at least once a week.

> Whatever the details are, scruple's boss should have told me he'll need to make an extra effort to make up for his remote work, and both sides can then decide whether to go ahead with the job.

You're totally off base here.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#309

Post by zenlikethat » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 5:55 AM UTC

dvcrn wrote: post #218

bryanh wrote: post #58

160 employees remote is impressive and commendable. Zapier is fully remote as well (but half the size in employee count). I'd say "write everything down" is a great shortcut to the sorts of practices you need to cultivate. We've also noticed that over-communicating is critical but hard - it is surprising the things that are "yeah yeah, we know" to some but are "oh we're doing that?" to others. This is only natural -…

The problem with remote, at least for me, is the visa. Being remote-only is nice for traveling around but the sad reality is that you will always be a non-citizen no matter where you go. Even if you really like a place, you will be working from there mostly illegally and can never fully integrate into local things that require bank accounts, IDs and friends. That was maybe the thing I disliked the most when I went co…

Working remotely doesn't mean that you have to travel around. You can work remotely from one main location in your own home.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#310

Post by kartickv » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 5:59 AM UTC

scruple wrote: post #308

kartickv wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all seems to boil down to unstated expectations from both sides, which is a no-win situation. My last boss's attitude to people who wanted to work remotely was "You can do whatever you want as long as your work doesn't suffer or you don't end up disconnected", making it explicit than the onus is on the remote worker to fit in to the team. scruple's boss should have told him that right at the interview stage, bef…

> scruple's boss should have told him that right at the interview stage, before a job offer is made. Well, this is awkward. I don't think you even read my original post. I literally said that I transitioned from on-site to part-time remote to full-time remote. I've been with this company for many years, it's gone exceptionally well until very recently. > Maybe say that he expects scruple to turn up in the office for…

> I literally said that I transitioned

Sorry for getting that detail wrong. I re-read your original post to make sure I didn't miss anything else.

Since you now say that you agreed ahead of time that you had no obligation to turn up in the office (that information wasn't there in the original post), I now agree with you that your manager was wrong. (This is something I've seen happen over and over again with managers — they say yes without thinking things through.)

If people are deliberately withholding information from you, as you said you suspected in your original post, that's obviously a bad thing.

Regarding my suggestion to have regular meetings, you're already doing it, so that's good.