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Remote Only

remoteonly.org

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Re: Remote Only

#91

Post by bmelton »

warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

If Kevin broke the site, it's a process problem. Kevin didn't break the site, he introduced code that might have broken the site, and the lack of tests to have detected the it broke the site. Jane then peer reviewed the code that might have broken the site and approved it. Bob then failed to notice that the site was broken during QA. The QA environment was apparently configured differently enough by Taylor that the site could appear working in dev and QA, and pass unit and functional tests without exploding until it hit production.

The team broke the site.

Re: Remote Only

#92

Post by rob_b »

keithnz wrote: post #37

I'd be interested to know some long term remote workers experiences with regards to interruptions. It's one of the things that I believe would be better. In many places I've worked I tend to become a "go to" person which results in many many interruptions, it doesn't make too much difference how much you write down, it's usually always quicker to just ask someone who you know knows the answer to whatever question you…

My approach has been to encourage email communication and then I just periodically check my email. This allows me the ability to get in the zone without constant distractions, while still providing the ability to assist when needed. If it’s an absolute emergency then I can be reached via mobile. There are also times though that I will sign into our internal instant messaging system or Slack and will respond there as well. My current tasks tend to dictate how “available” I am.

Re: Remote Only

#93

Post by k__ »

warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

That's why I don't do operations. Remote is only fun if you aren't "on-call"

Re: Remote Only

#94

Post by bmelton »

eckza wrote: post #69
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corollary here is that if nobody knows when you're working, people will always expect you to work. That whole work/life balance thing depends on having clearly denoted "working time" and "not working time".

Full-time remote worker. We solve work-life and burnout problems at my organization by having set hours and hard stops at the end of the day. What you lose in having a fairly rigid schedule, you more than gain back by not having to carry around that “always on” feeling.

Also full-time remote worker. We solve the problem by letting people know when you will and won't be available. It can be super informal (e.g. "Hey guys, gonna be out of pocket this afternoon") or entered into a shared calendar.

I agree with you (and OP) that there has to be some visibility into what work is going to be done when, and there are lots of ways to solve it, that said, I'm sympathetic to the notion that "I don't care how or when you work, as long as the work gets done." I'm a big fan of measuring developers more by the velocity of their Jira queues and commit history than how often they're available to be bothered with non-coding stuff.

Re: Remote Only

#95

Post by gitgud »

bmelton wrote: post #91
warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

If Kevin broke the site, it's a process problem. Kevin didn't break the site, he introduced code that might have broken the site, and the lack of tests to have detected the it broke the site. Jane then peer reviewed the code that might have broken the site and approved it. Bob then failed to notice that the site was broken during QA. The QA environment was apparently configured differently enough by Taylor that the s…

Additionally, if Jim had configured the backups properly the site could be reverted to a stable build. A lot of measures could prevent these situations.

Re: Remote Only

#96

Post by rob_b »

eanzenberg wrote: post #26

Its hard to have remote junior developers in my experience. Certain things are much easier explained in person than over conferencing software.

I work with junior developers that are fully remote without any issues. We communicate via IM, Slack, email, and Skype as needed. Not sure how to do something, let’s have a quick screen share and we’ll work through it. Finished with your assigned feature, submit a pull request and I’ll leave comments accordingly or we’ll review it via a screen share. It’s not impossible to do but may require some to change their collaboration approach.

Re: Remote Only

#97

Post by itake »

iandanforth wrote: post #88
warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

I think this is a valid and important point, especially as this is aimed at #1 on their list of 'practical tips.' The item in question isn't even really a practical tip. You should submit an issue that suggests a real practical tip for how people can be both flexible with their time and available in urgent situations.

I have been working remotely for about 2 years and the last 5 months completely out of cycle with the rest of the company.

This comment hits the nail on the head [0]. Everyone's butt is on the line. It should never be one person's fault that the website was taken down. If one person has the power to damage your business and only they can repair the error, then you have a process problem.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17252798

Re: Remote Only

#98

Post by reilly3000 »

k__ wrote: post #93
warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

That's why I don't do operations. Remote is only fun if you aren't "on-call"

Amen. Especially with Slack in your pocket.

Re: Remote Only

#99

Post by toomanybeersies »

Thrymr wrote: post #55
chpmrc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the only place a remote worker can work from is their home. There is nothing more detrimental to a person's psyche. Cafes and coworking spaces are the most obvious and effective solution to this problem. I made countless friends while working remotely and a good 90% of them I met in a coworking space (and the so called "digital nomad" community is made of some really awesome people). Plus you have t…

> This assumes that the only place a remote worker can work from is their home. There is nothing more detrimental to a person's psyche. That is rather hyperbolic. Many remote workers do fine working from home. Others do not. Not all people are the same. Any of us can think of things that are "more detrimental to a person's psyche" for nearly all individuals.

Everybody is different, which is something that I think HNers seem to forget sometimes.

Some people thrive working from home. Some people thrive working with a colocated team in a private office. Some people would thrive on a remote team, but working in a coworking space (I'm in this boat).

Personally, I'd go stir crazy if I worked from home on a regular basis, not just from social isolation, but from working where I live. I try to keep my life compartmentalised; my gym, my work, my home, and the bar I drink at are all different places and I like it that way.

Re: Remote Only

#100

Post by rmgraham »

binora wrote: post #76

what do you look for in a candidate when hiring for a remote position ? I am 3 years experienced dev and cant even get my resume filtered for first round. I do have 3 months of remote Gsoc experience if that counts. But i am curious, is there some particular factor that gives an edge over other candidates ?

One of the benefits listed in the manifesto (and often touted elsewhere) is that you are not limited to a specific region when hiring.

Unfortunately, what this means for candidates is they may have to compete with a LOT more people.

Another challenge you're likely facing is that a lot of companies are only willing to hire senior developers to work remotely because hesitant upper management thinks they will be more trustworthy (completely ignoring the level of trust inherent in having someone write code for them when they themselves can't even verify it).

That negativity aside, here's some advice: As much as there is some backlash around the idea of a GitHub profile being mandatory, one VERY practical use of an open source portfolio of some kind is that almost all open source project work is done remotely using the very same skills required for successful remote employment. This applies even more so to non-programming contributions, in my opinion, which means you don't even need to contribute code to demonstrate these skills.

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