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Remote Only

remoteonly.org

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Re: Remote Only

#261

Post by everythingswan »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #252
newscracker wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that writing well is important, but I would characterize this as beyond writing alone. Assuming that "remote work" isn't confined only to teams in time zones where working hours don't overlap, it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference. "Talking" directly is more important, and many a times yields quicker results than exchanging long emails or documents, whether it's with text (chat) or voice…

> it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference "Ok, we're all here. Wait, where's Mike?" "I think he was making coffee. Let's wait for him." "Hey, is Zhang saying something?" "Zhang, say something." "..." "I think your microphone is broken." "Can you disconnect and reconnect?" "Hey, he's typing something. I... will... reboot. Ok, let's wait for him to reboot." "Hey, Mike's back. Someone tell him we're…

I worked with a team remotely for 3 years, solely relying on Google Hangouts for video and an occasional Zoom meeting. The video/mic/hardware problems are _incredibly_ rare.

Being late or grabbing coffee instead of starting a meeting are culture problems at a company, not problems with the medium.

Re: Remote Only

#262

Post by collyw »

nvarsj wrote: post #207

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approac…

> If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable.

I had a pretty poor team leader a few years ago with a bums in seat type job. He would never write anything down and teh result was quite frustrating. The spec used to change frequenty and he would come and verbally tell me it. then he would change it again, then again. A week or two later when I actually got around to implementing teh said feature I would ask him what he wanted done,

"I thought we talked about that." "Yes we did but you changed your mind 4 times and I can't remember what the conclusion was."

I used to regularly ask him to put things in writing, but he was usually to lazy to deliver on that.

So I don't think these problems are unique to remote teams.

Re: Remote Only

#263

Post by drdaeman »

jon-wood wrote: post #258
pavel_lishin wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference "Ok, we're all here. Wait, where's Mike?" "I think he was making coffee. Let's wait for him." "Hey, is Zhang saying something?" "Zhang, say something." "..." "I think your microphone is broken." "Can you disconnect and reconnect?" "Hey, he's typing something. I... will... reboot. Ok, let's wait for him to reboot." "Hey, Mike's back. Someone tell him we're…

If you're working in a largely co-located company, where video conferences are an uncommon occurrence then this probably fits. In the context of this conversation around remote only companies though, everyone is going to be set up to be able to properly participate in a video call - that means making sure everyone has a decent internet connection, microphone, and camera at home. When people aren't at home tools like…

> In the context of this conversation around remote only companies though

I've worked mostly remote for many years and please trust me - it's almost exactly the same, with every weekly meeting starting with "is everyone here", "do you hear me?" etc etc.

This is especially when working from home - typical residential connections are having less nicer SLA and may get flaky from time to time. And someone may leave their phone near mic cable. Or someone's machine may need rebooting. Or conferencing service may be experiencing problems.

Glad if it's not like this for some, but I believe it's not exactly uncommon.

Re: Remote Only

#264

Post by nikhildaga »

"People don't have to say when they are working"

We are a remote only company and don't agree with this at all. People should have flexible working hours but others must know when they are working. It removes confusion and sets clear expectations.

Re: Remote Only

#265

Post by collyw »

AYBABTME wrote: post #231
nvarsj wrote: post #207

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approac…

People say that, yet in my experience it's not actually true. We just need to communicate enough to coordinate. I'm not a great communicator, I don't think most people at my work are great communicators, yet we work just fine as a remote company. I feel people exaggerate this belief. Regular chatter in public chat channels seems sufficient. What really seems to matter is work ethics.

I don't work remotely as such, but usually with distributed teams. Personally I find skype chats or similar the best way. Writing emails is quite a long winded way to get to where you want and takes me a while. Chats are more two way so you can judge where the other person is with understanding the problem, and has the benefit of being written down for future reference.

Re: Remote Only

#266

Post by narag »

SigmundA wrote: post #216

Doesn't seem to be much discussion about the environmental impact of remote work. Lately I have been feeling how ridiculous it is for me to drive everyday to a office and sit at a computer then drive home. So inefficient from an energy usage perspective. I see so many jobs that could easily be remote if people could deal with the issues outlined here. Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job th…

Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job that could be remote was.

I was wondering how much work cannot be remoted and it seems a lot. Remote work is a privilege.

Re: Remote Only

#267

Post by yosito »

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.

Having worked on a team that was responsible for uptime of some high traffic web apps, there's a difference between when you're working and when you're on call. We had an on call schedule for emergencies and down time, but we rarely had actual emergencies to respond to. The rest of our work was done in two week sprints. No one cared when we did the work, as long as we stayed on track with those two week sprints and got everything done most of the time.

Re: Remote Only

#268

Post by pavel_lishin »

everythingswan wrote: post #261
pavel_lishin wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference "Ok, we're all here. Wait, where's Mike?" "I think he was making coffee. Let's wait for him." "Hey, is Zhang saying something?" "Zhang, say something." "..." "I think your microphone is broken." "Can you disconnect and reconnect?" "Hey, he's typing something. I... will... reboot. Ok, let's wait for him to reboot." "Hey, Mike's back. Someone tell him we're…

I worked with a team remotely for 3 years, solely relying on Google Hangouts for video and an occasional Zoom meeting. The video/mic/hardware problems are _incredibly_ rare. Being late or grabbing coffee instead of starting a meeting are culture problems at a company, not problems with the medium.

> The video/mic/hardware problems are _incredibly_ rare.

You've had better luck than I have. Our New York team is still dealing with the problem of the Boston office being virtually inaudible, while Dublin sounds like they're speaking through a megaphone directly into my ear.

That is, assuming we didn't lose a room, or the Hangouts equipment isn't broken - then Boston uses our manager's laptop, which actually sometimes has better sound quality.

Re: Remote Only

#269

Post by yosito »

speleding wrote: post #210
aspaceman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. And I think this is why many employers are also highly hesitant about remote work (at times). They don't necessarily want to give their employees that much power, but they lack the courage to say that directly. And instead you hear the criticism that it's less productive.

An an employer who allows people to work remotely. My experience has been that some employees cannot handle the responsibility and their output drops a lot if they're not behind their desk. Others are fine / better. (Because I found it hard to tell some people they're not allowed to work remotely, while others can, I ended up replacing the ones who performed poorly when working remote.) My point is that you cannot re…

If you give people more explicit feedback about their performance and hold them accountable only for their performance regardless of where they get the work done, the problem disappears. I get the sense that you're holding yourself responsible for the performance of your employees, but for remote work to be successful, you need to hold the employees responsible. If you find that some employees aren't responsible enough to handle that, don't you want more responsible employees anyway?

Re: Remote Only

#270

Post by SigmundA »

narag wrote: post #266
SigmundA wrote: post #216

Doesn't seem to be much discussion about the environmental impact of remote work. Lately I have been feeling how ridiculous it is for me to drive everyday to a office and sit at a computer then drive home. So inefficient from an energy usage perspective. I see so many jobs that could easily be remote if people could deal with the issues outlined here. Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job th…

Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job that could be remote was. I was wondering how much work cannot be remoted and it seems a lot. Remote work is a privilege.

It seems to me nearly all white collar office/desk jobs could be remote as they basically involve sitting at a desk with a computer and phone. I believe more than half of all jobs in the US are considered white collar.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic about what could be done remote, but modern cities seem to be basically a bunch of tall buildings with offices that have a desk and computer to sit at.

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