Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Managing Remote Teams

klinger.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 48 posts

Re: Managing Remote Teams

#2

Post by dhh2106 »

Nice article op. I work in a remote-first org and completey agree that org structure is crucial.

A couple additional thoughts: people assume remote work expands your talent pool to everyone. I don't believe it does. You're limited by time zones and by autonomy. Not everyone performs at a high level in a remote context. You need people who are very organized, disciplined and self-starters. Additionally, it can be very hard to unplug in a remote first context so you need a culture that prioeitizes time offline (I.e out of the office)

Re: Managing Remote Teams

#5

Post by ken »

> In contrast, if you are 5 people co-located you just stand up and say: “everyone over there - we talk now”.

I much prefer working on software teams with other people in the same office, and yet this is one of the things I hate about it. Just because I'm physically near you doesn't mean there's zero cost to interruptions.

Working remotely is like memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking. Maybe in a perfect world, it wouldn't be needed, as there's a slight performance hit from requiring these abstractions, and in some cases it can be awkward to have to deal with the communication paths this requires, but the benefit from requiring everyone to be honest far outweighs the performance cost. In practice, not every component of the system is always perfect. Email is my syscall interface, and distance is my MMU. Open floor plan offices make as much sense to me as running all your programs in the same memory space.

Remote work works for software because it enforces desirable management styles -- that I can be sure my process won't be pre-empted in 5 minutes because someone brought donuts.

Re: Managing Remote Teams

#7

Post by codemac »

ken wrote: post #5

> In contrast, if you are 5 people co-located you just stand up and say: “everyone over there - we talk now”. I much prefer working on software teams with other people in the same office, and yet this is one of the things I hate about it. Just because I'm physically near you doesn't mean there's zero cost to interruptions. Working remotely is like memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking. Maybe in a perfect wor…

Have you worked on this small of a team before?

When the team is actually small (not a small part of some mondo corp), you get a lot of great team dynamics, and it's very easy to know that 'ken doesn't like being interrupted.

Working with a small team in the context of an open office w/100 people where 10-20% of the team is actually remote is what I've found to be the most unique intersection of terribleness.

Re: Managing Remote Teams

#8

Post by azundo »

andreasklinger wrote: post #4

author here thanks for posting the article on HN - i am a daily (more or less) lurker and a huge fan :) let me know if any parts in the article aren't clear or major points are missing - happy to extend or answer here

Really appreciate the emphasis on requiring 5x the process when working as a remote team. Prior the team I now lead I've only worked on co-located teams and it has certainly required some resetting of expectations on my end. Even though I've got a very talented small team I'm learning that we do need a level of process and protocol that feels much more "big-company" in order to work efficiently. Would love any more insights on practical elements you've added in terms of process that have worked well.
Post reply on HN