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Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

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Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#61

Post by tones411 »

peteradio wrote: post #60
gwbas1c wrote: post #27

When I worked for Intel, we all went through training on how to run effective meetings. Why? In a distributed team, meetings can become a severe time sink. A lot of people hold meetings to feel busy and important, and even less people put in effort to keep the conversation focused so that the meeting ends on time. Some basic things are: - Determine an agenda in advance. The agenda must be part of the meeting invite.…

I'd be weeded out as an idiot because Webex is not supported via linux even though it claims to be. I use it fine on my work laptop but if that had been used as a filter I'd have been gone.

I'm curious. Is there anything preventing you from using MacOS or Windows?

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#62

Post by imglorp »

addicted wrote: post #51
edwhitesell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used Skype for Business until a few months ago and had a fair amount of issues. We switched our Office 365 accounts all over to Teams and everything has been working a lot better since.

We are in the same boat. Skype for Business was extremely unreliable. Especially if you wanted to use a mobile device (I also had a weird issue where my Skype for Business would occasionally start thinking it was Lync, and refuse to work). Switching to Teams has made life a whole lot better.

Skype has basically been abandoned. They are pushing hard on Teams as an answer to Slack, eg integrations are coming along. It's no slack yet, but it's getting there.

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#63

Post by codemac »

james_at_plaid wrote: post #42
codemac wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is great, along with keeping a google doc of all previous updates sent in reverse order. Then author the email in the google doc, paste it into gmail and send - along with a link at the bottom to previous notes.

Because I want to encourage comments/questions, I do almost what you describe, except that the email ONLY contains a link to the doc. So in effect, the email is just a notification that the doc has been updated.

I don't do that because then you're just giving the reader more work to do.

Is there an unseen advantage to not including the actual text in the email?

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#64

Post by codemac »

tones411 wrote: post #61
peteradio wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be weeded out as an idiot because Webex is not supported via linux even though it claims to be. I use it fine on my work laptop but if that had been used as a filter I'd have been gone.

I'm curious. Is there anything preventing you from using MacOS or Windows?

I don't use macos or windows anywhere in my entire life. My work laptop, work servers, personal laptop, and phone all run linux.

So, yeah - keep weeding out those idiots?

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#65

Post by codemac »

pkalinowski wrote: post #55

We use [V2MOMs][1] for every team, created by said teams. Then, daily and weekly calls. Whatever we do is more or less connected to goals in V2MOM. It helps from being distracted. [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-v2mom-process-201...

I find that MBO/OKRs drucker-style is lighter weight than V2MOM as the method is left to the person doing the work.

Is there an advantage to documenting and setting methods in stone ahead of time? Curious about your experiences with it.

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#67

Post by ryanthedev »

ryanthedev wrote: post #66

Functions As A Service! It has worked great from the few implementations I have seen.

Well this is more from an architect manager. Trying to manage offshore and internal tech stacks is always difficult. Out source work via FAAS user stories.

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#68

Post by chadwittman »

codemac wrote: post #37
jedberg wrote: post #30

> Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I can share teams news and align my +40 people team? Email. Email is perfect for this. If you use GSuite, groups with the email gateway is ideal for this. You can have threaded discussions with a long history. Stripe was(maybe still is?) really good at this. They made a policy very early on that every email had to CC a mailing list (unless it was truly a personal o…

Email is great, along with keeping a google doc of all previous updates sent in reverse order. Then author the email in the google doc, paste it into gmail and send - along with a link at the bottom to previous notes.

I like this concept, but man that's expecting a lot from an entire organization.

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#69

Post by tootie »

jedberg wrote: post #30

> Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I can share teams news and align my +40 people team? Email. Email is perfect for this. If you use GSuite, groups with the email gateway is ideal for this. You can have threaded discussions with a long history. Stripe was(maybe still is?) really good at this. They made a policy very early on that every email had to CC a mailing list (unless it was truly a personal o…

Interesting. My first job in like 2000 or so used Outlook groups for this. It was basically a private usenet sort of thing. Worked fantastically well.

Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?

#70

Post by davidlinc1 »

codemac wrote: post #64
tones411 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Is there anything preventing you from using MacOS or Windows?

I don't use macos or windows anywhere in my entire life. My work laptop, work servers, personal laptop, and phone all run linux. So, yeah - keep weeding out those idiots?

I obviously don't think Linux users are idiots to be weeded out, but not knowing how to use Windows or MacOS in a pinch might be problematic for you at some point.

Professionally, I might recommend staying with Linux as your daily driver, but also branching out just to say you know the key differences between the OSes and how to be productive within them. This could help to prevent a situation where your dependence on Linux becomes a liability or roadblock in your career ("I prefer Linux" vs having to say "I can only use Linux").

From a development standpoint, Windows has been doing some cool stuff too - Windows Server Core for example. All my servers are of course running Linux, but my work desktop is running Windows, which I happen to prefer for productivity. Many of my SWE colleagues develop on Mac laptops, and leading UI design tools like Sketch only work on MacOS, so it looks like we're not getting any closer to a single-OS landscape in our industry.

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