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Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

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Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#201

Post by lkozloff »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #188
rickspencer3 wrote: post #170

Just my opinion, but based on running remote and semi-remote teams since 2008 ... fully or mostly remote engineering teams are a competitive advantage, so, by definition, organizations that choose not to adapt to this reality will have a hard time competing. Organizations can have a personal preference for co-located work, but, I think the marketplace will select those organizations out. I think this will unfold over…

I think if things flip and remote becomes the primary, and co-location becomes rare we'll also see some companies that are able to use co-location as a competitive advantage. But I agree that remote (and the practices it encourages) are currently a competitive advantage.

I don't think you're wrong here. Remote itself does unlock advantages that aren't accessible to colocated companies (e.g. hiring anywhere), but one of the primary things that remote-practices unlock are surrounding communication.

Organizations approaching remote have a helpful speedbump that encourages them to take an intentional look at the way they disseminate information. Being fully remote is an accountability structure that helps ensure that everyone is following those practices.

There's nothing that would prevent a well-run colocated company from capturing those particular advantages, but such a company would probably slowly drift remote as companies like Buffer (and GitLab!) have as they grow and look for new talent.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#202

Post by bndw »

frant-hartm wrote: post #186
r0rtega wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is tools like https://miro.com/

That might be good for creatives like designers, but it's horrible for software devs. Plain confluence page is better than that.

SWE here-- we use miro heavily at the remote-first company I work at. I barely use my whiteboard these days.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#203

Post by etxm »

rdsubhas wrote: post #100

How do people whiteboard remotely? This is a big problem for many development teams. Sometimes you just want to open a blank whiteboard and scribble some boxes and brainstorm or troubleshoot some things. The whiteboard is an inseparable part of nearly every meeting. And no, remote "canvas" whiteboards don't work. They end up looking like this: https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2015/3-3/jLndYAfNf... . Is there…

Miro and Jamboard are good.

You need a stylus so it doesn’t look like trash.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#204

Post by esseti »

philshem wrote: post #52
esseti wrote: post #20

Is there a way to generate an ebook for kindle? I would love to read it all

I use the "push to kindle" browser extension for online content, which seems to work fine for this page: https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2... The content is sent to the Kindle via the email service: https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email Depending on your Kindle settings, you may have to set the FROM address in the push-to-kindle page.

the fact is that generates the ebook fro that page only. i would love to have the whole ebook

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#205

Post by ukyrgf »

philshem wrote: post #52
esseti wrote: post #20

Is there a way to generate an ebook for kindle? I would love to read it all

I use the "push to kindle" browser extension for online content, which seems to work fine for this page: https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2... The content is sent to the Kindle via the email service: https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email Depending on your Kindle settings, you may have to set the FROM address in the push-to-kindle page.

If you just go up one category you'd see you don't need a third party tool: https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#206

Post by blktiger »

cyphar wrote: post #109
lampe3 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is why do you need a whiteboard? What problem is the whiteboard solving? Drawing freely with a mouse is something that can be done but also you have tools like draw.io if you need to draw something.

Whiteboards are absolutely indispensable for communicating ideas quickly in a small group of people. It's effectively just a bigger (and easier to erase) version of grabbing a scrap of paper to scribble something down when explaining or describing something to someone else. I'm honestly more surprised that this isn't a universally known concept on HN. Scribbling on scraps of paper is something most people in western…

I think it depends on what you want to accomplish with the whiteboard.

If you just want to capture a list of ideas, google docs will let people collaboratively edit a document or you could just have one person share their screen and capture verbal ideas.

If you want to diagram things, pen and paper + a camera can be just as effective if not more effective than a whiteboard. Often it's better to have the whole team do a sketching exercise and share their results which isn't really effective on a single whiteboard.

More importantly, whiteboards are never going to be effective for remote organizations for the same reason hallway conversations / voice chat aren't effective. It builds knowledge silos as only the people who were there understand the context of the whiteboard even if you photograph it.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#207

Post by ghaff »

bluGill wrote: post #139
DrScientist wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are not based on an objective skills or supply-based metric Then you have to ask why do these clusters exist - with high skills, high salaries and high costs? In my view, that's because there is value created by proximity. It is more productive to have people co-located in the same office. Also if you live in a major university town, or high tech area then that accelerates the exchange of ideas, partic…

The context here is an all-remote company though. As such they have rejected the advantages of proximity. They should be searching out the great but cheap people who want to live elsewhere.

TBH, if I were running an all-remote company, I'm not sure how hard I would try in general to match comp with big Silicon Valley employers. It's actually not clear to me that GitLab really does either. The pay scales for other popular cities are only about 10-20% below SF.

The phenomenon where of Googles/Facebooks/etc. offering mostly very attractive comp in spite of Bay Area CoL is actually relatively recent. Going back a couple of decades I looked at some employment options in Silicon Valley and the comp uplift wouldn't have covered the higher CoL relative to Massachusetts. And the companies freely acknowledged this.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#209

Post by aantix »

rdsubhas wrote: post #100

How do people whiteboard remotely? This is a big problem for many development teams. Sometimes you just want to open a blank whiteboard and scribble some boxes and brainstorm or troubleshoot some things. The whiteboard is an inseparable part of nearly every meeting. And no, remote "canvas" whiteboards don't work. They end up looking like this: https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2015/3-3/jLndYAfNf... . Is there…

The Meeting Owl Pro will be getting whiteboard functionality soon where it will be able to recognize when someone is writing on the whiteboard in the meeting room and will focus on that. https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-owl

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#210

Post by DrScientist »

bluGill wrote: post #139
DrScientist wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are not based on an objective skills or supply-based metric Then you have to ask why do these clusters exist - with high skills, high salaries and high costs? In my view, that's because there is value created by proximity. It is more productive to have people co-located in the same office. Also if you live in a major university town, or high tech area then that accelerates the exchange of ideas, partic…

The context here is an all-remote company though. As such they have rejected the advantages of proximity. They should be searching out the great but cheap people who want to live elsewhere.

But if those great people have any sense they will be working for a company that recognizes and rewards their skills and not simply offers a rate based on the area of the world they are in.

ie great people don't want to be competing on cost for work, unless they can capture some of the value of their greatness.

eg price for work completed rather than by the hour - so if they finish it in the half the time then they keep that value.

On the other hand, people currently average skill or below ( half... ) are more likely to be better off being paid by the hour.

So if you take a pure economic view, and everyone was behaving rationally, then a cost based hourly recruitment model gets you average and below workers.

ie you get what you pay for at equilibrium.

Of course what they are hoping is to exploit not being at equilibrium - countries with relatively high skills and low costs.

However they are going to be competing with companies based in those lower cost countries ( eg India ), who have both the low cost environment advantage and the ability to recruit locally and better select and retain employees.

My experience of working with even locally based companies that compete on price is high staff churn ( as the good ones find better employment ) - which really damages productivity.

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