From the developer perspective the most enjoyable remote work I have done, has been when I did larger projects (weeks to month duration) with the primary responsibility (choose stack and libraries) and with the customer concerned with the result, not the onboarding, cultural alignment with company values, day-to-day instructions, scrum etc. The latter is just expendable (micro) management noise.
Building Remote Teams for Startups
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#22Onboarding is much more important in remote work. I actually left my Engineering job at a large YC backed company a month ago to focus on an onboarding/documentation idea that I came up with while seeing smart employees not being able to get up-to-speed. We would just throw them high level confluence docs without any context. They said they read the documentation, but without context they really had no idea what it meant. https://www.gainknowhow.com uses a skill dependency tree kinda like the game Civilization to incrementally get employees up-to-speed.
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#23> However, they probably need a stricter environment to function correctly, more robust control over their work – meaning they thrive when someone is looking over their shoulder. A remote gig is not a good fit for these kinds of people.
There's a lot more of those folks than you might think. We have a fairly "skewed" sample set, with geeks (especially the ones that frequent HN).
A lot of us love to work, and we'll do it; no matter the environment. Naturally, we tend to thrive in environments that reduce interruptions, and remove tangential stressors.
Other types of industries may not have a workforce with the same motivation. Also, personal self-discipline is crucial. That is not necessarily something they teach in college. I attended a vocational school, where that kind of thing was a significant part of the curriculum. It's never been an issue, for me.
As far as managers that need to have people at hand to bully? Unfortunately, they are learning to adapt, and have discovered that they can be just as bad, over Zoom, as in person. Worse, even.
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#24Good article. Having a lot of experience managing remote teams, I wanted to expand on this point: > Try to focus on the employees who thrive in such environments rather than those few bad apples. You can’t let the bad apples define the work experience for everyone, but you do need to identify them and remove them as fast as possible so they don’t poison the well. One thing I didn’t realize at first was that remote wo…
Let me expand on that point: "Don't accidentally throw out good apples with the bad ones because you are looking at the wrong metrics."
What I mean is: Bad apples are real, but don't ever do time-tracking or fast response testing in an effort to identify them. There are some excellent apples who will get your 8h-day deliverables done in 2-4h. Don't ever establish any system to find them. If you have a problem with them, you are the problem.
Kick people based on repeatedly violating the deadline for deliverables.
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#25When I’ve asked friends and coworkers how they like remote work, the answer depends on how comfortable they feel being candid with me. Publicly everyone says they’re more productive being remote. Privately, people admit that their productivity has cratered, being home is very distracting, and the lack of separation between work and home life makes both realms more difficult. I definitely empathize with the answers I’…
Personally I enjoy going to the office most days, even thought I don't have to. And know plenty people that do as well.
What I hope comes out of all these pandemic adjustments, is more diversity in work modalities to choose from instead only one or the other. That remote employers and employees get better working that way and that on-site/hybrid employees put more effort into making themselves more attractive. E.g. instead of having one massive, packed HQ everyone has to commute to, have smaller and more quieter spaces scattered around, having rules on not allowing taking calls on desk, etc..
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, remote just doesn't work for some people. This should be decided on a per-company basis
All but the smallest companies were already remote by having multiple offices. Companies that had problems to grow out of that early phase struggled in the past and will struggle with that in times of remote work. The only thing that remote work changes is to move that problem more to the beginning of a companies lifecycle. This should be seen as a chance and not a problem.
Remote doesn't really refer to the geography, but the asynchronous workflow. In the manner, many of those companies are far from remote.
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, remote just doesn't work for some people. This should be decided on a per-company basis
And being in the office doesn't work well for others. Those people have had (practically) no choice in the matter for all of time. Perhaps it's okay to try a little of the opposite scenario and see how it plays out.
Sure, I am a great advocate of remote work and that's how I work and worked (mostly).
We just need to recognize that it's not for everybody
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#28Good article. Having a lot of experience managing remote teams, I wanted to expand on this point: > Try to focus on the employees who thrive in such environments rather than those few bad apples. You can’t let the bad apples define the work experience for everyone, but you do need to identify them and remove them as fast as possible so they don’t poison the well. One thing I didn’t realize at first was that remote wo…
Let me expand on that point: "Don't accidentally throw out good apples with the bad ones because you are looking at the wrong metrics." What I mean is: Bad apples are real, but don't ever do time-tracking or fast response testing in an effort to identify them. There are some excellent apples who will get your 8h-day deliverables done in 2-4h. Don't ever establish any system to find them. If you have a problem with th…
Work is not all about deadlines. It also requires discipline to be present for meetings (no matter how much you hate them), be available to solve problems (sometimes immediately), collaborate with other team members and many other things. It is called "Team work" for a reason. Good developers can get away with a lot of things for sure especially if they produce code but as someone who runs teams, it is not enough. I would rather work with someone who cares about how their work impacts the overall team vs just them working in silo and happy enough coz they hit their deadlines.
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#29Good article. Having a lot of experience managing remote teams, I wanted to expand on this point: > Try to focus on the employees who thrive in such environments rather than those few bad apples. You can’t let the bad apples define the work experience for everyone, but you do need to identify them and remove them as fast as possible so they don’t poison the well. One thing I didn’t realize at first was that remote wo…
Well said. There also are websites that are openly encouraging working 2 full time remote jobs concurrently/at the same time. I don't want to name those here but wow.
Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups
#30> In my opinion, a decentralized, remote workforce is the future of the digital economy. This is based on the wonky assumption that this: > There will always be people who abuse the system, abuse your trust and try to game the mechanics for their benefit. […] A remote gig is not a good fit for these kinds of people. are just some extreme outliers. However, we were just yesterday having a discussion on HN about „how t…
> Is a remote-first economy perhaps a system fundamentally at odds with human instincts? Seems like office-first, 9 to 5 economy is at odds with human instincts, if you have to physically keep humans from "gaming the system".
In that sense, taxation is against human instincts, if you have to force people to contribute to welfare payments.
And yet we still do it.