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Building Remote Teams for Startups

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#61

Post by lmarcos »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #46
pengwing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is: Some of the worst remote workers are actually the best at appearing always online. They’ll go out of their way to remind everyone that they were “working” at 8PM or on a weekend because they need to compensate for the lack of actual work done. One of the worst remote work offenders I ever dealt with had a routine of doing things every Saturday morning that would ping the team: Lots of Slack “@channel” q…

> Engineers are good at spotting when someone has been lying about effort, but managers without engineering backgrounds can often (but not always) be fooled by charismatic remote workers.

Then hire better managers. Really, if a manager cannot spot remote slackers, then that manager is doing a poor job.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#63

Post by civilized »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #46
pengwing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is: Some of the worst remote workers are actually the best at appearing always online. They’ll go out of their way to remind everyone that they were “working” at 8PM or on a weekend because they need to compensate for the lack of actual work done. One of the worst remote work offenders I ever dealt with had a routine of doing things every Saturday morning that would ping the team: Lots of Slack “@channel” q…

All of these things have in-office parallels that experienced workers have seen plenty of. Why is it that remote workers are especially suspect?

What exactly do people think here? That being able to look over a worker's shoulder at their computer screen a few times a day makes the difference between effective in-office management and remote slackerdom?

If that's all managers do, they can be replaced with spyware that measures how much time the worker is typing in VSCode each week. It'll be easy to game but will STILL work way better than the manager.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#64

Post by goodpoint »

nfriedly wrote: post #14

I've been remote for over 10 years, and this article mostly rings true. The employer has to put extra effort into communication and documentation. But that ends up being good for everyone - even in hybrid companies we're not everyone is remote. I think my current employer, FullStory, gets a lot of this right. Even before they went fully distributed, they were really good at documenting things - from PTO policies to p…

> I do frequent pair programming, it's just over a screen sharing / video call rather than sitting beside the person I'm pairing with

If anything, pair programming with a good headset and good quality audio is better than in person.

100% audio clarity and no external noises.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#65

Post by andrei_says_ »

pengwing wrote: post #24
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Good 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…

As someone who is involved in both engineering and management - in my experience 8h days do not exist.

Are there just isn’t an environment allowing for eight hours of deep work without interruptions, emails, meetings, chats etc.

And even if eight hours of deep work were possible, the cognitive load the programming tends to lead to exhaustion within 4 to 6 hours max.

I don’t expect more from myself or others.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#66

Post by PragmaticPulp »

civilized wrote: post #63
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is: Some of the worst remote workers are actually the best at appearing always online. They’ll go out of their way to remind everyone that they were “working” at 8PM or on a weekend because they need to compensate for the lack of actual work done. One of the worst remote work offenders I ever dealt with had a routine of doing things every Saturday morning that would ping the team: Lots of Slack “@channel” q…

All of these things have in-office parallels that experienced workers have seen plenty of. Why is it that remote workers are especially suspect? What exactly do people think here? That being able to look over a worker's shoulder at their computer screen a few times a day makes the difference between effective in-office management and remote slackerdom? If that's all managers do, they can be replaced with spyware that…

> Why is it that remote workers are especially suspect?

Because it's not difficult to get hired into two remote jobs.

It is, however, impossible to be in two physical offices at the same time.

Being in office is not a free pass to ignore performance management. Obviously if you're not paying attention to deliverables then your in-office employees could be doing nothing as well.

But remote jobs are a magnet for people trying to abuse the system (by riding the coattails of their actually productive coworkers).

> If that's all managers do, they can be replaced with spyware that measures how much time the worker is typing in VSCode each week.

I think you misunderstood my comment. I specifically said that measuring hours active at a keyboard or activity in Slack is the worst way to try to do performance management.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#67

Post by PragmaticPulp »

zerocount wrote: post #55
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! There’s an entire school of thought that management and engineering are so entirely different that managers don’t need to have an engineering background. I personally disagree, but I have a friend who insists that the best engineering managers are those who come from professional management backgrounds (project management, then people management usually) instead of engineering backgrounds.

There's also a school of thought that managers are not necessary. I'm a big fan of it.

I worked at one of these companies, actually.

It was actually a lot of fun and very productive when it was a small team of people who knew and respected each other.

Scaled up to a bigger company, it turned into the nastiest political nightmare I've ever seen.

The "no managers" thing is also an illusion. There's always someone who can fire people or give them raises. Those people become the de facto managers even if they have some different title.

Employees are extremely good at picking up on who they need to impress to get raises and promotions, even if you try to pretend that they aren't managers.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#68

Post by ipaddr »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #66
civilized wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things have in-office parallels that experienced workers have seen plenty of. Why is it that remote workers are especially suspect? What exactly do people think here? That being able to look over a worker's shoulder at their computer screen a few times a day makes the difference between effective in-office management and remote slackerdom? If that's all managers do, they can be replaced with spyware that…

> Why is it that remote workers are especially suspect? Because it's not difficult to get hired into two remote jobs. It is, however, impossible to be in two physical offices at the same time. Being in office is not a free pass to ignore performance management. Obviously if you're not paying attention to deliverables then your in-office employees could be doing nothing as well. But remote jobs are a magnet for people…

The amount of people holding two remote jobs for more than a few months without burning out approaches zero pretty quickly.

In person positions are a magnet for people abusing the system by not being productive. People will feel justified to chit-chat as long as everyone can see them, they will organize meetings or volunteer work hours put on bakeathons. They will meet people in higher positions in these social settings and leverage their relationship for better position often with more success than someone productive.

Productive workers are seen as resources. Non productive social climbers will always leap over the productive.

Non-productive socializers remote or in person will always be holding you back.

The remote double job close to being burned out with no time for socializing is the least of your concerns if they even exist.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#69

Post by ipaddr »

codegeek wrote: post #29
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Good 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.

If you read the posts in that blog the guy is barely holding in to positions for a few weeks. You are better off going for the best paying position rather than trying to manage two poorly paid positions.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#70

Post by ipaddr »

yeldarb wrote: post #12

I think anyone who says remote is strictly better is fooling themselves. There are definitely down-sides. We’ve been doing a lot to try to bring back the benefits of being in-person while maintaining the flexibility of being remote. Wrote about our specific tactics here: https://blog.roboflow.com/remote-not-distant/

"Friday we cap off the week by eating lunch together over Zoom"

How awful. I think you are trying to take the benefits of less social activity inspired remote workplaces and adding in forced. some social interaction. I would like to see this type of activity stopped.

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