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Building Remote Teams for Startups

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#71

Post by sokoloff »

yowlingcat wrote: post #59
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…

Obligatory question here: how are you tuning how you screen for bad apples in your technical interview pre-hire to make sure that over time you have less and less bad apples? Also, what level of scale is your remote eng organization operating at? Having also had a lot of experience managing remote teams (and to be a little bit hyperbolic for the sake of making a point), saying that remote work attracts "bad apples" a…

I think the applicant pool has a higher concentration of any given negative> than the employee pool.

I posit that people with negative factors tend to apply/interview more per job start and probably have shorter average tenures [due to getting fired/managed out or quitting because they’re not getting their needs met].

We just experienced a 20-month disruption that caused certain previously latent negatives to be newly and massively amplified. Life’s also been harder than usual on many(most?) people. I’d be somewhat shocked if those negatives didn’t get concentrated into the applicant pool as well. To a hiring manager, that would be nearly indistinguishable from “remote work attracts bad apples at a higher rate”.

I’m quite pro-remote and think it’s going to end up overall wonderful that the tech world was forced into this massive, synchronized pre/post test. I also see employees who did well in the in-office structure struggle in the higher-discipline required remote model. Those employees are probably best served to return to in-office work.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#72

Post by closeparen »

moltar wrote: post #17
hnuser847 wrote: post #9

When 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’…

Remote != home. Home _is_ distracting, unless you have black belt concentration ability, and will power. For a long time I’ve worked from a coworking place near my house. Before that, when I wasn’t earning as much, I’d work from cafes. Some days when the weather was especially nasty I chose to stay home and work from home. Now I have a kid, and I’m forced to work from home due to corona, and my productivity definitel…

Coworking space is rather a big-city amenity, while the point of remote working for many people is to avoid big cities.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#73

Post by idiocratic »

DrammBA wrote: post #38
snicker7 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software engineering, four hours of actual work per day is probably average even on-site.

I'm always amazed when people claim they work more than that a day. Between meetings, context switching, and social interactions, I pat myself on the back if I manage to work a total of 4 hours.

I don't understand how you don't count meetings and context switching as part of work hours. You're helping others, making decisions, etc. It's not that what's not coding is not work.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#74

Post by marcinzm »

zerocount wrote: post #47
codegeek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, it is about the deadlines. That's what keeps me getting a paycheck, which is the reason I'm working. What you describe as teamwork is just every day development activity. There is no discipline to attending a meeting when the meeting is mandatory. I can always spot someone who 'runs teams' by the way they prioritize the company and piss on the workers in the name of the customer and 'teamwork.' This is why you c…

I've never been at a company where deadlines are what keeps people getting a paycheck. Overall output is what kept the paychecks flowing. Deadlines are an artificial construct in most cases and in most of the remaining they're just a way to synchronize work. If a feature comes out today or in a week or a month has little difference in the vast majority of cases. If you get 1 or 5 or 10 features out this month has a difference.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#75

Post by civilized »

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…

> 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.

You say that, but then you advocate for butts-in-chairs (BIC) as a critical performance management practice that can't be replicated in the remote model and therefore shows the weakness of the remote model.

If BIC is so critical to performance management, spyware will do a way better job.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#76

Post by slotrans »

hnuser847 wrote: post #9

When 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’…

I am vastly less productive working from home. Many of my friends will (privately, as you say) confess to the same.

I keep seeing this narrative that the pandemic forced everyone to try remote work and surprise! productivity went up. I really, really doubt it.

What actually happened is that you had sufficient organizational momentum to keep things going. Your rate of actual creative work (big new stuff launched, etc) has almost certainly cratered. Your new employees are all struggling. If you've had a spike in turnover, the company as a whole is probably struggling. But it's invisible, because you can't keep your finger on the cultural pulse of the company without an office for that culture to manifest in.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#77

Post by paperskull »

slotrans wrote: post #76
hnuser847 wrote: post #9

When 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’…

I am vastly less productive working from home. Many of my friends will (privately, as you say) confess to the same. I keep seeing this narrative that the pandemic forced everyone to try remote work and surprise! productivity went up. I really, really doubt it. What actually happened is that you had sufficient organizational momentum to keep things going. Your rate of actual creative work (big new stuff launched, etc)…

I'd like to chime in with my anecdotal counter example from my big corporate workplace. A colleague recently created some graphs showing commits over time, confluence pages created/updated, tickets fixed, ticket turnaround time, code reviews given, and number of features released. All of these metrics made a sharp improvement as soon as our WFH policy came into effect and have kept its pace for the last 1.5 years. While this might not be the experience at every workplace, as far as I can tell, my workplace seems to have greatly benefitted from more remote work.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#78

Post by Lhiw »

hnuser847 wrote: post #9

When 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’…

No post body was provided.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#79

Post by nanidin »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #48
snicker7 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software engineering, four hours of actual work per day is probably average even on-site.

Yes, but communications, meetings, and being available to answer questions are also part of the job description. The more someone becomes unavailable for communications, knowledge sharing, and meetings, the more work they create for their teammates and managers who have to compensate by tracking everything down, re-hashing missed meetings, re-communicating things that should have been covered the first time and so on…

It sounds like you are describing a work culture that relies heavily on synchronous communication to make progress. These don’t work well for companies that want to have remote workers and treat them as first class citizens.

The solution is to find ways to knowledgeshare that don’t require everyone’s attention at the same time - like a well maintained wiki, or recorded knowledge sharing sessions.

Consensus building may well require synchronous communication, and it should be made clear to remote workers which meetings are cruft and which are important. This can be accomplished by publishing meeting agendas and goals prior to the actual meeting.

I think at the end of the day it is important to recognize that different people work differently and accommodations have to be made for all sides to contribute effectively. By that I mean some people need to sit in a meeting with a person that is presenting slides to learn, but someone else might pick up the same material via one paragraph and a diagram + access to the code, and someone else might work better with a whiteboard presentation.

I prefer async written communication (email) because it leaves behind an easily searchable record to reference in the future.

Re: Building Remote Teams for Startups

#80

Post by EricDeb »

slotrans wrote: post #76
hnuser847 wrote: post #9

When 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’…

I am vastly less productive working from home. Many of my friends will (privately, as you say) confess to the same. I keep seeing this narrative that the pandemic forced everyone to try remote work and surprise! productivity went up. I really, really doubt it. What actually happened is that you had sufficient organizational momentum to keep things going. Your rate of actual creative work (big new stuff launched, etc)…

I would disagree I am personally more productive at home and I love being able to just focus on code without half my brain being distracted by the context of an office. However, I think it's much harder for new employees and weaker engineers because it's difficult to get help/share screen/etc. It's also easy for slackers to slide by which I think just means you need better managers. I also miss the comradery a bit and in-office employees felt like actual friends.
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