We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

At my current company, we worked together on-site for about a year and a half. The last three and a half years, I moved off and worked remotely. While I can agree that there are benefits, I think the company would have been better served to have me local. This is all anecdotal, of course, but I think younger, smaller companies should consider the tradeoffs carefully before having remote co-founders/management. A mostly remote team can and has worked, but it's not going to be the right fit for every company. Even if you really want it to work out, and give it your best shot.

Yes, you do the Video calls and you've got HipChat and email. But there's something about being there down in the muck with the rest of the team that builds cohesion, camaraderie, and enthusiasm. I say this as someone who doesn't like crowds or lots of noise. It's also really easy to lose the pulse of the group being remote. I can't easily tell how morale is, what the team's general perception of our future is, and I can't head off issues that would have been obvious in person from 180 miles away.

Perhaps some of this is exacerbated by being a remote Co-founder, but I wouldn't do it again if I had the choice. I wouldn't hesitate to hire the right remote developer, but they probably wouldn't ever enter management or be a partner. You really need to be around each other because of all of those side conversations that happen outside of the meetings. That's where the best brainstorming, dreaming, and bonding happens.

This is a great post! Our entire team is fully remote all over the world, with 31 people in 22 different cities in each major continent. I'm quite glad the OP wrote this because it talks about the very first thing I try to say when people ask about what it's like for remote working: Remote working doesn't work for everyone. Some are energized by an office environment with face-to-face time, and others are more productive by self-managing and lots of focus time. I feel like it's key to recognize which camp you're in.

We've had to construct our hiring and on-boarding process to gauge in so many ways whether someone is a good culture fit and is also energized by remote working. We feel like there's no way to truly tell unless you work with them under a contract period, which is what we do for everyone that's hired. Generally we've found about 30% who enter this period aren't quite a fit for either remote or culture for us.

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This. You can't just hire anyone remote. You have to hire people who want to be remote, embrace the isolation, and moreover, fit well into the culture you already have.

The first two issues are software/technology issues and solving them is a business opportunity.

The third one is a social issue, and one which can only be solved through experience. The problem is not that human beings are destined to struggle with work/life balance in this situation, but that they have no experience to draw upon to learn how to do that.

The major problem here should be pretty obvious when looking at that list - the pros RADICALLY outweigh the cons. That 'no office overhead' thing? Just that alone benefits your organization more than all of the cons combined detract from it.