We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked • Hacker News Board

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#61

Post by mtone » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

clay_to_n wrote: post #50

ryanSrich wrote: post #31

Although I disagree with the overall sentiment of the article (remote working doesn't work for generalists). I commend the author for at least trying remote work (especially as a YC company, an organization that openly discourages remote work). Full disclosure, I work remotely and it's by far the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. So to address a few points. Collaboration to me is when a group of people,…

How does pair programming work over chat? I feel like pair programming relies on you both looking at the same code + talking things through while one of you is actually coding. It seems like having to switch over to a chat client to communicate would decrease productivity a lot.

I've had good productive sessions by using Skype video screen sharing with headsets for talking. Some benefits over doing this at the office on a workstation include:

- less disruptive to others in an open space

- both have a good full screen view of the code

- both can use their second monitor to look things up or try something during the session

- it's easy to switch from one "master" computer to the other (eg. I fix something, commit, and we continue the session on the coworker's screen, on the environment he's comfortable with)

None of these things are exclusive to doing things remotely, but they're included by default.

While I prefer this for pair programming, I find coaching works best in person, where body language (understanding), off-screen talking and drawing stuff on a piece of paper, are more important.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#62

Post by ryanSrich » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

clay_to_n wrote: post #50

ryanSrich wrote: post #31

Although I disagree with the overall sentiment of the article (remote working doesn't work for generalists). I commend the author for at least trying remote work (especially as a YC company, an organization that openly discourages remote work). Full disclosure, I work remotely and it's by far the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. So to address a few points. Collaboration to me is when a group of people,…

How does pair programming work over chat? I feel like pair programming relies on you both looking at the same code + talking things through while one of you is actually coding. It seems like having to switch over to a chat client to communicate would decrease productivity a lot.

I can't comment too much on the pair programming aspect. I know Floobits[1] has been floated around often. It seems most of the pair programming we do is with interns or junior developers, who are located at HQ until joining full-time/gaining more experience.

As mentioned below Screenhero is really great for 1v1s (they plan on adding team collaboration early this year).

For reference I wrote a post a while ago with some tools and methods we use at Catalyze. The only tools we've added to the list that aren't in this[2] post are trello and teamspeak.

1. https://floobits.com/

2. http://m97.co/writing/working-remotely-as-a-designer.html

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#63

Post by practicalpants » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:22 PM UTC

It seems wrong for this guy to generalize entirely about remote work arrangements based on his experience with 2 guys.

I've been a part of 3 teams, that each were rather different, with significant remote reliance. It was great each time, productivity and collaboration, developer happiness were all at highs. Maybe he was just working with the wrong personalities and timezones, since two of the big problems he cited were "work-life balance," something that is very personality oriented, and another being East-West coast related.

Unfortunately it seems, people who are against remote work typically just want employees to invest more into their product, as too much independence for the employees is viewed as a bad thing. This is always a factor to keep in mind.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#64

Post by woodhull » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

Shorel wrote: post #46

What about: Work remote. Get all the company together to a trip to Hawaii each year. I'm sure this can build camaraderie and morale, and I hope someone gives it a try.

We do this twice a year. Just got back from a week with the team in Brazil.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#65

Post by jmadsen » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

One of the things I've found about working remote that no one ever seems to talk about:

It doesn't work for teams where the Project Manager/owner/whoever is client-facing doesn't like to sit down and write out proper specs.

There are some teams that can't work remotely merely because the guy who knows what it is all supposed to look like doesn't like typing, and so there needs to be an environment where people can "drop in" on each other's work areas.

That's not a great thing anyway, but it definitely doesn't work when you aren't all in the same place, or even timezone

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#66

Post by s73v3r » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #57

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #8

Having had teams that were half-remote before, and all remote now, doing lots of hangouts seems to fill the remote-feels-weird niche pretty well. Just having long conversations in chat tends to not be productive, but you need chat. Something like Slack is a good choice if you can't get everyone on IRC. Somewhat still wanting for better "whiteboard simulator" type options. Ultimately not having an office not only save…

For having a remote whiteboard, shared OneNote notebooks on a Surface Pro 3 is fantastic. It's not 100% realtime sync, but it's close. Except that nobody else has a Surface Pro, so the only time I've tried it was with a friend with a Bamboo on the other end. Maybe someday.

One can get a decent drawing tablet for about $50 these days. Pretty minimal investment.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#67

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

pre wrote: post #58

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah some issues with the graphics causing credibility problems. But that's exactly what makes the presence work so well - "Patrick is in Thad's office, and they're both yelling!" Try that with any other tool

But part of the advantage of remote-work is that you can be in two or more conversations at once, that you can be in two or more 'places' at once. No? Seems odd to use a location metaphor, when online you can be in more than one place at a time.

Chatting works that way. But your video and audio don't.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#68

Post by s73v3r » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

stevenklein wrote: post #13

jms703 wrote: post #10

"I've spent the majority of my life surrounded by other people. I grew up with two brothers, played sports as kid, had a good amount of friends while going through school, have always had a pretty active social life, and lived with three friends in college." Does the entire staff of statuspage.io feel this way? Sounds like this is more of a personal issue for the author of this post. There's nothing wrong with admitt…

You know, I considered putting this on my (currently non-existant) personal blog for this exact reason. I talked to several of them and they agree in varying degrees. That is just one point out of several though so I thought it was fine to add here.

How much experience did they have working remotely?

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#69

Post by s73v3r » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

darklajid wrote: post #47

I'm working completely remote [1] for 2 years now. Wouldn't want to miss it again. I have two kids, 2 and 1 years old, and the office was the far noisier environment. Constant nagging, "Can you just for a moment" interruptions and people playing foosball (or whatever you call the tables on which you can waste a lot of time shouting and kicking hard plastic around) in the next room... Not for me. Home does have its ch…

Just because you don't need to collaborate or whiteboard things out, doesn't mean others don't find it useful.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#70

Post by s73v3r » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

pre wrote: post #28

chatmasta wrote: post #12

I like that you mention the disadvantage that "employees struggle with work-life balance." This is often overlooked when considering the feasibility of remote working. The ability to manage work-life balance when working remotely is a very rare ability, and one that takes practice to develop. The same ability is required of startup founders. Those who can define structure for themselves, even without external instruc…

I work remotely, and don't really understand why it's hard to shut down the work-laptop after you finish work and not open it again till you start work the next day. When your local employee commutes to the office, I open the lid on the work laptop. When your local employee leaves the office to go home, I close my work laptop. If I'm needed outside hours, which blessedly is rare, the message needs to go to my phone e…

"I work remotely, and don't really understand why it's hard to shut down the work-laptop after you finish work and not open it again till you start work the next day."

The key phrase there is "after you finish work". For some people, that point is not clear. Also, for some companies, your work laptop might be your laptop.

"I guess I can see why some folks would find the balance hard in the "life/fun" end being too heavy and fail to drag themselves to the keyboard for 8 hours a day."

For me, this is one of the things that I was worried about. Currently, there isn't a good place conducive to getting work done in my home.