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We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

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Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#71

Post by bwb »

mikeycgto wrote: post #26
sunils34 wrote: post #23

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 produc…

We're completely remote as well and have a very similar approach to hiring and on-boarding. It's definitely tougher to find the right candidates but it's a fun challenge for sure!

ditto here, in the early days we didn't ask the right screening questions, now we do.

We just hit around 128 people, all remote, all over the world.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#72

Post by msoad »

Remote teams certainly doesn't work for big enterprise companies. My team is remote in a big software company. Most of remote employees are pure slackers. I don't do much of work either. Because if you want to do a code review it can take two days because of "time difference" and "personal issues".

I can see how remote teams can work for a couple of super passionate startup founder/employees but if it's in a highly political giant enterprise it never works.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#73

Post by bwb »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #42
pre wrote: post #30

I can't imagine how you'd do pair-programming remotely, certainly. Some kind of shared-screen skype-call? Two sessions into a remote-desktop? Collaboration over the wire is slower than collaboration in person and less enthusing, but it's also more considered, more precise. We each have different styles I guess. Introverts likely prefer the considered precise way, extroverts the enthusiastic fast-paced way. People who…

Sococo (I work there) does a good job. Share apps (not desktops); talk and video, pointers and web apps all work together to make pair programming pretty seamless.

Man I wish sococo supported linux, our team is a mix of linux and mac and we would love to use it and pay for it. We've got 128 people around the world but without linux support we can't :(

If you can give me any timeline till a linux version I would appreciate it, bwbbwb@gmail.com

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#74

Post by pre »

s73v3r wrote: post #70
pre wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

If I found that my company laptop and my main computer were the same, I for one would buy myself a personal computer!

Home-work requires a home-office. At least a bedroom with a desk you don't mind never-leaving. I live alone, so it's easy. Working from home when I was 23 living in a shared house would have been way harder, indeed.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#75

Post by wlesieutre »

s73v3r wrote: post #66
wlesieutre wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but it doesn't really compare to drawing on a screen. And there's much more of a learning curve on those for people who haven't used one before.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#76

Post by hacst »

MetaCosm wrote: post #48

An unexpected tool has helped tremendously for our teams in terms of remote work: Mumble ( http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page ). Mumble is a cross platform, open source VoIP application. Often used for gaming in a group (like Teamspeak or Ventrilo). It has the idea of channels (rooms, offices, etc) is very high quality, low latency and low bandwidth installed on your companies servers in minutes, always encrypted…

Mumble core developer here. Glad to hear Mumble is useful to you and your coworkers. Always nice to get positive feedback.

If anyone has question about the software or the project feel free to ask.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#77

Post by MetaCosm »

ericbieller wrote: post #53
MetaCosm wrote: post #48

An unexpected tool has helped tremendously for our teams in terms of remote work: Mumble ( http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page ). Mumble is a cross platform, open source VoIP application. Often used for gaming in a group (like Teamspeak or Ventrilo). It has the idea of channels (rooms, offices, etc) is very high quality, low latency and low bandwidth installed on your companies servers in minutes, always encrypted…

One of the big downsides of Mumble, Teamspeak and Ventrillo is that they aren't made for business. This means they are really hard to get up and running, which is especially annoying when you are just just trying them out. We're actually working on something similar to these tools but built for business. We're currently in private beta and I'd be interested to get your input on what we're building. We've got a quick…

Is your product OS-X focused? One of the big things about Mumble for us was the cross-platform support, we have developers on Linux, OS-X and Windows all talking together every day.

What codex are you guys using?

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#78

Post by MetaCosm »

alfg wrote: post #54
MetaCosm wrote: post #48

An unexpected tool has helped tremendously for our teams in terms of remote work: Mumble ( http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page ). Mumble is a cross platform, open source VoIP application. Often used for gaming in a group (like Teamspeak or Ventrilo). It has the idea of channels (rooms, offices, etc) is very high quality, low latency and low bandwidth installed on your companies servers in minutes, always encrypted…

Interesting. I know Mumble is used a lot in the gaming community, but I never thought of the idea of using it for workspace/business. I wrote a webapp targeted for gamers to easily setup temporary Mumble servers ( http://guildbit.com ). So I'm sure someone can build a service similar to wrap the Mumble API for workspace users. Similar to Slack with IRC.

Yeah, I really think a polished / pre-configurable UI for business could be an amazing thing for Mumble (both for business, "use this binary" and for guilds / gamers ... same thing "use this binary" ... binary carries the config, etc). I consider Mumble like IRC, amazing but a bit raw. Someone is going to take shiny interface to it and make a killing in business.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#79

Post by MetaCosm »

hacst wrote: post #76
MetaCosm wrote: post #48

An unexpected tool has helped tremendously for our teams in terms of remote work: Mumble ( http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page ). Mumble is a cross platform, open source VoIP application. Often used for gaming in a group (like Teamspeak or Ventrilo). It has the idea of channels (rooms, offices, etc) is very high quality, low latency and low bandwidth installed on your companies servers in minutes, always encrypted…

Mumble core developer here. Glad to hear Mumble is useful to you and your coworkers. Always nice to get positive feedback. If anyone has question about the software or the project feel free to ask.

Have any of the core developers considered creating a very polished / simplified / professional supported client for business?

Stuff like "native look" on OS-X, some shiny features and ability to be easily pre-configured and shipped to people. So I could just give a pre-configured little bundle and they just run it, it would generate the cert and do the wizard, but we would have stuff like default push-to-talk, a few default keys, etc.

Re: We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked

#80

Post by ericbieller »

MetaCosm wrote: post #77
ericbieller wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big downsides of Mumble, Teamspeak and Ventrillo is that they aren't made for business. This means they are really hard to get up and running, which is especially annoying when you are just just trying them out. We're actually working on something similar to these tools but built for business. We're currently in private beta and I'd be interested to get your input on what we're building. We've got a quick…

Is your product OS-X focused? One of the big things about Mumble for us was the cross-platform support, we have developers on Linux, OS-X and Windows all talking together every day. What codex are you guys using?

Yes, currently we are OSX only, but that's for this initial private beta. We'll be expanding to other platforms very soon. If you think it could be helpful for your team I'd love to reach back out when we support other platforms :)

Oh and re codex, I believe we're using opus.

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