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Remote Only

remoteonly.org

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Re: Remote Only

#111

Post by m1keil »

JamyDev wrote: post #62

Didn't see anyone top level mention it, but: Disadvantages -> Timezones Timezones make scheduling team meetings hard, and if your organization ever becomes big enough to warrant a physical office people far away will start working late hours to keep up with the main office. YMMV, but it's 3 AM here in Berlin and until 10 minutes ago I was still actively working.

Depends on the team. In Operations, timezone differences can be quite good since it allows you "follow the sun" type of on-call shifts.

Re: Remote Only

#112

Post by jnmandal »

rwbcxrz wrote: post #66

> Fast internet everywhere - 100Mb/s+ cable, 5GHz Wifi, 4G cellular I used to say that. Now I live in a rural area, and the fastest speed that's even available is 5Mbps (and the uptime isn't great). My house also has zero cell service from any provider. It's also a bit presumptive that everyone can afford a 100Mbps connection. The last place I lived, it was like $120/month for 100Mbps. Not everybody can afford that.…

1. A lot of places that are remote will cover or subsidize internet costs for employees 2. I think the the poor access to Internet in rural areas is more of a US thing. In LDCs we have often wider availability for low cost 4g and/or more equal distribution of telecom infrastructure in general.

Re: Remote Only

#113

Post by meiraleal »

warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

This premise I guess is exactly for you to not have any part of your project strictly subject to only one cowboy coding.

Re: Remote Only

#114

Post by varenc »

buvanshak wrote: post #60
bradford wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the parent poster, but I think the document glossed over the biggest perceived disadvantage: Despite technological advances, I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information and come to conclusions on difficult decisions. It's also the least susceptible to misinterpretation.

> I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information ... Why do people think this. For one thing, and I think it is most important, face to face communication does not give either parties time to think. It ends up with awkward, unproductive pauses. Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought...

I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements and, as the parent said, difficult conclusions. I’ve seen things get a bit out of hand over email that then get resolved quite efficiently after a face to face.

Live video chat is a good alternative, but I think more natural human empthay comes out in face to face experiences. People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved quickly before they fester. Live video chat gets you much of this but isn’t quite as effective in my experience.

To me this observation just means that on remote teams you need to be observant of such issues and spend a little more time to resolve them, which can be a fine trade off for remote teams. (Or ideally avoid overly contentious debates in the first place)

Re: Remote Only

#115

Post by Nav_Panel »

existencebox wrote: post #39
s-shellfish wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to try using a writing style less similar to coding. I don't know if I'm noticing a trend between an influx of new users from reddit after their BS UI redesign, but your text can get quite dense (it's not lacking in information that makes sense). Did upvote you because I feel you made some very experienced and work-aware points.

Meta-comment: You're right, and it's a weakness I've observed in my own posts for years now. There are other commentators that often come into HN threads I post in, and make my point better+more succinctly than I could have. I wish I could replicate/learn from those examples better. I think it's less of a redditism and my own overly-loquatious style/attempting to avoid misunderstanding through verboseness. The feedba…

I found Twitter helped me unlearn Reddit verbosity. You learn to write succinctly or else you'll have trouble expressing your thoughts at all.

Re: Remote Only

#116

Post by mkl »

jameslk wrote: post #102
allday wrote: post #18

> Save on compensation due to hiring in lower cost regions Pay people what they're worth regardless of where they live. If you have a developer in Nigeria or Ukraine or Vietnam that is as equally capable as a developer in the Bay Area, they should be paid the same. Doing otherwise, at best, perpetuates Western hegemony, and at worst is simply racism.

I guess we'll have to throw purchasing power out the window to discuss this one. So pay the developer $20k per year or pay them $100k? If the former, I guess those US developers are just screwed and will probably make more money flipping burgers. If the latter, or anywhere between, then we'll just see developers move to the cheapest, lowest tax countries to arbitrage the artificial market inefficiency. Or are you sug…

I'm not saying I disagree with you, but why exactly would it be bad if people moved to places with cheaper cost of living or less tax?

Re: Remote Only

#117

Post by BigJono »

varenc wrote: post #114
buvanshak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information ... Why do people think this. For one thing, and I think it is most important, face to face communication does not give either parties time to think. It ends up with awkward, unproductive pauses. Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought...

I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements and, as the parent said, difficult conclusions. I’ve seen things get a bit out of hand over email that then get resolved quite efficiently after a face to face. Live video chat is a good alternative, but I think more natural human empthay comes out in face to face experiences. People seem to understand the other side’s perspective…

In my experience face to face communication is great for resolving contentious technical disagreements because whoever is doing the most thinking and the least talking falls behind, thinks "fuck this" and capitulates instantly; usually resulting in the wrong decision being made.

If the metric is "time to decision" then face to face will do very well.

Re: Remote Only

#118

Post by superfrank »

varenc wrote: post #110
superfrank wrote: post #107

Honestly, I find it a bit weird so much of this blog post focus on making all information visible and documenting everything (which I agree with) and then there is: > People don't have to say when they are working. That just seems a bit at odds with the rest of the post and I don't really agree with it. Sometimes there are questions that only one person (let's say Nick) can answer or situations where Nick is more val…

If all information is visible and everything is well documented, it should be rare to have the situation where one person is the only one that can answer that question. This will totally still happen for remote teams, but I think it happens more in other organizations that rely on face time and verbal information exchange. I still generally agree that knowing when folks are online can be helpful and don’t see a big i…

> If all information is visible and everything is well documented, it should be rare to have the situation where one person is the only one that can answer that question. This will totally still happen for remote teams, but I think it happens more in other organizations that rely on face time and verbal information exchange.

I worked at my last job for just over 2 1/2 years and, while we had an actual office, for the first two years I was there, we also had a true "unlimited vacation/remote work" policy. It wasn't unheard of that some people would take 4-6 week vacations and others would work remote for multiple months.

Documentation was great, but you can't document everything you know, so there will always be gaps. I'm a developer, so these will be dev focused, but some scenarios I can remember where one specific person was needed are:

- Legacy code. Bob was the only one around when this code was written and it hasn't been touched in years, now it's breaking and no one understands why. (In an ideal world, there wouldn't be knowledge silos like this, but there always are)

- Specialties. Most developers know this tool, but Bob is an expert. We need to do something that requires an expert. We need Bob.

- Bob left an ominous, yet vague comment on my PR. I don't want to merge until I get clarification. (something like "This looks hacky. I guess it works, but we should probably change this ASAP." or "Eww")

Re: Remote Only

#119

Post by UlisesAC4 »

warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

That point is a little bit bad worded. It is more pointed to old school managers who think that by controlling working hours they are controlling productivity.

After all in remote work productivity is measured about communication, issues , commits and pull requests done.

Re: Remote Only

#120

Post by UlisesAC4 »

Shank wrote: post #105

My biggest problem is this: While there is a surplus of remote only positions, this surplus always wants the same thing: very senior developers with tons of wide experience sets. Seems like there's a lot of talent being left on the floor by only looking for senior developers. There's a lot of goodwill that can be earned by trusting in potential and helping candidates grow into a position. Even an experienced develope…

That is something bad at our industry. Managers or whoever do that decision believes that being senior automagically makes you a genious, when it can be the other way around, the more senior you are, the more averse to change you are. I doubt that senior could easily change to remote lifestyle after years of onsite.

People must learn that anyone can be remote, the thing is that everyone must agree to communicate better instead of more.

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