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Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

blog.davidtate.org

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Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#21

Post by strobe »

timedoctor wrote: post #16

Have been working remotely for over 6 years and all of our team are remote. I think there is a massive change coming as businesses start to adapt to the idea of working remotely. It's just the beginning of the trend.

I've been working remotely about 2 years and I guess that if company and peoples really want to work remotely they will do it (in my case many team members located in different countries). At now it's very easy, if you have clear mind - we have skype and other tools for day to day meetings, many project tracking/documentations systems like redmine or basecamp that could be started from scratch in few hours, github, bitbucket, dropbox, aws etc. But not all peoples ready to deal with this, mostly because they can live without it and don't have enough motivation to change something in their current corporative systems.

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#22

Post by raverbashing »

btilly wrote: post #8
Simucal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of support infrastructure are you talking about? I work remotely a couple days a week and we have several full-time remote workers on my team. We setup a Webex meetings for every meeting and we all have webcams. Besides that, we will informally use Google Hangouts to chat with each other. I'm just curious what we could do beyond that to support the remote people.

Have a ticketing system. Use it religiously. Have online chat options (gmail is good). Use it religiously. Include remotes in conference calls. Do it religiously. Have key discussions in email, or at least summarized there, instead of just in person. Do it religiously. In short, make sure that everything is accessible for people who weren't there. And keep the habit going always.

Gmail is good but it is not sufficient

Learn with the open source people, they've been doing this for "centuries" (ok, for decades)

Use irc

The biggest advantage that no other (common) system has mimicked is simple: chat rooms.

But it's not chat rooms, it's because they are:

Easy to identify

Free to create

Easy to participate in several rooms

Irc can be used by bots easily (this is very useful)

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#23

Post by prodigal_erik »

whichdan wrote: post #17

I wonder if 20 years from now, programmers will see working in an office as a luxury, rather than working from home.

"Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home." - Philip Greenspun

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#24

Post by junto »

I've been working remotely for 10 years. Good ticketing system (Atlassian - JIRA and Wiki). Centralised source code repository and daily stand-up over Skype, otherwise known as a "Skype-up". Constant chatter on skype group chat. Shared screen sessions using Join.me.

The biggest issue for most employers is trust. "Is my employee just watching the TV?", is the first thought that pops into the employer's mind. As a programmer, the work is largely quantifiable, so the issue of trust is muted. My employer can see exactly what I produce. It is plain to see in every check-in to source control.

I have actually started renting my own office just round the corner from my home, so that I don't have to work from home anymore. I prefer the distinct separation of work and home life. My employer is in a different country if you were starting to wonder why I didn't just go to their office.

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#25

Post by elbeanio »

I'm curious how workers in different time zones get on with the rest of the team.

I work remotely most of the time but it has always been within the UK, I'd like to broaden my horizons internationally but keeping different hours to the rest of the team has always put me off.

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#26

Post by flyinRyan »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #23
whichdan wrote: post #17

I wonder if 20 years from now, programmers will see working in an office as a luxury, rather than working from home.

"Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home." - Philip Greenspun

Well wouldn't having them work from their home accomplish this?

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#28

Post by bjoernbu »

My peers often work from home. Personally, I rarely do it because I like the different environment for productivity. At home there is always distraction.

While it certainly is a good thing to allow and support working remote, I cannot deny heavy disadvantages. We discuss many important thing over lunch and especially long-term goals for our project are discussed over a coffee.

Additionally I find it seriously annoying to communicate over Skype / Phone / Messenger / whatever if a peer needs help with something. I love moving my chair to the next table and think about something together. I do not get that feeling at all when I'm communicating over distance. I am NEVER annoyed by someone asking for help on a tricky problem. Instead, I LOVE thinking about it. However, being ask for help via Skype messaging always annoys me. I dislike typing but most of all I can't stand waiting for a response because the other side is doing something besides our conversation.

I'm fine with my peers working from home, but I am incredibly glad it's usually about 1-2days a week and not all the time.

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#29

Post by btilly »

raverbashing wrote: post #22
btilly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a ticketing system. Use it religiously. Have online chat options (gmail is good). Use it religiously. Include remotes in conference calls. Do it religiously. Have key discussions in email, or at least summarized there, instead of just in person. Do it religiously. In short, make sure that everything is accessible for people who weren't there. And keep the habit going always.

Gmail is good but it is not sufficient Learn with the open source people, they've been doing this for "centuries" (ok, for decades) Use irc The biggest advantage that no other (common) system has mimicked is simple: chat rooms. But it's not chat rooms, it's because they are: Easy to identify Free to create Easy to participate in several rooms Irc can be used by bots easily (this is very useful )

Jabber can serve the same purpose as irc. But my experience is that irc tends to not like people sitting behind certain kinds of firewalls, and I personally avoid it.

Anyways the point is moot - I don't use either. Gmail is good enough for my purposes.

Re: Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t

#30

Post by maxwell »

btilly wrote: post #8
Simucal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of support infrastructure are you talking about? I work remotely a couple days a week and we have several full-time remote workers on my team. We setup a Webex meetings for every meeting and we all have webcams. Besides that, we will informally use Google Hangouts to chat with each other. I'm just curious what we could do beyond that to support the remote people.

Have a ticketing system. Use it religiously. Have online chat options (gmail is good). Use it religiously. Include remotes in conference calls. Do it religiously. Have key discussions in email, or at least summarized there, instead of just in person. Do it religiously. In short, make sure that everything is accessible for people who weren't there. And keep the habit going always.

I've been working remotely on asset tracking software+hardware for a little over a year with an exclusively remote team. This is exactly what we do. A few of us are in Maine, we've all met in person, and configurations of us get together every so often, but we all work from home.

We try to refer to code exclusively by commit hash, and issues exclusively by ticket number. Commit messages often refer to tickets, and our ticketing system provides notes on dev progress and further commentary on (sets of) commits. We use email for archive-worthy discussion and Skype for instant messaging and calls. We have a weekly ~1 hour dev meeting. (And we're fully insulated from direct customer interaction, with wonderful management and (on-site/in-the-field) ops people, who enable us to concentrate on design, implementation, and process.)

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