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21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

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Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#21

Post by sciurus »

arohner wrote: post #12

Does anyone have a recommendation for a better tool than LastPass? I use LastPass every day, and it's awful. It looks like meldium is headed in the right direction but the last time I tried it, it was still too early.

I hadn't heard of Lastpass Enterprise or Meldium before.

At previous companies I've used Passpack (http://www.passpack.com/en/home/) but didn't really like it. The sharing model is a real pain and doesn't scale. Team members create passwords in their individual accounts, then transfer ownership to a company account. Now the person who administers the company account gets an email, logs in, accepts the transfer, and shares the password to the appropriate team members.

Now that I'm in a simpler environment where veryone has access to all the passwords, I just use pass (http://zx2c4.com/projects/password-store/) and a central git repository.

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#22

Post by jqueryin »

csbrooks wrote: post #20
jqueryin wrote: post #17

Using Sqwiggle sounds a little too Big Brother for my liking.

I feel like it conflicts with the advice to trust your employees, too. Like, trust them, but have them on camera at all times.

Exactly. It's one thing to jump on Google Hangouts or Skype on a whim, but it's entirely different to ask employees to be monitored like animals at their desks. I'm envisioning management questioning why an employee is away from their desk if they went to the bathroom or to get something from the kitchen. It would seem to cast more doubt than assurance in my opinion.

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#24

Post by otoburb »

bluekite2000 wrote: post #23

I noted the OP's blog has a job post for a content manager that states Anywhere,USA. Why limit yourself to USA? I figure if it is remote it should be remote anywhere.

HR and legal compliance is much easier when dealing with domestic vs. international employees.

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#25

Post by zck »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #6
atacrawl wrote: post #4

I setup a recurring monthly event with each team member where we both jump on Skype or Google Hangout to chat about three things: what's one thing I can do better to help him with his job, what's one thing he can do better to improve at his job, and what's one thing the company can do better to make everyone's lives easier. I was just talking with a friend of mine about this very topic -- it's critically important fo…

I know that company Y does something similar with their artists as part of their yearly reviews, and their artists don't know of anything they could be doing better. As one of them said to me "If I knew what I could be doing better, I'd be doing it." Feedback can be useful, but I'd be hesitant around structuring requirements for it.

Part of the benefit is that setting aside time to talk about what you can do better forces you to think about what you can do better. Sure, some people will think about that without needing prompting, but having a set time to do so is beneficial for everyone else.

Additionally, it gets the employee and his or her supervisor on the same page -- "here's what we agreed I would work on, here's how it's going."

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#27

Post by gz5 »

atacrawl wrote: post #4

I setup a recurring monthly event with each team member where we both jump on Skype or Google Hangout to chat about three things: what's one thing I can do better to help him with his job, what's one thing he can do better to improve at his job, and what's one thing the company can do better to make everyone's lives easier. I was just talking with a friend of mine about this very topic -- it's critically important fo…

I don't have stats but for me it has proven invaluable (managing remote teams for years).

Unstructured, no agenda 1:1 video pings - hey, what's new type pings - have been very important too. The virtual version of the in-person coffee machine conversation, helping to replicate that important part of the co-located enviro.

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#28

Post by OGC »

aantix wrote: post #26
jqueryin wrote: post #17

Using Sqwiggle sounds a little too Big Brother for my liking.

Interesting. Versus having to sit in an office?

In an office nobody pops in every 8 seconds and takes a picture of you.

All this talk about trust is essentially useless if you're under surveillance all the time.

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#29

Post by mdbennett »

OGC wrote: post #28
aantix wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Versus having to sit in an office?

In an office nobody pops in every 8 seconds and takes a picture of you. All this talk about trust is essentially useless if you're under surveillance all the time.

I equate it to Google Talk. Replace "webcam picture" with "online status" and you can say remarkably similar things about the two.

Both Google Talk and Sqwiggle are meant to facilitate communication and not to be used as accountability tools, but if you don't trust those you're sharing that info with then it could be used that way. Both give out signals of my online status based on my presence, and both can manually be set to a "busy" mode(to the detriment of communication) if I want to not be bothered or "watched". Sqwiggle is obviously a more intimate version of this, but that works to its benefit in lowering barriers to having quick conversations with people you can "see" are available.

Disclosure: I work at Zapier.

Re: 21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

#30

Post by kephra »

I prefer to work remote for ages, but I dislike the choices of tools. Publishing valuable business critical documentation into the cloud looks to me to like typical US stupidity, I prefer to host them myself.

I host my own teamspeak, my own upload file server, my own repository, my own wiki, my own ...

I do not need PRISM scans. We had two burglars in 2010 who did not steal anything, but tried to reboot systems to install malware. Just raise the bar for industry spionage, do not make it to easy for them.

In the list of tools Sqwiggle would be a no go for me. I would walk out of the virtual hiring chat, if someone tells me that he wants to watch me with a webcam, while i'm sitting here in underpants. Hey - go to chatroulet if you want that.

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