Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Short Rant About Working Remotely

ericfarkas.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 339 posts

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#211

Post by AaronBBrown »

marknutter wrote: post #190
Irregardless wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The referenced study answers all of that: http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sillito/cpsc-601.23/readings/...

So reading through that study it appears as though that the remote test group ("Team Solo"): - was actually working in cubicles in the same room and could overhear each others conversations. - used email and a very basic text-based chatroom built in 2002 as their primary means of communication, as well as the telephone . Doesn't sound like a sophisticated setup to me. - did not use any screen sharing software or VOIP…

This... x10. Having worked remotely from 2000-2002 and also 2010 to the present, I don't know how anyone can make an accurate statement about remote working in 2013 based on a study from 2006.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#212

Post by numbsafari »

adrianhoward wrote: post #200
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it churlish to suggest that the most clear counter-example to "all in same room" is http://git.kernel.org/ However with a cursory glance over the references, they seem heavily biased towards a "crunch time, in a war-room" scenario. This can lead to large productivity gains for reasons unconnected with physical location (Clear short term goals, only the best get invited into the war-room, daily distractions and res…

"Is it churlish to suggest that the most clear counter-example to "all in same room" is http://git.kernel.org/ " Not churlish - maybe misguided ;-) I'm really not trying to suggest that distributed work is bad / evil / fails. Just that - all things being equal - colocated teams win. That there is a substantial body of evidence that not being colocated carries a substantial productivity hit. My "gut feeling" is that r…

I'd be curious to know if any of the quoted research looked at open source projects. In addition, I'd be curious to know if it included organizations such as GitHub and 37signals, especially given how old it is.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#213

Post by hnwh »

ivankirigin wrote: post #109

I have a new startup, two cofounders and a remote full time engineer. Things are working splendidly, but the reason is in large part because of how well we communicate. Yes, of course chat, video conferences, and email are important. But I think our wiki pages and pull requests are what make it work. We also have been making information dense screencasts for each other. I'm going to be so bold as to say a remote engi…

Definitely want to know about your toolset.. would like to structure my new startup this way. What are you using for making and hosting screencasts?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#214

Post by BudVVeezer »

nkg wrote: post #13
BudVVeezer wrote: post #2

I agree entirely -- I've been telecommuting for ten years now, and this is easily the #1 reason the recruitment process fails with me (with small companies as well as large).

@BudVVeezer you mean, you are trying to get into a physical office and the recruiters won't consider your 10y of telecommuting as real experience ?

Nope, I mean recruiters contact me about positions but then find out that I cannot relocate and that ends the discussion because the company they are recruiting for disallows telecommuting for one reason or another.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#215

Post by numbsafari »

adrianhoward wrote: post #172
romaniv wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. How do you define group productivity? 2. I'm willing to bet that most of those studies looked at what happens when you take some "on-site" positions and simply hand them to remote team members. Why? Because that's what usually happens. Companies do not want to alter any processes, team structures or responsibilities to explicitly deal with remoteness. Naturally, if you pretend that someone from another state is si…

* I'm willing to bet that most of those studies looked at what happens when you take some "on-site" positions and simply hand them to remote team members.* You'd lose that bet. There are a variety of different methodologies and areas studied. Companies that embrace remoteness from the start (like GitHub) seem to be doing fine, precisely because they treat remoteness as an asses, not a minor concession someone had to…

How much of that research includes open source projects and companies like GitHub and 37signals?

How much of it was looking at teams that are "super distributed", for example, between the US and India, where major differences in time and culture can play a huge role compared to say, a team distributed between Chicago and New York?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#216

Post by hnwh »

ditojim wrote: post #14

we're 30 strong and 100% remote at dito. we don't have an office. it's pretty great. we live on google apps and other collaborative tools that make this an advantage, rather than a sacrifice. our employees are dedicated, work hard, and for the most part, love their jobs. we enjoy seeing each other in person at customer sites and during company events, but for the most part, we use things like uber conference and goog…

you hiring?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#217

Post by dobbsbob »

Don't understand why startups would want to blow a bunch of money on infrastructure when they can just tangle together a remote operation. We have this thing called IRC, Jabber, Skype, VoIP, shared buffers and git.

Lot's of open source is designed over skype or even jabber using a common pad to doodle on

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#218

Post by numbsafari »

nvarsj wrote: post #188
adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

It's my experience that most people are simply terrible at communicating remotely. So this is what gets reflected in studies done on co-location. After all, traditional interviews bias for those who are good at face-to-face communication. There is basically no filter for those who suck at remote communication. It's exacerbated by the fact that it takes more than one to communicate. If you work remotely, it's not suff…

I've worked on two fully distributed teams, and I can assure that it is was a part of the interview process to determine how well the individual could communicate remotely.

If scheduling our call was difficult, or if you were hard to understand on the phone, or if there was excessive background noise, I'd hold that against a candidate. If your emails were not clear and intelligible, that counted as well.

People who communicate well remotely stick out like a sore thumb when you are interviewing for those types of roles and if you value it. If you are just looking for warm bodies, I can definitely see how it would be problematic.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#219

Post by destraynor »

Jared Spool did a good study on how remote vs colocated affects design. His conclustion is simple enough

The best set up, in order, for design work

* Best: Everyone in the same room * Good: Everyone remote but in the same time zone * Bad: Some people together, some people apart, in the same time zone * Worst: Some people together, some people apart, all in different time zones.

Now the one thing that his work, and indeed most discussion misses is they "Why" of remote workers. No one has tested "Given the available talent in our city, should we hire the best people around we can so that we're all together, or should we set a higher bar for talent and deal with the whole remote issue".

It all comes down to whether or not you can get the best people. Lots of talent tends to flock to big cities (SF, NYC, etc), but that creates its own problem, in that a start-up is now competing with the big spenders offering impressive packages/options/etc.

In short, I guess, It depends...

(Edit, forgot the url: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/06/design-teams-co-lo... )

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#220

Post by numbsafari »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #145

"...But I don't see a reason why, in 2013, given the tools we have, a developer has to be on-site at a desk every day, as the normal operating procedure..." I am struggling with this same question, but from the other side. I help teams become more Agile, and I'm a startup junkie, so all I care about is performance here. I want to know what works best in terms of product quality and pivot ability. And guess what? So f…

An important factor is team cohesion and trust. In a fully distributed team, trust is immensely important because you can't just look out at the warroom and see who is "crushing it".

You have to have a team that can come together in ways other than having a beer every Friday. Sometimes this is accomplished by having a once per quarter, or twice per year, or even once per year gathering. Those are generally good times for team building activities, not just commits.

Having non-work interactions with your other co-workers can also be helpful. Something as silly as firing up a Quake server or playing Halo together can make a difference.

Also, you cannot expect to apply standard management approaches in a distributed team environment. It can be a struggle because you have to find a new way to evaluate the contributions of your various team members. I think that this is actually where most distributed teams fall apart. Managers simply aren't trained for this environment.

Post reply on HN