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

301–310 of 339 posts

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#301

Post by ilaksh »

A lot of people don't know how to work remotely and there is a wide variance in how that is set up.

I was just talking to a surgeon about a procedure and mentioned how I had seen a study saying that a similar procedure had slightly more side effects or complications. He pointed out that there is a big difference between the way that different surgeons execute the procedure.

So I think that it is harder to make remote work effective for people who are used to traditional work and don't study up on the best ways to create a good remote working environment.

I personally believe the most effective tool for remote working is just a shared chat room with a history like Campfire and then putting most of the relevant conversations in there. Ideally I think that everyone should be in that room including customer stakeholders if possible, (although I haven't seen anyone really include the customers in that chat room very much).

The second most effective tool would be things like screen sharing and phone or VOIP, which can help a lot, but you have to be careful not to do that too much when it might be better to document things in a common chat room.

I may just be slow or lazy or something but as a more general comment on software project management I feel like the issue/task tracker or Pivotal or whatever is an extra distraction from the chat room or more direct communications because I can only really focus on a few important things in a day, I would like to deliver them immediately, and if I have a problem to respond to or something to communicate I want to do it directly rather than hoping or assuming that someone is going to see a notification email or whatever.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#302

Post by azjeepxtreme »

Good for you. I need assistance with web dev at times. I am the owner of a tech co and just recently went to a site where I was the "cult phenom" as I had not been onsite in a year and me actually walking in the door had people swooning. I look forward to hiring some people that know their sh*t in the remote assist web dev arena and are grown up enough to work for me remotely. Well spoken Mr. Farkas.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#303

Post by chrisennis »

Of my five startups, two have been virtual. I am gearing up to start a virtual team with my new startup. What I like about my virtual teams is that it makes the best use of each employee's time, it forces employees to communicate in ways they may not if they are in an office together everyday, and each employee feels like they have some control, which leads to a less bureaucratic environment.

All that said, you have to have an absolute level of trust in each employee, because not having the team within arms reach can leave you feeling a bit uneasy at times.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#304

Post by gruseom »

erichocean wrote: post #289
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in the best interview tradition, what do you read to keep up to date with the state of the art? I have a couple of times found myself inventing solutions to problems I had in the business, only to see them appear as cutting edge open source at the same or a little later (ie Python deployment tools) I have always assumed one needs to be working in an area, pushing hard and then finding that "what no-one has an ans…

As you suspected, I'm developing solutions in the areas I work in specifically (stuff I'm "knee-deep" in). I read the usual CS papers, plus lots of PhDs thesis. I follow the references in the bibliographies like crazy, and I also look up the writer's on the 'Net and see what other stuff they've done/written. It feels like detective work, actually: the most-cited papers are frequently not the best. There's tons of res…

It feels like detective work, actually: the most-cited papers are frequently not the best. There's tons of researchers working in obscurity but who nevertheless have useful results.

What are some examples of the best research that is obscure?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#305

Post by uniclaude »

eddieroger wrote: post #182
uniclaude wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that you are wrong, but none of the studies you quote was done in the last five years, and most of them are actually more than a decade old. The technologies we use to communicate evolve fast, and I would bet money on the fact that (probably because of mindset evolution and tooling) developers are now more efficient when working remotely than they were ten years ago. Moreover, as we are on HN, we are not n…

It's not every day you get to use the phrase "technologies we use to communicate evolve fast" and IRC in the same paragraph.

Oops, I was sure I was going to get caught on that one, but couldn't really help myself.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#306

Post by alexko »

greghinch wrote: post #284
calinet6 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most importantly, not every project (nor startup, nor business) needs "the very best" engineers. This is highly underrated wisdom. If you focus on always hiring "Rockstar developers," you'll find yourself in a miserable situation of competition and egotistical conflict. Hire your team, not your developers. Get your team working like clockwork with good systems and good relationships, and your company will be rockst…

Exactly. This is where having good engineering leadership can come in. A "mediocre"* developer can often be coaxed into producing great product with a little support from things like paired programing and code reviews. You'll probably increase his/her value and abilities in the process. So you need your lead to be awesome. But the rest can just be good people who know how to code. * this would be someone who may not…

The problem here is that the awesome lead will not stay long in a company where all other people are mediocre. Awesome people want to work with other awesome people. There should be a critical mass of them to keep them from leaving.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#307

Post by VonGuard »

You know, one more thing I've been thinking on this all day. A thought I had years ago. I work from home.

Whenever someone says to me "coworking space" I just marvel. Boggle, really. Why? I cannot imagine ever wanting to be in a room full of other people in order to motivate me to get work done. I call that the tyranny of a room full of people.

If I am done for the day, I'm done. If I want to crank through then night, I crank. If you cannot motivate yourself to work hard when away from a crowd of people, I just feel like yer some sort of pack animal. I agree, being near a boss makes you work more, but mostly, it just makes you look busy. You spend more time trying to find something stupid and mindless to do, during those down hours when yer brain is dead, than you do doing actual work. Whereas, when I'm home, I just hammer through everything I have to do immediately.

If my inbox is full, I don't leave the computer. But when it's empty, fuck ya'll, I'm going to the park.

I'd much rather clean the house and cook a steak when I am log jammed than feel like I have to sit quietly at my desk, looking busy. I think our education system trains people to be too dependent on others for work ethic.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#308

Post by nahname »

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…

Very relevant video from Gabe Newell about this topic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU&t=22m30s

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#309

Post by adrianhoward »

grishas wrote: post #103
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…

A lot has changed in the last few years-- with modern tools (Skype, Google Hangouts, IRC, GotoMeeting), it is possible to not only almost entirely replicate being co-located, but to even enhance productivity by spinning out ad-hoc co-located teams to solve individual problems. Need to have a concentrated task force from 5 various departments? No problem, it's a click away-- no need to book a meeting room, take all yo…

A lot has changed in the last few years-- with modern tools (Skype, Google Hangouts, IRC, GotoMeeting), it is possible to not only almost entirely replicate being co-located, but to even enhance productivity by spinning out ad-hoc co-located teams to solve individual problems.

The evidence from folk who study this seems to differ from this.

The world is full of anecdotes about how much better things are with the newer technologies - yet I can very little evidence that this is true. I know I'm really good at fooling myself about my own productivity. I don't imagine I'm unique there ;-)

And my personal anecdotal experiences over the years (including recent ones ;-) is that you can really ramp up productivity by getting everybody on a distributed team in one place. Even when everybody is normally skyping / IMing / whatever.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#310

Post by adrianhoward »

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…

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.

That's a really nice point that I'd not considered before.

It's exacerbated by the fact that it takes more than one to communicate. If you work remotely, it's not sufficient that you are capable of writing an intelligible email. Everyone you interact with also needs this ability, which tends to be rare in companies that are not purely remote workers.

The problem is that, from what I've read, the productivity advantage that folk get isn't through the sort of good communication you get from writing effective emails. It's the more ambient communication you get from noticing your coworker has been staring at the screen without typing for a few minutes, or from hearing and correcting a mistake automatically.

Post reply on HN