Why Remote Engineering Is So Difficult • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Remote Engineering Is So Difficult

#41

Post by klochner » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

Htsthbjig wrote: post #30

I have always worked remotely. My company works this way, my employees work remotely. IMHO it is not hard or difficult per se, but you need to design your company around it, like with other things. It is also an area that needs more study in order to develop fully. Probably if I had a conventional company and I had to transform or convert it to remote, it wouldn't work. There would be vested interest against the conv…

Very much like a service-oriented architecture: fairly easy if you design that way from the start, but difficult to refactor into after you have a giant monolith.

Re: Why Remote Engineering Is So Difficult

#42

Post by cunac » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 6:11 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #11

In a former life as a corporate software developer, I distinctly remember having to get up at graveyard-shift hours to infrequently coordinate with some of our Indian team members. Some minimal time-zone overlap is never overrated. I think it is hard to beat real-time communication over chat or voice - asynchronous delays break up any flow in collaboration and turn it more into throw the requirement over the wall and…

I found that up to +/- 4hr works , other makes life really hard For example we have team in Singapore 12 hr diff , every communication is so delayed that is really painful

Re: Why Remote Engineering Is So Difficult

#43

Post by paulhauggis » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 2:53 AM UTC

onedev wrote: post #18

paulhauggis wrote: post #15

I worked at two companies where everyone worked remotely. I think one of the big differences I noticed is that I never felt like I was that close to the rest of the team. We talked a few times/week through Webex or Skype, but it's just not the same as being there in person. Communication was also a big issue. It's not impossible to have good communication remotely, but I've rarely seen it in practice.

The missing part might have been Empathy.

I think you are onto something here. One of the things I remembered that really bothered me about my last remote job was that the boss would constantly change the scope of the project right before the deadline..and extend the deadline even further.

I was never part of many of the decision-making meetings with the boss and my project manager and I felt like the manager never had our back. After we met onsite for our first bi-yearly 1-week meeting, I realized that he didn't really have any choice in the matter and did in-fact fight for us when these decisions were made.