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Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

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Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#71

Post by rajivayyangar »

o-__-o wrote: post #70
pj_mukh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Push-to-talk was the killer feature for us. We've been using it extensively. There are no silver bullets in managing (and being) remote teams, but Tandem helps a lot along the way!

So they created the tap-you-on-the-shoulder problem for remote workers? I prefer being scheduled not someone blaring audio at me because it’s convenient for them... but it’s what the business owners want

The maker-manager dilemma is real - which is something we try to address with the prominent Focus mode. At the same time, a big reason we show the app status is so that the "business owners" can hopefully take cues and minimize their interruptiveness. For example, as a product manager, I will often decide not to bother my co-founder Tim because I see he's in a coding editor (and thus in deep-focus).

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#72

Post by venuur »

bernatfortet wrote: post #29
splix wrote: post #28

Congratulations with the launch! It's what I was looking for a few years. I mean I've been working in remote teams for years, and have thought about the exact service with screen/voice-message sharing features, as you created. I believe easy screen sharing is important part of remote work, thought I think it should be in other way, i.e. I want to share a part of my screen (static pic or video) with a comment/question…

I love the idea of sharing a part of screen, pic or video to create a conversation around it. We were chatting about a similar thing the other day. You've thought about this quite a bunch.How would you envision that experience? The good morning use case is awesome. We have some teams that have a room called "Good Morning". You can join there if you're the first one to start the day, and other can join you as they get…

WeChat for Windows has a shortcut (alt-a) to instantly bring up a cursor to snip a portion of the screen and annotate it with text and shapes. It’s super handy for quickly marking some code or a segment in a doc.

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#73

Post by gexla »

Just throwing in my two cents. I work with a small remote team and our first problem was that most apps would at times lag, hang, deliver messages out of order, etc. We found a relatively obscure app which has been solid and we have stuck with it. All other value (features) takes a hit once these issues pop up for us.

There's a ton of choices out there, but if other teams are like ours, then there apparently aren't many options for this one wish-list item. If we had one more to choose from, then we might look at other features.

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#74

Post by rajivayyangar »

ryacko wrote: post #37
rajivayyangar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - can you say more?

Yes, I can. Paper is the best form of asynchronous communication, requiring neither electricity or complex authentication schemes. By placing a piece of paper on the side of another person’s desk as quietly as possible, one would ensure that the person will be alerted to a necessary matter when they have the time to inspect their physical inbox. It also indicates the matter is important enough for the original person…

Funny - one of our teammates used to do this at a previous company. We built in a similar function for remote workers with a Slack integration. It sends a little message with pre-formatted responses that indicates you'd like to talk on Tandem.

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#76

Post by com2kid »

323454 wrote: post #16

We use Tandem extensively: the killer feature is that during screenshares you get to control a pointer that the other person can see on their screen, which makes pair programming over Tandem feel basically the same as in person. It was especially useful when onboarding a dev onto a new section of code that they had never touched before, and also when unblocking someone who was having trouble learning to use the IDE.

> We use Tandem extensively: the killer feature is that during screenshares you get to control a pointer that the other person can see on their screen, which makes pair programming over Tandem feel basically the same as in person.

NetMeeting did this way back when. It has been annoying watching things regress and then slowly work back to what NetMeeting used to be able to do.

In retrospect NetMeeting was way ahead of its time, the largest issue it had was that NATs become super popular around the same time, back NAT breakthrough tech wasn't there yet, so using it involved lots of firewall bypass rules on the switch/router.

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#77

Post by itsthisjustin »

bwaine wrote: post #60

I recently read Carl Newport's "deep work". One of the points he made that struck home the most was that a leading indicator of success for most knowledge workers was the number of hours spent doing deep work. Ie - the number of hours spent doing uninterrupted work that makes use of your differentiated skills. As a remote worker the thing I treasure most is the opportunity to organise my schedule to spend the majorit…

That's literally the entire thought process behind https://yac.chat. This message is so validating for what we are trying to accomplish. Would love further feedback if you're up for it.

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#78

Post by o-__-o »

rajivayyangar wrote: post #71
o-__-o wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they created the tap-you-on-the-shoulder problem for remote workers? I prefer being scheduled not someone blaring audio at me because it’s convenient for them... but it’s what the business owners want

The maker-manager dilemma is real - which is something we try to address with the prominent Focus mode. At the same time, a big reason we show the app status is so that the "business owners" can hopefully take cues and minimize their interruptiveness. For example, as a product manager, I will often decide not to bother my co-founder Tim because I see he's in a coding editor (and thus in deep-focus).

You are The problem, not the solution. But enjoy your angel money and when you’re living on the beach not worrying about anything remember there are real people being forced to use your software that are still miserable. But you did a great job selling water to a whale :+1:

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#79

Post by alexeldeib »

itsthisjustin wrote: post #77
bwaine wrote: post #60

I recently read Carl Newport's "deep work". One of the points he made that struck home the most was that a leading indicator of success for most knowledge workers was the number of hours spent doing deep work. Ie - the number of hours spent doing uninterrupted work that makes use of your differentiated skills. As a remote worker the thing I treasure most is the opportunity to organise my schedule to spend the majorit…

That's literally the entire thought process behind https://yac.chat . This message is so validating for what we are trying to accomplish. Would love further feedback if you're up for it.

This is...interesting. Once i'm leaving a voicemail, why would I prefer that over a slack message?

Re: Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams

#80

Post by austinsharp »

bernatfortet wrote: post #53
austinsharp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to use Sococo and got frustrated and abandoned it a couple years back, actually. If you hit the Slack button it opens a link to that Slack chat. If you are in a room with a group it'll open a group DM to the other people present. (I personally rarely use the Slack button because any given DM or channel in Slack is only ever alt+tab and ctrl+k away, but that's just me.)

That makes sense. What was frustrating with Sococo?

They rewrote it from a native app to a web app, and it got a lot slower. Limits on the size / number of videos active. Status was not as flexible as we wanted (i.e. reminders when you forget to update, time zone conversion, etc).
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