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Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#81

Post by chris11 »

dsp1234 wrote: post #44
dvcc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would anyone else find this tiring though? I feel like I am omitting the use of basic communication skills in favor of something less than ideal. I guess I am just not a huge fan of remote work in general though, so I have a hard time coming around to the idea that quick questions must go through a chat at all times.

It's a matter of culture. It may be tiring for some people, but having what I call 'dark meetings' all the time encourages a policy where remote workers are shut out of the process. This is pretty much the same as a default policy of "Don't IM me one-on-one, IM us all in the group chat", with exceptions for personal issues. I feel it's a good policy in general for two main reasons, first it increases the possibility…

Does this scale well? I don't think group chat would work well for larger chats. I personally ignore a lot of email that I isn't personally relevant. And one-on-one conversations are usually more personally relevant than group conversations.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#82

Post by taurath »

cookiecaper wrote: post #77
taurath wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. The fact is that relationships and trust especially can fray after a long time without actually meeting with people (most of the time, you may be a special case). Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time - you may be in a very special situation where there are almost no benef…

>2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. Sure, I agree it's not "asking much" relative to the requirement of a lot of employers that you be in the office every day. That doesn't mean it's something to advertise as if it were a perk. >Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time I don't get this. You only find out what…

True, work things are generally fine over the wire. I've found that even in a professional relationship it's nice and even advantageous to know whats going on with your coworkers!

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#83

Post by brianwawok »

chris11 wrote: post #81
dsp1234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of culture. It may be tiring for some people, but having what I call 'dark meetings' all the time encourages a policy where remote workers are shut out of the process. This is pretty much the same as a default policy of "Don't IM me one-on-one, IM us all in the group chat", with exceptions for personal issues. I feel it's a good policy in general for two main reasons, first it increases the possibility…

Does this scale well? I don't think group chat would work well for larger chats. I personally ignore a lot of email that I isn't personally relevant. And one-on-one conversations are usually more personally relevant than group conversations.

I know of several 100 to 50p person companies that are 100% remote. You just use chat rooms a lot.

I never worked at a giant remote only company or old school Yahoo, so not sure how it scales there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#84

Post by justin808 »

Picking either in-office or "remote-first" is what matters most. Companies cannot optimally be both simultaneously.

I'm Justin Gordon, the founder of ShakaCode, http://www.shakacode.com. My article and video on telecommuting from Maui is still the number one google search result for "telecommuting maui": http://www.railsonmaui.com/blog/2014/05/06/remote-pair-progr....

I've been a full-time remote worker from Maui, since 2007, a remote freelancer since 2011, and over the last 2 years, I've run a remote consulting and product company. To brador, that says "Remote devs start to have mental health issues from the loneliness and lack of supervision in down times", I'd say that's total hogwash. We spend almost every day video chatting on Skype with people (team members and clients) around the world, and we are very often on ScreenHero sharing screens (often with Skype video), and always on Slack and github conversations. There is 100% no loneliness with this lifestyle. In fact, I'd say spending 1-2 hours a day commuting is a far bigger risk for physical and mental health issues!

Since I founded my company to be 100% remote-first, we've avoided many of the issues that face companies that are schizophrenic about remote work. I've heard numerous stories around Silicon Valley about how companies start allowing "work from home days" and then the senior managers see the parking lot 3/4's empty at 11am, and then there's an ultimatum that you have to work from the office unless you have specific management approval to work from home for one given day. And I'm NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING ONE BIT!

One of the keys to my firms success is to hire team members that love what they do, either programming or design, and that typically interact well on open source. To that end, I've found almost all my team members though our popular open source, https://github.com/shakacode/react_on_rails/ (1238+ stars), which is the number one package that integrates Ruby on Rails with React via Webpack and NPM.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#85

Post by berd »

alexeysemeney wrote: post #79

I have been managing remote devs for 4 years and now running http://devteam.space . So, have a decent expertise at that. Maybe you can apply it too. Here are must have rules: #1. You need to have a PM for remote devs, on their side. Or decide who is the PM out of these remote devs. This person will be your trustworthy manager. If something goes not right, you talk to him/her first. Ask him to provide all the honest a…

I like how you work, can you please contact me?

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#86

Post by alexeysemeney »

berd wrote: post #85
alexeysemeney wrote: post #79

I have been managing remote devs for 4 years and now running http://devteam.space . So, have a decent expertise at that. Maybe you can apply it too. Here are must have rules: #1. You need to have a PM for remote devs, on their side. Or decide who is the PM out of these remote devs. This person will be your trustworthy manager. If something goes not right, you talk to him/her first. Ask him to provide all the honest a…

I like how you work, can you please contact me?

yep, ping me over email

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#87

Post by mbrock »

joesmo wrote: post #35
mbrock wrote: post #25

The prevailing ideal of a commercial software team is a tight knit tribe. Members are selected for "culture fit", ability to do pleasant small talk around the lunch table, personal hygiene, and so on. The team should huddle around every day for status updates, bonding, and small talk. Communication should be frequent and face-to-face collaboration is considered the ideal. You can adapt this ideal to remote work situa…

This is exactly how we work at my job currently. We use pull requests and each programmer picks a task and goes on his way. When it's done, it's submitted to the other programmer for review (we have two full time). Most communication happens in chat and pull requests and we rarely have meetings other than the daily scrum-like sync up meeting (which is tolerable). Most tasks are half a day to a day (except larger task…

As I see it, that's still far away from the kind of "open source" development model I'm thinking about.

Most obviously, no open source project has mandatory daily status meetings! And usually, tasks are larger. They often have chat rooms, but they're not really used for synchronizing work, more for idle socializing and occasional discussions.

Daily coordination in the "scrum" fashion, I think, is still under the threshold where work tends to become "tightly coupled" and synchronous. I have more thoughts about how I think this can discourage longer-term projects... but, another time...

By the way, I think these are just two different models, with their own flaws and benefits, and it's interesting to think about whether they could be combined in some novel way.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#88

Post by OrionSeven »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #31
alistairSH wrote: post #28

My team (I'm the project manager/tech lead) is roughly half remote, with the remotes including my product owner and lead test engineer (among others). As noted elsewhere, thinking remote-first is required for non-co-located teams to be successful. Technical items, in no particular order: All meetings are conducted with full video teleconferencing. Most meetings are configured to default participants as muted (help st…

I work remote most of the time and so do almost all of my colleagues. But I think you've highlighted an important issue here. White-boarding!!! No communication tool comes close to a human drawing pictures to explain complex concepts - a picture is worth a thousand words. What I did is invest in a Wacom tablet (I do not work for Wacom) to be able to explain and draw to people I'm on calls with. It takes a bit getting…

I could see something like a Surface Pro or iPad Pro being useful for white boarding.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#89

Post by vmateixeira »

junto wrote: post #33
vmateixeira wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like you're thought about the future of the work environment. Can you tell me, from your experience, how easy was for your company to accept for you to work remotely? I work for a startup in the UK, with a very small team, and can't find an easy way to apply for that.

I'm pretty much the same as you. My main client is in the UK and they are a solutions provider. At the beginning I was due to move away from the area local to the company. I made the suggestion that we try the remote working and if it didn't work for either party, we'd call it a day. That was 2004. The most important part is trust. People know I'm sitting at my desk working and checking in code, because they can see…

Thanks for your advice! I can see your point and those arguments you described can also be applied to my behavior and actually be a valid argument for my remote working application. I also agree that working from a coworking space can be much more beneficial than from home.

Re: Ask HN: How do you integrate remote developers?

#90

Post by vmateixeira »

eertami wrote: post #16
vmateixeira wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like you're thought about the future of the work environment. Can you tell me, from your experience, how easy was for your company to accept for you to work remotely? I work for a startup in the UK, with a very small team, and can't find an easy way to apply for that.

Not all companies will be open to this idea, and the ones that are may have some criteria eg: how far into your career you are (for instance new/junior devs are less likely to be going fully remote). Picking the right motivation will help, "I can't be bothered coming into the office everyday" won't work but "I'm wanting to move away from the city for X/to do Y" gives you a good reason to be asking about it. If you tr…

I got recently promoted to Senior, have a bit more than 5y of experience. My main motivation is to be able to save on two hours commute, which I think can be beneficial for both parts. I would be able to start early and without the commute hassle, and same on time/money as well. I think my major problem is due to having a short team, and company concern about having a fair Dev representation in the office.
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