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We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

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Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#91
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RW makes your tech job even easier to offshore I don't think so. Offshore comes with its own challenges.

Tell that to managers.

... before it's too late and they can't backtrack because it already cost too much in the transition and their ego can't handle admitting they were wrong.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually it's a just a quick phone conversation to talk about interest. The technical interview actually happens the second you enter my open source channel and contribute code or show off something cool you built. This demonstrates a few things to me: 1. You know our codebase 2. You can build things we need 3. I've already collaborated with you 4. You're proactive and interested in solving problems we would have for…

interesting - this seems like perhaps a "good enough" solution for the age old problem that many creative-type career often encounter these days where employers don't want to pay to hire someone before knowing if they can work, while employees don't want to work before knowing they'll be paid. your method seems to basically say, we won't hire you unless you've already done work for us, and we expect that you are self…

A lot of companies employ this strategy with some sort of open source presence on github.

The key for the hiring on the open source component is, we use this in our daily work, and it's directly useful when people work on it.

The open source project itself is fairly popular though.

The easiest analog here might be something like a react js.

I definitely don't claim to have this generalize well, only that it's worked for us, and some companies do this to an extent. I'm not sure how many companies hook their hiring in to this though.

If more hiring engineering managers were aware of their open source presence, and who did what on there, it could make hiring more efficient.

We've had very good retention over the last few years, because there's some pre vetting that happens at the very minimum.

I'm currently looking at formalizing this in some form, but there's a trade off to how much formalization you do vs making the process inefficient.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#94
I work remotely. I'm from Romania and we have a team that's distributed across the country, with some members from other European countries as well. We do have a small office where I live, but it is provided just as a place to come to in case you don't like working from home and I do go to our office almost daily, but most of the team is on the other end of a Gmail/Skype/Slack connection.

Today I got tired at 1 PM, got up from my desk, got my bike and went for a ride in the park nearby. Once in a while I would take the phone out of my pocket and give quick answers on Slack, but most of my time I enjoyed what is the beginning of autumn. You can feel it in the air, it's more chilly, the light gets warmer and the color of the trees start changing. It's by far the most beautiful time of the year for walking in parks. And it felt great. Now I'm back home and I'm thinking of finishing my work, but after I eat something.

And I do this all the time, while managing to get shit done. Many times I work late to finish this or that. But I'm a responsible software developer, I care about the project and I can work without somebody watching over my shoulder.

And surely there are those times where you need to do design sessions with the rest of the team. But we do those over Skype and every once in a while we travel in order to meet face to face. There are challenges in communication of course, but we make it work.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#95
post #29

> In remote team, we get to experience the culture at its most naked form. There is no catered lunch or a hip office with table tennis table. Everything artificial is stripped away. I totally disagree with this. The most naked form of communication is (and IMHO always will be) face to face. I can't tell how many countless times many emails were exchanged before simply speaking face to face solved the problem. Working…

Not in every case. It was often an excuse for my last manager to not do anything like write down requirements. "I thought we talked about that." "Yes you changed your mind three times and I can't remember what the final outcome was." Personally I like having things done in writing as you have something solid to refer to afterwards.

Tip: after a meeting / conversation, create the user story as you understand it based on the conversation then tagged your manager on the item and ask for confirmation. Ideally, you'd have a product manager who keeps an easy to read backlog; but if you don't then you need to take matters into your own hands.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#96

I love this topic. On one hand, many tech giants spent an exorbitant amount of money hiring and bringing their technical talent to one location. Easy examples such as Google and especially Amazon come to mind. On the other hand, any studies on the subject strongly imply anyone farther than 50 feet rarely speaks anyway so you are better off with remote teams as they are setup with better tooling (slack, et tal). https…

of course, all you're saying is right. we are 100% remote, have been for about 2 years.

the only thing i'd add/modify is i do like to meet up with everyone at least once every 12-24 months, usually in a town where a convention is happening.

note we don't actually go to the convention, which i think are largely pointless, but it's good to take advantage of when a bunch of colleagues are in town. that's when we bring the new hires in to meet the team and network with the industry at large.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#97
post #85
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think RW supporting teams that do RW well (including both managers who know how to run it and techies) outperform local ones. However, RW makes it easier for slackers to slack off; it is difficult for less effective managers to detect, let alone handle it. I think managing RW teams well (getting needed work and shielding members from most non-tech crap) is a pretty rare skill. In any case, if you want to do X (work…

> However, RW makes it easier for slackers to slack off; it is difficult for less effective managers to detect, let alone handle it. This is, I think, because most management techniques don't rely on any sort of objective measurement to determine effectiveness. Using measurements can have its own dangers if done poorly, but subjective observations and feelings about how productive or effective a team or individual is…

There mostly isn't any sort of objective measurement of effectiveness (if there was, everyone would use it).

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that, if Queen Izabella could have daily standups with Chris Columbus, she would.

That's not the point. The question is if Columbus would have done his job better if he had the ability to do daily stand-ups with the Queen? I don't think so, because the Queen probably didn't have the skills of an explorer. Great leaders have always delegated ;-)

In all fairness Columbus was pretty terrible at his job. The only reason he was even working for the queen in the first place is because pretty much no one else would hire him because of his track record of being terrible at his job. He tried sailing to India the long way around, almost ran out of supplies and got lucky that the Americas happened to exist.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. The question is if Columbus would have done his job better if he had the ability to do daily stand-ups with the Queen? I don't think so, because the Queen probably didn't have the skills of an explorer. Great leaders have always delegated ;-)

In all fairness Columbus was pretty terrible at his job. The only reason he was even working for the queen in the first place is because pretty much no one else would hire him because of his track record of being terrible at his job. He tried sailing to India the long way around, almost ran out of supplies and got lucky that the Americas happened to exist.

Its possible he had a Chinese map showing that the Americas did exist. Which he could barely read, and concluded that India was over there. He got the distance right; just not the place.

So he had enough supplies for the journey he made, that part was actually planned. No luck involved.

Re: We Don’t Simply Get Remote Jobs, We Join Remote Teams

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your interview process look like for such candidate?

Usually it's a just a quick phone conversation to talk about interest. The technical interview actually happens the second you enter my open source channel and contribute code or show off something cool you built. This demonstrates a few things to me: 1. You know our codebase 2. You can build things we need 3. I've already collaborated with you 4. You're proactive and interested in solving problems we would have for…

I like this. Interviews are supposed to be proxy of how successful / valuable the team member is going to be on the job. Since the person is already contributing, makes sense to cut out the "algorithmic quiz".

Too bad I am not a java developer! :)

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