
The manager’s schedule is holding remote work back - lukethomas
https://medium.com/@lukethomas14/the-managers-schedule-is-holding-remote-work-back-f9c1302ac6f3
======
eledumb
I've worked in 4 very successful organization that were almost 100% remote
work, the percentage of remote work employees by company, 98%, 99%, 92%, 98%.

These companies were no different than the 3 successful companies that didn't
support remote work at all.

All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes
were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were
followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed
it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything
worked and made sense.

I've worked at 4 unsuccessful companies 2 that were almost 100% remote, and 2
that were almost 100% not remote. What these 4 companies had in common was a
lack of process, or discipline. Chasing the "next thing", blowing up schedules
because "we need it now", zero planning. These companies need everyone in the
same location because nothing is written down, everything is rumor, tribal
knowledge is key and if you don't get to sit in a room and look at everyone to
figure out the politics nothing works.

Bottom line is if you want to be successful you need to plan, have process and
be disciplined in your approach to running the business. If you do these
things managing remote employees is no different than having everyone in the
same room. If however your company is a mess, trying to manage remote
employees is next to impossible.

~~~
soneca
Not that relevant, but caught my eye. A 98% or 99% remote company is
effectively a 100% company right? 1% or 2% is not enough to be considered a _"
headquarters"_.

~~~
WorldMaker
There's an old adage that headquarters is wherever the CEO works. Most major
corporate headquarters moves are to be closer to wherever the CEO calls home.
Taking that adage to its literal extreme there will only ever be 99% remote
companies as effectively the corporate headquarters is still the CEO's home.
Though of course the adage isn't meant to be taken solely literally, and its
more just a lens into a power relationship, and even a "majority remote"
company may still need (or unintentionally build) the power of a headquarters
on paper. (Maybe not directly to make the CEO happy, but accountants for tax
reasons, shareholders for accountability reasons, or other reasons.)

~~~
hammock
>There's an old adage that headquarters is wherever the CEO works.

Is that an adage or it is the literal meaning of the word "headquarters"? The
head's quarters - and the premier definition of headquarters if you look it up
in Merriam.

~~~
pgwhalen
I've worked for a company where the CEO's home office had less than 10% of
employees, and the HQ (for lack of a better term) halfway across the country
had greater than 70% of employees.

------
cdavid
As a former software eng. who has been on the management side for a few years,
I am quite ambivalent about remote work, and I find most arguments for it a
bit naive. For example, the idea that the manager schedule is built around
taylorism is not true IMO. I have never seen a single senior manager who do
not have their life consisting mostly of 30 / 60 / 90 mins slots in my life,
and I have worked in very technical environments, e.g. where the average
engineer had a PhD.

First, to let it out of the way: yes, you can definitely have remote teams
which work very well and produce high quality products. In my experience,
those have the following characteristics: clear and fairly technical product
definition (e.g viz software which are built for scientists), excellent teams
with no bad performer, and healthy business environments.

The problem is when at least some of those conditions are not met:

1\. Most organizations are dysfunctional in some ways. Product and engineering
are not aligned, or there are constant re-organizations, lack of ownership. It
is extremely challenging for managers to improve this situation if everybody
is remote, because communication is your main tool here, and doing so remotely
is even more difficult. My experience in those situations is that face to face
discussions are the most effective tool to untangle the mess.

2\. When things go south (e.g. you lose a big client, etc.), it is almost
always the case that people will start to find teams / people to blame.
Executives have shallow information, and most will rely on what is available
to them (kind of availability bias, but for people instead of ideas). Remote
teams will be at a disadvantage.

3\. When your team is not very good, or not very experienced, it is very
difficult to improve their skills remotely. First, being remote means you lose
a lot of very useful information, such as "do they often talk to other people
when they are stuck". Instead of observing how people act, you have to ask,
which paradoxically means more interruption.

Generally, my sense is that remote-first work is quite fragile, or said
differently, is an unstable equilibrium. As soon as things go badly, it is
much harder to fix things. As long as everything goes well, it may well be
more efficient though.

~~~
nullspace
I don’t know why you got downvoted, your points are certainly good and reflect
my one personal data point.*

I have also seen that face 2 face interactions are the best in order to align
within or across product and engineering. Especially at the level of longer-
term goals. Not so much at the level of weekly or monthly cycles.

And I’ve seen the exact same thing with coaching and mentoring people and
teams. It feels like it’s much harder. I think when you are the person who
needs to upskill, it is a lot more obvious when you are sitting next to a
person senior to you. That you have to grow becomes more “material” maybe?

I love remote work, the benefits brought up are very real. I’m curious about
solutions to these very real issues.

* Although in my case, I’m sure someone could come and say “you are not doing it right!” We were fairly new to this.

~~~
nullspace
And there’s one more thing, I’ve found that building good interpersonal
relationships are quite important to having effective discussions with
someone. Especially when the topic is controversial. I’ve found this to be a
lot harder when two people have never met each other.

How do people work around this?

~~~
lukethomas
Hey, I'm the author of the post and have been working remotely for 6 years.

There is no replacement for meeting up in person periodically. Anyone who
tells you it's not a key requirement of remote work is foolish. Smart teams +
companies have figured this out and do regular meetups.

With that being said, there are ways to "maintain" relationships with
coworkers. I wrote a big post about this last week you might like:
[https://www.friday.app/build-relationships-remote-
team](https://www.friday.app/build-relationships-remote-team)

~~~
cdavid
Did you write anything about remote team management ? The "value proposition"
for remote work for IC is obvious to me, but much less so from a management
perspective.

~~~
lukethomas
Good idea - I will write about this shortly. I've written a "how to" post, but
it's mediocre.

------
Phillips126
I was part of a remote-work trial at my office (as a Software Developer). We
were remote for about a year and honestly it was the best work experience I've
ever had. I felt so productive working in an environment perfectly tailored to
me (my own home).

It ultimately ended as several upper management thought we were too
"disconnected" from the company although my e-mail was always open, phone
forwarded to my cell and I was online in a company wide chat messenger during
working hours. We even came on-site once a week for face-to-face meetings. But
I guess some people picture remote workers negatively so we are now back on-
site and all the things I took for granted during the trial year are making
being on-site so much harder.

I commute an hour by car so I gave up a pay raise ~$6,000/yr. on gas alone. I
haven't (and don't want to) calculate vehicle wear, snow tires, etc. I'm
constantly interrupted by people throughout the day laughing at the nearby
reception desk, asking me about lunch or just coming to talk because they are
bored. Even right now I have someone using a leaf blower directly outside my
window so I can't focus on code (why I am on HN right now). The office
temperature is an uncomfortable 66F because the corner office gets so hot with
the many windows it has and I am part of their HVAC line. I am using an
underpowered laptop instead of my home desktop (32GB RAM, high end CPU, etc)
and I require our IT Department to install all software for me because
"company policy"... Needless to say my productivity has dropped.

Perhaps someday we'll be able to go remote again, or maybe it's just time to
move on. I've been here now for more than 5 years and I enjoy the work I do
and the people I work with but after having a taste of remote-work, it's hard
going back.

~~~
TheCapn
I discussed the same points on Reddit recently and the one that I focused on
as well was the aspect of just my physical health.

When I'm at home I have a fully stocked kitchen, my fridge with all my
ingredients and no competition for any of it. What it means is when I'm
working from home, I eat healthier and lead a healthier lifestyle. I save
money on food because the laziness to not pack a lunch doesn't exist.

The commute in mornings is stressful (especially around this time of year
where roads become treacherous with rain/snow with melt+freeze cycles).
Without that commute I can wake up at 6:30, shower, eat and be "at my desk" by
7:00 while the on-site work has me waking up at 5:30.

There's just _so many_ benefits to remote work. I'm happier, and therefore
more productive on that matter alone. I don't even need to get into all the
reasons you covered why work at my office is far worse

~~~
shantly
Remote work saves me ~$300/month in extra child care, or else having to work
so late that by the time I get home my kids are going to bed because the other
option is not being able to reach an office until 9:30-9:45, by letting me get
them where they need to be at the right time instead of early (which costs
money—before-school programs, early care at daycare, that kind of thing).

Plus savings in gas and wear & tear on my car. Hell when all my kids are in
regular k-12 school and I can just toss them on the bus, we could drop to one
car easily, too, saving even more money.

So, remote work: worth probably $6000/yr to me now in sheer cash savings, call
it $10k for time saved and lower stress. Worth maybe $15k in a couple years
when all my kids can ride the bus. Not friggin' bad. Oh and despite the kids
(disease carriers that they are) I'm still sick like 1/2 as often, so that's
nice.

Plus I can prep ingredients for dinner over lunch or while on a call that
doesn't need 100% of my attention or whatever. Measure stuff, chop some
veggies, set it aside, back to work. We've been eating so much better (and
cheaper) since I went remote.

Looking like that'll end soon which has me pretty bummed, though. Remote is
just _so_ much better. Any music I want (or none), get up and walk around,
work from any room or out on the deck. No shared bathroom, hahaha. Offices are
expensive time-wasting misery factories by comparison.

~~~
Phillips126
You nailed my experience entirely. Every point. Working remote was incredible
and I hope to find that again. I wish you the best of luck.

------
scotch_drinker
The manager's schedule is built around Taylorism and the idea that if she (the
manager) just figures out the exact mechanistic steps for squeezing all the
productivity out of the worker, everything will operate smoothly.

Unfortunately, that's not particularly useful in knowledge work where most of
the time, we're dealing with a non-deterministic relationships and creatively
figuring out a problem. The expression of the symptom is the manager's
schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as
a way to manage knowledge workers.

~~~
fogetti
The problem is that priorities are still to be managed. And there is no such
thing as 10 people decide one priority. It's always one person who decides the
priority either by signing a contract, pushing a button, committing some code,
etc.

For this reason there will always be command and control, since an
organization becomes dysfunctional when people act against decisions based on
made-up priorities which are way mis-aligned with the real priorities which
were decided.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Of course there are different types
of management styles like servant leadership for example. But that still
doesn't change a damn thing. Now instead of the most aggressive person signing
the contract, pushing the button, etc, now a nicer fellow signs the contract,
then commands every one else to follow.

And having knowledge work on the table doesn't really change the equation
either. That's why almost all IT companies these days use OKRs. An objective
is to be set by managers and checked upon later (a.k.a command and control).

------
trollied
2 moths ago I started a work from home role (dev) for a company that is 200
miles away. I didn't even need to go to the office as everything was done via
video call & they couriered me a decent MacBook Pro.

Having come from a company that was dead against working from home, it's a
breath of fresh air and has completely changed my life.

I work 8-4. Finishing at 4 feels like I actually have part of the day left. No
more commuting & setting off early in the morning / later at night to avoid
traffic. I don't have to sit in a car for 2 hours a day. I can go to the gym
and get home again before the masses start turning up at 5:30.

Technology is such a massive enabler. Need to talk to a team member? Video
call them. I've never met any of them, but it feels like we're colleagues and
know each other well. I'm more productive not sitting in an office - No
interruptions because someone is bored or wants to talk utter nonsense. I'm in
a relaxed atmosphere, I don't have to wear a shirt and trousers, don't get
dragged into pointless meetings all the time etc etc.

Video call meetings seem to get straight to the point & speed along. People
seem less inclined to go off-topic and faff - a big productivity boost.

I will never understand the mindset of the previous employer that had a
natural mistrust of remote working. They've lost many employees because they
haven't embraced flexible working, and that trend will continue.

Granted, it's not for everyone. You have to be mindful that you're at work (I
have a separate space), and ensure that you're not disconnected from your
colleagues. I find that making sure that I have a few video calls a day with a
colleague keeps me in check.

------
philfreo
There's a big difference between remote work (which can function 100%
perfectly fine in the "Manager's schedule") from "remote work across varying
timezones". In my experience (3+ years working fully remotely, 10+ years
working partially remotely), timezones (overlap of working hours) matter much
more than physical geography.

Even among remote work in different timezones, there's still a huge difference
between say a 4 hour timezone (say, covering all of North America) working
with people from potentially ANY timezone where you have potentially 0 hours
per day of overlap.

Even in an organization that does asynchronous work really well, very few
organizations can do _everything_ effectively in async, meaning that you'll
always want to have some overlap for synchronous discussions.

My advice for any company concerned about expanding remote work would be to
simply limit/restrict which time zones you're comfortable people working in.

Our all-remote person team at Close.com has scaled up to 15+ engineers, 40+
people overall. We do have people all over the world, but we tend to focus our
hiring around American & European Timezones, which provides a nice balance of
covering a huge percentage of the world's population while still providing
enough overlap to have synchronous meetings.

~~~
pc86
Or just require that people keep a schedule for your timezone. So you can _be_
in whatever timezone you want provided you're working 8-5 UTC-8, for example.
Requiring someone _be_ in a specific timezone is just a slightly less of a
burden than requiring they be local enough to commute it. You're still
excluding a huge swath of potential employees.

~~~
philfreo
Yes, I'm using "timezone" as shorthand for "the timezone of your working
hours", which occasionally can/does include people who want to work odd hours
to accommodate.

That said, we are always a little skeptical of people who are willing to work
very odd hours (e.g. throughout their night), because for many people it's not
sustainable for them long-term.

------
buboard
Probably has to do with Trust. Managers by definition exert some power in
other people in a way that engineers do not, so they need to be trusted and
build trust within a hierarchy. That's a social function so they think it's
best done face-to-face. I 'm pretty sure it can be replaced with an social
network though, we know it can be done since it works for social networks in
general.

~~~
pdonis
_> we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general_

I'm not sure we know that. We know that social networks enable people to
communicate remotely, but I'm not sure we know that they actually help in
building trust.

~~~
buboard
i think it works in closed networks. not in the open net

------
setgree
I was looking for a bit more insight into why these diverging preferences have
developed and didn't see it.

My 2c on that:

The chairman of the board at a company I know well has been in business for
like 40-50 years and he reckons that CRM software has been transformational
for managers. Apparently, before Salesforce, you had little idea what your
salespeople were doing with their days -- especially if they were regional
specialists (re: remote employees). Salesforce keeps them on track, keeps them
disciplined, provides strategists with better on-the-ground facts, etc. And
that's had huge effects, according to him.

But, if you're a chief marketing officer or biz dev person, and your success
depends on engineers, you don't have a SF equivalent. Sure you can look at
their Jira tickets or whatever, but if don't really understand what they're
working on, that won't provide a lot of clarity. So maybe you look for clarity
by asking them to be in the same room -- but ultimately that doesn't help much
either (they just put on their headphones, deliberately avoid you, etc.). So
you give up that battle.

But with product people -- you don't have a salesforce-type system to keep
eyes on what they're doing. But neither is their work totally
incomprehensible. So, drawing on how helpful SF has been, you conclude that
transparency and oversight are needed to keep things on track. So you develop
a strong preference for face to face conversations.

This is a theory to explain how a startup I know well has decided that its
challenges getting to PMF are (in part) about a WFH policy that was 'too
liberal' (CEO's words).

------
ineedasername
Where I work all remote work was recently outright banned. Because one single
person was found to be neglecting their work for years in favor of their
second job, collecting two pay checks. Pretty absurd, considering that issue
was at least as much the result of poor managerial supervision as it was
unethical employee activity. I used to work from home frequently when my kids
were home sick from school, it allowed me to put in at least a half day of
work. Now, the work just has to wait, because unless there's an emergency I
won't let myself be taken advantage of.

~~~
matwood
Given how poor the management sounds, that person could have worked a second
job without too much trouble while in the office. I've seen it done in
multiple companies.

~~~
ineedasername
Yes, though actually it's upper (the very top) level management that isn't so
great. Many mid level are good, my boss included, who is understanding on this
issue and says, "yeah, absolutely don't do work from home if you're not
allowed to claim the time."

She's also extremely supportive of family time, taking an hour off to leave
early for a kid's event, etc. She allows a very healthy work/life Ballance,
which is part of why I stay.

------
archeantus
I worked as a fully remote software engineer for a very large company for
several years and it worked great. Engineering is something that can be done
well remotely. It was on me to build and maintain important relationships via
Slack or occasional travel, but I made it work very well.

So well that they decided to promote me to manager of my team, which is
arguably more risky than working as a remote engineer. They took a bet on me,
and I think it has worked out well. I encourage my team to work at home as
much as they would like to, and have even started hiring remotely.

I stand by remote work. Work is about more than enslaving code monkeys to do
your bidding. It is a partnership that works well when you trust your
engineers to get their work done, regardless of where they are located.

------
markbnj
It seems unlikely that differences in management schedules are the big issues
holding remote work back. I mean, perhaps the first question to answer is
whether anything is holding remote work back. It was my impression that it is
gaining popularity, but I know there are companies and segments where it just
isn't culturally a thing people do much of yet.

Maybe I'm a cynic (oh heck I should just be honest and say I'm a cynic), but I
suspect that the big issues in those places that are resistant to remote work
are about power, control and trust. I work on what I would say is a very
successful fully remote team. However, we're small (~30 people), tightly knit,
our work is essentially self-organizing with a little steering from above, and
each of the people responsible for components of it is a domain expert with a
lot of experience and little need for hands-on coaching. Our managers know
every one of us personally and they know we're doing our best every day. There
are no trust issues. We collaborate pretty effortlessly using the usual tools,
and our ability to do these things has allowed us to keep our overhead low and
attract skilled people from all over the world.

In short I think we're essentially a different kind of organization, and it
would not surprise me to find out that it is hard to nearly impossible to
convert an old-style organization, especially a larger and older one with
hidebound traditions, into a new-style fully remote thing.

------
dadarepublic
Someone on this thread brought up trust as an aspect of successful
organization remote work. I do like this take. As a manager I have observed
that trust can be hard to come by if there's not a solid metric that can help
establish trust where there is none. And one bad miscommunication experience
can erode trust that has been built up for months.

Face-to-face is always one of the highest fidelity mediums for communication
in expressing the verbal & non-verbal. And I would agree with the resounding
opinion in this thread that periodic meet-ups are very good for keeping trust
relations higher in the times when remote is the norm.

Sometimes even that is hard if you're managing a team from across the globe,
and then trust is reduced to a metric of some kind - work output, quality of
work, etc.

I like working with remote teams and I've had great and horrible experiences
with them - first and third party. It can sometimes be cultural but oftentimes
I've found it can be isolated to the individual - and working to remedy that
weak link can oftentimes (but not always) turn a situation around.

Understanding how to build a team, identifying the needs of the team, and
establish trust within that team, whether co-located or remote is important.
It's also important to understand how those needs and methods are differ
between co-located and remote work.

~~~
trollied
I've found that frequent face-to-face video calls works well to establish a
rapport & make the remote working experience seem more "local".

~~~
dadarepublic
I would definitely agree with this. Video conference has helped immensely.

A good example would the time my team (spread out in 4 different countries)
was crunching for a launch where we set up a 'virtual' mega war room
connecting 4 war rooms across the globe with live video feeds. Worked wonders
for open communication when there was overlap in time zone working hours.

------
ummonk
>For some, the idea of working remotely is equivalent to laying around,
watching Netflix (while working of course), and happy hour at 3pm

Ironically, when I need to draft some long write up (e.g. perf evaluation,
speech, etc.), I have the easiest time when I lie in bed watching some
pausable movie or show. Nothing like passive entertainment to help me work
through writer’s block.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
After years of remote work and guilt over doing stuff like this, I've come
around to the idea that -- for some types of tasks -- there's no more
efficient way of plowing through it than laying around on the couch with
something pausable on the TV, or occasionally even a video game. I always end
up spending much more time on pause than not, and it _actually gets done_. It
has to be a pretty specific type of thing, but I no longer feel guilty about
it.

------
Spooky23
I'd argue that the tools and lack of understanding re: how to use them, and
not understanding people's needs are holding back remote work.

The standard stack that companies use is Office 365. The tools in there are
really awful and unreliable in many scenarios, and add friction to most
interactions.

The other thing that an individual contributor won't grok is that your people
are usually on a bell curve. Your most self-motivated workers thrive remote
and often are more productive. But many workers either don't perform as well
without direct human-to-human feedback or don't perform well remote for
various reasons. We tend to assume that people have home lives and
environments that are stable and amenable to work -- many _do not_. Many
people have difficulty being alone all day. Still others fear (rightfully)
that they will be held to a higher standard of performance/accountability
because they aren't present to informal conversation.

------
kube-system
> I find this is more prevalent for non-technical people. The boss allows
> remote work up to a certain point, but they can’t cross over into being
> fully remote.

> That would be too scary. We can’t have that!

It could also be that non-technical members of the team don't have the
combination of tools, technical ability, and training to make remote meetings
effective.

I've seen a lot of remote meetings completely wrecked by inability to use the
meeting software, failure to adjust audio settings properly, faulty or
improper hardware, inappropriate use of hardware, etc. After a few frustrating
interactions, many might conclude that this mode of communication isn't
effective.

This is definitely a cultural issue that needs to be addressed from the top --
these people need to be assigned the proper tools, trained to use them, and
expected to use them.

------
bogomipz
I thought this post had some good insights and am looking forward to seeing
the finished book. I had a question about the following statement:

>"For example, I’d argue that Slack is a tool that has made the idea of remote
work much more realistic for people on the manager’s schedule. While it’s
technically an asynchronous communication tool, it’s also used as an
alternative to being in the same room, powering constant back-and-forth
communication (which can be annoying)."

I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be
curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the
interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office defeats
one of the key benefits of remote work.

~~~
52-6F-62
> _I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be
> curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the
> interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office
> defeats one of the key benefits of remote work._

Maybe. In some offices, it only means that you get both: constant pings from
even unrelated teams' chats, etc, _and_ the in-office interruptions. I'd like
if this were limited to one form...

------
WhompingWindows
I was told when I started my current position that remote work would be
available for any employee with 12 months of experience. Then, upper
management changed, and my boss's hands are tied: he can only request remote
for special circumstances. All of my older co-workers were grandfathered in
with their old remote access, granted before I arrived, but I essentially have
zero chance of gaining remote work, all due to upper management not trusting
its employees to know what's best for themselves.

~~~
ilaksh
Now is a good time to start looking for a better job. And be sure to tell them
when you leave what the reason was.

------
ken
They're using a different measuring stick for these cases. They equate being
in the office with "being constantly interrupted". Well, sure. Obviously
that's bad! But does it have to be that way?

In other words, remote work is how people give themselves private offices when
their company refuses to.

For 10 years, I've seen people write articles which dance around this fact.
Everybody is afraid to say "private offices", even when that's exactly what
they're describing.

------
crtlaltdel
this is interesting, and something i've experienced from both ends of the
conversation.

from the perspective of managing technical teams i've only found the
"manager's schedule" (as described) to be a bother to _me_ and _my_ time
management. this has been a major pain in the ass when i had to kick out
feature work and caused me to spend several super late nights to wrap things
up. this didn't affect my team directly; no doubt my exhaustion impacted my
mood and thus my interactions. not sure if i was a total dick (never got that
kinda feedback, direct or indirect...but how knows...), but i certainly more
than once had the posture of defeat as i shuffled from a pairing session to a
strategy meeting.

i tried my hardest to create a big sandbox the devs could own and (mostly)
self organize. with the help of sympathetic product managers we switched from
scrum to kanban and dropped physical standups (and their associated shitty
conference call experience) for a dedicated slack channel. we leaned heavily
on tech and a couple basic asks such as "try to post status around the same
time every day", "important communication goes in email, not in slack", "if
you know your schedule, add it to the team calendar" and so on. it was not
perfect but it worked out...for the that team, project and business
conditions.

now, i have also certainly (and most commonly) experienced shitty remote
situations where people on the speakerphone are forgotten, work from home is
viewed as a negative and local time is gravely disrespected.

------
PragmaticPulp
I've managed multiple remote, distributed, asynchronous teams over my career.
When remote teams work well, it's a great experience for everyone.

However, I'm more convinced than ever that these pop-culture articles and
thought pieces about remote work are counterproductive for remote workers.
Most of the remote work thought pieces that make it to the HN front page are
very one-sided; They make remote work sound like a panacea, or a way to boost
productivity and happiness with zero downsides. This creates very unrealistic
expectations of remote work for job seekers, especially the more junior remote
devs that I've worked with in recent years. When it comes to remote work, we
want to believe that it's the golden ticket to solving all of the problems of
the modern workplace.

In my experience managing remote, on-site, and mixed teams: It's much more
difficult to make remote teams work well. Some key things to watch out for
with remote employees:

\- Communication is everyone's job. Async, text-only communication can be more
efficient when done right, but it's much more difficult to foster friendly,
accurate, and rapid shared understanding over Slack or e-mail than in a well-
run face to face meeting. Successful remote work depends on everyone making an
effort to seek out information they need, proactively share understanding via
accessible documentation, and develop healthy relationships with their peers
and managers.

\- Remote employees are not contractors. A common misconception is that remote
work equals total freedom about when, where, and how you do your job. Pick
your own hours, vacation without taking PTO as long as you respond to e-mails
once a day, batch your e-mails to once a day or less, and work on your own
terms. This can work in certain situations if everyone agrees to it, but it's
not a given. If you're a remote employee, the only guarantee is that your
working location is not at the office. Having the team working together during
specific core hours is hugely valuable if any collaboration is required. It's
not efficient to have two people ping-ponging e-mails back and forth with one
response per side per day when they could hash things out with a 5-minute chat
during overlapping business hours.

\- Some people can't handle remote work. It just doesn't work for everyone. My
biggest surprise as a remote manager was how many people's productivity
dropped off a cliff after they went remote, yet they were convinced they were
being more productive than ever. Some of these employees can be trained to be
productive remotely with intense hands-on management, but it's a lot of work.
I give new remote employees very explicit instructions about expectations for
process, check-ins, and team discipline when we start. Continually update
these remote onboarding documents as you learn how your remote team works
best.

\- Remote job listings attract a lot of bad apples. Remote jobs are synonymous
with slacking off in some circles. Watch out for digital nomads who want to
collect a paycheck while they travel the world. Avoid startup founders who
think they can put in a couple hours of remote work and collect a paycheck and
benefits while they focus on building their startup on someone else's dime.
Watch out for remote applicants who try to work two jobs at once, doing the
bare minimum for whichever of the two companies is paying the least attention
to their work. When hiring remote at scale, you'll run into more of these bad
actor applicants and employees than you might expect.

\- Meetings are still helpful in remote teams. There's another common
misconception that remote work == no meetings. Some conversations are still
most efficiently handled as an N-way video call for 15-30 minutes, rather than
a never-ending Slack conversation where participants are half-distracted as
they alt-tab between Slack and their work.

~~~
perishabledave
As an EM, these points are quite helpful. Regarding your fourth point, how do
you filter out or deal with bad apples?

~~~
PragmaticPulp
At the hiring phase: Check their LinkedIn and public social media closely. If
they have a recent startup or freelancing business listed on LinkedIn, ask
them for details about it and how they ended it. For freelancers, I directly
ask if they plan to continue freelancing and how they plan to separate the
work.

As with all hiring, references are key. There's an art to getting an honest
reference out of remote employee referrals, though. Don't neglect to follow up
on reference checks. Be polite and professional, but don't hesitate to ask
hard questions or ask for more appropriate references if they try to give you
softball answers. Also have your hiring department follow up with the previous
employer to confirm start and end dates. It's tempting for remote workers to
stay on with their old employer for a few extra months, double-dipping both
paychecks while they can.

Ask people why they want a remote position. There are many valid reasons to
work remote, but having other obligations during the day is not one of them.
For example, if someone wants a remote job so they can stay home and watch
their toddler during the workday to save on daycare costs (actual answer from
someone I interviewed) then they aren't going to be very productive. Make sure
they can allocate a proper amount of time for focused work.

After hiring: Proper performance management is key. The important thing here
is to treat on-site and remote employees the same with regards to performance
management. Technically, there's no reason an employee down the hall couldn't
also be sandbagging their performance while they work on a side hustle for 75%
of the work week.

The biggest pitfall with remote employee performance management is the idea
that people have a finite amount of work that can be finished early.
Specifically, it's difficult when people get attached to the idea that the
number of hours worked shouldn't matter as long as they get their work done.
The flaw in this argument is that if your employees are running out of work
before the end of the work week, you're not managing your backlog and roadmap
effectively, or you're grossly overstaffed. Set the expectation that if
someone finishes their sprint work by day 7 of a 10 day sprint, they need to
spend those last 3 days taking on additional tickets or helping coworkers.

Watch out for people padding estimates, sandbagging, and playing other games
to minimize their hours worked. Your job as an engineering manager is to make
sure they're not worked too hard, but also ensure they're not sandbagging.
Again, this isn't unique to remote employees, but in my experience remote
employees have far more temptations to sandbag a little bit here and there
that most people just can't resist. Don't nag, but let them know you're
watching closely.

Most of all: You need to build mutual trust with the remote employees. Without
watercooler conversations, shared lunch breaks, and other office mingling you
need to make an effort to get to know people. I've found that the more you
build a healthy personal connection with remote employees, the less likely
they are to try to abuse the system. Be wary of anyone who insists on purely
transactional communication arrangements with odd working hours that
suspiciously never line up with anyone else's working hours. Also be wary of
anyone who always has excuses for why they couldn't finish their work each
week, but always rushes to be the heroic person saving the day when something
goes wrong. The remote work abusers are always trying to make themselves look
indispensable at key moments while dragging the team down on average. Don't
let heroism overshadow underlying problems with someone's performance.

------
alexellisuk
It took me until 2019 to discover Paul's blog post - Maker's Schedule,
Manager's Schedule and it has been invaluable
[http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

I now run a mix of densely packed manager schedule and maker schedule whilst
maintaining a number of large OSS projects and a consultancy business.

------
FpUser
All my work ( my own ventures and consulting ) was remote since 2000. Sure
there were some real meetings with subcontractors and customers but I think it
was less the 3% time wise in total.

------
bernierocks
I see two problems with remote work being the norm at most companies:

1) most people don't have the discipline to work remotely. I've been working
remotely for a decade. I'm a self-starter and have run my own businesses. I
find that the same discipline needed to build a company is almost the same as
it is to work remotely.

You don't have the possibility of the boss coming in to see what you are doing
or a manager right across the hall. Many people have a hard time succeeding in
this environment, especially if you are working from home with lots of
distractions.

I've seen many companies struggle to keep remote employees because if this.

2) Managers need to be excellent communicators to manage a remote team. At my
last remote gig, I eventually had to quit because the manager was extremely
introverted and passive aggressive, which made working remotely almost an
impossibility.

I think if we were in an office, I might be able to work with his personality,
but instead he just avoided any sort of non-slack chatting and intentionally
assigned me tickets that had misinformation or left out important details for
a task that I needed to complete (and then acted shocked when I missed them).

After it happened the first time, I thought I was the problem and tried to get
more information about specific tickets. Something important would always be
left out...and then I was always blamed for the mis-communication.

It finally came to a breaking point when I worked on a month-long project and
was asked to merge it with a junior developer's work right before a vacation.
The Junior developer's work broke everything. I explained the situation and
asked the manager if he wanted me to fix the code that was a result of our
merge, when I came back.

He said 'no' and then sent me a long list of issues while I was gone (I saw
them in the airport on the way home..1 day before I was returning to
work)..which all resided in the junior developer's code base.

He then had a conversation with me about not being a 'senior' enough developer
and that they felt they were paying me 'too much'.

This conversation was odd and funny at the same time because In the previous 6
months, I had written large additions to the application, which were still in
production with almost no issues and I was praised by the owner of the
company. I was also getting paid 60% less than my market value, which I
negotiated because their original offer was laughable. I only took the job
when my business had a couple of slow months.

I should also add that the manager built the application we were all working
on 7 years prior..and it was steaming pile of garbage. Spaghetti code, bad
practices, and I would find so many bugs that needed to be fixed when I was
working on a feature request, it would delay everything.

It's been a couple of years since I worked there and they still haven't gotten
out of beta and launched. I'm guessing it's because of the managers inability
to communicate and effectively manage a team.

------
anovikov
Why people don't tell the definite and super obvious reason for that: people
will scam their employers! I know many people who work fully remote. All of
them have 3-4 "full time" jobs, and just do the minimum necessary on all of
them to not get fired, or outsource work. Making a good Valley salary in a
place where rent is $400 a month. Good? For them yes, but a company that
allows remote work is just making a mistake: it WILL be scammed by the vast
majority of people who work there.

High-level employees need collaboration and frequent meetings making remote
work impossible (execs), low-level ones can't be trusted because they have
nothing to lose.

~~~
vharuck
If they meet expectations, how is that a scam? "Full time job" is a weird idea
for salaried workers, anyway. They're paid $X to produce $(X + Y) value. Hours
spent producing that value shouldn't mean much to the employer.

~~~
falcor84
As a manager, it's extremely difficult to figure out how much work can be
reasonably and sustainably achieved by a particular person/role. Performing
this estimation and planning is part of the inherent transaction costs in
working with contractors.

The perceived benefit of hiring a full-time employee is that they will strive
to be as effective as they can be in achieving the firm's goals filling the
entire work-day. Obviously this is not quite as easy as that, but if you hire
good people who share your vision and treat them well, then it gets quite
close. And this is equally true for remote employees.

