

Remote: the new book by 37signals, coming fall 2013 - dmishe
http://37signals.com/remote

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adrianhoward
I'm not going to repost my long list of research on co-located vs remote work
again right now - but for those who are interested go see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145358>

And I would love to see pointers to _research_ rather than _anecdote_ on how
remote teams are better than co-located ones in a team room (all other things
being equal).

~~~
capisce
All other things are not necessarily equal, even if co-located teams did
perform better people with the required skills might not be willing to
relocate.

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thejosh
I hate when websites put seasons rather than a date, it confuses international
visitors........

~~~
skrebbel
Hah, that's not very "remote" of them indeed.

~~~
dmix
All of my startup experience has told me using seasons for launch dates is a
bad idea regardless of practicality. Especially when you're a proven startup
with something to lose.

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gnufied
Half of my team works remotely, but one of the problems we have been
struggling with is - how do you mentor junior programmers?

It is not about technology or programming language, but some of the words that
a person with > 7 years experience uses can throw off a new programmer. And
people ask less questions when working remotely.

Anyone has a solution for this?

~~~
jasonjei
I've mentored junior programmers (e.g, some of my guys/coworkers are still in
school studying Comp Sci despite my attempts to get them to drop out), and it
doesn't have to be done in person. As long as there is good motivation and
discipline and trust remote working can work perfectly well over Skype. Code
reviews done through Skype will be incredibly resourceful.

However, if there is lack of trust or discipline, this will not work. But then
again, if you are having this problem you should really reconsider whom you
hire! I hire my guys as interns, and I can quickly figure out who I want and
who I'll wish the best of luck after the internship is over (my internships
are just really long interviews): the ones who can figure things out
themselves, the ones who go through an issue tracker and look for new things
to do, the ones who will constantly ask things on Skype. You can't mentor
self-sufficiency!

Bottom line: the people you want to hire aren't going to be needing constant
babysitting. Those people will do it themselves.

Everyone is much happier because people work where they want to work. We still
have 1 day a week where we all meet up in person (granted, that's still
_optional_ , but everyone shows up for camaraderie, and I bribe them with
lunch). I work from many places, on my own time--and so does everyone else. As
long as their output is roughly meeting the mean productivity of everyone
else, it will work.

Here's another thought: when you bring someone on board, get them to work on a
fun project. For example, I have my guys build apps with Twilio that book
tables at OpenTable automatically using mechanize. Some fun apps will get them
to learn a framework and language very quickly.

~~~
maqr
When I was younger, I was mentored almost exclusively by the very
knowledgeable people on Freenode IRC. It's not only possible, but it's much
better to do this remotely.

I've found that when people receive criticism remotely, it tends to escalate
into "I feel this way because I read this: <insert link here>". Then a debate
proceeds about the merits of one approach or another. When people receive
criticism IRL, it's much more common to be defensive, because the references
are not immediately available and there's a desire to resolve the disparity
immediately.

I google everything (at least, when I'm outside of the office), and if I have
two minutes to google anything before responding, the quality of my discourse
will always be higher.

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ericclemmons
The problem I still can't seem to adequately solve is remote teams working
entirely in sync with local teams.

For example, I need to hire an additional 2-4 JavaScript or PHP developers,
but most of our team is in Houston, TX, which is not really a hot spot for
these.

I already have some remote workers, but their projects tend to live more in
isolation until the PR needs to be discussed, while the local team constantly
works together, on their own accord, through the whole process.

How can this gap be bridged where remote and local can cohesively share the
same projects without the "latency?"

~~~
scarecrowbob
I've been working remotely from about 90mi outside of Austin (for folks in
Austin, doing front-end work on top of PHP).

By being generally fast with email and generally quick/responsive I've gotten
a lot of freelance work, so maybe it's just a general skills issue; it's not
easy communicating certain things in email/phone/text/message and developing
that as a skill takes a lot of work... it's totally subjective, but it feels
that it's taken as much effort to learn when to reply to an email and when to
sit on it for a half hour as it took when I first learned how to use jQuery.

IMO, this skill is made tougher to practice when the people I deal with are
not also skilled at communicating; there is a lot of communication that I get
remotely that takes a bit more decoding because whoever wrote it doesn't put a
lot of thought into the communication.

I dunno what the good answer is; just saying "hire more experienced remote
workers" sounds like a dumb answer...

~~~
onemorepassword
No, that sounds a lot like exactly the right answer.

To promote remote working we need developers that can help and teach a company
to handle remote work. Not people who will just whine about how companies suck
because they don't offer remote work.

Remote working is a skill, on both sides. Most companies that would
theoretically not be averse to remote workers don't have that skill and can't
properly evaluate that skill in others, so the only alternative to a long
period of trial and error is to hire developers with a proven track record.

Either that or wait for 37signal's book to come out...

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wyclif
I'd love to see this book achieve a wide reading, and by that I mean outside
of the startup bubble. It's frustrating to see how averse some companies are
to even the idea of remote work, let alone the reality of it. Anyway, I'll
definitely be picking this one up when they release it.

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kriro
I know this is techstartuplandia but I'll be pretty interested in this book
because it probably has some interesting nuggets of wisdom for OpenSource
projects and the like :)

I'll also be interested in application to the world of academia because I
think working remotely could be more efficient in a lot of cases there as
well. Granted there's office hours and lecture dates but I tend to pre-
research better at home (very informal gut observation)

Edit: Hope this is not going to be marketing for Campfire in disguise. But
given the 37s background I don't think so.

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petercooper
Anyone else notice how this page looks like a classic Ogilvy style direct
response magazine ad? I like it.

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philip1209
Seems to me like 37Signals is gauging the community response, then deciding
whether to write the book.

~~~
dhh
The first draft is already 90% complete and the book has been sold to the
publisher. The decision to write this book was taken months ago.

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zingano
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3307-im-hiring-a-personal-
ios...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3307-im-hiring-a-personal-ios-
prototyper)

So long as he or she can come into the office in Chicago every day.

~~~
joesb
In that case he wants someone to also be continuously interact with him. Not
all kind of work fit working remotely.

Next you probably are going to comment about how they still don't allow
cleaning maid to work from home, right?

~~~
davidw
If the book is good, it'll dedicate significant space to when _not_ to hire
remotely.

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MysticFear
Well if any company is inspired, I'm ready to be remotely hired.

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DodgyEggplant
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2593-official-pictures-of-
our...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2593-official-pictures-of-our-new-
office)

~~~
jackowayed
Without further explanation this is not relevant. There is no contradiction in
simultaneously believing that it is worth it to provide one's in-office
workers the best office money can buy and that to find enough excellent
talent, one should accept that not all employees will live within easy
commuting distance of the office.

