
A Guide to Distributed Teams - tate
https://increment.com/teams/a-guide-to-distributed-teams/
======
gregdoesit
I am someone who did not enjoy remote work, because I felt lonely. I’m lucky
enough that now my commute is a 25-minute bike ride in Amsterdam, and I
thoroughly like being between people all day, having in-person interactions.
It’s also nice to leave the office, knowing that most of my workday is done.

It might be an old school way of thinking, but as long as I can have a short
enough commute, an office where flexible work is the norm (eg WFH is fine on
some days, there are no fixed hours etc); I would choose this over full
remote, anytime. While my team is local and large, I do end up working across
time zones, with other engineering teams.

I get it that this is highly dependent on personality and situation: there are
those that thrive on remote. It’s just not me. How do others feel about this -
and what do you like/dislike about remote work?

~~~
Ocerge
I spent 3 months fully remote, and by the end I was fully depressed. There’s
something about looking at the same walls of my apartment for 14 hours a day
that just did not work for me at all. I would occasionally go to coffee shops
or whatever but it didn’t change the isolation. I had no idea how much I
leaned on being in a shared physical location with my coworkers. It’s hard to
know until you try it; I think you need to be in a very specific work
situation and have a certain disposition for it to work well.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Recently started a FT WFH job with a semi-flexible schedule. Prior I was self-
employed (consultant / freelance) and made my own schedule, etc.

The adjustment to the new schedule wasn't too bad per se. That said, at the
first opportunity possible I'm going to ask for some budget to get a day (or
two) per week at a co-working space. For me and how I'm wired that would make
a massive difference.

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shahsyed
+1 on the sync and async discussions.

This is super important, not just at work but every day life. I find that
sometimes I don't want to text someone when I'm having a passionate
discussion, I'd rather video call or call them. If I can't do that, then I'll
go for async messages (like voice clips).

Really awesome newsletter, and amazing collection of tips.

This stuff is crucial to any distributed team.

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jpincheira
The culture bit is what I think makes remote teams more productive, more
engaged and in the end happier, when nailed in the right way. This is why I am
building a platform [1] to help alleviate the cultural challenges around
remote teams.

Not being in the same place, at the same time, not having the kitchen
conversation by the coffee machine is something that _can_ be worked around by
using the right tools and implementing the right processes where those types
of conversations can happen.

[1] [https://standups.io](https://standups.io)

~~~
Swizec
And as a counterpoint, I have worked in organizations that were on-site but
everyone was so stressed about heads down work and looking busy that we didn’t
have those random small conversations anyway.

It was one the most depressing work periods of my life.

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PragmaticPulp
This is a good collection of tips. Being deliberate with distributed team
culture and expectations is crucial to healthy teams. I particularly agree
with their advice about asynchronous vs. synchronous communication:

> Healthy distributed teams blend synchronous and asynchronous styles. Because
> what doesn’t have to be synchronous is better done asynchronously, default
> to asynchronous communication for nonblocking items and help team members
> review them on a cadence.

I've managed distributed teams for several years now. One of the biggest and
most unexpected challenges has been orienting new hires to healthy
expectations about remote work. A lot of people are drawn to remote and
distributed teams for the wrong reasons. You need to be careful to identify
and correct bad behavior or misaligned expectations as early as possible, for
the sake of the employee and the rest of the team. Specifically:

\- Some people are drawn to remote work because they want to be as isolated as
possible. They don't like interacting with, communicating with, or
coordinating with other team members. These lone wolf employees can work in
very narrow, specific job roles, but most tasks require teamwork and
cooperation. Don't try to cater to individual's isolationist tendencies if
it's not a good fit for your workload.

\- Distributed teams can attract bad actors who see remote work as an
opportunity to escape supervision and get as little work done as possible. You
need to find a healthy way to follow individual's productivity without being
overbearing or nagging them frequently. Address performance issues early and
often.

\- Watch out for the side hustler. Remote listings attract a lot of
wantrepreneurs who want benefits and a paycheck while they prioritize their
energy toward their own startup, contracting gigs, or other side hustles. I
make it very clear that our hires need to prioritize company business as their
full time job. In theory, I don't care if someone is taking on side work on
the weekends or in their spare time, but in practice most people can't juggle
competing priorities effectively.

\- If employees are in similar time zones, I encourage a "core working hours"
policy where everyone is expected to be online and working. 3-4 hours of
overlap is enough to cover any synchronous discussion needs while still
leaving plenty of schedule flexibility for most people. I've had night owl
employees try to work opposite schedules from everyone else, but this quickly
turns into the isolationist problem I mentioned above. Set the expectation of
some work hours overlap, then let people decide when/where/how they do the
rest of their work. It's a small price to pay for the increased communication
efficiency.

\- Group chat is fun, but don't let it become a constant distraction. The
article mentions memes, gifs, and humor as a plus, which is fine, but be
careful not to let the culture degrade into all-day distractions. If people
feel like they need to read your #random channel all day long to avoid missing
something important, consider gently reshaping the chat culture with dedicated
focus hours or other expectation setting.

\- Watch the private vs. public message ratio of your group chat. There is no
magic number, but it can hint at communication problems. If you have 95%
private messages and 5% public messages, you might be at risk of cliques and
silos. On the other hand, if you have 95% public messages and 5% private
messages where everyone is in every channel, your group chat might be too
distracting. Lead by example with "Let's take this offline" when conversations
get too chatty in shared channels, and also by following DM conversations up
with summaries and decision announcements in shared channels.

\- The article mentions budgeting for in-person meetings, which I strongly
encourage. Meeting someone in person creates a much healthier bond. However,
keep the in-person trips short and focused. A 2-day off-site retreat once a
year is reasonable for most people. However, asking everyone to fly out for a
week-long off-site from Sunday night through Saturday morning twice a year is
likely to generate resentment from people with children. Find a healthy
balance and keep it short and sweet. Don't burn your remote workers out on
travel.

\- Finally: Distributed and remote work is great when it works out, but it's
not for everyone. Practice healthy expectation setting, performance
management, 1:1s, routine feedback, training, and other guidance. However, if
someone can't handle distributed work then it's not helpful to try to force it
indefinitely. At scale, you need to be prepared to let some otherwise
excellent people go if they can't handle the distributed environment. It's
always sad to let them go, but it's better for everyone if they're allowed to
find a better fit elsewhere.

~~~
tate
This is a great set of advice, and matches my experience as a remote manager.
It seems that remote work seems to attract two types of people (to grossly
oversimplify):

1\. Professional hard-working people that are really focused on getting stuff
done and free thinkers that don't tolerate a lot of waste. So a commute and
other ceremonies seem dumb, and they love remote work, love being trusted, and
get a lot done if you help them.

2\. People that want to figure out how to work 2 jobs, or get away with not
doing a lot in 1. Or who are really good at getting jobs, and are hoping that
the overall immaturity of your company, you as a manager, or remote work
itself, will allow them to work 4 hours a day and do the absolute minimum.

Remote work if managed well exposes #2 pretty quickly, but it is more of a
challenge than the general population in my experience. You have to put a
great focus on hiring and testing people.

------
javieranton
The hardest thing for me is actually remembering peoples names, faces and
roles

That's why I made me an app to keep track of this (and enable others to update
the team's info)

Sry if this looks like spam!

[https://collaborativegroups.blogspot.com/2019/11/today-is-
re...](https://collaborativegroups.blogspot.com/2019/11/today-is-release-
day.html)

