
6 Things to ask when interviewing for a remote job - daspecster
https://medium.com/@daspecster/how-to-interview-for-a-remote-job-f6282ee0365d#.1e4uk7ntm
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nmcfarl
I _really_ like the article but I’m really not sure about:

>> Chat works so well at communicating with the team that we’re all available
24/7/365

We’re fully remote at my job - no 2 people are in the same state in the whole,
small, org. And I think we work well.

But people sign off at 6:30 in their own timezone by and large - and while
they’ll check slack as much as they’d check email, slack is not going to cut
for 24 hour access.

And it shouldn’t - we don’t want a culture of no downtime at all. If it’s an
emergency use their pager* - which yes does get expensive for foreign
employees but really the company is fine picking up those charges.

Even if you are remote quality of life matters - and people’s timezones, and
schedules should be respected.

* Note that everyone does have a "pager number"\- including our support reps. But most people haven’t been paged in more than a year. We consider this to be the right way to do things.

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daspecster
Yeah sorry if my GOOD/BAD wasn't clear. But I was trying to convey that if
that's the kind of response a company gives then you should take it as a
warning. I've had companies say things like that in interviews when I asked
them questions about remote communication and I think it means their
management has not matured yet.

~~~
nmcfarl
Looks like I got the wrong end of the stick on this one :-)

~~~
daspecster
haha, I'll take the blame, I probably should format it better.

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x0x0

       "How many full time remote people do you currently have working for you?"
       GOOD: "We have about 25% of our workforce remote."
       BAD: "You would be the first one and really, we just listed remote to get 
       more applicants. Are you open to relocation?"
    

I thought it was just me that happens to. And employers never cease to be
amazed when candidates react poorly to it. Shout out to the liars at
DataBricks who played this game with me.

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eridal
> _If there’s drawing we have an app that we use where anyone can draw and
> anyone can see what’s being drawn._

somebody had success with such draw apps? this is a missing piece for us

~~~
AaronBBrown
With close to a decade of remote work experience under my belt at companies
that are more than 50% remote (GitHub) down to being the only remote guy, I
have concluded that some things are best left in the physical world...

There is an actual whiteboard on my wall and a webcam on a stand. When I want
to whiteboard something, I get up, switch camera angles, and literally draw it
out. I have found this to be far more productive than any whiteboard apps out
there.

For something more interactive, Google Draw isn't awful, but it's not a pen
and paper.

~~~
daspecster
Thanks for commenting! That's true, I do have a whiteboard within arms reach
in my home office. Sometimes I'll take a picture of it and send it along when
talking about a problem.

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skewart
I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on what it's like being remote when a
team is partially remote - say, 30% are remote - vs when a team is fully
remote.

I've never worked remote in either situation, but I'm kind of inclined to
think that being remote on a fully remote team is much, much better. I would
think that a partially remote team would have a hard time fully committing to
using remote work flows and tools, and the remote workers would inevitably
always be a little out of the loop. Of course, if you're cool with that, and
are happy with something more like a consultant role then maybe that's fine.
If you're looking for a bigger or more central role in the org, then you'll
have a hard time being remote in a partially remote org. Does that perception
seem accurate? Or do I have the wrong impression?

~~~
daspecster
In my humble experience, I've found that there are two paths that seem to be
traversed and work. 1. It doesn't matter how many people work remotely but
everyone is committed to participating and communicating through distributed
means(chat, email, etc). That usually works pretty well. 2. Depending on the
company culture, you'll need to have different amounts of the work force
remote to get critical mass of adoption.

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ergothus
I was surprised at the quality of this article given the clickbait title.

As an anecdotal case, I recently started working remote most days of the week
at my job, and it's been dramatically successful compared to the occasional
days I'd do it at my last job. So far as I can tell, the reasons are subtle:

* Hipchat/slack integration: My current job does exactly what is listed in the article: even when sitting next to someone, we rely on the IM client for most conversation. Meanwhile, at my previous job, Such tools were rarely used: IM or email, you'd expect a 24 hour response time, so most questions were handled in person.

* Hours. My current job has remote offices, but only spanning a 3 hour time difference. My past job had offices in Seattle, Detroit, and two areas of India (Pune and Bangalore), so a 12 hour time shift was normal. This made ANY remote action difficult, so teams got more insular, so coordination took more time.

* Lots of Remote-ness. My current team is spread across 4 cities. My previous job had everyone local, except for several people in Pune, India. Thus, the difference to my team in having me work from home rather than office is very little: only one person would actually be in the same office as me anyway.

* VPN. My current job has VPN feel exactly like being there. My previous job had VPN be extremely slow, and some crippling dependencies. We had some workarounds, but basically working remote felt like something you suffered through, not something sustainable.

* Monitors/Home Office. My wife recently redid my office, and as such I have a private space to work from at home, and can plug my laptop into a preferred mouse/keyboard/monitor. This makes me much more productive than I'd be before.

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daspecster
> I was surprised at the quality of this article given the clickbait title.

Thanks!

Great reply btw. I think there really is something to remote work once
everything starts working together. But it's definitely a more than one
ingredient cake.

~~~
ergothus
Hope that didn't come off as more insulting than complimentary - I thought the
article was great, and the title is fine and accurate.

It's just that certain publications have set low expectations for certain
title types :/

~~~
daspecster
No problem! I appreciate criticisms and perspectives as long as they're
constructive! Titles are really hard for me so feedback is good. Thanks for
reading it!

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dudul
The title may be a bit misleading, "What questions to ask when interviewing
for remote job" would be a better description.

Would have been helpful to explain _why_ some answers are bad, why they show a
bad "fully-remote" environment. Otherwise good post. The 1st item is very
important: being the first/only fully remote employee is really tough.

~~~
daspecster
Yeah, I agree. I updated the title here, but I just need to pay more attention
to titles+content in general I think. I'm trying to get back into blogging so
I really like this feedback!

Also, I totally agree on the being the first employee is a tough one. I've
done that 2 times now and it's not easy.

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daspecster
There was a good comment about how I used the terms "perk" and "dream" that
was made. ([https://medium.com/@martinb3/i-think-you-ve-come-up-with-
som...](https://medium.com/@martinb3/i-think-you-ve-come-up-with-some-great-
specific-examples-about-evaluating-jobs-for-being-
remote-85b1fa5d9ee7#.7t35m0j4l)) I agree with this. I could be wrong but I
think a lot of people view it that way. I had hoped that the article would
bring the tone around to make it sound less like a "dream" or a "perk" and
more like a work environment decision. Either way excellent point!

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daspecster
Now that I'm back off the top page, I just wanted to say thank you to
everyone! I really enjoyed the dialog and hopefully we can all talk more next
time!

