

Remote Working – 3 Year Retrospective - eloycoto
http://blog.jonliv.es/blog/2015/01/14/remote-working-3-year-retrospective/

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32bitkid
I've been working remotely exclusively for about the past 9 months (before
that I have been doing it off and on for about a year and a half), and I think
the piece that really strikes a chord with me in this article is the
"Communication" section.

If you have a clear understanding of what you are building/creating then
working remotely can be a boon; I think of it as working in some kind of hyper
office. I can find times when I am hyper productive with heads down
development, or pairing with another developer. What I think is difficult to
reproduce are the shared working spaces/open-office floor plans.

To be specific, I find meaningful collaborative communication to be the most
difficult for me. The tips presented here will help, but still leave a lot to
be desired. I think one of the hardest things with a distributed team is
brainstorming.

Maybe it's just a tooling thing, for example: I have yet to find a decent
digital replacement for a whiteboard. Being able to scribble down idea, then
go grab someone and talk through thoughts, erase, redraw, discuss. This all
seems way more awkward than it should be online. It seems like a medium that
could be much improved digitally, but I have yet to find a tool that really
works.

I also wish more audio conferencing software supported positional audio.
Perhaps this is insane, but I miss being able to overhear other conversations,
but I don't want them blaring directly in my ear (as if they are standing 6
inches away from ear. I want to be able dynamically group people, and place
voices within a virtual spatial domain. Having every voice come from the same
"place" is really unnerving for me.

~~~
lighthazard
I agree with the shared working spaces being missing from a remote position,
but that can be simulated by using things that support screen sharing, Skype
comes to mind, as does Google Hangouts. Alternatively, you can use something
like Join.me to have a full collaboration effort on one screen, together.

The white board issue - this is something I haven't been able to reproduce
either, but I think I've changed my workflow to follow it. Right now, for a
remote position, I sketch out my ideas/structures on paper, take a picture,
and share it with the team. If it makes sense to them, we're golden, if not,
they can each modify the image and share with the team again (and now we have
a 'version controlled' 'whiteboard.' In truth, I think the focus should be on
finding an alternative workflow than finding a replacement for a whiteboard.
Don't ask me though, I have no idea what an alternative would be.

Finally, audio conferencing - I had my team set up Teamspeak which does a
fantastic job with positional awareness in a ['3D'
environment]([http://i.imgur.com/pc3EG3b.png](http://i.imgur.com/pc3EG3b.png)).
Of course, this is a setting that needs to be constantly changed/updated based
on the conversations, but it works well in large groups where members need to
talk to each other, but still hear other conversations that are happening on
the side (or 'behind' you).

~~~
32bitkid
I pair a lot and, most of the time, I use ScreenHero. I think is a great tool,
and before yesterday would have recommended it without hesitation. I have
mixed feelings about the recent Slack acquisition, but I'd rather see a tool
like that get rolled into another tool than run out of money and die.

I do something similar for a whiteboard replacement. I use IPEVO Ziggi-HD
High-Definition USB Document Camera [1], a sharpie and a nice sketchbook. I'll
switch between my macbook webcam and that for sketching/drawing. Which helps a
lot, but still feels very one sided; like I am presenting an idea rather than
collaborating on an idea. I'm a very visual communicator, so there are times
when I feel very handicapped by a lack of a good collaborative sketching tool.

I've tried using TeamSpeak, but in my experience it was a pain to set up for
non-gamers. It can be great once you get it tuned just right, however, I think
there is a broader (more accessible) niche that could appeal to a lot of
people -- they just don't know it yet. Having the ability to simply and
quickly, spawn a side conversation within a bigger meeting would be ideal for
me.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-
Came...](http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Camera-
CDVU-04IP/dp/B008DBF5Z8/ref=sr_1_1)

------
jcastro
Been doing this ~7 years and here's an easy tip I learned from someone:

When taking a phone call stand up and walk around. Sometimes it's easy to get
into a zone and not realize you've been sitting for a long period of time, if
you train yourself to walk around when you're on a call it helps loosen things
up.

And here's my tip:

Absolutely invest in yourself. If you're going to spend hours there, make sure
you do it right. It's not just getting a nice chair, monitors, and workspace;
you need to spend the time to set them up right and in a way that is healthy.

You don't have people dropping by and interrupting you for a coffee or meeting
so it's easy to stay immobile. Little things can make the difference between
staying healthy or (in my case) having to go to a few weeks of physical
therapy because your sexy new monitors arms were positioned all wrong. Lots of
ergonomic resources on the web, make sure to use them!

(This obviously applies to office workers as well but at home it's easy to
think you can grab a notebook and sit weird in a couch all day for an entire
week and be fine.)

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drewg123
I worked remotely for 12 years for a fairly small tech company. The keys to
being successful, as I saw it, were

\- Be very active in your team. Comment on code changes. Be on every conf
call. Be on skype, IRC, or whatever mechanism your team uses to stay in touch.
You have to make up for the missing facetime by being that much more active in
other ways.

\- Have a regular schedule that you stick to & make sure your teammates know
what your schedule is. Just because you work remotely does not mean you're
always on call. Conversely, working remotely isn't a license to watch TV &
play video games all day.

\- Have a dedicated home office (or at least a workspace) that is for work
only. When you're in this space, treat family and/or roommates as you would if
they showed up unannounced at your office. Be polite, but let them know you're
working. Similarly, try to avoid working during your downtime. Unless there is
a severe crunch, you probably would not go into your office at 9pm, so stay
out of your home office.

~~~
Touche
> Have a dedicated home office (or at least a workspace) that is for work
> only. When you're in this space, treat family and/or roommates as you would
> if they showed up unannounced at your office. Be polite, but let them know
> you're working.

It's crazy how hard it is for people to realize that just because you work
from home doesn't mean you are always available. I don't know how many time
I've had a family member knock on the door 2 minutes before I have a meeting
or get a call from my wife just to chat about her day... there's got to be
some major misunderstanding in the general public about what working from home
means. It feels like people think it means there's no structure at all.

------
Touche
> Again unique to my particular work situation, my team are at work roughly
> between 2PM and 11PM UK time.

Ugh, that's terrible. I also work remote. The thing that's never changed is
that people always talk about time in reference to themselves. "Can we have
the meeting at 3:30?" means 3:30 my time. And they usually do not think about
how that matches up to your schedule. It's something I've constantly had to
deal with. Working with people only a time zone or 2 away makes this much
easier.

~~~
bshimmin
I'm based in the UK but have a few clients in NYC. To be honest, translating
from UTC to EST barely requires any thought at all for me now, and I always
work to my clients' timezones, not mine - though, to be clear, I would usually
phrase a meeting request like, "How about we have a call first thing in the
morning your time, 9am EST?" (whilst in my head I'm thinking, "Yes, 2pm should
fit nicely with my lunch plans").

Admittedly it does require more effort - and a little googling - when the
clocks change; and I have definitely had issues with misunderstandings between
iCal and Outlook over what timezone a meeting is in... which you'd think would
be a solved problem in 2015, but seemingly not.

Perhaps I've just been lucky, but the people I deal with have always been able
to understand that a late afternoon meeting for them would mean a _very_ late
evening call for me - and if that's the best that they can do, they are always
apologetic and appreciative of my being accommodating enough to do that.

~~~
Touche
Yeah it's more of the constantly having to remind people that is annoying. You
constantly have to be the person that forces a meeting to be rescheduled.

The first remote job I had I worked at a startup in SF and typically everyone
started work at 1 or 2pm. They'd schedule standups for 4:30 or 5:00. Of course
I worked on the east coast and am a morning person. But what was I supposed to
do (having just started)? Of course I'd attend the 8:00pm meetings (my time)
even though I started work 12 hours earlier.

It's been much easier in my experience where most people overlap at least 4
hours.

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supergeek133
I like this..

Most of the corporate type jobs I've worked in over the years afforded lots of
responsibility for flexible work location. Some of those jobs I could never
work from home and get anything done, others was just fine.

The other key is the folks you have to interact with on a regular basis. Do
they communicate well over email/chat/phone or are they only useful in person?

I've seen companies hire people in remote jobs that have no business working
remote (bad communication) and some people that would improve productivity if
allowed to just stay home when they felt necessary.

Especially in the world of every office moving to open areas with little room
for escape. Noise pollution is a big problem.

Edit: Also to the point of expenses. This one ALWAYS throws me for a loop.
You're not having to pay for a desk, office, etc for them. Pay for something!
Internet, travel, etc. You're saving money with your remote employee in most
cases.

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e0m
To echo the point on video conferencing, this is why I love Sqwiggle! (not
affiliated!)

The activation energy is a single "click" instead of:

1\. turn on TV

2\. switch input

3\. enter name of hangout

4\. wait to connenct

5\. wait for the other person to connect

6\. "can you hear me?"

Not to mention the fact that the constant presence of the slowly updating
picture reminds everyone that the person exists and is "present".

The only thing I hate about Sqwiggle is the ability to turn auto-updating
photos off. That one feature completely destroys the major benefit of using it
as a reliable indicator that someone is or is not afk.

~~~
joesmo
To me, having this ever present picture sounds worse than an open office. I
would absolutely hate it if someone was staring at me (or potentially so)
every minute of every day and would be much less productive about it (same
thing in a real office). Even in meetings, I find video to be useless and
actually an impediment to expressing myself well.

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Killswitch
This info is very interesting to me, because I'm a month away from leaving the
company office I've been at for a year now to working remote and I'm very
worried about my productivity and how to handle working from home.

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sctb
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886073)

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matnyfr
Insightful input !

