

Running a Business With Staff Scattered Around the World - olegious
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/business/smallbusiness/running-a-business-with-employees-around-the-world.html?src=dayp&pagewanted=all

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pinaceae
I work for a global start-up. Currently 350 people all over the world, incl.
NZ and LT.

We have a mix, we do have offices in major markets but people scattered all
over the place.

Located in Central Europe, I run a team of 3 people, all in different
countries, one even one hour away (timezone wise). I report to someone in the
SF bay area.

How do we pull it off:

\- When going into a new region we establish ownership. One general manager
who owns it, who most importantly from now on works in this timezone. No
matter where he/she lives, it is the customers and team that matters

\- We run on the Google App Stack. Google Chat is my second home. GoToMeeting
my third.

\- Scheduling things is important. Regular talks with your team, etc. If it is
not in people´s calendar, you cannot assume to just "walk by to chat" for
important topics.

\- English is the corporate language, we do not hire anybody who is not
capable of holding a conversation in English. Be it Europe, China or Japan.
Our internal documentation is in English. Our customers operate in the same
way.

\- As a manager: very flexible work hours. a fine ear/eye for issues and
conflicts. awareness of cultural differences on communication and perception.

------
JoeAltmaier
We're distributed across the US. Easier to solve, but still timezone problems.
West coast, Midwest mostly. Sometimes folks in the field e.g. Japan, Hong
Kong. 75 people in the company.

We're Sococo, and we eat our own dogfood. From the day audio streams came up
for Alpha test, we abandoned other tools and have made ourselves live with
Teamspace. From the coders to the CEO, we inhabit several virtual spaces by
team.

It solves some of the issues brought up here. The presence information is
tremendous, making it possible to see who's talking with whom, when a meeting
or standup is starting, what they're doing. Yesterday we had an all-hands, the
whole company. Half are in Mt View CA, the rest distributed. I didn't know
where the meeting would be (which virtual room) so I looked at the map, saw
folks congregating in a big meeting room and clicked in. Spookily similar to
what happens when physically present - you follow the crowd.

Anyway we had everybody on video (in groups, so 7 or 8 thumbnails); switched
our map between Mt View video, shared docs and shared screens as the
presentations went on.

Q&A was very interesting. It was actually easier to follow questions from
other virtual participants - they all have their own mic, so everybody could
hear the questions. Folks physically present were just some mumbling from the
back of the room in Mt View; the speaker would forget to repeat the question
half the time.

I cannot emphasize enough how much immediate and present you feel in a virtual
tool like this. I actually feel anxious when I have to participate in a
conference call or talk to somebody on a phone - the experience is so crappy
and disconnected. Instead I 'call out' from a virtual space. At least then I
can collaborate with my team while interviewing somebody, or talking through a
customer problem. I can add a virtual participant into the call with a click.
I can leave the call for a moment, get an answer from an Engineer, get back to
the customer transparently.

Sorry for the gushing. Its hard to explain how different it is to be virtual
without sounding like an advertisement. Anyway, there are definitely many
tools out there to help with the distributed-team problem. And now some are
integrated complete solutions, which is a whole new ballgame.

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cageface
I've been collaborating with a bunch of people all over the globe on my latest
contract and so far the hardest thing has been coordinating dependencies. If
my task depends on somebody else's task but he's in a different time zone it
can take a couple of days of messages to get things going in the right
direction.

I think the key here is to nail down the design and any related specs as much
as possible upfront. The more you have to sculpt things as they go along the
more time you lose in coordination.

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runemadsen
It's funny how most of this advice is about "controlling" employees and making
them perform. I wonder what happened if Github was interviewed for the same
article.

~~~
brandnewlow
Github's got a huge advantage though: Massive product/employee fit. Every
person who works there probably uses the product personally on a daily basis.
That really helps smooth things over and has to be a semi-secret weapon for
them.

~~~
mmahemoff
Yes, a lot of the GitHub doctrine of letting people choose what to build is
great and a refreshing change from a lot of other IT companies. But doesn't
apply for an IT company serving the construction industry.

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mpchlets
I work for a globally distributed company and we have similar issues. The only
way I see it working is by allowing total freedom and getting people fully
immersed to the point of ownership over their tasks.

We also make team collaboration software, so we utilize it and I highly
suggest everyone else trying this model does the same. Use the software and do
not deviate, then watch your company flourish.

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netcan
One thing I'm curious about recently is implications for tax regimes. For
example, the Argentinian employees decide to work from Costa Rica.

One type of tax is like Goods & services taxes. They are very hard to avoid.
Tax makers can set these to whatever rate they want and have to deal mostly
with simple economic effects (lower demand at the higher price point). They
don't have to worry about "dynamic effects" where people just choose to
purchase outside of the tax regime.

Another type of tax is corporate taxes, investment taxes, capital gains taxes
& similar taxes. These "have legs". Tax makers _do_ have to consider
investment going elsewhere or corporate profit being accumulated elsewhere.
Often lowering cooperate taxes can lead to higher totals because companies
move in from higher tax regimes.

Income taxes are still much more like the first type but they are getting more
like the second. They are tied to the job & the job is tied to a place. But..
as our culture, economy & the companies we work for get more globalized,
differences between income tax regimes may become a bigger factor. If you pay
$30k a year in income taxes and work from home this becomes paying $30k a year
to live in a country.

I've spoken to several people lately that are considering taking such
proposals to their employers. Let me work remotely so I can clear an extra
$x0,000 per year. These are average income people, not millionaires.

Whatever the ideological disposition of a culture, many governments may be
forced to survive on lower revenues. In Ireland for example, it seems that tax
revenues reached a peek a few years ago. The current budget is milking
lizards. There is no more tax revenue that can be raised without hitting a
point of negative return. There is a sense that "recovery" will take a long
time but I suspect the decline (at least as a % of GDP) may continue.

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acabal
I have a few helpers--writing blog posts, creating contests, etc.--for my
website, Scribophile, and they're all over the world and I've never met them.
So far they've all worked out really well. Maybe I've been lucky.

I basically set a goal and let them do whatever they want. After any initial
emails to get them up and running it's not uncommon for me to not email them
for weeks or months. If I do email, it's to make a small course correction.
People who care about what they're doing don't need to be micro-managed, and
like having the freedom to solve problems on their own terms. The trick is
finding those people in the first place!

~~~
dfischer
Where did you find people to write blog posts and create contests?

~~~
nshankar
it must be the people who reply to blogs.

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mmahemoff
I've been working with contractors from various parts, and I have to say
Trello has been a huge help in keeping track of everything.

Though I agree, working around the clock becomes an issue. You can ask people
to work on the same timezone as you, like the article says, but it's a lot
harder for casual workers to do that, as they tend to do part-time contracts
around their other work or studies.

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bwb
Nice article, we have ~85 people working from ~18 countries since the business
runs 24/7. A bit easier than the business int he article maybe since about 50%
of those people are doing customer service shifts, and the others dev /
systems.

A lot of fun problems but I love it!

------
Bjoern
Do you think it is possible to pull off a startup where the team (e.g. three
people) is spread over different timezones? How would possible investors react
to something like that?

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lifeisstillgood
I seem to be losing my sense of wonder

Yesterday I worked with my collegue, me at my desk near London, him in the
Pennsylvania sunshine, producing code for a Texan university. We chatted,
shared code, pushed updates to servers on two continents.

We were using technology that is according to Arthur C Clarke, _magic_ in any
previous human generation.

And I never even noticed.

Co-ordinating humans over vast distances is really no different to doing it in
two adjacent rooms. Treat people as craftsmen doing a professional job,
individuals capable of coming together for a shared vision, encouraged by peer
accolade and pressure.

and don't forget to stop and smell the flowers once in a while. It's a
wonderful life.

