

Do startups work well when managed remotely? - jmtame

I've had limited startup experience.  I do primarily design and LAMP development.  Currently doing JSP (new to MVC architecture but making the change fairly smoothly, usually I script and do front-end design).<p>I joined a startup just this past summer that received some funding from a popular VC firm and worked there as an intern over the summer.  I'm accustomed to being in the incubator, and being in the presence of the co-founders, while I work.<p>However, in my current position, everyone works remotely from their own locations.  There is office space, but it's out of the VC firm, there's not really dedicated incubator space for us.  The product is already developed for the most part, we're just focused on growth.<p>The entire team (about 6 and counting) operates this way.  Can anyone chime in and let me know what your experience and opinion on remote work on a startup is like?  Do you feel it's effective?
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shimon
Let's consider a more extreme version of the question. Do startups work well
when all development is outsourced?

Assume you have a very capable outsourced team. You will naturally have more
difficulty communicating with the external team, both in terms of expressing
requirements to them and in getting feedback from them. On the other hand, you
might get better people and be able to work with them on a more flexible
basis. If you can understand and communicate your requirements in written
form, and they don't change very rapidly, this may be a worthwhile trade-off.
If you underestimate your product's rate of change, or overestimate your
ability to communicate requirements, your life will suck. This is extensively
documented in the lore of outsourcing.

Distributed teams are incrementally better than outsourced. You get better
people, there is less turnover, and the team members are focused on your
project. You might get decent communication if everyone uses chat and a wiki.
But you'll still have to work hard to communicate, and you'll probably
misjudge your difficulty/capability ratio. You're essentially copying the
model of open source software development, and should take note of where that
model has been successful.

Remote work is great because developers can focus for hours at a time without
interruption. If you are at a stage where most people are working on big
chunks of implementation or fixing bugs, this is a huge productivity boost.
The other major benefit is that you can hire great people who are blocked from
most tech jobs by their location and/or family obligations.

Remote work sucks because communication is more difficult. A group
brainstorming session conducted by phone is, optimistically, one fifth as
productive as an in-person session. If you are trying to generate ideas or
generate a specification, you should expect this to be very difficult to do by
phone.

As far as I can tell, having worked for about 2.5 years in a distributed tech
company, the determining criterion of success in distributed work environments
is specialization. If you have separate people in charge of design, marketing,
and coding, it works well. But this often isn't the case in startups;
sometimes your best design ideas come from some hacker with an offhand
interest in usability, or you decide you can't find a good marketing person
and you'll just have everyone pitch in a bit. Those sorts of group-work
decisions imply a communication cost, and if you don't realize that your team
will feel strangely hobbled and directionless.

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swombat
This is the way my startup is currently operating. There are certainly
challenges that come with that. You need to be internally motivated on a day
to day basis, and it's important for the team to have a high-level plan that
you can work towards so that you know whether you're "late" or doing well, but
overall it's working fairly well.

Another key element is to ensure there is a touching point each day, where all
the team members are online at the same time.

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delano
I second the high-level plan and the brief daily calls.

I'll add that if you're working from home, put your shoes on when you start
working and don't forget to spend time outside.

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danielrhammond
37signals champions working remotely here is one example of their praise of
the topic, but you can find many more on their site.

[http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_real_the_alon...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_real_the_alone_time_zone.php)

For me, in my limited experience in the area I would have to say that it is
completely dependent on the quality of the people and the level of autonomy
their job responsibilities can afford.

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tx
<http://pikluk.com> was built out of 5 different locations in 2 different
countries without even a central office. The only "central" thing we had was a
Subversion repository.

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snorkel
Sure startups can work well remotely but they work even better in person.

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CHIEFARCHITECT
Remote collaboration can work. It depends alot on how the goal and objectives
is defined and relayed to the team. There is a strategy project consulting
company in SF Bay Area that trains project teams to collaborate remotely.

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CHIEFARCHITECT
One more thing. it is all about the process preceding the technology not the
other way around.

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juansequeda
You need to have an excelent software development cycle. I am in the US, my
partner and clients are in Zurich, and my development team is in Cali,
Colombia, South America! and it works perfectly!

