

We're Shutting the Offices and Going Virtual: An Experiment - mchafkin
http://blog.inc.com/archives/2010/02/going_virtual.html

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mrkurt
I don't think a month is nearly enough time to form any judgements. From
personal experience, it takes about a year to really learn how to work out of
an office.

Multiply this by an entire office and they're in for a world of hurt. To
really successfully pull this off, they'd need a couple of fascists who
already knew how to work remotely, people would need to defer to them, and
they'd need a serious transition period to get used to all the tools they'll
need (ie: work a day or two per week remotely).

The biggest problem they have, though, is one of measuring success. They don't
really say what a successful experiment's going to look like. It's easy enough
to measure writer output (quantity, not necessarily quantity), but most other
facets of the business aren't quite as measurable. Even the success of writers
is ultimately determined by the number of eyeballs on their stories. It's
awfully hard to measure that stuff with any kind of reliability over the
course of a month.

The best possible tool we've found for this is IRC. I assume Campfire would
work reasonably well, but it's awfully simple to find bots that speak IRC and
do useful things.

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mchafkin
These are great suggestions--and good points about the limitations. Thanks! Do
you think IRC is superior to other IM clients? A lot of folks in the offices
have never used IM before--and may be more comfortable with something like AIM
or GChat.

~~~
madkangas
+1 to group chat over IM for company use.

Skype has excellent group-chat, that's what we use. Much easier to adopt than
IRC for non-tech types, and it's free which is a bonus.

(I didn't even know Skype had a chat feature, let alone group-chat, until I
got to my current job.)

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anigbrowl
I call BS; $10 says they won't exist by summer. Initiatives like this are
usually announced when it's time to cut costs. While a virtual office can be a
wonderful thing, it imposes significant problems too: how are you going to
train new hires? existing issues can perhaps be handled by teleconferencing,
but do you really want to have brainstorming sessions and involved discussions
about future strategy via IM (or whatever)? How do you keep your contributors
from thinking to themselves 'I'm practically freelance anyway' or handle the
work-life balance issues?

I'm not saying it can't work - I've been an enthusiast and advocate for
telecommuting ever since I got a modem. But it's not a panacea, and it doesn't
work in every employment context. Color me very skeptical.

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mchafkin
To clarify: This is not a cost-cutting measure--and it wasn't introduced by
managers. (I, humble writer that I am, proposed it.) It's a month-long
editorial experiment that I will be writing about in the April issue of Inc.
magazine. But yes, we will have to face all of these issues you describe.
Hopefully that's what will make the story interesting. Would love to hear your
thoughts on what you think will be the pain points. (I'm at mchafkin at Inc
dot com).

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, in that case I have to eat my words, and wish you luck with it - I'm
afraid I'm so skeptical of management-speak that I read your Inc. article as a
CYA. I'll shoot you a brief email during the afternoon, and apologize for my
skepticism.

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ohashi
I wonder if that is like cheating in a sense? I would think it's easier to
work with people remotely who you have built relationships with. You
understand them, you have seen how they operate in person and gain insights
beyond what is spoken/written and have a certain common culture. I work with
outsourcing/offshoring and now work remotely with a partner who used to be
local. I don't think it would work if we hadn't spent all the face-to-face
time first.

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mey
Hasn't ArsTechnica operated in such a fashion for it's entire history?

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mchafkin
Sure. But the experiment is about taking a company culture that is built on
face to face contact (and moving around a bunch of printed pages) and taking
it virtual. Should be interesting to see what happens.

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ryanwaggoner
Interesting experiment, but I wish they had a feed just for these stories, as
I don't want to pick through all the Inc stuff.

