

Companies that support remote workers win against those that don’t - tate
http://blog.davidtate.org/2013/01/companies-that-support-remote-workers-win-against-those-that-dont/

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btilly
The use of the word "support" in the title is critical.

I've witnessed second hand the anti-pattern where a company has lots of remote
workers, and fails to support them. You quickly get a 2-tier system where only
the workers who are in the office actually know what is going on. This can
seem to work for a while, but there is no shortage of problems.

One of my current contracts is different. One of the founders has been remote
since the beginning, so they pay close attention to this type of issue. They
have a number of remote workers (including me, very much part time) and it
seems to be working out quite well for them - because they have the necessary
support infrastructure in place.

~~~
Simucal
What kind of support infrastructure are you talking about? I work remotely a
couple days a week and we have several full-time remote workers on my team. We
setup a Webex meetings for every meeting and we all have webcams. Besides
that, we will informally use Google Hangouts to chat with each other.

I'm just curious what we could do beyond that to support the remote people.

~~~
btilly
Have a ticketing system. Use it religiously. Have online chat options (gmail
is good). Use it religiously. Include remotes in conference calls. Do it
religiously. Have key discussions in email, or at least summarized there,
instead of just in person. Do it religiously.

In short, make sure that everything is accessible for people who weren't
there. And keep the habit going always.

~~~
raverbashing
Gmail is good but it is not sufficient

Learn with the open source people, they've been doing this for "centuries"
(ok, for decades)

Use irc

The biggest advantage that no other (common) system has mimicked is simple:
chat rooms.

But it's not chat rooms, it's because they are:

Easy to identify

Free to create

Easy to participate in several rooms

Irc can be used by bots easily (this is _very useful_ )

~~~
btilly
Jabber can serve the same purpose as irc. But my experience is that irc tends
to not like people sitting behind certain kinds of firewalls, and I personally
avoid it.

Anyways the point is moot - I don't use either. Gmail is good enough for my
purposes.

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mindstab
I would have thought "Have access to the entire world of smart talented
people" would have cropped up but it didn't. I see why, that's not quite the
direction the article was going in, but it's another benefit. In my company we
had a pretty talented front ender who had to go back to germany but since we
support remote workers we've been able to keep him which is cool.

~~~
byoung2
I've noticed an interesting paradox at companies where I've worked. They are
very flexible about remote workers when they are far away (e.g. office is in
Los Angeles, and one programmer is in Oregon and one customer service rep is
in Colorado), but they are more resistant when someone local wants to work
remotely (e.g. to avoid a 1.5 hour commute each way in Los Angeles traffic).

~~~
ownagefool
I've had a similar experience. Most of remote my work has been between 4-10
hours drive away (I'm in the UK, so thats pretty far) and anyone within an
hour wants me to commute.

I generally don't take them up on the offer as driving for 2 hours (and much
longer on bad traffic days) on a regular basis feels like a waste of time when
I don't need to do it.

It's funny because I'd much rather work for the companies in drivable
distances if given the straight choice. I love to be able to get on site for
meetings of if I need something physical done with hardware but alas its not
to be. :)

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gyom
It almost sounds like sexual selection in the way that the natural logic is
turned on its head. A male bird with such a cumbersome and visible plumage
could only survive if its genes were awesome in all other respects, so it gets
more favor from the female birds.

A company that had many remote workers would crash and burn if it didn't have
many other qualities (good management, processes and developers) to support
the remote workers.

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jaggederest
Today I am reminded of reason number #37 to telecommute: influenza.

~~~
oldmantone
That reminds me of my favorite book, "How to lose friends and influenza
people"

~~~
daeken
I rarely upvote jokes on HN, but sometimes laughter is just infectious.

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zende
The reinforcing lesson I take away from the post is that you should know your
company's weaknesses. Don't support remote workers if you don't have the
culture or structure to support remote workers. Otherwise, you'll end up as a
company that _allows_ remote workers but doesn't truly _support_ them, which
is worse than not having remote workers at all.

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flyinRyan
Where are you all finding remoting contracts? I'd really love to but I have no
idea where to look. The two places people told me about had about 5 jobs
between them.

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up_and_up
> All our knowledge transfer was done in person using heavy sarcasm and
> obscure hand waving

Choice quote and very true in my exp.

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junto
I've been working remotely for 10 years. Good ticketing system (Atlassian -
JIRA and Wiki). Centralised source code repository and daily stand-up over
Skype, otherwise known as a "Skype-up". Constant chatter on skype group chat.
Shared screen sessions using Join.me.

The biggest issue for most employers is trust. "Is my employee just watching
the TV?", is the first thought that pops into the employer's mind. As a
programmer, the work is largely quantifiable, so the issue of trust is muted.
My employer can see exactly what I produce. It is plain to see in every check-
in to source control.

I have actually started renting my own office just round the corner from my
home, so that I don't have to work from home anymore. I prefer the distinct
separation of work and home life. My employer is in a different country if you
were starting to wonder why I didn't just go to their office.

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ownagefool
Replace remote worker with new starts and you could have written a very
similar article.

I've been remote working for about 5-6 years and I use that same argument to
get jobs. Hiring, supporting and listening to your remote workers is a great
way to validate you have sufficient processes in place that all new staff who
come in can get up and running with minimal fuss.

I've never looked at figures, but I'm willing to bet this'll reflect on churn
rates too.

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bjoernbu
My peers often work from home. Personally, I rarely do it because I like the
different environment for productivity. At home there is always distraction.

While it certainly is a good thing to allow and support working remote, I
cannot deny heavy disadvantages. We discuss many important thing over lunch
and especially long-term goals for our project are discussed over a coffee.

Additionally I find it seriously annoying to communicate over Skype / Phone /
Messenger / whatever if a peer needs help with something. I love moving my
chair to the next table and think about something together. I do not get that
feeling at all when I'm communicating over distance. I am NEVER annoyed by
someone asking for help on a tricky problem. Instead, I LOVE thinking about
it. However, being ask for help via Skype messaging always annoys me. I
dislike typing but most of all I can't stand waiting for a response because
the other side is doing something besides our conversation.

I'm fine with my peers working from home, but I am incredibly glad it's
usually about 1-2days a week and not all the time.

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whichdan
I wonder if 20 years from now, programmers will see working in an office as a
luxury, rather than working from home.

~~~
prodigal_erik
"Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers
essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office
had better be nicer than the average programmer's home." - Philip Greenspun

~~~
flyinRyan
Well wouldn't having them work _from_ their home accomplish this?

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elbeanio
I'm curious how workers in different time zones get on with the rest of the
team.

I work remotely most of the time but it has always been within the UK, I'd
like to broaden my horizons internationally but keeping different hours to the
rest of the team has always put me off.

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timedoctor
Have been working remotely for over 6 years and all of our team are remote. I
think there is a massive change coming as businesses start to adapt to the
idea of working remotely. It's just the beginning of the trend.

~~~
strobe
I've been working remotely about 2 years and I guess that if company and
peoples really want to work remotely they will do it (in my case many team
members located in different countries). At now it's very easy, if you have
clear mind - we have skype and other tools for day to day meetings, many
project tracking/documentations systems like redmine or basecamp that could be
started from scratch in few hours, github, bitbucket, dropbox, aws etc. But
not all peoples ready to deal with this, mostly because they can live without
it and don't have enough motivation to change something in their current
corporative systems.

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michaelochurch
Actually, I think the "chromosomal difference" that will pull some companies
ahead and leave some in the dust is open allocation. See:
[http://www.quora.com/Software-Development-
Methodologies/What...](http://www.quora.com/Software-Development-
Methodologies/What-is-Open-Allocation) . This is related to telework because
project allocation is one of the first things to fail in a badly-designed
distributed company (the main hub takes all the interesting work for itself).

Remote work I have mixed views of, because it's obviously a good thing in the
abstract, but I also think there are major benefits to having people eat lunch
together and discuss ideas through informal channels. Also, having a culture
where some people cannot participate in those benefits, but others do, is, I
think, problematic. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that completely
distributed companies do better than semi-distributed ones. I'm glad to see it
becoming more common, though.

