
Beating the Talent Crunch with a Distributed Team - hkarthik
http://hkarthik.me/blog/2011/12/12/beating-the-talent-crunch-with-a-distributed-team/
======
Kynlyn
We have both in-house and remote developers at AutoRevo and while we've been
successful at maintaining both, we've stumbled a bit in a few areas.

The biggest problem we have is the remote folks feel disconnected. Even with
Campfire and Skype, it can still be a challenge to keep everyone connected.
It's not uncommon for an in-house dev to ask a simple question to the folks
around him and have that question turn into a thoughtful conversation.
Sometimes, we'll think "Oh, fire up Skype and get so-and-so on the line so
they can join in." But many times, we just don't even think of it.

I hadn't heard of Sococo, but it looks intriguing. Keeping an open mic with
Skype was something we considered, but it seems intruding. This is an area
we're still trying to get better at.

The other issue is one of team-building. Usually our in-house devs go to lunch
together and grab the occasional beer after (and during!) work. There is a
camaraderie there because these guys work together, eat several meals a week
together and drink more than a few beers together. That just can't be
replicated to a remote developer.

We've also found that some devs simply aren't disciplined enough for remote
work. They love the freedom, but sometimes that freedom becomes a problem for
them. We don't keep devs that have to be supervised constantly, but when they
are remote it can be harder to gauge if they are just hitting a slow,
unproductive period that will pass or if they are just doing as little as
possible to keep a check coming in.

Distributed teams are definitely a huge bonus for a company, but there are
challenges that have to be thought through up front.

~~~
Blocks8
We use campfire to do 90% of our conversation even with our team all in house.
It helps kick off conversations, save them for later and keep everyone in the
team on the same page. I think before you start hiring remote talent you need
to build in that communication strategy to your core team.

Very much agree that in-person bonding, whether working side by side or having
a beer, are important. If you do have a remote team- try to build in time for
the whole team to be in a single office every other month at least.

~~~
Kynlyn
We're the same. Even though the bulk of our devs are in the office, we still
use campfire because it's the central hub of communication. (commit messages,
CI build notices, when stories get updated in Pivotal,etc.)

And it's searching ability is very nice. Pro-Tip: Keep that searchability in
mind when you discuss a candidate's interview in campfire..they might be
reading it later when you hire them. Dohp!

------
yummyfajitas
I've actually found being in the opposite timezone can be handy. Currently I'm
in the US while most of my team is in India. Often, our workflow is the
following:

9AM-5PM EST: build a view.

9AM-5PM IST: view becomes nicely styled.

Similarly, I can work on a project, hand it off to my developer across the
sea, and considerable progress will be made before I wake up.

Of course, this strongly depends on having people I can trust - not just any
developer will do.

~~~
hkarthik
Can you elaborate a bit on what these projects entail? Maybe a short
description and how long each project went on?

The work I do tends to require a lot of collaboration as we figure things out
and experiment. Having a one day delay for every thing feels like it would
slow us down A LOT.

We also use iterative development in a two week sprint, a day lost would limit
our productivity tremendously.

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DevX101
The site is down so if you can't read the article, see here [1].

The author is actually pointing out two distinct problems, which are both
having a real impact on tech companies. The first and most difficult problem
which every company faces (startup or otherwise), is finding great talent.

Every tech company is fishing in the same water trying to find devs in
competitive places like S.F. or NYC. These cities certainly have the highest
concentration of great developers, but there are hundreds of thousands of
equally great devs scattered across the country. If your company can find a
way to get the best of the best among these isolated devs (who may be in
Kansas), you're ahead of the game.

The second problem he discusses is how to get startups to work well in a
distributed team. As many have pointed out, using Skype can be awkward. There
is also something missing from typical remote working platforms that doesn't
capture the social dynamic of working in the same office.

I'mworking to solve both of these problems. Right now, I'm looking for beta
testers before I launch. If you're interested and willing to give feedback,
shoot me an email.

1\.
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://hkarthik.me/blog/2011/12/12/beating-
the-talent-crunch-with-a-distributed-team/)

~~~
hkarthik
FYI the site should be up now. It's loading fine for me.

------
cletus
I'm surprised no one has mentioned a great technical solution for this:
Hangouts (disclaimer: I work for Google).

Other posters are correct in that there is friction with Skype or in fact any
solution that isn't always on (you could keep Skpe up of course) but I can
tell you from experience that if you get in the habit of just keeping a
Hangout open it gives you much of the benefit that physical proximity does.

Remote debs can keep a Hangout open on a second screen or possibly a dedicated
machine. Your main dev site should just hang a monitor on the wall and hook up
a Mac mini to stay always on (per room). You may need a decent mic for this.

~~~
mmagin
Is there a solution whereby this common "monitor on the wall" could be logged
in via some common account instead of with a particular individual's account?

Also, according to
[http://support.google.com/plus/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic...](http://support.google.com/plus/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=1651183&guide=1257349&page=guide.cs&answer=1216374)
"There's a 90 minute check-in to make sure you're still there."

------
zackzackzack
Exception: always bring the interns in house. I've heard the talent crunch is
bad, but I cannot imagine a remote internship being beneficial at all.

I tried working a remote internship once and it was awful. I didn't get
anything done, had no idea what was going on, really a big waste of time. The
first day I got to the office I fixed a bug and got the product to actually
work though. The rest of my time there I did some good work.

Interns don't know what they are doing. If they did, they would be full time
employees. They need to have somebody to point out some of the basics, not
all!, but enough for them to actually be productive.

~~~
jackowayed
Eh. My first job was a remote (cross-country, even) internship when I was 16
for a 2-man bootstrapped startup that didn't have an office anyway. Since they
were already setup to do most work conversations through Campfire, it worked
great.

There's nothing keeping you from "pointing out the basics" via email, chat, or
Skype and being available on chat if they hit walls just as you would be in
person.

Sure, if you're not communicating well, maybe your full-timers can get stuff
done despite that and your interns can't. But I'd say that means that having a
remote intern is one of the most important things you can do from time to
time. It will be a test of whether you're actually doing the distributed team
thing right, instead of your team just being competent enough to work around
it.

~~~
zackzackzack
Maybe. I think there is much to be said for being able to just walk down the
hall with your laptop and debug everything in person with someone who knows
what they are doing. I didn't know much before that internship about software
development and I learnt a ton about the whole field just watching other
people. It's why I use emacs nowadays at a more than beginner level.

Again, if the intern is competent, then they aren't really an intern anymore.
Just kind of a part time worker more likely to be hired in the future.

------
nwilkens
At my company, we like to offer great health insurance, but this can be
difficult to provide if you only have a single person in another state or
region.

In the US, each state (and regions within a state) have different insurance
providers. All providers that I have investigated require a minimum of two
people as part of their group. We are just beginning discussions with our
agent on this topic, so a good solution may exist that we have not crossed.

For those of you that work distributed in the US, can you tell me a little
about your health insurance (+life, dental, etc) and if it is great, average,
poor or non-existent?

~~~
amorphid
We had that come up. A Blue Cross PPO allowed us to offer coverage in
California and Kansas.

------
brown9-2
Anyone happen to have any advice on convincing the rest of your distributed
team to use a chat room?

Our team lead has an odd aversion to using IM, which extends to distrust of
any electronic messaging beyond email. However I really feel a persistent chat
room would be a big help for the team.

~~~
jessed
I actually prefer a chat room over email. It's logged, with group discussion
and it's asynchronous. I don't have to begin a reply and then wait for a
response. I just get it out in the room and keep going.

Another thing I like about using a room is the chance to use Hubot
(<http://hubot.github.com/>). It makes for some fun and can also be extended
to actually do useful stuff.

If your team as an aversion to IM try to entice them with a room is better
because it's not one to one and everyone can see and answer questions and it
facilitates group discussion easily and it's asynchronous so it gets out of
your way.

~~~
erikcw
We've been using skype chat almost elusively for 3 years. At first, I loved
the work flow, but in our case it has devolved into an email replacement for
one of our team leads. He daily sends reams of chat messages into the room
with the expectation of a synchronous response. Messages routinely get lost in
the shuffle. I'm working to get him to use email for these sorts of issues --
status, in progress.

If skype had threaded chat conversations, it would be much more manageable.
Until then, I miss gmail... :)

Use the right tool for the job.

~~~
technomancy
Skype has a pretty awful UI for chats. If you get people set up using a
bouncer then it's pretty easy to get persistent conversations over IRC, and
then people get to use the client of their choice. Plus it's a lot easier to
automate with bots.

------
Killah911
This is an awesome article. I've been working on a distributed team and have
learned some of these things in a rather painful way. Are all these lessons
learned just from experience? A Hacker News type subgroup for distributed
teams would be nice to have so we can share experiences learned the hard way
so others don't have to. Someone please let me know such a forum exists.

------
jister
I also work on a distributed team. While all my teammates are in the US I am
the only one working in the Philippines. We use email, chat (yahoo messenger),
skype and gotomeeting for communication. We use our internal tool to log our
time every day.

This setup works for us and has been going on for almost 2 years now.

~~~
wyclif
I also do some work from the Philippines when I'm there on occasion, but I'm
based in the US. One problem I have is the reality of power "brownouts" in the
RP interrupting bandwidth.

~~~
jister
I guess that depends on where you're located.

------
samdelagarza
Good article Kar, I agree that the talent pool is drying up and I'm not sure
what reasons are behind it. I wish more company's would adopt a work from home
mentality as it also creates a competitive advantage to attract some of the
brightest.

~~~
mkramlich
agreed. but you also need to be the change you want to see in the world. in a
hiring role? ensure you allow remote/home-based team members. evaluating
working for someone else? filter for that and demand it, else seek elsewhere.
it's what I do (well, trying to do. mostly succesful so far.)

------
JoeAltmaier
I work on a distributed team. Timezone is definitely an issue. But in a
startup, folks work when they must, and get the job done.

We use Sococo Teamspace (I work for Sococo). It combines chat, audio
conferencing, doc share and video conferencing. Everybody stays on all day.
That means you can track what anybody is doing online, know when a meeting is
starting, who's talking with whom etc.

Its not perfect, but it sure beats the isolation of working at home, checking
email every 10 minutes.

------
richardburton
I have always wondered how scaling across countries affects a company but I
have never thought about a distributed founding or early-stage team. I think
the intensity and sensitivity between founders would be lost in the ether.
Great products require tough decisions that should lead to disagreements. Web-
chat might obfuscate such tension or take the passion out of the process.

------
timedoctor
The article doesn't put it strongly enough.

If you run a tech company and only think about hiring people locally you're
crazy.

Why hire only locally when you can draw from talent anywhere in your country,
in fact, anywhere in the world. Likely at a much lower cost for the same level
of talent. Plus you have the advantages of your team not needing to travel.

Working together in the same office is a 20th century model of doing business,
and I'm surprised that many technology companies are not open to a more
distributed model.

A more important question is: What needs to be done from an office versus a
distributed team?

From an office you will probably want: Core executive team members (in a
larger company, but not necessary in a small company, all team members can be
distributed) Local based sales people (if you are doing one-on-one
presentations selling to local businesses) Plus certain types of businesses do
need an office

~~~
hkarthik
I agree with you, but in practice I've seen that even if a company wants to go
distributed, they lack the knowledge on how to make the model actually work
for them.

They resort to using the exact same process with more conference calls and
emails. That clearly doesn't work as you miss many subtle communication
queues.

------
ericingram
I agree and plan to build a company in which distributed is the norm.

------
davidhansen
More drum-beating about this illusory talent shortage, eh? I'm still waiting
to see any signs at all that this shortage actually exists, aside from random
"I can't find a rockstar!" anecdotes.

~~~
poutine
Very hard to find experienced Ruby devs in Vancouver, Canada. Have had open
positions for months at my company with only junior people applying.

~~~
hnwh
so train them

~~~
rickmb
As long as there's no decent form of _vocational_ education, training in-house
is a huge investment. You can only properly train one junior for every three
to four seniors before it becomes disruptive.

Many companies that have already made the mistake of hiring too many juniors
in an attempt to deal with the shortage, and have suffered the consequences
(huge drops in quality and productivity, and in the worst case, seeing the
experienced seniors they did have walk away frustrated).

Where education fails, major companies like Google and Facebook should take
the responsibility for training juniors. Instead they spend their fortunes
strip-mining the market.

~~~
polyfractal
Yeah! Google should start firing their top talent every five years too so the
rest of the tech industry has a chance to hire them.

Because that makes about as much business sense.

