
Ask HN: Effective communication methods with remote employees. - zeynalov
We have a startup in Germany, which should work with their employees remotely. It's a startup, doing online paid services for foreigners willing to come to Germany. We have employees for each country, native speakers, and it's very hard to find all of them in one city to be able to work in an office space. Therefore we can only work remotely. But we can't communicate, solve problems properly and effective online. We hired some of them from their country, thousands kms distance from Germany. When we hire, we must explain the workflow which is very hard explaining it online. We used:<p>Trello
Skype
Mobile tel
Complex explanations are drawn in Photoshop(!!!) sent via emails<p>None of them were useful and everytime when I hire someone I try to fly there and explain the work etc. Can you please list your favorite tools communicating your remote employees. This thread can also be used as a reference for others having remote employees or freelancers.
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darkxanthos
I work at Cheezburger and our group is spread around the country with one
person even working in Poland. Here are the tools we use:

Campfire (casual group conversations.. basically our "watercooler") Skype
(Main IM program for important questions, voice chat, video chat) Ventrilo
(Great for casual chat throughout the day.) Google Chat (Some people use this
in addition to Skype... dunno why!) Webex (Whole company dev meetings/screen
sharing) Google Sites (Company blogs/information sharing) Google Groups (For
email lists) Gmail Fogbugz Wiki (dev work processes) PivotalTracker
(organizing team work)

For me personally having never been a remote worker before, it works so well
that I don't feel like a remote worker. As you can see that's an awful lot of
technology though. We're constantly trying new things to consolidate but the
tools that do everything seem to just do it poorly.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Can you expound a little on Ventrilo? It looks interesting, and I'd like to
hear more about how you use it.

~~~
darkxanthos
Yeah. Ventrilo is used by online gamers to coordinate game play that requires
tight and intricate cooperation... not unlike software development. Rather
than being always on it works "walkie-talkie" style requiring you to push a
button to speak OR it can self activate once your mic volume exceeds a
threshhold you set. We've found it doesn't have the friction of a Skype call
because you are immediately connected to everyone in your room, and you get
complete visibility into what all the rooms are and who is where... much like
a real team room.

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gtani
recent threads:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3364025>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3347788>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428195>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3300198>

~~~
gtani
BTW i found these by hnSearch.com: "skype GNU screen"

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smalter
To plug my own product: try <http://iDoneThis.com>

We make it easy to know what everyone is getting done. Tracking and
accountability are two of the biggest problems we've seen with remote teams.

Often work with remote employees requires asynchronous communication because
of time differences, making it difficult to sync up via Skype or Hipchat (two
great tools).

With iDoneThis, we email everyone and ask what they did. They just reply and
it goes into a central place. The next morning, everyone gets a digest with
what they did.

It's been a big help for us sync up with our remote developers who are
freelancing for us. We use it along with Skype, Campfire, Trello, and Google
Groups.

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jensnockert
At my workplace, we mostly use IRC for synchronous communication when solving
problems, it works very well for programming imho.

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guruz
At woboq here we are both using IRC with an IRC channel for the two of us. As
IRC client we use Quassel which is an IRC client that keeps you connected on
IRC and you can attach/detach from it. This means you never lose any message
and can read the backlog.

We also use a private Wiki together if some information needs to be more
persistant than a chat log.

This worked well for the periods when we are not in one office (the periods
had a maximum length of 3 weeks so far). It also helps to have this when
working at the same place: You can keep distractions low by just writing what
you want instead of always using real verbal communication.

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dcaylor
There is a gap between IM/chat and email and documents, specifically in regard
to remote team collaboration. That was one of the strengths of Google Wave,
except that Wave had a learning and familiarity threshold people weren't
willing to climb over. There's a huge opportunity there for a startup that I
haven't seen anybody really tackling yet.

You can't get away from the value of face to face meetings though. If it is
possible, getting face to face occasionally is a huge benefit in strengthening
relationships in a team. In the end, teams are about relationships. Remote
teams work great, and I prefer them to co-located teams, but figuring out a
way to meet in person on occasion is worth the effort.

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ovidiu
We use <http://www.tandberg.com/> and I find it incredibly good. I recommend
you to go see a real demo, because you can't grasp the real feel by just
looking at some pictures. It's quite expensive, but in my opinion it's worth
every dollar.

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ayers
I have used Mikogo quite successfully in the past. Something that I found
useful was that you can swap who the "Presenter" is at any time. This allowed
different members to share their desktops when trying to explain something.

<http://www.mikogo.com/>

~~~
yalooze
We use Skype for voice but their desktop sharing is abysmal. Mikogo, on the
other hand, works brilliantly.

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j45
I systemize and automate businesses end-to-end for a living.

Don't despair, this is a bit of an art and it's slowly becoming a science.

I have largely virtualized my consulting practice that I have run for 10+
years using remote developers both locally and out of town.

This is a problem I have obsessed over solving the past 12 years. It was hard
enough to get it working in-house with employees, to learn the key qualities
needed to make it work from anywhere.

There are a few key things you must solve:

0) KNOW YOUR PROCESS.

Are you able to take all the steps of your process and lay it out on a
flowchart, no matter how complex?

Can you take any request currently in your business and place it on this flow
chart?

Once you can do this, you are ready to systemize. Until then, this is where
you are needing to clarify and build out things.

1) A CENTRAL SYSTEM THAT HANDLES YOUR WORKFLOW.

There is no magic ONE tool that will solve anything. Most suggestions will be
helpful with one or a few parts of the process. Instead you will need to
_connect_ multiple tools to get what you need.

The key is having a central communication system. It doesn't sound like you
have this yet. This is a non-neogotiable.

The communication system must be based around requests/cases. All
communication, regarding work people need to do, needs to be in this system.
The cases need to be run through a fulfillment process that captures and
reflects your competitive advantage.

2) DOCUMENTATION IS YOUR FRIEND.

Documentation can suck, royally. Meaningful documentation is even harder. But
it's the only thing that allows people to answer their own questions. Being
able to capture your intellectual capital and spread it is critical to having
your business grow.

If you're having trouble teaching, remote workers are having a hard time
remembering. The key is to create a culture of self-serve updating documents.
A wiki is often critical for this, however I am also a _big_ fan of videos
integrated.

3) BUILD YOUR TIME / BILLING TRACKING INTO THE BREAD.

Billing, and time tracking, also sucks. Whatever unpleasantness we don't want
to deal with now has to be dealt with doubly later.

It's best to bake time tracking/billing into the bread and your process. With
the right configuration based around your process this is pretty possible.

If you have to track billing/time for this, it must be a simple, usable,
system that is hopefully integrated right into your system. I am a quickbooks
guy for most of my stuff, however I've started using Freshbooks for the
Accounts Receivable / time collection side of my business and it's working a
lot better.

If you have a process but works and just lacks in being clearly explained /
taught, I can help you with that. Reach me by email or ask any questions here.
I guarantee results if you're willing to do what's needed.

~~~
hluska
Thanks for taking the time to write that - it is extremely useful!

~~~
j45
Glad it helped! Let me know if any of this ends up helping you or if you have
any questions.

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SKoschnicke
We use Flowdock and Github for most of team communication. Skype and
Teamviewer for collaborative "real-time" work. I wrote about the workflow
here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274080>

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DevX101
I'm working on codemeet.com to solve this problem. I'm looking for beta
testers. Contact me.

~~~
zeynalov
Looks really nice. Is it only for code? I would like to write some text with
formatting and draw some arrows on my ipad with my fingers, tables or
something like this for effective speech, and then save it online, that
employee can use it as a future reference. I would definitely buy/subscribe to
your app if it will have these features. Not all of employees are developers,
most hired people are non-developers. If you would have these features it
would be a game-changer startup.

~~~
DevX101
For now, it's only code sharing. I may add text w/ formatting in the near
future. No plans to add drawings though.

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janus
I work remotely with a web designer (I'm a programmer), and we mostly use a
combination of Skype, GitHub and Gmail (for asynchronous communication)

We haven't found collaboration software for documentation and such good enough
for our needs yet, but we are trying Trello.

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typicalexample
Have you tried Google hangouts? We've been pretty happy with its screen-share
(Hangouts with extras).

Also we use redmine as a wiki+issue tracker with git integration. An almost
github like setup :)

~~~
zeynalov
I didn't used Google hangouts, but what is the difference between Hangouts and
Skype? are there any better features?

~~~
ayers
One difference is that Google hangouts allows you to have multi video sessions
for free. To do this in Skype one member needs to have a premium membership.

~~~
typicalexample
Yup one of the reasons we switched once our team became bigger. Another
problem with skype is that if user's are on multiple versions of skype, the
text chat gets disabled.

Hangouts on the other hand is quick to start with, free and chat, screen
sharing, scribble pad work seamlessly across all platforms.

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bitmonki
Perhaps something like OpenQwaq might be useful.

VoIP, web cam, chat, meeting rooms, open office, and more.

<http://code.google.com/p/openqwaq/>

