

We Tried Building a Remote Team and It Sucked - stevenklein
http://blog.statuspage.io/we-tried-building-a-remote-team-and-it-sucked

======
mpdehaan2
Having had teams that were half-remote before, and all remote now, doing lots
of hangouts seems to fill the remote-feels-weird niche pretty well.

Just having long conversations in chat tends to not be productive, but you
need chat. Something like Slack is a good choice if you can't get everyone on
IRC.

Somewhat still wanting for better "whiteboard simulator" type options.

Ultimately not having an office not only saves the commute, but it saves a lot
of thought-cancelling interruptions. People say this is "collaboration", but
usually it's just someone being noisy in another department talking about a
football game, or someone repeating the required meme / pop-culture reference
to hearing a word.

The advantage of having a great home office and being able to play your own
music (or not to HAVE to play your own music into headphones) is pretty much
priceless.

It does require hiring the right kind of folks and being able to communicate
very clearly what you want.

It's especially valuable as I really believe being able to work on what you
work on shouldn't be constrained based on where you live, because that's
unfair to a lot of smart folks with reasons to not want to live in the half-
dozen or so major tech centers. (Or someone gets bored working for the only
major software company in town).

~~~
senko
If I can shamelessly plug my project: we're trying to solve the "whiteboard
simulator" part of the picture by focusing on the essentials and getting out
of your way.

If you'd like to give it a spin: [https://awwapp.com/](https://awwapp.com/)

All feedback welcome!

~~~
wbachnik
Thanks for this very useful tool! It became an essential part of online
meetings with my team -- it's been working great for us. We love the
simplicity. For me it's missing only a single feature: ability to draw basic
shapes like lines, rectangles or squares.

Thanks again!

------
sunils34
This is a great post! Our entire team is fully remote all over the world, with
31 people in 22 different cities in each major continent. I'm quite glad the
OP wrote this because it talks about the very first thing I try to say when
people ask about what it's like for remote working: Remote working doesn't
work for everyone. Some are energized by an office environment with face-to-
face time, and others are more productive by self-managing and lots of focus
time. I feel like it's key to recognize which camp you're in.

We've had to construct our hiring and on-boarding process to gauge in so many
ways whether someone is a good culture fit and is also energized by remote
working. We feel like there's no way to truly tell unless you work with them
under a contract period, which is what we do for everyone that's hired.
Generally we've found about 30% who enter this period aren't quite a fit for
either remote or culture for us.

~~~
deedubaya
This. You can't just hire anyone remote. You have to hire people who want to
be remote, embrace the isolation, and moreover, fit well into the culture you
already have.

~~~
bradleyprice
I don't think I necessarily agree with any of this.

First:

If you're hiring for a remote position, I think hiring people who "want" to be
remote is obvious.

Second:

Hiring remote doesn't mean that you have to "embrace the isolation." There are
plenty of people that do like the isolation, but I've worked with plenty of
remote developers (I'm remote as well) that aren't isolated. We stay on
hangouts/chats, work from coffee shops, meet up to work with
colleagues/friends, or even work from someone else's office.

It's quite easy to meet other people in the same scenario (remote workers)
that are more than happy to meet up to work, even if you're working with
different companies. Just to have casual chat throughout the day or to bounce
ideas off of.

Third:

I think "fitting will into the culture you already have" should be a
requirement in general. Just because I worked on site wouldn't mean that I'd
want to sacrifice culture anymore than I would if I worked remotely.

------
MetaCosm
An unexpected tool has helped tremendously for our teams in terms of remote
work: Mumble
([http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page](http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page)).

Mumble is a cross platform, open source VoIP application. Often used for
gaming in a group (like Teamspeak or Ventrilo). It has the idea of channels
(rooms, offices, etc) is very high quality, low latency and low bandwidth
installed on your companies servers in minutes, always encrypted... and
clients are available for linux, windows, os-x, android, ios, etc.

So you can have channels like "Bob's Office", "Working on XYZ problem", etc.
People can come into these channels to speak to you and can leave them. It
feels a bit like an office environment, I can pop into Jay's office, talk to
him about an issue, and go back to my office. I recommend people setup Push To
Talk, which really helps create a silent non-annoying environment. Basically,
me and another developer can be working on an issue, but maybe not actively
talking, but in the same channel -- and there is blissful silence... I don't
hear the fan, the cat, the fact that his wife came into talk to him for a
minute, etc.

When I start my work-day -- I start it by logging into the mumble server (or
more accurately, moving myself out the AFK channel) -- and when I end it, I
move myself back into the AFK channel. This is a realtime communication
system, async work still happens... well, everywhere else.

It is easy to be on all day as an "in-office" experience... when I am eating
lunch, I create a "eating lunch" channel under AFK and put myself there.... We
find it works so much better than video chat (or really anything else), is far
more casual (like an office) and far more fluid... it is like having an open
door policy. Sometimes I might be in a channel that says "Debugging Race Issue
Go Away" \-- but it technically doesn't keep anyone out, it is a request.

Using mumble day to day basically changed the experience from mediocre to
great for us. We still use everything else, but mumble is our real time core,
and slack is our async core.

~~~
alfg
Interesting. I know Mumble is used a lot in the gaming community, but I never
thought of the idea of using it for workspace/business.

I wrote a webapp targeted for gamers to easily setup temporary Mumble servers
([http://guildbit.com](http://guildbit.com)). So I'm sure someone can build a
service similar to wrap the Mumble API for workspace users. Similar to Slack
with IRC.

~~~
MetaCosm
Yeah, I really think a polished / pre-configurable UI for business could be an
amazing thing for Mumble (both for business, "use this binary" and for guilds
/ gamers ... same thing "use this binary" ... binary carries the config, etc).
I consider Mumble like IRC, amazing but a bit raw. Someone is going to take
shiny interface to it and make a killing in business.

------
jms703
"I've spent the majority of my life surrounded by other people. I grew up with
two brothers, played sports as kid, had a good amount of friends while going
through school, have always had a pretty active social life, and lived with
three friends in college."

Does the entire staff of statuspage.io feel this way? Sounds like this is more
of a personal issue for the author of this post. There's nothing wrong with
admitting working remote didn't work for you. Maybe the title should be
"Reasons working remotely is difficult for me."

~~~
stevenklein
You know, I considered putting this on my (currently non-existant) personal
blog for this exact reason. I talked to several of them and they agree in
varying degrees.

That is just one point out of several though so I thought it was fine to add
here.

~~~
s73v3r
How much experience did they have working remotely?

------
cs02rm0
I think it's less this:

 _REMOTE DOESN 'T WORK FOR GENERALISTS_

and more this:

 _Some people just aren 't wired for working remotely._

Nothing to beat yourself up over. And in my view not something that needs to
apply to the full team - I've done a lot of work with a company where you get
to choose whether you want to work remotely or not. Once every three months
the whole company meets up for a couple of days and in between occasionally
people will choose to meet up for a day to kick a project off or wind it up.
Some people work full time in an office together. I think it works brilliantly
letting people have the choice from a developer's perspective, although I can
think of a few project managers that perhaps didn't get it.

------
ryanSrich
Although I disagree with the overall sentiment of the article (remote working
doesn't work for generalists). I commend the author for at least trying remote
work (especially as a YC company, an organization that openly discourages
remote work).

Full disclosure, I work remotely and it's by far the best decision I've ever
made in my entire life.

So to address a few points. Collaboration to me is when a group of people, at
least two, are working on a project together. As a designer this is one of the
core aspects of my job. I'm constantly working on things with engineers,
founders and marketing people. Therefore I feel that I have a solid idea of
what it takes to collaborate efficiently.

At my previous job, that was location dictated, collaboration typically took
place over chat. We did have meetings to go over larger ideas and aspects of
the project, but typically critiques, pair programming, decision making all
took place over chat. Even though we were in the same room we made it a point
to communicate over chat because one: you need to respect my space and not
interrupt me just because we're in the same room and two: we have a transcript
so we can reference it later.

When I decided to leave that job as a developer and pursue a career in design
I decided that I would look for remote work only. I firmly believed that
everything I did on a daily basis in a single location could be done remotely.

The biggest point I want to make in this post is that tools are essentially
irrelevant. What matters most is the management of people on remote teams.
When you hire remote employees they need to be both self managing and self
motivating. You need to make them aware that collaboration on a remote team is
what each individual member puts into it. If they aren't documenting their
work each day, if they aren't participating in daily scrums, if they aren't
contributing to chats, if they aren't volunteering to review PRs, etc. it's
just not going to work out.

For me, and many of the folks I work with, remote work is about freedom. The
freedom to build your own schedule. The freedom to work on something early in
the morning or late at night, in the comfort of your own home. The freedom to
walk to a coffee shop and work from there. The freedom to forgo that commute.
The freedom to be more productive. The freedom to spend more time with your
family and loved ones. The freedom to just build great products without the
hassle of office politics.

~~~
clay_to_n
How does pair programming work over chat? I feel like pair programming relies
on you both looking at the same code + talking things through while one of you
is actually coding. It seems like having to switch over to a chat client to
communicate would decrease productivity a lot.

~~~
ryanSrich
I can't comment too much on the pair programming aspect. I know Floobits[1]
has been floated around often. It seems most of the pair programming we do is
with interns or junior developers, who are located at HQ until joining full-
time/gaining more experience.

As mentioned below Screenhero is really great for 1v1s (they plan on adding
team collaboration early this year).

For reference I wrote a post a while ago with some tools and methods we use at
Catalyze. The only tools we've added to the list that aren't in this[2] post
are trello and teamspeak.

1\. [https://floobits.com/](https://floobits.com/)

2\. [http://m97.co/writing/working-remotely-as-a-
designer.html](http://m97.co/writing/working-remotely-as-a-designer.html)

~~~
ericbieller
How has Teamspeak worked out for you? We're actually building a similar
product that's specifically for teams. I'd be curious to hear your feedback on
it as it may be helpful for you. Here's a quick walkthrough
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q)
Let me know if you have any thoughts / ideas.

------
practicalpants
It seems wrong for this guy to generalize entirely about remote work
arrangements based on his experience with 2 guys.

I've been a part of 3 teams, that each were rather different, with significant
remote reliance. It was great each time, productivity and collaboration,
developer happiness were all at highs. Maybe he was just working with the
wrong personalities and timezones, since two of the big problems he cited were
"work-life balance," something that is very personality oriented, and another
being East-West coast related.

Unfortunately it seems, people who are against remote work typically just want
employees to invest more into their product, as too much independence for the
employees is viewed as a bad thing. This is always a factor to keep in mind.

------
chatmasta
I like that you mention the disadvantage that "employees struggle with work-
life balance." This is often overlooked when considering the feasibility of
remote working.

The ability to manage work-life balance when working remotely is a very rare
ability, and one that takes practice to develop. The same ability is required
of startup founders. Those who can define structure for themselves, even
without external instruction, and then execute within that structure, will
always succeed before those who cannot.

Because this ability is so rare, and necessarily present in startup founders,
we can logically assume that a higher percentage of _startup founders_ have
the ability than the percentage of others who do. Or, at least we can assume
that startup founders are the most well-practiced in this ability to execute
within their own structure.

This means _many of_ (not all!) the people who are best at managing work-life
balance (a requirement for a productive remote employee), are already founding
startups. So the best remote employees are selected out of the hiring pool if
they decide to found startups instead. This leaves you with a plethora of
less-competent potential remote employees, who are not as skilled at managing
their own work-life balance as the best of them.

A risk when hiring a remote team is that you recruit too many employees who
cannot properly manage their own work-life balance, and therefore suffer
productivity losses. I would imagine the effect compounds as you hire more
employees sharing this weakness.

~~~
smackfu
Even when I was bad at work/life balance when I first started working from
home... I still saved an hour-and-a-half each and every day by not having to
commute or iron clothes or make my lunch.

~~~
robhack
I guess that depends on everyone's personal case. But I for one like my
commute: 10min by bicycle or 15min by foot, with a nice parc with lots of
birds on the way. So in my case, the pros of working from home are almost void
compared to the pros of a workplace.

~~~
rifung
You sound like you have an awesome commute; consider me incredibly jealous.

On the other hand, I think besides the commute itself is the freedom you get
from not having to constrain yourself to living in places where the commute is
doable. I work in downtown Seattle and I would love to move to the suburbs but
I'm not sure it's really feasible to spend 45 minutes on the bus to get to
work.

------
metasean
In my last job, we had three main hubs and each hub had offshoots. So it was
possible that every person on a project was working in a different location or
they could all be in the same office. We did a lot of military contracting,
and as a result, some work could only be done on-base; otherwise, we were
allowed to choose where we worked.

In otherwords, it was a wonderful mix of everyone in the same office, remote
teams, and working from home. Based on this, I learned I really _prefer_
having semi-regular meetings in person (things like kick-offs and 6-month
project retreat weeks), regular tele-cons (weekly all-project-hands), and the
rest of the time I was able to work on my own from where ever felt the most
productive that morning. On those days non-synchronous email communication
worked splendidly. There were co-workers who really _preferred_ only ever
working in the same location as the rest of their team, so we structured teams
that met that preference. There were other co-workers that were perfectly
happy with completely remote work (in fact, I never met, face-to-face, three
of my regular co-workers).

By and large, it really did boil down to preferences, although I did note that
my co-workers that preferred in-person projects were the ones most likely to
interrupt me - and be completely oblivious to the fact that they were
interrupting me! My remote coworkers were much less likely to interrupt me,
check to see if it was a good time when they did, and apologize for the
interruption.

------
pre
I can't imagine how you'd do pair-programming remotely, certainly. Some kind
of shared-screen skype-call? Two sessions into a remote-desktop?

Collaboration over the wire is slower than collaboration in person and less
enthusing, but it's also more considered, more precise.

We each have different styles I guess. Introverts likely prefer the considered
precise way, extroverts the enthusiastic fast-paced way.

People who remote-work need to have a good social life outside work,
certainly. I'm glad I've got that, coz remote work suits me so damned well.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sococo (I work there) does a good job. Share apps (not desktops); talk and
video, pointers and web apps all work together to make pair programming pretty
seamless.

~~~
pre
Heh, it looks like a game. Gauntlet or something. Strange model to
deliberately capture the office layout even.

It looks so much like a game of "Cluedo" I'd be tempted to try a murder to see
how it worked. "It was Thad, in Patrick's office, with the pistol"

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah some issues with the graphics causing credibility problems. But that's
exactly what makes the presence work so well - "Patrick is in Thad's office,
and they're both yelling!" Try that with any other tool

~~~
pre
But part of the advantage of remote-work is that you can be in two or more
conversations at once, that you can be in two or more 'places' at once.

No?

Seems odd to use a location metaphor, when online you can be in more than one
place at a time.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Chatting works that way. But your video and audio don't.

------
ArtDev
The title is very misleading. The content of the article doesn't support the
title at all..

~~~
Someone1234
The article actually reads like this one individual got tired of working
remotely (see "HAPPINESS SUFFERS (FOR SOME)") and then reverse-justified why
it wasn't working so it didn't seem like that was the core of why he wanted to
stop.

I'd be interested to see how many other of the team are unhappy, and more to
the point how many are perfectly happy with the current situation.

~~~
stevenklein
The happiness section about being around people is just one of the points and
doesn't even really apply to the whole team. Though I can see it appears to be
the main point because it is the longest in length.

The main reason is really that we feel like we'd be more productive if we were
together more often.

------
serve_yay
I like doing both. Previously I was working 100% remote and it was quite
isolating. I don't really like being around people very much, so in that sense
isolation suited me, but I still need to have some amount of interaction to
feel "normal" and stave off sinking into depression.

Now I work in an office and work from home at least one day a week, sometimes
more, and the freedom to work where I feel like working that day is quite
nice. Sometimes you just don't feel like doing the commute, or you didn't get
much sleep or whatever, and it's fine.

I agree the tools are not very good - using Skype-the-app sucks, but Skype is
also the only video-chat solution I've tried where the audio isn't terrible or
echo-y. (Sometimes the echo situation turns into straight-up feedback.)
Actually, they all work fine for one-on-one video chatting, but when you start
adding people to the call, things get ugly quick.

------
pbreit
I remember when we split from a 1 floor building to a 2 floor building and
even _that_ really killed a lot of the communication. I'm sure part-time
remote can work and might even be better in some situations. Full-time remote
sounds extremely challenging.

------
darklajid
I'm working completely remote [1] for 2 years now.

Wouldn't want to miss it again.

I have two kids, 2 and 1 years old, and the office was the far noisier
environment. Constant nagging, "Can you just for a moment" interruptions and
people playing foosball (or whatever you call the tables on which you can
waste a lot of time shouting and kicking hard plastic around) in the next
room... Not for me.

Home does have its challenges, certainly. But for me it's the far better
trade.

Now, communication and tools: I prefer less. We're a Windows/MS shop, so it's
Office 365 (worst. thing. ever. [2]) and Lync (sad..) for us. I'd prefer mail,
in a decent way, and a reasonable chat (IRC would work fine, but HipChat et al
might work just as well). I have a corporate phone, that is with me all the
time. People _can_ reach me - in theory - 24/7 with that.

That's enough. I have no need in this job for sketches on a virtual
whiteboard. I couldn't care less about conferences (aka discussions with > 4-5
participants). Phone's fine, mail is for persistence and tracking, git is for
source code and .. that works pretty well.

Sad to hear that it didn't work our for StatusPage.io, but I'm convinced that
this model can work perfectly fine.

1: Remote as in 'Less than a single digit number of days in the office per
year', although the distance to the Real Office™ is manageable at about
90-100km one way, same country.

2: WSDL files? Can't open those in OWA for example, because everything that
looks like XML is obviously 'scary'. OWA 'protects' you and according to our
IT Office 365 doesn't allow you to fix that. WSDL is just one example of
gazillion, I should by now create a template for the "Sorry, dear customer.
Our mail server is batshit crazy and acting up. Can you zip that stuff/share
it in other ways?" mails I send regularly. Your company/coworker uses s/mime?
Forget about using OWA, it will either throw around scary warnings or .. just
refuse to open the message completely.

~~~
s73v3r
Just because you don't need to collaborate or whiteboard things out, doesn't
mean others don't find it useful.

~~~
darklajid
Arguably I am collaborating just fine.

I agree with the whiteboard part of your comment, but don't feel that I stated
something to the opposite effect in my original comment?

------
jmadsen
One of the things I've found about working remote that no one ever seems to
talk about:

It doesn't work for teams where the Project Manager/owner/whoever is client-
facing doesn't like to sit down and write out proper specs.

There are some teams that can't work remotely merely because the guy who knows
what it is all supposed to look like doesn't like typing, and so there needs
to be an environment where people can "drop in" on each other's work areas.

That's not a great thing anyway, but it definitely doesn't work when you
aren't all in the same place, or even timezone

------
otakucode
The first two issues are software/technology issues and solving them is a
business opportunity.

The third one is a social issue, and one which can only be solved through
experience. The problem is not that human beings are destined to struggle with
work/life balance in this situation, but that they have no experience to draw
upon to learn how to do that.

The major problem here should be pretty obvious when looking at that list -
the pros RADICALLY outweigh the cons. That 'no office overhead' thing? Just
that alone benefits your organization more than all of the cons combined
detract from it.

------
saryant
I worked remote for about six months for the company I currently work for. I
actually miss that arrangement.

I solved the problem of being alone by working from a coworking space where I
shared an office with three other people, none of us actually working
together. All the benefits of being around people, but none of the downsides
of being stuff in a small box filled with office politics and whatever other
BS is going around that week.

------
exelius
I absolutely agree with you. It's been pretty well known for a while that
creative work is best performed in a single location.

I would argue that a lot of engineering work can be done by remote teams; but
defining your product, your market, your business model... all those need to
be done by a team in the same location because remote working stifles
creativity. All those interruptions that destroy productivity in an office are
also great when you're working on a creative task - by looping a coworker into
my creative process to help vet my ideas, the work product I produce as a
whole is better. Inspiration strikes at all times, so it's nice to be able to
just drop in on someone and discuss a topic.

Many companies reach a point where creativity isn't as important as execution;
and at that point I think remote teams are appropriate. OP discovered the hard
way that when you're in the ideation stage, it's hard to have a meeting of the
minds unless those minds are in the same room. Again, I don't think it's about
remote teams being inherently good or bad as much as they aren't appropriate
in every situation.

------
luckydude
Hi, a guy who has managed a remote team for 15 years here.

What it sounds like to me is that they don't have someone doing the
communication. I get all the bummers that is no face time, no hallway stuff.
But we are systems programmers (he said generalists and I think it is sort of
the same thing, everyone does everything, there aren't any narrow roles) and
we have made it work.

Some ramblings on what works for us.

IRC is big. We're all on it, if there is no chatter I know something is wrong.

Weekly staff meetings. I hate meetings but the team needs to sync. So do
those. Maybe even twice a week.

Phones. So much phone, you have no idea.

This is perhaps the biggest thing. Here's how we do design. It's all on the
phone and it is all someone talking about a picture. Then the other person
talks about the picture. Then the other person. What I mean by picture is
we're trying to solve $PROBLEM and we have a proposed $SOLUTION and we talk
about the solution. Someone leads because they believe they have a real
solution. So they articulate that and the next person either articulates it
back or proposes a change. When you go around the circle and everyone says the
same thing, you are done. Start coding. Don't code before that, you need to
have all the people seeing and saying the same picture.

We've made it work. It has not been easy and someone needs to step up and be
the communication dude (that was me). That person has to see everything that
is going on and know who needs to know what and make sure they either get the
info or talk to the person who can give them that info. It's a lot of work.
Many, many hours on the phone. But it can work, we've been doing it for 15
years, we gave you distributed source management as a result, all that work
was with a team that didn't live in the same city.

I would not give up on remote teams so quickly, they can work.

------
Shorel
What about:

Work remote.

Get all the company together to a trip to Hawaii each year.

I'm sure this can build camaraderie and morale, and I hope someone gives it a
try.

~~~
stevewilhelm
"Companies, too, are drawn to the intimate communal areas, amenities and
activities of co-working/co-living spaces. Nine remote-working employees of
Automattic, a web development corporation gathered for a work meetup this
month at the Surf Office in Gran Canaria, taking over the 10-room property for
six days “to build relationships, have real-time interaction and also work on
projects that are best done in person,” the company said." from

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/business/co-working-on-
vac...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/business/co-working-on-vacation-a-
desk-in-paradise.html)

------
patroqueeet
Hey, I fuly agree with what yor saying, having let dev teams for agile
projects for more then ten years, all remove attemts we tried were not
producing results as good as those of the onsite teams. I assume facing the
same walls, being integrated with the full team dynamics, feeling all everyday
emotions does integrate all team members much better and enables them to
contribute much more efficiently...

------
OmarIsmail
This is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about VR.

There's still an issue with timezones but I think the
communication/camaraderie problems will be fixed in a VR workplace. This gives
you all the benefits of remote and mitigates many of the downsides. If the
downsides are sufficiently depressed then many more teams will be able to be
remote and distributed and that may have a dramatic effect on society.

------
berkay
Steve, have you considered the hybrid option, where you would have hubs, but
still let some people to be remote?

May be this does not have to be an either or proposition. For some people
remote works and others are energized by being together with people. It varies
depending on their role as well (as you've stated).

------
muaddirac
I see this more as a technology issue - no one has sufficiently solved the
"remote creativity" problem of allowing people to communicate as seamlessly as
they can in a room with a whiteboard. (Or someone has, and I don't know about
it, and StatusPage doesn't either)

~~~
stevenklein
I don't know that this is the case. I feel like there just isn't anything that
can replace consistently being in the same room with someone.

~~~
simmons
Like muaddirac, I, too, think there's a lack of tools for solving the problem.
I've been a remote worker for ten years or so. A couple of years ago, a
colleague and I decided to just run a continuous all-day video conferencing
session with dedicated screens and speakers. It was really great for hashing
out random ideas as we thought of them, getting in some "water cooler" talk,
joking about who's doorbell is ringing, and even having some beers together
after a long day at work. It wasn't perfect (Google Hangouts kept wanting to
kick us out every two hours, for instance), but gave me optimism that good
tools could go a long way towards solving the problem. (One of these days,
maybe I'll get around to putting together my own WebRTC telepresence
solution.)

In any case, let me be the first to welcome you to Denver! There's no other
place that I'd rather work non-remote. ;)

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jchung
Is this a scale issue or a frequency of co-location issue? e.g., What is the
minimum number of people that must be collocated for an "office" to thrive?
What is the minimum frequency that people must be together for them to
collaboratively thrive?

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brandonuttley
I'd love to hear others' tips on how they are using Slack effectively with
remote team members (vs. typical email trails).

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msoad
Remote teams certainly doesn't work for big enterprise companies. My team is
remote in a big software company. Most of remote employees are pure slackers.
I don't do much of work either. Because if you want to do a code review it can
take two days because of "time difference" and "personal issues".

I can see how remote teams can work for a couple of super passionate startup
founder/employees but if it's in a highly political giant enterprise it never
works.

