
Work for a remote culture - ScottWRobinson
http://www.higginsninja.net/Blog/work-for-a-remote-culture/
======
jasode
_> Companies that support remote workers and do it well seem to have a huge
leg up on the competition._

I'm a remote worker and I'm definitely spoiled by not having to deal with open
office plans and disruptions.

That said, I see _no evidence_ that the article's statement is true. (I _want_
it to be true, but that doesn't change the fact that so far, I see zero
evidence that it is true.)

You can't convince people with just rhetoric.

Instead, show compelling examples of how _Company-A-with-mostly-remote-
workers_ is beating the pants off of the _Company-B-with-onsite-workers_.

Show that RemoteWorkerCompany is 10x more innovative, delivers 10x faster, has
10x profits, etc etc.

I suspect finding comparisons that control for other variables are hard to
come up with. Nevertheless, that's what it's going to take to convince
managers. A bunch of programmers writing a thousand essays on the "advantages"
of remote workers is just preaching to people like me who happen to like
working from home.

~~~
blizkreeg
I'm curious as to how companies that have many remote workers (developers,
more specifically) achieve some of the benefits that come with in-person
communication and co-working in the same space? For instance, in our
experience, a lot of the times our developers will get together in a
conference room and work together and we've had remarkable success with it.
Problems get solved quicker, there is more coordination, and just good
motivating camaraderie. It becomes sort of a war room, especially around
critical projects.

How do you emulate this in a remote working scenario?

~~~
hibikir
You'd be surprised by what can be achieved by just having Slack. The best
parts of IRC and email, put together. Searchable. Persistent communication
changes companies. My current employer is only running part-remote, but we
actively move important conversations to slack, because if nothing else, we
can go back to them later.

When sharing actual screens is necessary, there's ScreenHero, which is very
useful for pair programming and such.

Now, I think it's important to have at least some video chat every day, if
just so that we can keep up with the emotional state of our coworkers. Over
the years, I've preemptively fixed many team dynamics problems by paying
attention to people's emotions. If Joe is sad today, maybe I can help with
whatever the problem is, or I can at least make sure he isn't pressured too
much. If you do most of your talk by text, it's far harder to pick up on those
things. If there's some rotating pair programming going on, those things can
be handled better.

~~~
blizkreeg
We do use Slack and it certainly helps. However, we invariably find that there
is a certain inertia to reach out via video among some devs or wait until the
person is in office to hash out a problem. It may just be because we don't
have anyone 100% remote on the team and hence expectations aren't set. Also,
in an open office plan, talking over video at your desk can becoming annoying
to the person sitting next to you, which means grabbing a conf room. I'm just
saying it depends on the personality of the developer in how she/he handles
working with a remote worker.

------
pcmaffey
I've been a remote worker for almost 10 years. In fact, I hardly know what
working in an office is like.

I can say that remote working is not without its own set of challenges. Chief
among them is the need for EXCELLENT communication skills. I've worked with
supremely talented and previously successful teams that simply fall apart in a
remote environment, because they don't understand the value of transparent
communication. Working remotely, everyone relies almost entirely on the word
of their coworkers, as its much more difficult for leaders/managers to get a
feeling on their team.

Like any successful team, it comes down to establishing trust. But with remote
teams, there's much less margin for error.

------
andrewljohnson
We've done both (office in Berkeley, but now two founders in Berkeley, and the
other 7 or so around the US).

A couple of points:

a) It should be all remote, or all local. You ruin the fun for people if a
chunk of the team if talking, and chat is dead.

b) My co-founder/wife and I purposefully avoid shop talk, and keep it all in
chat.

c) Remote is a good life style for some people. We look for people who will be
happy at home, people with lives and families, who don't need to meet friends
to go out with and lovers at work. This fits our culture - we attract outdoors
types, who like time to themselves.

d) Some people are self-driven and make good remote workers. Some people need
to be in an office and get constant nudging from physical social pressure (and
their boss).

e) Tools: weekly Google Hangout, frequent one-on-ones, Slack, Trello, Github -
almost zero email.

~~~
jedberg
Hey, question for you. Have you found a good "remote whiteboard" solution? Our
company is all remote, and this is the one area where things could be better.
Sometimes we really want to just get in a room and whiteboard something, but
we can't.

~~~
andrewljohnson
No, can't say that I have. We sometimes collaborate in realtime on a Google
doc, Trello card, or Screenshare on Hangout.

Maybe we have a more show-and-tell-and-iterate approach.

~~~
jedberg
Dang. Oh well.

------
discardorama
I worked for a large company that had a somewhat flexible policy (if your
manager allowed it, you could). I found that on the days I was working from
home, I could get a _lot_ more done. I was more relaxed, and highly
productive. I didn't have to go through the morning ritual of chit-chat,
coffee, etc. etc.

Having said that: I also saw how it was being abused. There were some
colleagues who were working side gigs while working remotely. If it's a highly
specialized area, then it's hard for a manager to make sure you're pulling
your weight. There were some stellar remote workers; and there were some total
slackers. Just like with anything else in life, it's a mixed bag.

~~~
joeax
> Having said that: I also saw how it was being abused.

There are easy ways to ensure productivity. For example, using Skype and
requiring offsite workers to be available (i.e. green status) throughout the
day.

If workers are not being productive at home it's management's fault for not
laying out a culture and guidelines to ensure productivity.

------
omouse
I find that a remote culture is hard to build if half your office is remote
and the other half is in the office.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
I've worked in this situation and it worked out great, and I've worked in this
situation and it was terrible. There are a couple of things I would say are
key:

\- Everyone has to use the same communication tools, ie everyone in the office
has to be using Slack/Hipchat and regularly do hangouts with remote people

\- All meetings have to assume someone is going to be remote. It has to be
burned into the culture that when you have a meeting a laptop is open and
hangouts/gotomeeting/etc are running

\- Annual onsite is a must! I've been amazed how a few days of in person
communication can form pretty deep bonds. Once that username has a face and
some shared inside jokes they become human forever. Anyone more key on any
team should also strive to make it out around quarterly. I think everyone has
people they'd consider good friends that they only have met in person one or
two times while attending a conference or visiting a far away friend, same
goes for the office.

\- Let your local people work from home when it makes sense! Don't make your
office people trudge through feet of snow while the remoters sip hot cocoa at
home. In my experience most people working in the office actually like working
in an office and most remoters like working remote. But, whenever possible,
let the local people stay home if they need to wait for a package, take care
of a sick kid, need some time to clear their head, the office is under
construction etc.

Even though it sounds like the smallest one, the chat one is actually one of
bigger issues. If everyone is on Slack you'll find even people in the office
start using it to communicate with people a few seats away for small stuff,
sharing links, conversations you'd prefer to be quiet etc. And this eventually
means that communicating with someone 10 ft and 10k miles away feels very
similar.

~~~
omouse
I actually introduced Slack which is much better than Google Hangouts; having
any sort of shared chat room is much better for team cohesion but I feel
there's something missing the culture because we don't constantly chat. At my
last workplace we had no one remote but since everyone was on different
projects the Slack #general channel was _the_ place to make sure you get that
cross-team and company-wide communication happening and to have fun. Here with
25% remote and 75% in office it feels like the watercooler and team cohesion
aspect can't ever really happen.

Your advice is sound.

------
TeamMCS
I love this idea and very much agree you end up with a much more modular, and
proactive organisation with the right people. Owing to desk space issues,
finance is moving more towards working-from-home. Honestly, in my next job I'd
like to go 100% WFH - the amount of time saved from commuting is huge and,
from an organisational perspective, if I get inspired over the weekend or the
evening I'm much more likely just to get some bits and pieces done.

Unfortunately there's still a lot of legacy managers and people who make the
transition tricky. If you can start from the ground up, or at least foster it
within teams that's great.

~~~
ryandrake
Yea, those "legacy managers"... always trying to harsh our mellow. That's
surely the only thing getting in the way of the ideal 100% remote-work-
everywhere nirvana.

If remote working was really the slam-dunk productivity panacea that its
supporters claim it is, then companies would be switching to it overnight to
beat their "legacy" competitors. Shareholders would demand it! Soon, you'd
have a hard time finding companies with physical offices. But that's not
happening. Is it because of these old stodgy legacy managers, or could it be
because there are major down sides to remote work that tend to get get glossed
over by people singing its praises? What's more likely?

~~~
glogla
I don't think we can easily argue that "it this was good, people would have
done it long time ago". Culture changes slowly, and people don't always make
the best decisions.

~~~
ryandrake
The culture of "I want to make more money than my competitor" doesn't need to
change. I can easily argue that if switching to remote work, in and of itself,
were to produce clear, repeatable productivity gains that consistently
outweighed the downsides, companies would switch to it very quickly.

~~~
logfromblammo
In that case, the easy money would be in selling remote-work consulting to
businesses that want help implementing it. The results would largely depend on
the quality of the people jumping onto that particular bandwagon.

Can you argue that a company that wants to try remote, but doesn't know where
to start, can consistently achieve measurable gains by employing such
consultants?

That element seems to be what killed the positive momentum behind Agile. If
the same people end up doing the same things, remote work will likely become
just as dysfunctional as local in-office work, if not more so. Companies will
buy just enough rope to hang themselves from people who will even gleefully
tie the slip knot for them.

------
gizi
I've worked remotely for the last 10 years now. Existing businesses will
probably stick to their existing practices until they die, while new startups
which don't have too much baggage to drag around, may indeed see that the
future is heavily biased in favour of working remote:

\- There is a higher caliber of workers worldwide than just next-doors (if the
company is truly capable of distinguishing)

\- Some workers may conceivably even be cheaper (cheaper countries, but don't
count too much on that for high calibre workers)

\- Part of their salary is that they get a huge portion of their life back
(this has real cash value)

\- The tooling and overall technical management tends to be better, simply
because it has to

\- Especially in an international context, both employer and employee avoid an
impressive number of government regulations, including visas, work permits and
so on.

Even though an entirely remote company is more productive, I don't believe
that existing on-site companies would be able to introduce it. I see them
rather continuing to outsource while shrinking their head count year after
year.

------
pmikesell
It doesn't have to be 100% one way or the other. I think the optimal solution
might be something like 1 (or maybe 2) days per week in the office for
planning and sync up, and then 3 days WFH.

I'm sure it depends on the size or the organization and type of work being
done (even depending on the type of software being written), but it's
something that could be experimentally figure out.

~~~
jon-wood
I currently do 2 days in the office, 2 at home, 1 off. While it is easier to
have meetings while in the office it feels like most of the meetings I'm in
could have just easily been a few emails, or shared Google Docs document which
would better capture the process getting to any conclusions.

------
zkhalique
I happen to agree. As an employer however, we've found it hard to always keep
our developers motivated and executing on time. Any advice?

~~~
allochthon
> As an employer however, we've found it hard to always keep our developers
> ... executing on time.

There's something off about this -- it has the whiff of micromanagement or
waterfall; perhaps I'm misreading your point. Far better than micromanagement
is hiring good, trustworthy people and collaborating with them together on
incrementally building something out.

~~~
noarchy
It could also have the whiff of an "Agile" team that has a crisis every 2 or 3
weeks, due to routinely setting unrealistic sprint goals. No, this isn't
supposed to happen, but I've seen it at more than one shop, that's for sure.

~~~
allochthon
Yes, indeed. "Agile" can have its share of manufactured crises, too.

------
scottndecker
The first four points are summarized in "Email is better than verbal
communication." While email definitely has advantages, there are tons of
downsides of having to rely on written communication. It's slower, you don't
get the non-verbals, it's easy to misinterpret, you form less of a bond with
the person on the other end, etc.

The last three points are much better (though I can't attest if they're true
or not).

~~~
boken
I agree with you. My experience with remote work has been touch-and-go, but it
always helps when team members are mutually willing to communicate over the
phone. Effective back-and-forth over email seems to be a rare skill. No matter
how much time you put into refining a message, it is only ever one piece of a
conversation. If there is more to say than just "Do this," or "I have done
that"—if you need a back-and-forth—all email does is stretch the dialogue out.
Answers come more slowly, and often as incompletely. And, as you say, tone is
very hard to get right over email. I'm sure I've read at least a couple
articles on HN about the tendency to read aggressiveness into concise emails.

~~~
frandroid
Email is simply not a conversation medium, and rarely even a discussion
medium. It's a medium mostly useful to propagate information and meeting
requests (where discussion happens).

------
andrewtbham
My friend tony, that owns a startup called fleetio, made a compelling
presentation about remote work and it's advantages. It also has lots of info
on tools.

[http://www.slideshare.net/tonysummerville/tech-tools-for-
bui...](http://www.slideshare.net/tonysummerville/tech-tools-for-building-and-
managing-a-remote-culture)

------
pselbert
I've been partially remote for the past 5 years, averaging 2-3 days a week in
the office. During that time I've also had stints of being fully remote while
overseas for a few months at a time. The fully remote time is vastly more
productive, but could be very difficult regarding communication. The work
environment wasn't designed to be remote-first, and this puts a strain on
anybody who isn't in the office.

In my experience remote all-the-way works wonderfully. Remote partially
suffers around communication when the rest of the team doesn't emphasize
asynchronous tools like chat/comments/email.

------
49531
I recently switched from a non-remote team to a remote one, and I can
definitely echo these sentiments.

The biggest difference I have seen is that merit seems to give more weight to
a team member's position than politics.

------
robohamburger
As person who has spent half their career telecommuting and half in an open
floor plan: it seems mostly like a series of trade offs.

Being remote forces you to be more deliberate with communication. I tend to
make more design docs and proposals than I think I otherwise would.

Working in an open floor plan means you can randomly overhear things you are
either passionate about or have expertise in and jump in.

I suspect there is also an emotional and introvert/extrovert bit as well.
Sometimes it is nice to be physically be around people working industriously
on your same problem domain.

------
grumps
They're are many downfalls with working remote. In the past year of being
remote I've found that it can be very difficult to pick up on the attitude of
a co-worker or boss. It also can make difficult conversations not go so well.
People will also avoid having to have face to face conversations because they
don't like confrontation. I like working remote, but I also think it's
important that a "connection" be built with your co-workers and sometimes that
just only partially happens over chat and hang outs.

------
varelse
I find that in the age of the open office, working remotely is the only time
I'm really productive. I didn't mind working from an 8x8 cube, but my current
tiny desk in a maze of desks, all alike, is the pits (cue some nimrod
posturing about how this enhances agile/availability/WTFever).

That said, I totally grok people who have a large social component to their
dayjob seeing these things as a perk. I am not one of those people. I write
code. It it isn't truly important, GO AWAY...

------
sulam
The one quantitative thing I think you can say about companies with lots of
remote workers is that they don't have to pay as much for engineers. Speaking
as someone who lives in the Bay Area, that makes me less likely to work for
such a company. Yes, I could move somewhere where the cost of living is lower,
but I actually like it here, and I have yet to run across a company with a
strong remote culture that doesn't use it as a cost-savings device (among
other things).

------
dom96
As someone who would be interested in working remotely, I have to ask: which
companies would you say have a good remote culture?

~~~
VLM
Which kind of companies?

Big companies. Multinationals. Megacorporations. My coworkers in other states
have no idea if I'm at home or work, and they have no idea where I am. Often
enough I'm not sure what cities are involved much less office or home on on
the road.

This leads to a BIG social and cultural problem that it's director/vp
privilege to have a boss/employee relationship across timezones, how dare
those lowly scum cross timezones, next thing you know they'll be using the
exec washroom, nobody under $250K/yr gets to work across state lines, etc.

Also there's stealth WFH if everyone is expected to put in some hours while
VPN in from home during emergencies, then weekly emergencies become BAU, then
people are expected to VPN in when they're sick at home, next thing you know
people are staying home and VPN in because they have a dentist appointment in
the middle of the day, then people start going home after lunch and VPN in on
a regular basis... You will save commute time money WRT rush hour slowdowns
but you won't save many car-miles.

Also look for professional, experienced managers. Noob managers will be lucky
to achieve and measure trivial baby step metrics like "butt-hours in seats per
week", although the pros will get stuff done without making graphs of
tardiness infractions and dress code violations. There are numerous other
advantages to working for professionals instead of amateur hour.

------
Sawbones
I would love to work for a remote company. I had partial remote work for
awhile and wanted to just go full remote.

~~~
HigginsNinja
[http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Paylocity-Software-
Engineer-...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Paylocity-Software-Engineer-
Salaries-E29987_D_KO10,27.htm)

------
dataker
That's a broad statement: time-zones might make communication a lot harder
and/or cultural differences(for other countries).

Working in the U.S with someone from Australia or Asia is a lot harder than
with someone down in Mexico or Canada.

------
baby
Curious about what the people at buffer think of this

------
copsarebastards
Look, I get that working remotely is good for many workers, but let's admit
that's why we're doing it instead of pretending it's about "getting a leg up
on competition".

 _> They prioritize communication and collaboration by necessity_

This is exactly what remote culture _doesn’t_ do. A remote culture inherently
has decided that being off-site is more important to them than being able to
communicate and collaborate quickly and easily.

 _> It is easy to reach out for help_

Easier than standing up and asking for help over the cubicle wall? No.

I can see how the increased difficulty of communication could be arguably a
better thing, but let’s not pretend it’s easier.

 _> There is a lot less wasted communication_

This is true, but it’s balanced by the fact that the non-wasted communication
costs a whole lot more. And I think it’s also an overstated claim: just
because you can refer back to your communication doesn’t mean anyone actually
can find the communications or actually does go back and refer to it.

 _> There is a lot less posturing_

I can see how this is annoying, but I’m not sure how this relates to a claim
of productivity. In the end, I’m not sure presenting ideas with logic is
actually the best way to do things: often I’d rather just do what the best
doers on the team suggest, with or without justification. The best plan is the
one that gets the job done quickly and with quality, even if it’s one that’s
hard to justify logically beforehand. Requiring logical justification for
things means that you prioritize the talk of people who talk well over the
intuition of people who are actually good at their jobs. It’s worth noting
that posturing tends to be most effective for people who are respected by
their teammates, which tends to correlate with being good at your job in
technical fields. Posturing evolved as a behavior for a reason, and I’d not be
so quick to discard it.

Also, there’s an apparent contradiction between "Even if we are over-
communicating, it is okay, because we aren't forcing a squadron of employees
to sit in a meeting room pretending to be interested.” and "I have to believe
that it has something to do with the fact that most of the effective
communication is either written, or is done in large meetings where lots of
people are watching.” Either your meetings are larger or they aren’t; don’t
pick whichever fits the point you’re trying to make.

 _> There is often a higher caliber of workers_

Uh, okay. If we’re allowed to make vague unjustified claims, I guess I can
just counter with, “Remote work tends to lead to unhealthier workers because
they don’t go outside”.

 _> You get a huge portion of your life back_

This is also a pretty unjustified claim. When I worked from home I found that
it was a lot harder to “turn off” when my workday was done.

Citing commute times is a good justification for living near where you work,
not necessarily for working remotely. I’m a 25 minute train ride from my work,
and having an excuse to get up and go out is pretty good for me in general.

~~~
sandover
Very much agree. There's a herd mentality in the programmer community on this
issue. Having worked remotely for a year myself, I think remote work should be
considered harmful for the career of most engineers.

For engineers who are in the habit of thinking of their job and their career
(and maybe a lot of other things?) exclusively in mechanistic terms of inputs
and outputs, it's a tempting abstraction.

But when you work remotely, you're basically advertising your work as
commodity work. You're basically consistently reminding the company -- and the
job market -- that you are substitutable. In economic terms, that is simply
not a smart signal to be sending.

It's also short sighted in terms of the arc of your career. Right now you
might be making economic value in the marketplace strictly by extruding a
software widget from your keyboard. Great! But at some point, the odds are
good (not 100%, but good) that the way you'll make value is by enabling others
to build software; reading body language, detecting issues in a team; or
negotiating; or motivating; or selling; etc. The proportion of people reading
this who will hack til their retirement day is quite small.

Sitting in your home office being "productive" isn't preparing you to do much
that's important in the second half of your career. It's a case of over-
fitting. You're optimizing around your current skill set and not thinking
about the larger portfolio of useful -- human -- skills.

~~~
sankho
> But when you work remotely, you're basically advertising your work as
> commodity work. You're basically consistently reminding the company -- and
> the job market -- that you are substitutable.

You don't provide an argument for why working in an office provides what you
are claiming remote workers to lack, nor do you provide evidence to backup
your claim that remote workers are more replaceable.

> But at some point... the way you'll make value is by enabling others to
> build software; reading body language, detecting issues in a team; or
> negotiating; or motivating; or selling; etc.

If you can't do this through verbal communication and hangouts, maybe you
should work on your communication skills as a manager - sometimes listening to
the words people say is more reliable than making assumptions based on body
positioning. On the flip side, maybe you should focus your hiring efforts on
developers with strong communication skills, and enforce an evaluation period
w/ new developers to see if they can meet the mustard in terms of remote
communicating. Good developers don't communicate passively; they use their
words and this can be assessed by good managers.

~~~
copsarebastards
> You don't provide an argument for why working in an office provides what you
> are claiming remote workers to lack, nor do you provide evidence to backup
> your claim that remote workers are more replaceable.

Maybe the reason you don't see that this is obviously the case is that you
haven't been in enough direct contact with the people making these replacement
decisions. :P

> If you can't do this through verbal communication and hangouts, maybe you
> should work on your communication skills as a manager - sometimes listening
> to the words people say is more reliable than making assumptions based on
> body positioning.

...and sometimes it's not. Also, you're making it sound like people are more
likely to make assumptions based on body positioning-- _every_ form of
communication involves assumptions. Communication without body language
inherently communicates less--you're making _more_ assumptions because you
have less information to go on.

