Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

My team (I'm the project manager/tech lead) is roughly half remote, with the remotes including my product owner and lead test engineer (among others).

As noted elsewhere, thinking remote-first is required for non-co-located teams to be successful.

Technical items, in no particular order: All meetings are conducted with full video teleconferencing.

Most meetings are configured to default participants as muted (help stop random noise on line).

When we white-board, we use a webcam (or lacking that, frequent cell-phone pics) to keep remotes in the loop.

Heavy use of IM tools, online wikis/notes, etc

Social Things: Try to meet in person occasionally. Obviously doesn't work if people are truly global, but I usually see my team in person at conferences, client meetings, or we fly them in every so often (project kick-offs, major high-level design efforts, etc).

Find team building activities that can be conducted via video-conference. Commit to doing them regularly.

If you conduct 1-on-1s, make sure part of those meetings is social. Take the time to do some "water-cooler" chit-chat.




I work remote most of the time and so do almost all of my colleagues. But I think you've highlighted an important issue here. White-boarding!!!

No communication tool comes close to a human drawing pictures to explain complex concepts - a picture is worth a thousand words.

What I did is invest in a Wacom tablet (I do not work for Wacom) to be able to explain and draw to people I'm on calls with. It takes a bit getting used to but definitely makes my meetings much more productive.

From a technology standpoint I'm surprised there isn't a better integrated experience to mimic the actual whiteboard that can be shared across several people on a conference call with a digital pen.


Smartboards exist! Also, some competitors are creating comparable items as well. I am looking into this myself so that our engineering team can white board together.


> mimic the actual whiteboard

What do you currently use? I'm looking for a smooth way to do the same thing.


I could see something like a Surface Pro or iPad Pro being useful for white boarding.


> Find team building activities that can be conducted via video-conference.

What kinds of things have your tried? or would recommend?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: