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Great list! I agree with all but the 9-5 premise. The thing that makes it easy for me is Git! Having all of our work stored in version control gives our team 1

by err4nt 11y ago

Great list! I agree with all but the 9-5 premise. The thing that makes it easy for me is Git! Having all of our work stored in version control gives our team 100% accountability in a totally painless way. And if there's ever a project I'm working on outside of git, I do daily dump archives so each day is snapshotted. No need to track hours, no need to wonder what somebody did all day. If you want to know what I did last tuesday go check my commit! Version control = accountability and trust

mildbow 11y ago
The 9-5 premise is about having regular hours (whatever they are) so team members can get in touch if they need to. It's also about signaling when team members can't get in touch. Both are important since they are implicit to an office but something you need to be careful to correctly define/signal when you are working remotely. I don't really look at commit logs because, to me, they reflect how one prefers to work, rather than how productive they are being. 2 people can easily have 2 or 20 commits for the same feature set. I'm not going to be calling one a 10x engineer based on that :) To that end I don't believe in looking at commit log, or time tracking (!) because both can be falsified pretty easily: they are just another form of counting lines of code IMO. I prefer to look at how much customer value someone is delivering and how much other team members listen to them.
- err4nt 11y ago
  I focus on delivering recurring value so we're on the same page. I also agree that communication should have clear hours regardless of when you work, so you can be reached when others need you, and you know when you can reach them. For us it gets a little stretched out because of the time zone difference too, but most of our communication happens through the ticket system. I'm not advocating numbers of lines of code or numbers of commits either, value is what's important, but having a daily, timestamped record of everything everybody did just takes all the question out of 'What did you do last Tuesday?', any of us could just go and check. Working with version control has been a _huge_ benefit to remote working because it provides a way that people who don't see each other can trust each other. It also ensures that nothing of value what was ever produced by anybody (and paid for) is ever lost, even if deleted. That's just smart business!
  - mildbow 11y ago
    That makes sense. I like the idea also of using it as a quick refresher to remind everyone/yourself what you were doing X days ago esp. during review time. Thanks!

by err4nt 11y ago

mildbow 11y ago

The 9-5 premise is about having regular hours (whatever they are) so team members can get in touch if they need to. It's also about signaling when team members can't get in touch. Both are important since they are implicit to an office but something you need to be careful to correctly define/signal when you are working remotely. I don't really look at commit logs because, to me, they reflect how one prefers to work, rather than how productive they are being. 2 people can easily have 2 or 20 commits for the same feature set. I'm not going to be calling one a 10x engineer based on that :) To that end I don't believe in looking at commit log, or time tracking (!) because both can be falsified pretty easily: they are just another form of counting lines of code IMO. I prefer to look at how much customer value someone is delivering and how much other team members listen to them.

err4nt 11y ago
I focus on delivering recurring value so we're on the same page. I also agree that communication should have clear hours regardless of when you work, so you can be reached when others need you, and you know when you can reach them. For us it gets a little stretched out because of the time zone difference too, but most of our communication happens through the ticket system. I'm not advocating numbers of lines of code or numbers of commits either, value is what's important, but having a daily, timestamped record of everything everybody did just takes all the question out of 'What did you do last Tuesday?', any of us could just go and check. Working with version control has been a _huge_ benefit to remote working because it provides a way that people who don't see each other can trust each other. It also ensures that nothing of value what was ever produced by anybody (and paid for) is ever lost, even if deleted. That's just smart business!
- mildbow 11y ago
  That makes sense. I like the idea also of using it as a quick refresher to remind everyone/yourself what you were doing X days ago esp. during review time. Thanks!