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I have worked remotely for 4 years. Start by creating a remote-first culture. Everyone should think "remote" first. Thus it should never matter if a local empl

I have worked remotely for 4 years. Start by creating a remote-first culture. Everyone should think "remote" first. Thus it should never matter if a local employee is working from home, the HQ, from the other side of the world. Make all work processes remote friendly. That should be step zero when considering hiring a remote person regardless of the reason. The goal should be to avoid a two-tiered culture. Some differences will always be there but if the spirit of the remote-friendly culture is there integration is pretty fluid. Thus (near) all communication happens in Slack/Hipchat/etc. Group meetings, when including remote people, happen in video conf / Hangouts. Shared Google docs to collaborate on. Have in-person meetups 2-4 x a year for beneficial face-time and for people to get to know each other better on a personal level. When a new person is hired, have them do 20 min 1-on-1's with all team members to get to know each other and their job role. Have monthly video conf/hangouts on non-work technical topics where people rotate presenting. The biggest element is the decision to be a fully remote team. Which honestly is a major retention benefit as well. Why should local employees not enjoy the same flexibility to work as needed remotely?

dhd415 11y ago
Your point about a remote-first culture is 110% true. It has to be in the DNA of the company or else remote workers end up as second-class citizens. While it does not have to be the case, it does seem to be true that if a large portion (~50% or more) of the team is not remote, the culture will rarely end up being remote-first. If the culture is not remote-first, you end being just that guy who comes into the office every few months. I'm working now in such a situation and it's not pleasant.
- Touche 11y ago
  Happened to me too. I lived on the east coast and my team, where I was the only remote employee, was in the west coast. They would schedule stand-ups in their afternoons not realizing it was 7:30 my time. I didn't stay at that job very long.
- dsp1234 11y ago
  A concrete example of this is if someone stops by your area to ask a "quick question" then culturing an environment where an answer of, "Why don't you bring that up in the global chat so everyone can contribute?", is welcomed rather than brushed off as being unfriendly.
  - dvcc 11y ago
    Would anyone else find this tiring though? I feel like I am omitting the use of basic communication skills in favor of something less than ideal. I guess I am just not a huge fan of remote work in general though, so I have a hard time coming around to the idea that quick questions must go through a chat at all times.
    - Touche 11y ago
      I guess the person who is always interrupting others in favor of their own issues would find it tiring. But the person who is constantly being interrupted would find it refreshing that they can prioritize themselves.
      - matwood 11y ago
        We need to get off of this 'I am a special snowflake' that cannot be bothered to work with a team. If you want to solo develop than go be a solo app developer. If you want to deliver software as part of a team, then working with the team is part of the gig. I know it is hard to believe, but the act of coding is only one part of many required to deliver working software that meets the requirements. Great function you wrote there that does the wrong thing because you were too busy to be bothered.
        Touche 11y ago
        Working with a team doesn't mean synchronous communication. We need to get off of this "I am a special snowflake" and my current issue trumps whatever anyone else is working on. Hire good people and trust that they will respond to issues appropriately. If your services are down and the company is bleeding cash every second, they will stop what their doing and help fix the issue. Having communication be synchronous-by-default more easily leads to scenarios where you decide to ask a colleague a question real quick that breaks their flow. I'm guilty of this myself.
d0m 11y ago
I agree. I've both worked as an employee and as an employer from remote work, and it's just really hard to get right. But if there's one thing is to make it remote friendly right from the beginning. Think about it, it's practically impossible to force an existing organisation to change the whole way it works in just one day because there's a new remote employee. And, if the organisation doesn't change, that new remote employee won't like his experience (I know I didn't). However, built from the beginning, then everyone will already work and be remote-friendly.
cookiecaper 11y ago
>Have in-person meetups 2-4 x a year for beneficial face-time and for people to get to know each other better on a personal level. This is a turn-off for me as a full-time remote worker. When I browse remote job listings, a lot of companies list this like it's a perk. Maybe it's a perk if you're a 23-year-old single guy, but it's not a perk for me; it actually flies in the face of why I'm a remote worker, which is that I want to focus on my work with minimal interference on the other components of my life (which are what really matter to me). I don't want to travel. I find planes immensely uncomfortable and telling the employer that I only fly first-class is usually not an option. I don't want to be stuck in a room with everyone from the company for a week or more while I miss everything that's going on at home, and like most company functions, skipping out on this also isn't really an option if one wants to remain politically viable. One of the great things about remote work is that it takes a great deal of bullshit out of the employment process; you don't have to worry about if you're making the wrong facial contortions, if you're offending someone by slouching, if you look bored, or if you laugh hard enough at someone's bad attempt at a joke. The work is the focus. There are few social signals to misinterpret or blow out of proportion. I think a remote-first culture is one of the best ways to secure a meritocratic working atmosphere, simply because it removes so much of the irrelevant noise, like personal charisma, that people misinterpret as being relevant to the performance of job duties. Occasional company meetups only serve to dampen this focus on actual working output. I prefer to keep a professional emotional distance from my co-workers, generally speaking, which I think is for the best. If we really hit it off, there's no reason we can't arrange our own meetups, but for most colleagues, we develop a strong sense of professional respect for one another and that's plenty sufficient. No need to mess that up with personal elements. I understand that these company meetups may be great if you're looking for companionship, but I don't really think a lonely person is well suited to remote work anyway. At home, I have a wife and several children to hang out with, plus a few close friends and a group of loose associates from hacker meetups, community functions, and/or church.
- taurath 11y ago
  2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. The fact is that relationships and trust especially can fray after a long time without actually meeting with people (most of the time, you may be a special case). Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time - you may be in a very special situation where there are almost no benefits to actually knowing your colleagues better than what you can say over IRC, but for me its always been very helpful to get a good feel for who is on the other end of the keyboard, which becomes super useful for collaberations.

dhd415 11y ago

Your point about a remote-first culture is 110% true. It has to be in the DNA of the company or else remote workers end up as second-class citizens. While it does not have to be the case, it does seem to be true that if a large portion (~50% or more) of the team is not remote, the culture will rarely end up being remote-first. If the culture is not remote-first, you end being just that guy who comes into the office every few months. I'm working now in such a situation and it's not pleasant.

Touche 11y ago
Happened to me too. I lived on the east coast and my team, where I was the only remote employee, was in the west coast. They would schedule stand-ups in their afternoons not realizing it was 7:30 my time. I didn't stay at that job very long.
dsp1234 11y ago
A concrete example of this is if someone stops by your area to ask a "quick question" then culturing an environment where an answer of, "Why don't you bring that up in the global chat so everyone can contribute?", is welcomed rather than brushed off as being unfriendly.
- dvcc 11y ago
  Would anyone else find this tiring though? I feel like I am omitting the use of basic communication skills in favor of something less than ideal. I guess I am just not a huge fan of remote work in general though, so I have a hard time coming around to the idea that quick questions must go through a chat at all times.
  - Touche 11y ago
    I guess the person who is always interrupting others in favor of their own issues would find it tiring. But the person who is constantly being interrupted would find it refreshing that they can prioritize themselves.
    - matwood 11y ago
      We need to get off of this 'I am a special snowflake' that cannot be bothered to work with a team. If you want to solo develop than go be a solo app developer. If you want to deliver software as part of a team, then working with the team is part of the gig. I know it is hard to believe, but the act of coding is only one part of many required to deliver working software that meets the requirements. Great function you wrote there that does the wrong thing because you were too busy to be bothered.
      - Touche 11y ago
        Working with a team doesn't mean synchronous communication. We need to get off of this "I am a special snowflake" and my current issue trumps whatever anyone else is working on. Hire good people and trust that they will respond to issues appropriately. If your services are down and the company is bleeding cash every second, they will stop what their doing and help fix the issue. Having communication be synchronous-by-default more easily leads to scenarios where you decide to ask a colleague a question real quick that breaks their flow. I'm guilty of this myself.

d0m 11y ago

I agree. I've both worked as an employee and as an employer from remote work, and it's just really hard to get right. But if there's one thing is to make it remote friendly right from the beginning. Think about it, it's practically impossible to force an existing organisation to change the whole way it works in just one day because there's a new remote employee. And, if the organisation doesn't change, that new remote employee won't like his experience (I know I didn't). However, built from the beginning, then everyone will already work and be remote-friendly.

cookiecaper 11y ago

>Have in-person meetups 2-4 x a year for beneficial face-time and for people to get to know each other better on a personal level. This is a turn-off for me as a full-time remote worker. When I browse remote job listings, a lot of companies list this like it's a perk. Maybe it's a perk if you're a 23-year-old single guy, but it's not a perk for me; it actually flies in the face of why I'm a remote worker, which is that I want to focus on my work with minimal interference on the other components of my life (which are what really matter to me). I don't want to travel. I find planes immensely uncomfortable and telling the employer that I only fly first-class is usually not an option. I don't want to be stuck in a room with everyone from the company for a week or more while I miss everything that's going on at home, and like most company functions, skipping out on this also isn't really an option if one wants to remain politically viable. One of the great things about remote work is that it takes a great deal of bullshit out of the employment process; you don't have to worry about if you're making the wrong facial contortions, if you're offending someone by slouching, if you look bored, or if you laugh hard enough at someone's bad attempt at a joke. The work is the focus. There are few social signals to misinterpret or blow out of proportion. I think a remote-first culture is one of the best ways to secure a meritocratic working atmosphere, simply because it removes so much of the irrelevant noise, like personal charisma, that people misinterpret as being relevant to the performance of job duties. Occasional company meetups only serve to dampen this focus on actual working output. I prefer to keep a professional emotional distance from my co-workers, generally speaking, which I think is for the best. If we really hit it off, there's no reason we can't arrange our own meetups, but for most colleagues, we develop a strong sense of professional respect for one another and that's plenty sufficient. No need to mess that up with personal elements. I understand that these company meetups may be great if you're looking for companionship, but I don't really think a lonely person is well suited to remote work anyway. At home, I have a wife and several children to hang out with, plus a few close friends and a group of loose associates from hacker meetups, community functions, and/or church.

taurath 11y ago
2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. The fact is that relationships and trust especially can fray after a long time without actually meeting with people (most of the time, you may be a special case). Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time - you may be in a very special situation where there are almost no benefits to actually knowing your colleagues better than what you can say over IRC, but for me its always been very helpful to get a good feel for who is on the other end of the keyboard, which becomes super useful for collaberations.