4 ms·

Technology is there - Jira, Slack, Skype, GitHub, email... There is absolutely no excuse to not have remote jobs.

• jimmywanger 10y ago
  Did you not read most of my comment? The technology is there, it wasn't ten years ago. Now, it comes down to management setting strict guidelines and enforcing them. What good is it to pay for Jira accounts when nobody uses them? Or what good is it to have Github and everybody ends up hosting their own private repos? That is definitely a management mandate, and logistically, it's a lot easier to manage a group if they are all in the same place.
  • ljf 10y ago
    Totally and wholeheartedly agree. You cant just solve a problem with tech, you also have to think about who you will move the people. I'm all for remote work, and would love it to work for me, but the culture needs to be right to support it.
  • aardvark179 10y ago
    I'd say the tech has been there a lot longer than you think, I've known people who've worked in distributed teams 20 years ago. Yes, the tech was a little different, but it was still good enough. I absolutely agree with you though that the culture of making sure everything is done using those tools is the important part. You essentially have to give up most of the benefits you might get from some members being colocated and do everything as though you were all at separate sites.
    • wott 10y ago
      > I'd say the tech has been there a lot longer than you think, I've known people who've worked in distributed teams 20 years ago. Yes, the tech was a little different, but it was still good enough. E-mail, chat system, telephone, version control system, remote access were indeed there and are still enough for most use cases. What was missing or not very good or reliable? Video chat and screen sharing, perhaps? I dislike the first, I find it almost doesn't bring anything positive compared to the phone but has drawbacks. And the latter makes me seasick.
  • elcct 10y ago
    Then maybe we are not on the same page. I would assume company is already using one or another project tracking tool or distributed source control. I can't think of companies that are not doing this as being relevant.
    • jimmywanger 10y ago
      No, we are not on the same page. The point is not that you're using a project tracking tool or distributed source control. Btw, Google/Facebook do not use distributed source control, and they are quite relevant. The point is the communication tools. If you are not accustomed to jumping on chat with somebody with the same comfort as walking over and tapping their shoulder, it doesn't matter if you pay for VC software licenses. If you talk to somebody in person, and then decide something and act on it, without looping the entire team in on the decision, then remote employees are going to feel like outsiders, even if you are paying money for email software.
• ljf 10y ago
  Well - if everyone else is co located, then changing the way they work to support a new group of remote workers actually add a cost to the local team. This is why it needs to be at a culture and people level, not just a tech level. The tech can be there and the local group can just ignore it, leaving the remote workers out of the loop. I was talking about a job a while back where I would have been the first and only remote worker. What was a 'no' for me was that not only would I have to do my day job, I'd also have to be the one the pushed the remote agenda - which is a large job in it's own right. If there had been support to help the business migrate this way, then I'd have been more interested, but my feeling was that although they wanted me I'd always be the spare wheel causing additional effort for a whole team.