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I ran 5 teams remotely spread out at different times in my life so far. The outcome of my success or failure seemed to hang on my due diligence. The more flaky

I ran 5 teams remotely spread out at different times in my life so far. The outcome of my success or failure seemed to hang on my due diligence. The more flaky and relaxed I became, the more my employees became less productive and eventually less confident of my ability to lead. The more I checked in with people and made sure everyone was on point and constantly provided clear thought out plans / tasks, assigning to the appropriate people, things went really well. I did learn this the very stupid way by ruining some projects by my laziness and didn't know how to weed people out either but it really comes down to the person in charge IMO, not much having to do with remote work as in either case with the office or remote, you need to hire the right people for your requirement which does include your working environment.

pryelluw 10y ago
Ive experienced the same managing remote teams.
donw 10y ago
In my experience, most problems boil down to "management". If management is clear, supportive, and attentive, then things are good. As a leader, doing this is not easy. There is often a thin line between being attentive, and being overbearing. The same can be said for being supportive: helping employees through a rough patch is usually a wise move from a business perspective, but at the same time, you need to know when it's time to cut your losses. That kind of decision is never easy to make. And being clear and unambiguous requires placing some tough bets on direction and strategy: you are going to have to say "no" to a lot of tempting possibilities, because the alternative is to try and chase everything that comes your way (a pattern I like to call "Chaos Driven Development").
- lostboys67 10y ago
  Main q is does a remote team need more management time - which is a limited resource If I am a manger I want to make best use of my time. Organising the structure and location of the team to reduce overhead.
  - sebringj 10y ago
    Its a trade off. You have to be more organized and use the right tools if you are remote. You have to pick the right kinds of personalities to work with you to be remote. If you don't do that, then you will have a harder time than being in the office. It completely depends on YOU.
mercer 10y ago
Thing is, given a 'sufficiently good leader', I figure any kind of approach can be made to work, even if we have a team consisting of a deaf person, an astronaut and a deep-sea diver communicating exclusively via morse code. It's a bit like the many discussions we have here on HN around testing and/or static typing, or using frameworks, or full-blown IDE's versus plain text editors: it's a perfectly valid argument that given a good enough team or individual, we can do without any of this, but it doesn't really contribute or help much in many real-world situations where we don't have that luxury.
tboyd47 10y ago
Would you say that this is much different from colocated work?
- sebringj 10y ago
  Personally I think its very different. If you are asking me directly I'll embellish so please forgive me based on that... Chat systems for example like Slack to me are so much more productive than hunting someone down in an office. You are then forced to use that all the time which reenforces productivity in communication. White boarding still sucks remotely though until we have a holographic communication with 3d people on 2d whiteboards or VR. I tend to be binary in that social interactions distract me so much that I fully engage in them, forgetting the work, tending to tell jokes and am less focused on getting work done although you get a comrade boost but I have such a strong family life that I don't really need that but it is distracting like a drug to me. That I don't have a need to be validated by social interactions at work probably is a huge factor of preferring remote along with not driving. Alone, I can completely focus and zen out in music, literally getting weeks worth done in days compared to my coworkers having to drive to work which is 2-3 hours less out of your day when you add it up and robs you of energy and things like working out and having more hobbies.

pryelluw 10y ago

Ive experienced the same managing remote teams.

donw 10y ago

In my experience, most problems boil down to "management". If management is clear, supportive, and attentive, then things are good. As a leader, doing this is not easy. There is often a thin line between being attentive, and being overbearing. The same can be said for being supportive: helping employees through a rough patch is usually a wise move from a business perspective, but at the same time, you need to know when it's time to cut your losses. That kind of decision is never easy to make. And being clear and unambiguous requires placing some tough bets on direction and strategy: you are going to have to say "no" to a lot of tempting possibilities, because the alternative is to try and chase everything that comes your way (a pattern I like to call "Chaos Driven Development").

lostboys67 10y ago
Main q is does a remote team need more management time - which is a limited resource If I am a manger I want to make best use of my time. Organising the structure and location of the team to reduce overhead.
- sebringj 10y ago
  Its a trade off. You have to be more organized and use the right tools if you are remote. You have to pick the right kinds of personalities to work with you to be remote. If you don't do that, then you will have a harder time than being in the office. It completely depends on YOU.

mercer 10y ago

Thing is, given a 'sufficiently good leader', I figure any kind of approach can be made to work, even if we have a team consisting of a deaf person, an astronaut and a deep-sea diver communicating exclusively via morse code. It's a bit like the many discussions we have here on HN around testing and/or static typing, or using frameworks, or full-blown IDE's versus plain text editors: it's a perfectly valid argument that given a good enough team or individual, we can do without any of this, but it doesn't really contribute or help much in many real-world situations where we don't have that luxury.

tboyd47 10y ago

Would you say that this is much different from colocated work?

sebringj 10y ago
Personally I think its very different. If you are asking me directly I'll embellish so please forgive me based on that... Chat systems for example like Slack to me are so much more productive than hunting someone down in an office. You are then forced to use that all the time which reenforces productivity in communication. White boarding still sucks remotely though until we have a holographic communication with 3d people on 2d whiteboards or VR. I tend to be binary in that social interactions distract me so much that I fully engage in them, forgetting the work, tending to tell jokes and am less focused on getting work done although you get a comrade boost but I have such a strong family life that I don't really need that but it is distracting like a drug to me. That I don't have a need to be validated by social interactions at work probably is a huge factor of preferring remote along with not driving. Alone, I can completely focus and zen out in music, literally getting weeks worth done in days compared to my coworkers having to drive to work which is 2-3 hours less out of your day when you add it up and robs you of energy and things like working out and having more hobbies.