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I've had both positive and negative experiences at different companies. ProTip: It really helps when your manger is remote as well. It's harder to bias themse

by apohn 9y ago

I've had both positive and negative experiences at different companies. ProTip: It really helps when your manger is remote as well. It's harder to bias themselves to preferring local employees that way. Positive: I worked for a software company that had a solid mix of remote and co-located (in the office 3-4 days a week) employees. People and offices were located around the country. Since there were a solid number of remote employees, things like picking up the phone and web meetings were never an issue. No major issues with career or visibility. When we had a massive restructuring, many of the people I worked with moved to other remote positions and that helped me move on as well. Important: Traveling and meeting people in person really helps others remember you exist. Negative: I worked for a company were there was an obvious headquarters. All decisions came down from there, and anybody who wanted to have a upward career in the company eventually moved there. Being at an office location outside the headquarters definitely stalled your career, and being remote was even worse for your career. Even people who had the option of being remote would come into the local office a lot for visibility reasons. Even if you were remote, it was useful to be near an office where your manager or manager's manager was located so you could meet them on a regular basis.

agibsonccc 9y ago
We're distributed in 8 timezones and 10 countries. My cofounder and I started in SF, but I moved to Japan partially for this reason. I force remote first (and we've been like that since the start) the horror stories in this thread all sound like horrible mismanagement from companies trying to "add it on" rather than have it be a first class policy. We spread our decision makers across 4 countries and ensure that there are multiple points of contact, otherwise you end up with exactly what you're describing. It's a real shame when this happens. Remote is harder and you definitely need to account for it.
- apohn 9y ago
  >I force remote first (and we've been like that since the start) the horror stories in this thread all sound like horrible mismanagement from companies trying to "add it on" rather than have it be a first class policy. At the place where I had a positive experience, there were two major factors. 1) Since so many people were remote and some teams were spread across the world, everybody knew information had to be explicitly distributed. There was no assumption that something that came up in a meeting would be later discussed at a secondary meeting, lunch, in the kitchen area, etc. The benefit of this was that people generally knew what was going on in project relevant to them. There was minimal hoarding of relevant information, which helped everybody feel like they were plugged in and not working for a very hierarchical organization. 2) Almost everybody on my team respected, trusted, and liked each other. This meant that conversations weren't forced and people always tried to help each other. Calling somebody wasn't an issue and wasn't seen as an intrusion. There were none of the games you see when you have to work with people you don't trust. From a network perspective, this was great! I notice that you're a cofounder so I state an observation. In times of stress for a company (e.g. a reorg) please over communicate. The company where I was working went through a massive reorg. Everybody maintained their previous level of communication, which was fine from a project perspective. But from a "What is really going on" and morale perspective, leadership did very little because they never had to do it before and didn't realize the value of it. To them, they were communicating as they always did. In actuality, there was an information vacuum and a failure in leadership. In a remote environment you're always fighting the feeling of being left out. It's easier to feel isolated, lost, and that information is being hidden from you. The leadership only reinforced this and lost a lot of good people.
  - agibsonccc 9y ago
    I appreciate this. That's a lot of what we focus on now. We make sure that there's redundancy in communications. We also make sure folks understand that mistakes are allowed, not communicating is not. It helps we hired a ton of folks from our open source community. It takes a certain kind of hire for this to work well.

by apohn 9y ago

agibsonccc 9y ago

We're distributed in 8 timezones and 10 countries. My cofounder and I started in SF, but I moved to Japan partially for this reason. I force remote first (and we've been like that since the start) the horror stories in this thread all sound like horrible mismanagement from companies trying to "add it on" rather than have it be a first class policy. We spread our decision makers across 4 countries and ensure that there are multiple points of contact, otherwise you end up with exactly what you're describing. It's a real shame when this happens. Remote is harder and you definitely need to account for it.

apohn 9y ago
>I force remote first (and we've been like that since the start) the horror stories in this thread all sound like horrible mismanagement from companies trying to "add it on" rather than have it be a first class policy. At the place where I had a positive experience, there were two major factors. 1) Since so many people were remote and some teams were spread across the world, everybody knew information had to be explicitly distributed. There was no assumption that something that came up in a meeting would be later discussed at a secondary meeting, lunch, in the kitchen area, etc. The benefit of this was that people generally knew what was going on in project relevant to them. There was minimal hoarding of relevant information, which helped everybody feel like they were plugged in and not working for a very hierarchical organization. 2) Almost everybody on my team respected, trusted, and liked each other. This meant that conversations weren't forced and people always tried to help each other. Calling somebody wasn't an issue and wasn't seen as an intrusion. There were none of the games you see when you have to work with people you don't trust. From a network perspective, this was great! I notice that you're a cofounder so I state an observation. In times of stress for a company (e.g. a reorg) please over communicate. The company where I was working went through a massive reorg. Everybody maintained their previous level of communication, which was fine from a project perspective. But from a "What is really going on" and morale perspective, leadership did very little because they never had to do it before and didn't realize the value of it. To them, they were communicating as they always did. In actuality, there was an information vacuum and a failure in leadership. In a remote environment you're always fighting the feeling of being left out. It's easier to feel isolated, lost, and that information is being hidden from you. The leadership only reinforced this and lost a lot of good people.
- agibsonccc 9y ago
  I appreciate this. That's a lot of what we focus on now. We make sure that there's redundancy in communications. We also make sure folks understand that mistakes are allowed, not communicating is not. It helps we hired a ton of folks from our open source community. It takes a certain kind of hire for this to work well.