4 ms·

Fortunately not every company is that close-minded. I work in a remote office, and I collaborate every day with my team in Dallas (and most company members are

Fortunately not every company is that close-minded. I work in a remote office, and I collaborate every day with my team in Dallas (and most company members are distributed mostly all through the U.S. but also Canada, the UK and India). There's a LOT of collaboration tools, we use Slack (well, we were forced on Microsoft Teams now), Jira, Skype, e-mail, WhatsApp... I still appreciate meeting in person, they flew me once to meet most of the team. Videocalling is decent, but still no substitute, but all those tools I outlined do enable us to create value :) .

rmk 8y ago
I would not really call that close-minded. It's established practice that has worked very well when building many, many non-trivial, innovative, technologically complex things. There have been ginormous cost overruns, not to mention real technological problems and delays getting to market when collaboration has not been close. For example, the Airbus A380 (and to a larger extent the Boeing 787) were both massively delayed and over budget because far-flung suppliers of various major components faced big issues coming together on many details. A counterexample (mentioned in a book by the 'father of the 747', Joe Sutter) is how the 747 program was endangered in a big way when the Boeing company considered moving production (of the 747) to Walnut Creek, CA. Similar problems happen on a routine basis in many software shops; only routine, well-scoped work has been successfully carried out by offshore teams.
- GFischer 8y ago
  From personal experience, I disagree. You're assuming we cannot carry out non-well scoped work just because we're remote? The project I'm currently leading definitely gives lie to your assumption, and I'm a member of an offshore team. I'm not saying that projects with substantial manufacturing components don't benefit from proximity. Also, those project you mention had huge political issues (not great examples). And yes, the ideal situation is to have everyone on-site. But the disadvantages are that you have to pay them ridiculous wages to offset cost of living, and compete with a smaller subset of talent, or they have to do 90 minute super-commutes. Many people can't move to the Bay Area for various reasons. Does a top developer that leaves the U.S. magically become worse? Or is a top developer bad just because he hasn't tried hard enough to get into the U.S.? Even YCombinator believes that founders don't have to be physically present if it doesn't make sense.
  - rmk 8y ago
    Your personal experience may have been different, but it does not change the fact that almost no major commercial product has come out a fully-distributed company. Individual anecdotes that support one case or another are easy to dig up, but you would be hard-pressed to find large pieces of really innovative software products developed without people in close proximity (you could claim that the Linux Kernel is a big project but that's an open source software that is not really a commercial product). Everybody can not move to the Bay Area, and good developers do not become bad by moving away or not being there, but the simple fact remains: there are no (financially) large and successful software companies have been fully distributed from the ground up.
    - GFischer 8y ago
      You're mixing up two claims, I mostly agree with one and strongly disagree with the other. Claim I agree is there are no (financially) large and successful software companies have been fully distributed from the ground up. Which is very different from the claim I strongly disagree with which is: only routine, well-scoped work has been successfully carried out by offshore teams. I DO agree that there's an advantage to on-site work.

rmk 8y ago

I would not really call that close-minded. It's established practice that has worked very well when building many, many non-trivial, innovative, technologically complex things. There have been ginormous cost overruns, not to mention real technological problems and delays getting to market when collaboration has not been close. For example, the Airbus A380 (and to a larger extent the Boeing 787) were both massively delayed and over budget because far-flung suppliers of various major components faced big issues coming together on many details. A counterexample (mentioned in a book by the 'father of the 747', Joe Sutter) is how the 747 program was endangered in a big way when the Boeing company considered moving production (of the 747) to Walnut Creek, CA. Similar problems happen on a routine basis in many software shops; only routine, well-scoped work has been successfully carried out by offshore teams.

GFischer 8y ago
From personal experience, I disagree. You're assuming we cannot carry out non-well scoped work just because we're remote? The project I'm currently leading definitely gives lie to your assumption, and I'm a member of an offshore team. I'm not saying that projects with substantial manufacturing components don't benefit from proximity. Also, those project you mention had huge political issues (not great examples). And yes, the ideal situation is to have everyone on-site. But the disadvantages are that you have to pay them ridiculous wages to offset cost of living, and compete with a smaller subset of talent, or they have to do 90 minute super-commutes. Many people can't move to the Bay Area for various reasons. Does a top developer that leaves the U.S. magically become worse? Or is a top developer bad just because he hasn't tried hard enough to get into the U.S.? Even YCombinator believes that founders don't have to be physically present if it doesn't make sense.
- rmk 8y ago
  Your personal experience may have been different, but it does not change the fact that almost no major commercial product has come out a fully-distributed company. Individual anecdotes that support one case or another are easy to dig up, but you would be hard-pressed to find large pieces of really innovative software products developed without people in close proximity (you could claim that the Linux Kernel is a big project but that's an open source software that is not really a commercial product). Everybody can not move to the Bay Area, and good developers do not become bad by moving away or not being there, but the simple fact remains: there are no (financially) large and successful software companies have been fully distributed from the ground up.
  - GFischer 8y ago
    You're mixing up two claims, I mostly agree with one and strongly disagree with the other. Claim I agree is there are no (financially) large and successful software companies have been fully distributed from the ground up. Which is very different from the claim I strongly disagree with which is: only routine, well-scoped work has been successfully carried out by offshore teams. I DO agree that there's an advantage to on-site work.