5 ms·

I'm convinced it's possible for a business to work in a distributed manner, but I think there are certain business scenarios (and/or persons' personality types/

by gregw2 8y ago

I'm convinced it's possible for a business to work in a distributed manner, but I think there are certain business scenarios (and/or persons' personality types/collaboration styles) where it's problematic. Anecdote: I've been in two startups, one working remotely ("distributed") and one working in the room with the CEO. The degree of situational awareness was very different. When I was sitting 5 feet from the CEO, I knew the company was in the tank and in grave danger of going under. We turned it around. When I was remote, based on the daily/weekly phone calls I knew the project I was working on was in trouble and way behind, but had no idea till the CEO drove up to meet me that he and the other execs had no salary for 3 months and the company was out of money. (They found a buyer for a pittance within a year to save face.) I had a sense of urgency in both cases... but the urgency was different when in-person. And the awareness was WAY different.

sailfast 8y ago
Real questions from someone who has been leading remote teams for awhile: Which one helped you better focus on your role and deliver what you needed to help the company? Hearing all these things in-person can definitely be good context, but there is also a risk that you hear something wrong, succumb to gossip, or lose focus based on worries that may not be necessary. (Of course I’d argue it’s best for the employee to judge rather than be left in the dark, but I’m curious here specifically) Part of this comes down to company culture as well - getting remote comms channels down is really hard, and takes a LOT of effort from senior management, especially for things that are nuanced or may change. How do you not panic anyone but also let them know there may be a need for urgency, etc (in-person works well for that) When you were remote, was the CEO remote as well, or just you?
- dboreham 8y ago
  By definition the CEO is not remote, right?
  - sailfast 8y ago
    Fair enough - I meant was the CEO in an office with others, or was everyone distributed. I find that when it's "a few folks are remote" vs. "everyone is remote" (even culturally) this makes a big difference in how context is provided to an organization.
- VLM 8y ago
  Something to consider about scalability is in the long term either the company will figure out how to scale beyond all workers sitting within five feet of the CEO or it'll go out of business or they'll somehow have over a hundred employees per square foot. So over a long enough timescale the problem kinda fixes itself. As I moved up in the industry it eventually became normal for my peers to be two floors away and I never see them IRL, or later on, for my boss or peers to be 100 to 2000 miles away. If my closest (in the sense of daily peer cooperation) coworker is three hundred miles away, does it matter if I'm at home or in an office with 600 people that I don't directly work with in it? Not ever job will forever be entry level with a dozen IRL peers within a dozen feet. Companies that can't scale, do not survive long term.
- gregw2 8y ago
  It's an interesting question- which one helped me focus on my role and deliver? I can see in the abstract that distributed work can both demand and benefit from strong focus. In my case, when I was a "distributed" worker I had a much narrower scope of responsibility and along with that, less ability to gauge whether something was "good enough" to ship and perfectionism/procrastination and poor remote communication on my part really hampered my work. As an in-person worker, when we were betting the company I was able to constantly assess all work being done by all the company and pivot us and others to what was the most risk-mitigating thing we needed to do. When distributed, I suppose that was the role my Engineering VP was supposed to do and I was just focused on my narrow domain, but overall the company wasn't able to leverage my problem solving and triaging strengths and I was just a remote coder/designer resource with a task. When it was late, I knew it was bad, but I didn't have a sense of the consequences to the broader team (just my own job). In hindsight I think management was trying to shelter me from the stress and I respect that but I was really stunned at the end of the day how out of the loop I was. I was East Coast, CEO was East Coast but four hours away, some execs were West Coast, Engineering Lead was UK. I did a great job for them with engineering for in-person clients, but when I switched to being managed from overseas it really didn't work out. I always didn't want to interrupt the UK VP since he was so busy and/or because I was behind but the communication dynamic was ultimately dysfunctional for which I take more than half the responsibility. (I have since been on the flip side of that coin with a remote worker! It's an interesting challenge.)
  - sailfast 8y ago
    Thanks for these answers - super interesting and helpful. Much appreciated!
logfromblammo 8y ago
There's a lot of gradient to be found between those poles. If your CEO had a private office with a closable door, it would have been a lot easier to conceal the urgency of the "money" calls and conversations. I think your experiences may have had more to do with the openness and transparency of the CEO to the line employees, rather than a matter of mere proximity. It's certainly easier to hide things from employees when they aren't all in the same room, but if the execs decide to keep bad news from you so you'll keep working instead of jumping ship, it's not going to matter where you sit. Personally, I'd rather not have to deal with the pressure of keeping the whole company afloat, rather than staying on my oar and pulling on the drumbeat. We divide labors and trade different areas of expertise to be more efficient economically. Were I sitting 5 feet from the CEO with the knowledge the company is in the tank, I would look at my ownership stake in it, likely find that it was worthless even if I busted my ass to turn things around, and would then put all my extra effort into shopping my resume out to companies with more runway--after hours, keeping it secret. If things are that dire, my loyalty can only be secured with ownership, not promises and dreams. At that point, everyone still left hanging on might as well be co-founders, because the originals couldn't pull it out themselves.
pdimitar 8y ago
Both your example seem to relate to (1) startups and (2) being on the brink of oblivion. Hardly a representative sample.
- gregw2 8y ago
  True. My anecdotes correlate with the issues someone raised here of VC bias against remote work which other people didn't seem to have any sympathy for so I figured I'd mention my real-world experiences. I've worked with offshore resources on and off in my career and have a variety of more mundane (?more representative?) experiences pro and con. In my experience, it's hard to transfer knowledge, wisdom, and strong (micromanaging?) technical/quality-oriented direction offshore. Onshore tech lead becomes a bottleneck. If there are strong persons offshore leading efforts, or some rotation onshore of people from offshore largely focused on communication I've seen it work out better.

by gregw2 8y ago

sailfast 8y ago

Real questions from someone who has been leading remote teams for awhile: Which one helped you better focus on your role and deliver what you needed to help the company? Hearing all these things in-person can definitely be good context, but there is also a risk that you hear something wrong, succumb to gossip, or lose focus based on worries that may not be necessary. (Of course I’d argue it’s best for the employee to judge rather than be left in the dark, but I’m curious here specifically) Part of this comes down to company culture as well - getting remote comms channels down is really hard, and takes a LOT of effort from senior management, especially for things that are nuanced or may change. How do you not panic anyone but also let them know there may be a need for urgency, etc (in-person works well for that) When you were remote, was the CEO remote as well, or just you?

dboreham 8y ago
By definition the CEO is not remote, right?
- sailfast 8y ago
  Fair enough - I meant was the CEO in an office with others, or was everyone distributed. I find that when it's "a few folks are remote" vs. "everyone is remote" (even culturally) this makes a big difference in how context is provided to an organization.
VLM 8y ago
Something to consider about scalability is in the long term either the company will figure out how to scale beyond all workers sitting within five feet of the CEO or it'll go out of business or they'll somehow have over a hundred employees per square foot. So over a long enough timescale the problem kinda fixes itself. As I moved up in the industry it eventually became normal for my peers to be two floors away and I never see them IRL, or later on, for my boss or peers to be 100 to 2000 miles away. If my closest (in the sense of daily peer cooperation) coworker is three hundred miles away, does it matter if I'm at home or in an office with 600 people that I don't directly work with in it? Not ever job will forever be entry level with a dozen IRL peers within a dozen feet. Companies that can't scale, do not survive long term.
gregw2 8y ago
It's an interesting question- which one helped me focus on my role and deliver? I can see in the abstract that distributed work can both demand and benefit from strong focus. In my case, when I was a "distributed" worker I had a much narrower scope of responsibility and along with that, less ability to gauge whether something was "good enough" to ship and perfectionism/procrastination and poor remote communication on my part really hampered my work. As an in-person worker, when we were betting the company I was able to constantly assess all work being done by all the company and pivot us and others to what was the most risk-mitigating thing we needed to do. When distributed, I suppose that was the role my Engineering VP was supposed to do and I was just focused on my narrow domain, but overall the company wasn't able to leverage my problem solving and triaging strengths and I was just a remote coder/designer resource with a task. When it was late, I knew it was bad, but I didn't have a sense of the consequences to the broader team (just my own job). In hindsight I think management was trying to shelter me from the stress and I respect that but I was really stunned at the end of the day how out of the loop I was. I was East Coast, CEO was East Coast but four hours away, some execs were West Coast, Engineering Lead was UK. I did a great job for them with engineering for in-person clients, but when I switched to being managed from overseas it really didn't work out. I always didn't want to interrupt the UK VP since he was so busy and/or because I was behind but the communication dynamic was ultimately dysfunctional for which I take more than half the responsibility. (I have since been on the flip side of that coin with a remote worker! It's an interesting challenge.)
- sailfast 8y ago
  Thanks for these answers - super interesting and helpful. Much appreciated!

logfromblammo 8y ago

There's a lot of gradient to be found between those poles. If your CEO had a private office with a closable door, it would have been a lot easier to conceal the urgency of the "money" calls and conversations. I think your experiences may have had more to do with the openness and transparency of the CEO to the line employees, rather than a matter of mere proximity. It's certainly easier to hide things from employees when they aren't all in the same room, but if the execs decide to keep bad news from you so you'll keep working instead of jumping ship, it's not going to matter where you sit. Personally, I'd rather not have to deal with the pressure of keeping the whole company afloat, rather than staying on my oar and pulling on the drumbeat. We divide labors and trade different areas of expertise to be more efficient economically. Were I sitting 5 feet from the CEO with the knowledge the company is in the tank, I would look at my ownership stake in it, likely find that it was worthless even if I busted my ass to turn things around, and would then put all my extra effort into shopping my resume out to companies with more runway--after hours, keeping it secret. If things are that dire, my loyalty can only be secured with ownership, not promises and dreams. At that point, everyone still left hanging on might as well be co-founders, because the originals couldn't pull it out themselves.

pdimitar 8y ago

Both your example seem to relate to (1) startups and (2) being on the brink of oblivion. Hardly a representative sample.

gregw2 8y ago
True. My anecdotes correlate with the issues someone raised here of VC bias against remote work which other people didn't seem to have any sympathy for so I figured I'd mention my real-world experiences. I've worked with offshore resources on and off in my career and have a variety of more mundane (?more representative?) experiences pro and con. In my experience, it's hard to transfer knowledge, wisdom, and strong (micromanaging?) technical/quality-oriented direction offshore. Onshore tech lead becomes a bottleneck. If there are strong persons offshore leading efforts, or some rotation onshore of people from offshore largely focused on communication I've seen it work out better.