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To be honest, the conference call linked lower in the thread has increased my skepticism for remote work. Another commenter pointed out how much smoother everyt
by kevinventullo 8y ago
To be honest, the conference call linked lower in the thread has increased my skepticism for remote work. Another commenter pointed out how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- levesque 8y agoDon't kid yourself, it's not going to be as efficient. Audio and delay are big issues, as not everybody can talk at the same time. But the point is that it is doable, and some companies have good success with that. They are usually small-medium companies though, my guess is we won't be seeing any 100% remote unicorns popping up.
- luisfmh 8y agoelastic?
- mirekrusin 8y agoYou mean like github?
- jdietrich 8y agoIt continues to amaze me that most businesses use worse conferencing tools than the average e-sports clan. High-quality, low-latency conferencing and screen sharing is essentially a solved problem if you don't use completely crappy tools.
- yread 8y agoWhich tools should you use?
- Kluny 8y agoZoom.
- speedplane 8y agoMost businesses have far more requirements than a e-sports clan, namely security, standardization, and dealing with large numbers of people. An e-sports clan can change their service in a day with one email. A large organization can't move that nimbly.
- kalleboo 8y agoWe changed our voice conferencing to Discord since it worked better than anything else we had tried
- ivalm 8y agoWolfram has 800 employees, most of them tech, which puts payroll at ~160m. Suppose 30% margin, thats about $50m earnings, at 20p/e thats about $1b/unicorn.
- nadc 8y agoBoth GitLab and InVision are 100% remote unicorns, last valued at $1.1B [1] and $1.9B [2] respectively. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/19/gitlab-raises-100m/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/19/gitlab-raises-100m/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/11/invision-valued-at-1-9-billion-picks-up-115-million-series-f/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/11/invision-valued-at-1-9-bil...
- levesque 8y agoHaha I did set up the stage for the multiple slam dunks I received as replies. This is really amazing.
- cma 8y ago> how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room. Definitely true, but you'd also have to watch the livestream of everyone prepping for and commuting to work for a fair comparison.
- sidcool 8y agoI tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's feels pretty good. I may be wrong, but I also feel that work is more than producing code. It's also about interactions with people.
- pishpash 8y agoThat's all very nice but it's all not work related. Water cooler conversation may be great for incubating the very very beginning ideation of some 20% project, but come on, how often does a 20% project really happen. When it comes to real work (well defined work), where what you need is a mix of concentration time and focused interactions to address questions, remote call could be much more efficient than face-to-face meetings that end up engulfing a dozen people just because "it's possible, everyone's here."
- Tepix 8y agoHumans aren't robots. If you want to keep them productive you should treat them as humans.
- pishpash 8y agoI think you're confusing "comfortable" with "productive". At some point in life a job is just a job and the job of the job is to get the job done. I'm happiest when I get it done, when everyone around me gets it done, together, on time and well.
- p1necone 8y agoSeems to me like the biggest benefit of a solid remote working culture would be the vastly larger hiring pool. That should be weighed against the downsides.
- walkingolof 8y agoI've been working remote for decades and my observation is that whats standing inbetween great communication in remote teams are often trival, easily fixable things like poor software and hardware. When it comes to hardware, people use whatever headset and camera they have, connected to wifi served by the a cheap SOHO router. More or less the stuff you use to call your parents over skype once a week.
- splittingTimes 8y agoJust curious: In your opinion, what are proper tools / setup in hard- and software terms that makes remote collaboration as efficient as on-site interaction?
- Moru 8y agoThat depends on what you work with. My productivity as programmer got higher but my ability to help with hardware issues went down a lot. Helping over phone or chat to replace a PSU is tricky.
- kilroy123 8y agoI've worked remote for the past 4 years so I think I can weigh in on this. If there are meetings in person you really need to have a good conference call phone, preferably with an external mic. Like this: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/images/i/000/016/072/original/shutterstock_525765133.jpg?1528117471 https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/images/i/000/016/072/origi... For things like screen sharing, the conference room must have a very solid connection as screen sharing typically uses a lot of bandwidth. For the remote employee, you need: * Solid headset. I've tried using a USB one but it had interference at terrible times. Once I was on a call presenting to the client when interference started making odd noises. Now I use a USB headset with noise canceling mic. * Good fast reliable internet! * Solid voice-over-ip phone if you need to talk on the "phone" a lot. I use DialPad which are the makers of UberConfrence. The quality is _way_ better than using Google Voice, skype, etc.
- seanp2k2 8y ago
- neokantian 8y agoThe criticism on remote work confirms the same thing all over again. There are almost no real hackers commenting at "Hacker News". A corporate IT drone is not a hacker. He is first and foremost a corporate drone, and has nothing to do with hackers.
- juskrey 8y agoI love such comments. The guy has a multimillion dollar private business which is at the same time his hobby and a dream, and does it in the way he likes. And someone comes and says his meetings can be more efficient..
- jarek83 8y agoFor me it does not look like a criticism. He simply is not convinced to the idea of remote work, which means that he does not see it fit for his way of working.
- IloveHN84 8y agoYeah that is HN!
- jessriedel 8y agoBut commenters are taking evidence of how this guy runs his business as evidence that that method is effective. Shouldn't there be comments pointing out if this isn't effective?
- ianai 8y agoNot really. It will always be easy to look at something from the outside and point out all the ways it should or can’t work or could work better. The systems and people involved are usually much more complicated. The world also owes itself more compassion. “Thousand foot” criticism lacks compassion.
- jessriedel 8y agoYou're describing a policy of not making frank assessment of the efficacy of business practices.
- fnordsensei 8y agoThat’s a bit far. From my perspective, the point is that looking at inefficiencies in isolation is as bad as looking at benefits in isolation. Making a frank assessment about the efficiency of meetings is probably of limited value in and of itself in abstractly assessing the overall equation of trade-offs in running a distributed vs collocated business. Even more so when concretely assessing this particular company.