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- 1:1 relationships between teammates are harder to build remotely. I've seen that countered with recurring pairing and online coffee/tea hangouts, and making t

by kaikai 7y ago

- 1:1 relationships between teammates are harder to build remotely. I've seen that countered with recurring pairing and online coffee/tea hangouts, and making time for 1:1 meetings whenever the team is together. - communication issues escalate. The lack of small daily positive interactions make any friction-ful interactions more intense. Direct communication is my only strategy for fixing this. For example, "Hey, I don't like it when you post a ton of comments before I ask for review. I like to put up PRs before I'm 100% done so that people can see what I'm working on, but they're very much works-in-progress." rather than just stewing and being resentful of someone pointing out something I already knew and just hadn't gotten to yet. - timezones suuuuuck. A couple hours is manageable, but working with an east coast / west coast / india team was a real problem. We have team quiet hours until noon ET / 9PT a couple days a week, so even though I'm 3 hours behind I don't feel behind when I show up for work. - Everyone needs to be a strong and profuse written communicator. If folks aren't in the habit of proactively providing lots of context, people will get left behind and lose context for why decisions were made, and the product suffers. We're used to reading facial expressions and body language to actively gauge understanding in conversation, and it's harder to get that remotely.

remotecool 7y ago
I completely agree with this. I have been working remotely for different companies for about a decade. A couple of years back, I had a year-long contract on a remote team and the team leader was a horrible communicator. It got to the point where I had to almost beg him for information. He would leave things out (not sure if it was intentional) and then make snide, passive-aggressive comments. The rest of the team (2 people) were also fairly passive and it was extremely difficult to feel any kind of team cohesion. Daily standups were painful. I finally gave up and quit. Managers as well as non-managers need to be excellent communicators for a remote team to work.

by kaikai 7y ago

remotecool 7y ago

I completely agree with this. I have been working remotely for different companies for about a decade. A couple of years back, I had a year-long contract on a remote team and the team leader was a horrible communicator. It got to the point where I had to almost beg him for information. He would leave things out (not sure if it was intentional) and then make snide, passive-aggressive comments. The rest of the team (2 people) were also fairly passive and it was extremely difficult to feel any kind of team cohesion. Daily standups were painful. I finally gave up and quit. Managers as well as non-managers need to be excellent communicators for a remote team to work.