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The manager’s schedule is holding remote work back

332 points by lukethomas 7y ago

scotch_drinker 7y ago
The manager's schedule is built around Taylorism and the idea that if she (the manager) just figures out the exact mechanistic steps for squeezing all the productivity out of the worker, everything will operate smoothly. Unfortunately, that's not particularly useful in knowledge work where most of the time, we're dealing with a non-deterministic relationships and creatively figuring out a problem. The expression of the symptom is the manager's schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as a way to manage knowledge workers.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  >"The expression of the symptom is the manager's schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as a way to manage knowledge workers." Nicely put.
- fogetti 7y ago
  The problem is that priorities are still to be managed. And there is no such thing as 10 people decide one priority. It's always one person who decides the priority either by signing a contract, pushing a button, committing some code, etc. For this reason there will always be command and control, since an organization becomes dysfunctional when people act against decisions based on made-up priorities which are way mis-aligned with the real priorities which were decided. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Of course there are different types of management styles like servant leadership for example. But that still doesn't change a damn thing. Now instead of the most aggressive person signing the contract, pushing the button, etc, now a nicer fellow signs the contract, then commands every one else to follow. And having knowledge work on the table doesn't really change the equation either. That's why almost all IT companies these days use OKRs. An objective is to be set by managers and checked upon later (a.k.a command and control).
buboard 7y ago
Probably has to do with Trust. Managers by definition exert some power in other people in a way that engineers do not, so they need to be trusted and build trust within a hierarchy. That's a social function so they think it's best done face-to-face. I 'm pretty sure it can be replaced with an social network though, we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general I'm not sure we know that. We know that social networks enable people to communicate remotely, but I'm not sure we know that they actually help in building trust.
  - buboard 7y ago
    i think it works in closed networks. not in the open net
- ilaksh 7y ago
  I would argue that power comes from fear and necessity rather than trust. In other words, people know their manager will fire them if they don't go along, so they don't resist them. Often they go along despite being convinced numerous times that they should not trust their manager.
cdavid 7y ago
As a former software eng. who has been on the management side for a few years, I am quite ambivalent about remote work, and I find most arguments for it a bit naive. For example, the idea that the manager schedule is built around taylorism is not true IMO. I have never seen a single senior manager who do not have their life consisting mostly of 30 / 60 / 90 mins slots in my life, and I have worked in very technical environments, e.g. where the average engineer had a PhD. First, to let it out of the way: yes, you can definitely have remote teams which work very well and produce high quality products. In my experience, those have the following characteristics: clear and fairly technical product definition (e.g viz software which are built for scientists), excellent teams with no bad performer, and healthy business environments. The problem is when at least some of those conditions are not met: 1. Most organizations are dysfunctional in some ways. Product and engineering are not aligned, or there are constant re-organizations, lack of ownership. It is extremely challenging for managers to improve this situation if everybody is remote, because communication is your main tool here, and doing so remotely is even more difficult. My experience in those situations is that face to face discussions are the most effective tool to untangle the mess. 2. When things go south (e.g. you lose a big client, etc.), it is almost always the case that people will start to find teams / people to blame. Executives have shallow information, and most will rely on what is available to them (kind of availability bias, but for people instead of ideas). Remote teams will be at a disadvantage. 3. When your team is not very good, or not very experienced, it is very difficult to improve their skills remotely. First, being remote means you lose a lot of very useful information, such as "do they often talk to other people when they are stuck". Instead of observing how people act, you have to ask, which paradoxically means more interruption. Generally, my sense is that remote-first work is quite fragile, or said differently, is an unstable equilibrium. As soon as things go badly, it is much harder to fix things. As long as everything goes well, it may well be more efficient though.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I am a big fan of remote work but your points are very valid. I think a remote company need to have a fundamentally different way of management. I think most important is for management to have a good grasp of the type of work people are doing. When I look at my company my managers just one or two levels up haven’t even the foggiest idea how one does the work my team does. When something goes wrong the only thing they can do is to see that people are at the office and working hard. They have no tools to judge work without seeing people at their desks.
Phillips126 7y ago
I was part of a remote-work trial at my office (as a Software Developer). We were remote for about a year and honestly it was the best work experience I've ever had. I felt so productive working in an environment perfectly tailored to me (my own home). It ultimately ended as several upper management thought we were too "disconnected" from the company although my e-mail was always open, phone forwarded to my cell and I was online in a company wide chat messenger during working hours. We even came on-site once a week for face-to-face meetings. But I guess some people picture remote workers negatively so we are now back on-site and all the things I took for granted during the trial year are making being on-site so much harder. I commute an hour by car so I gave up a pay raise ~$6,000/yr. on gas alone. I haven't (and don't want to) calculate vehicle wear, snow tires, etc. I'm constantly interrupted by people throughout the day laughing at the nearby reception desk, asking me about lunch or just coming to talk because they are bored. Even right now I have someone using a leaf blower directly outside my window so I can't focus on code (why I am on HN right now). The office temperature is an uncomfortable 66F because the corner office gets so hot with the many windows it has and I am part of their HVAC line. I am using an underpowered laptop instead of my home desktop (32GB RAM, high end CPU, etc) and I require our IT Department to install all software for me because "company policy"... Needless to say my productivity has dropped. Perhaps someday we'll be able to go remote again, or maybe it's just time to move on. I've been here now for more than 5 years and I enjoy the work I do and the people I work with but after having a taste of remote-work, it's hard going back.
- Buttons840 7y ago
  When was the last time you brushed up your resume and put it out there? When was the last time you looked for new job openings?
  - Phillips126 7y ago
    To answer your question honestly, it has been a long time. At this company I transitioned from a Graphic Designer to a Software Developer. After my first year I took the role of a Web Developer and ended up building a custom internal application for the Art Department which opened a lot of eyes at the possibilities of what a Software Department could provide. I was employee #1 in this new role and have since made a lot of really awesome things such as a company directory (mobile app), dashboards for our fabrication department, license management software for our IT folks, visitor check-in/out kiosks, interactive surgical simulators for our R&D/Sales teams, to name a few. I hold a BS degree in Art. While in college, I took some web development courses and that is when I first started noticing my interest in programming. Despite having ~10 years of programming experience (~4 being as a professional software dev) I am not the most confident developer and the horror of software dev interviews scares me. Maybe it is time to go for it - worst they can say is no, right?
anovikov 7y ago
Why people don't tell the definite and super obvious reason for that: people will scam their employers! I know many people who work fully remote. All of them have 3-4 "full time" jobs, and just do the minimum necessary on all of them to not get fired, or outsource work. Making a good Valley salary in a place where rent is $400 a month. Good? For them yes, but a company that allows remote work is just making a mistake: it WILL be scammed by the vast majority of people who work there. High-level employees need collaboration and frequent meetings making remote work impossible (execs), low-level ones can't be trusted because they have nothing to lose.
- Phillips126 7y ago
  Are you saying that on-site employees don't "scam" their employers? This is non-sense and is the exact reason why remote work is viewed so negatively. Remote workers (just like on-site) have goals and expectations. They are also likely on company chats, answering phone calls, video meetings, etc. If the expected quantity of work is not getting done, I think this is a problem with this employee and should be looked into. Don't cast a blanket statement over every remote working because this is not the norm.
- notfromhere 7y ago
  Very very few people do this. If people are unproductive, they'll be just as unproductive in the office as they would be at home.
  - anovikov 7y ago
    No they are very productive. Just work for several people at once and eventually turn from 1 super productive person into 3-4 barely acceptable ones. They also gain job security this way. And get paid way more.
    - yowlingcat 7y ago
      Kind of curious here -- do you mean they're making valley level salaries doing remote work and basically "available" to all four companies at the same time and just juggle tasks as they come in? What happens if they double book a meeting? What do they do at standup?
dadarepublic 7y ago
Someone on this thread brought up trust as an aspect of successful organization remote work. I do like this take. As a manager I have observed that trust can be hard to come by if there's not a solid metric that can help establish trust where there is none. And one bad miscommunication experience can erode trust that has been built up for months. Face-to-face is always one of the highest fidelity mediums for communication in expressing the verbal & non-verbal. And I would agree with the resounding opinion in this thread that periodic meet-ups are very good for keeping trust relations higher in the times when remote is the norm. Sometimes even that is hard if you're managing a team from across the globe, and then trust is reduced to a metric of some kind - work output, quality of work, etc. I like working with remote teams and I've had great and horrible experiences with them - first and third party. It can sometimes be cultural but oftentimes I've found it can be isolated to the individual - and working to remedy that weak link can oftentimes (but not always) turn a situation around. Understanding how to build a team, identifying the needs of the team, and establish trust within that team, whether co-located or remote is important. It's also important to understand how those needs and methods are differ between co-located and remote work.
- trollied 7y ago
  I've found that frequent face-to-face video calls works well to establish a rapport & make the remote working experience seem more "local".
  - dadarepublic 7y ago
    I would definitely agree with this. Video conference has helped immensely. A good example would the time my team (spread out in 4 different countries) was crunching for a launch where we set up a 'virtual' mega war room connecting 4 war rooms across the globe with live video feeds. Worked wonders for open communication when there was overlap in time zone working hours.
eledumb 7y ago
I've worked in 4 very successful organization that were almost 100% remote work, the percentage of remote work employees by company, 98%, 99%, 92%, 98%. These companies were no different than the 3 successful companies that didn't support remote work at all. All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense. I've worked at 4 unsuccessful companies 2 that were almost 100% remote, and 2 that were almost 100% not remote. What these 4 companies had in common was a lack of process, or discipline. Chasing the "next thing", blowing up schedules because "we need it now", zero planning. These companies need everyone in the same location because nothing is written down, everything is rumor, tribal knowledge is key and if you don't get to sit in a room and look at everyone to figure out the politics nothing works. Bottom line is if you want to be successful you need to plan, have process and be disciplined in your approach to running the business. If you do these things managing remote employees is no different than having everyone in the same room. If however your company is a mess, trying to manage remote employees is next to impossible.
- cdavid 7y ago
  > All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense. That sounds like a strict requirement for remote work to work, and intuitively so. In your experience, how was the training done for less experienced IC ?
  - crustacean 7y ago
    I’m just as curious about how the managers were trained to be process-driven. Manager behavior seems to me just as if not more important than IC behavior here. Since managers have power, and engineers usually don’t personally know their skip levels, managers can easily replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings. And they can silence dissent! They can wreak havoc in a way no IC could ever do.
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
I've managed multiple remote, distributed, asynchronous teams over my career. When remote teams work well, it's a great experience for everyone. However, I'm more convinced than ever that these pop-culture articles and thought pieces about remote work are counterproductive for remote workers. Most of the remote work thought pieces that make it to the HN front page are very one-sided; They make remote work sound like a panacea, or a way to boost productivity and happiness with zero downsides. This creates very unrealistic expectations of remote work for job seekers, especially the more junior remote devs that I've worked with in recent years. When it comes to remote work, we want to believe that it's the golden ticket to solving all of the problems of the modern workplace. In my experience managing remote, on-site, and mixed teams: It's much more difficult to make remote teams work well. Some key things to watch out for with remote employees: - Communication is everyone's job. Async, text-only communication can be more efficient when done right, but it's much more difficult to foster friendly, accurate, and rapid shared understanding over Slack or e-mail than in a well-run face to face meeting. Successful remote work depends on everyone making an effort to seek out information they need, proactively share understanding via accessible documentation, and develop healthy relationships with their peers and managers. - Remote employees are not contractors. A common misconception is that remote work equals total freedom about when, where, and how you do your job. Pick your own hours, vacation without taking PTO as long as you respond to e-mails once a day, batch your e-mails to once a day or less, and work on your own terms. This can work in certain situations if everyone agrees to it, but it's not a given. If you're a remote employee, the only guarantee is that your working location is not at the office. Having the team working together during specific core hours is hugely valuable if any collaboration is required. It's not efficient to have two people ping-ponging e-mails back and forth with one response per side per day when they could hash things out with a 5-minute chat during overlapping business hours. - Some people can't handle remote work. It just doesn't work for everyone. My biggest surprise as a remote manager was how many people's productivity dropped off a cliff after they went remote, yet they were convinced they were being more productive than ever. Some of these employees can be trained to be productive remotely with intense hands-on management, but it's a lot of work. I give new remote employees very explicit instructions about expectations for process, check-ins, and team discipline when we start. Continually update these remote onboarding documents as you learn how your remote team works best. - Remote job listings attract a lot of bad apples. Remote jobs are synonymous with slacking off in some circles. Watch out for digital nomads who want to collect a paycheck while they travel the world. Avoid startup founders who think they can put in a couple hours of remote work and collect a paycheck and benefits while they focus on building their startup on someone else's dime. Watch out for remote applicants who try to work two jobs at once, doing the bare minimum for whichever of the two companies is paying the least attention to their work. When hiring remote at scale, you'll run into more of these bad actor applicants and employees than you might expect. - Meetings are still helpful in remote teams. There's another common misconception that remote work == no meetings. Some conversations are still most efficiently handled as an N-way video call for 15-30 minutes, rather than a never-ending Slack conversation where participants are half-distracted as they alt-tab between Slack and their work.
bogomipz 7y ago
I thought this post had some good insights and am looking forward to seeing the finished book. I had a question about the following statement: >"For example, I’d argue that Slack is a tool that has made the idea of remote work much more realistic for people on the manager’s schedule. While it’s technically an asynchronous communication tool, it’s also used as an alternative to being in the same room, powering constant back-and-forth communication (which can be annoying)." I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office defeats one of the key benefits of remote work.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  > I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office defeats one of the key benefits of remote work. Maybe. In some offices, it only means that you get both: constant pings from even unrelated teams' chats, etc, and the in-office interruptions. I'd like if this were limited to one form...
WhompingWindows 7y ago
I was told when I started my current position that remote work would be available for any employee with 12 months of experience. Then, upper management changed, and my boss's hands are tied: he can only request remote for special circumstances. All of my older co-workers were grandfathered in with their old remote access, granted before I arrived, but I essentially have zero chance of gaining remote work, all due to upper management not trusting its employees to know what's best for themselves.
- ilaksh 7y ago
  Now is a good time to start looking for a better job. And be sure to tell them when you leave what the reason was.
trollied 7y ago
2 moths ago I started a work from home role (dev) for a company that is 200 miles away. I didn't even need to go to the office as everything was done via video call & they couriered me a decent MacBook Pro. Having come from a company that was dead against working from home, it's a breath of fresh air and has completely changed my life. I work 8-4. Finishing at 4 feels like I actually have part of the day left. No more commuting & setting off early in the morning / later at night to avoid traffic. I don't have to sit in a car for 2 hours a day. I can go to the gym and get home again before the masses start turning up at 5:30. Technology is such a massive enabler. Need to talk to a team member? Video call them. I've never met any of them, but it feels like we're colleagues and know each other well. I'm more productive not sitting in an office - No interruptions because someone is bored or wants to talk utter nonsense. I'm in a relaxed atmosphere, I don't have to wear a shirt and trousers, don't get dragged into pointless meetings all the time etc etc. Video call meetings seem to get straight to the point & speed along. People seem less inclined to go off-topic and faff - a big productivity boost. I will never understand the mindset of the previous employer that had a natural mistrust of remote working. They've lost many employees because they haven't embraced flexible working, and that trend will continue. Granted, it's not for everyone. You have to be mindful that you're at work (I have a separate space), and ensure that you're not disconnected from your colleagues. I find that making sure that I have a few video calls a day with a colleague keeps me in check.
Spooky23 7y ago
I'd argue that the tools and lack of understanding re: how to use them, and not understanding people's needs are holding back remote work. The standard stack that companies use is Office 365. The tools in there are really awful and unreliable in many scenarios, and add friction to most interactions. The other thing that an individual contributor won't grok is that your people are usually on a bell curve. Your most self-motivated workers thrive remote and often are more productive. But many workers either don't perform as well without direct human-to-human feedback or don't perform well remote for various reasons. We tend to assume that people have home lives and environments that are stable and amenable to work -- many do not. Many people have difficulty being alone all day. Still others fear (rightfully) that they will be held to a higher standard of performance/accountability because they aren't present to informal conversation.
markbnj 7y ago
It seems unlikely that differences in management schedules are the big issues holding remote work back. I mean, perhaps the first question to answer is whether anything is holding remote work back. It was my impression that it is gaining popularity, but I know there are companies and segments where it just isn't culturally a thing people do much of yet. Maybe I'm a cynic (oh heck I should just be honest and say I'm a cynic), but I suspect that the big issues in those places that are resistant to remote work are about power, control and trust. I work on what I would say is a very successful fully remote team. However, we're small (~30 people), tightly knit, our work is essentially self-organizing with a little steering from above, and each of the people responsible for components of it is a domain expert with a lot of experience and little need for hands-on coaching. Our managers know every one of us personally and they know we're doing our best every day. There are no trust issues. We collaborate pretty effortlessly using the usual tools, and our ability to do these things has allowed us to keep our overhead low and attract skilled people from all over the world. In short I think we're essentially a different kind of organization, and it would not surprise me to find out that it is hard to nearly impossible to convert an old-style organization, especially a larger and older one with hidebound traditions, into a new-style fully remote thing.
crtlaltdel 7y ago
this is interesting, and something i've experienced from both ends of the conversation. from the perspective of managing technical teams i've only found the "manager's schedule" (as described) to be a bother to _me_ and _my_ time management. this has been a major pain in the ass when i had to kick out feature work and caused me to spend several super late nights to wrap things up. this didn't affect my team directly; no doubt my exhaustion impacted my mood and thus my interactions. not sure if i was a total dick (never got that kinda feedback, direct or indirect...but how knows...), but i certainly more than once had the posture of defeat as i shuffled from a pairing session to a strategy meeting. i tried my hardest to create a big sandbox the devs could own and (mostly) self organize. with the help of sympathetic product managers we switched from scrum to kanban and dropped physical standups (and their associated shitty conference call experience) for a dedicated slack channel. we leaned heavily on tech and a couple basic asks such as "try to post status around the same time every day", "important communication goes in email, not in slack", "if you know your schedule, add it to the team calendar" and so on. it was not perfect but it worked out...for the that team, project and business conditions. now, i have also certainly (and most commonly) experienced shitty remote situations where people on the speakerphone are forgotten, work from home is viewed as a negative and local time is gravely disrespected.
ineedasername 7y ago
Where I work all remote work was recently outright banned. Because one single person was found to be neglecting their work for years in favor of their second job, collecting two pay checks. Pretty absurd, considering that issue was at least as much the result of poor managerial supervision as it was unethical employee activity. I used to work from home frequently when my kids were home sick from school, it allowed me to put in at least a half day of work. Now, the work just has to wait, because unless there's an emergency I won't let myself be taken advantage of.
- matwood 7y ago
  Given how poor the management sounds, that person could have worked a second job without too much trouble while in the office. I've seen it done in multiple companies.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Yes, though actually it's upper (the very top) level management that isn't so great. Many mid level are good, my boss included, who is understanding on this issue and says, "yeah, absolutely don't do work from home if you're not allowed to claim the time." She's also extremely supportive of family time, taking an hour off to leave early for a kid's event, etc. She allows a very healthy work/life Ballance, which is part of why I stay.
ummonk 7y ago
>For some, the idea of working remotely is equivalent to laying around, watching Netflix (while working of course), and happy hour at 3pm Ironically, when I need to draft some long write up (e.g. perf evaluation, speech, etc.), I have the easiest time when I lie in bed watching some pausable movie or show. Nothing like passive entertainment to help me work through writer’s block.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  After years of remote work and guilt over doing stuff like this, I've come around to the idea that -- for some types of tasks -- there's no more efficient way of plowing through it than laying around on the couch with something pausable on the TV, or occasionally even a video game. I always end up spending much more time on pause than not, and it actually gets done. It has to be a pretty specific type of thing, but I no longer feel guilty about it.
bernierocks 7y ago
I see two problems with remote work being the norm at most companies: 1) most people don't have the discipline to work remotely. I've been working remotely for a decade. I'm a self-starter and have run my own businesses. I find that the same discipline needed to build a company is almost the same as it is to work remotely. You don't have the possibility of the boss coming in to see what you are doing or a manager right across the hall. Many people have a hard time succeeding in this environment, especially if you are working from home with lots of distractions. I've seen many companies struggle to keep remote employees because if this. 2) Managers need to be excellent communicators to manage a remote team. At my last remote gig, I eventually had to quit because the manager was extremely introverted and passive aggressive, which made working remotely almost an impossibility. I think if we were in an office, I might be able to work with his personality, but instead he just avoided any sort of non-slack chatting and intentionally assigned me tickets that had misinformation or left out important details for a task that I needed to complete (and then acted shocked when I missed them). After it happened the first time, I thought I was the problem and tried to get more information about specific tickets. Something important would always be left out...and then I was always blamed for the mis-communication. It finally came to a breaking point when I worked on a month-long project and was asked to merge it with a junior developer's work right before a vacation. The Junior developer's work broke everything. I explained the situation and asked the manager if he wanted me to fix the code that was a result of our merge, when I came back. He said 'no' and then sent me a long list of issues while I was gone (I saw them in the airport on the way home..1 day before I was returning to work)..which all resided in the junior developer's code base. He then had a conversation with me about not being a 'senior' enough developer and that they felt they were paying me 'too much'. This conversation was odd and funny at the same time because In the previous 6 months, I had written large additions to the application, which were still in production with almost no issues and I was praised by the owner of the company. I was also getting paid 60% less than my market value, which I negotiated because their original offer was laughable. I only took the job when my business had a couple of slow months. I should also add that the manager built the application we were all working on 7 years prior..and it was steaming pile of garbage. Spaghetti code, bad practices, and I would find so many bugs that needed to be fixed when I was working on a feature request, it would delay everything. It's been a couple of years since I worked there and they still haven't gotten out of beta and launched. I'm guessing it's because of the managers inability to communicate and effectively manage a team.
philfreo 7y ago
There's a big difference between remote work (which can function 100% perfectly fine in the "Manager's schedule") from "remote work across varying timezones". In my experience (3+ years working fully remotely, 10+ years working partially remotely), timezones (overlap of working hours) matter much more than physical geography. Even among remote work in different timezones, there's still a huge difference between say a 4 hour timezone (say, covering all of North America) working with people from potentially ANY timezone where you have potentially 0 hours per day of overlap. Even in an organization that does asynchronous work really well, very few organizations can do everything effectively in async, meaning that you'll always want to have some overlap for synchronous discussions. My advice for any company concerned about expanding remote work would be to simply limit/restrict which time zones you're comfortable people working in. Our all-remote person team at Close.com has scaled up to 15+ engineers, 40+ people overall. We do have people all over the world, but we tend to focus our hiring around American & European Timezones, which provides a nice balance of covering a huge percentage of the world's population while still providing enough overlap to have synchronous meetings.
- pc86 7y ago
  Or just require that people keep a schedule for your timezone. So you can be in whatever timezone you want provided you're working 8-5 UTC-8, for example. Requiring someone be in a specific timezone is just a slightly less of a burden than requiring they be local enough to commute it. You're still excluding a huge swath of potential employees.
  - philfreo 7y ago
    Yes, I'm using "timezone" as shorthand for "the timezone of your working hours", which occasionally can/does include people who want to work odd hours to accommodate. That said, we are always a little skeptical of people who are willing to work very odd hours (e.g. throughout their night), because for many people it's not sustainable for them long-term.
archeantus 7y ago
I worked as a fully remote software engineer for a very large company for several years and it worked great. Engineering is something that can be done well remotely. It was on me to build and maintain important relationships via Slack or occasional travel, but I made it work very well. So well that they decided to promote me to manager of my team, which is arguably more risky than working as a remote engineer. They took a bet on me, and I think it has worked out well. I encourage my team to work at home as much as they would like to, and have even started hiring remotely. I stand by remote work. Work is about more than enslaving code monkeys to do your bidding. It is a partnership that works well when you trust your engineers to get their work done, regardless of where they are located.
setgree 7y ago
I was looking for a bit more insight into why these diverging preferences have developed and didn't see it. My 2c on that: The chairman of the board at a company I know well has been in business for like 40-50 years and he reckons that CRM software has been transformational for managers. Apparently, before Salesforce, you had little idea what your salespeople were doing with their days -- especially if they were regional specialists (re: remote employees). Salesforce keeps them on track, keeps them disciplined, provides strategists with better on-the-ground facts, etc. And that's had huge effects, according to him. But, if you're a chief marketing officer or biz dev person, and your success depends on engineers, you don't have a SF equivalent. Sure you can look at their Jira tickets or whatever, but if don't really understand what they're working on, that won't provide a lot of clarity. So maybe you look for clarity by asking them to be in the same room -- but ultimately that doesn't help much either (they just put on their headphones, deliberately avoid you, etc.). So you give up that battle. But with product people -- you don't have a salesforce-type system to keep eyes on what they're doing. But neither is their work totally incomprehensible. So, drawing on how helpful SF has been, you conclude that transparency and oversight are needed to keep things on track. So you develop a strong preference for face to face conversations. This is a theory to explain how a startup I know well has decided that its challenges getting to PMF are (in part) about a WFH policy that was 'too liberal' (CEO's words).
kube-system 7y ago
> I find this is more prevalent for non-technical people. The boss allows remote work up to a certain point, but they can’t cross over into being fully remote. > That would be too scary. We can’t have that! It could also be that non-technical members of the team don't have the combination of tools, technical ability, and training to make remote meetings effective. I've seen a lot of remote meetings completely wrecked by inability to use the meeting software, failure to adjust audio settings properly, faulty or improper hardware, inappropriate use of hardware, etc. After a few frustrating interactions, many might conclude that this mode of communication isn't effective. This is definitely a cultural issue that needs to be addressed from the top -- these people need to be assigned the proper tools, trained to use them, and expected to use them.
pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
I used to show up between 10:00-10:20 AM, after all the 5 managers got their morning gripe emails together and caught up on all the work I had gotten done and reported on overnight. The highest of the managers had a question for me at 9:30 AM and got mad I wasn't at my desk. New policy: everyone is at their desk by 8 AM. I explained to the 2 other higher managers that I work basically all night long, and during the day at the office, I'm constantly distracted because I seem to be the only person who knows anything. My direct supervisor completely understood my process and schedule and couldn't be happier with my production. The CEO as well, but this manager and his "butts in chairs at 8am" policy couldn't be stopped. I happily accepted and explained I would be leaving every day sharply at 5 PM and leaving my laptop at my desk. The manager and the policy were both fired about a month later.
FpUser 7y ago
All my work ( my own ventures and consulting ) was remote since 2000. Sure there were some real meetings with subcontractors and customers but I think it was less the 3% time wise in total.
alexellisuk 7y ago
It took me until 2019 to discover Paul's blog post - Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule and it has been invaluable http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html I now run a mix of densely packed manager schedule and maker schedule whilst maintaining a number of large OSS projects and a consultancy business.
ken 7y ago
They're using a different measuring stick for these cases. They equate being in the office with "being constantly interrupted". Well, sure. Obviously that's bad! But does it have to be that way? In other words, remote work is how people give themselves private offices when their company refuses to. For 10 years, I've seen people write articles which dance around this fact. Everybody is afraid to say "private offices", even when that's exactly what they're describing.

332 points by lukethomas 7y ago

The manager's schedule is built around Taylorism and the idea that if she (the manager) just figures out the exact mechanistic steps for squeezing all the productivity out of the worker, everything will operate smoothly. Unfortunately, that's not particularly useful in knowledge work where most of the time, we're dealing with a non-deterministic relationships and creatively figuring out a problem. The expression of the symptom is the manager's schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as a way to manage knowledge workers.

chrisweekly 7y ago
>"The expression of the symptom is the manager's schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as a way to manage knowledge workers." Nicely put.
fogetti 7y ago
The problem is that priorities are still to be managed. And there is no such thing as 10 people decide one priority. It's always one person who decides the priority either by signing a contract, pushing a button, committing some code, etc. For this reason there will always be command and control, since an organization becomes dysfunctional when people act against decisions based on made-up priorities which are way mis-aligned with the real priorities which were decided. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Of course there are different types of management styles like servant leadership for example. But that still doesn't change a damn thing. Now instead of the most aggressive person signing the contract, pushing the button, etc, now a nicer fellow signs the contract, then commands every one else to follow. And having knowledge work on the table doesn't really change the equation either. That's why almost all IT companies these days use OKRs. An objective is to be set by managers and checked upon later (a.k.a command and control).

buboard 7y ago

Probably has to do with Trust. Managers by definition exert some power in other people in a way that engineers do not, so they need to be trusted and build trust within a hierarchy. That's a social function so they think it's best done face-to-face. I 'm pretty sure it can be replaced with an social network though, we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general.

pdonis 7y ago
> we know it can be done since it works for social networks in general I'm not sure we know that. We know that social networks enable people to communicate remotely, but I'm not sure we know that they actually help in building trust.
- buboard 7y ago
  i think it works in closed networks. not in the open net
ilaksh 7y ago
I would argue that power comes from fear and necessity rather than trust. In other words, people know their manager will fire them if they don't go along, so they don't resist them. Often they go along despite being convinced numerous times that they should not trust their manager.

cdavid 7y ago

As a former software eng. who has been on the management side for a few years, I am quite ambivalent about remote work, and I find most arguments for it a bit naive. For example, the idea that the manager schedule is built around taylorism is not true IMO. I have never seen a single senior manager who do not have their life consisting mostly of 30 / 60 / 90 mins slots in my life, and I have worked in very technical environments, e.g. where the average engineer had a PhD. First, to let it out of the way: yes, you can definitely have remote teams which work very well and produce high quality products. In my experience, those have the following characteristics: clear and fairly technical product definition (e.g viz software which are built for scientists), excellent teams with no bad performer, and healthy business environments. The problem is when at least some of those conditions are not met: 1. Most organizations are dysfunctional in some ways. Product and engineering are not aligned, or there are constant re-organizations, lack of ownership. It is extremely challenging for managers to improve this situation if everybody is remote, because communication is your main tool here, and doing so remotely is even more difficult. My experience in those situations is that face to face discussions are the most effective tool to untangle the mess. 2. When things go south (e.g. you lose a big client, etc.), it is almost always the case that people will start to find teams / people to blame. Executives have shallow information, and most will rely on what is available to them (kind of availability bias, but for people instead of ideas). Remote teams will be at a disadvantage. 3. When your team is not very good, or not very experienced, it is very difficult to improve their skills remotely. First, being remote means you lose a lot of very useful information, such as "do they often talk to other people when they are stuck". Instead of observing how people act, you have to ask, which paradoxically means more interruption. Generally, my sense is that remote-first work is quite fragile, or said differently, is an unstable equilibrium. As soon as things go badly, it is much harder to fix things. As long as everything goes well, it may well be more efficient though.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I am a big fan of remote work but your points are very valid. I think a remote company need to have a fundamentally different way of management. I think most important is for management to have a good grasp of the type of work people are doing. When I look at my company my managers just one or two levels up haven’t even the foggiest idea how one does the work my team does. When something goes wrong the only thing they can do is to see that people are at the office and working hard. They have no tools to judge work without seeing people at their desks.

Phillips126 7y ago

I was part of a remote-work trial at my office (as a Software Developer). We were remote for about a year and honestly it was the best work experience I've ever had. I felt so productive working in an environment perfectly tailored to me (my own home). It ultimately ended as several upper management thought we were too "disconnected" from the company although my e-mail was always open, phone forwarded to my cell and I was online in a company wide chat messenger during working hours. We even came on-site once a week for face-to-face meetings. But I guess some people picture remote workers negatively so we are now back on-site and all the things I took for granted during the trial year are making being on-site so much harder. I commute an hour by car so I gave up a pay raise ~$6,000/yr. on gas alone. I haven't (and don't want to) calculate vehicle wear, snow tires, etc. I'm constantly interrupted by people throughout the day laughing at the nearby reception desk, asking me about lunch or just coming to talk because they are bored. Even right now I have someone using a leaf blower directly outside my window so I can't focus on code (why I am on HN right now). The office temperature is an uncomfortable 66F because the corner office gets so hot with the many windows it has and I am part of their HVAC line. I am using an underpowered laptop instead of my home desktop (32GB RAM, high end CPU, etc) and I require our IT Department to install all software for me because "company policy"... Needless to say my productivity has dropped. Perhaps someday we'll be able to go remote again, or maybe it's just time to move on. I've been here now for more than 5 years and I enjoy the work I do and the people I work with but after having a taste of remote-work, it's hard going back.

Buttons840 7y ago
When was the last time you brushed up your resume and put it out there? When was the last time you looked for new job openings?
- Phillips126 7y ago
  To answer your question honestly, it has been a long time. At this company I transitioned from a Graphic Designer to a Software Developer. After my first year I took the role of a Web Developer and ended up building a custom internal application for the Art Department which opened a lot of eyes at the possibilities of what a Software Department could provide. I was employee #1 in this new role and have since made a lot of really awesome things such as a company directory (mobile app), dashboards for our fabrication department, license management software for our IT folks, visitor check-in/out kiosks, interactive surgical simulators for our R&D/Sales teams, to name a few. I hold a BS degree in Art. While in college, I took some web development courses and that is when I first started noticing my interest in programming. Despite having ~10 years of programming experience (~4 being as a professional software dev) I am not the most confident developer and the horror of software dev interviews scares me. Maybe it is time to go for it - worst they can say is no, right?

anovikov 7y ago

Why people don't tell the definite and super obvious reason for that: people will scam their employers! I know many people who work fully remote. All of them have 3-4 "full time" jobs, and just do the minimum necessary on all of them to not get fired, or outsource work. Making a good Valley salary in a place where rent is $400 a month. Good? For them yes, but a company that allows remote work is just making a mistake: it WILL be scammed by the vast majority of people who work there. High-level employees need collaboration and frequent meetings making remote work impossible (execs), low-level ones can't be trusted because they have nothing to lose.

Phillips126 7y ago
Are you saying that on-site employees don't "scam" their employers? This is non-sense and is the exact reason why remote work is viewed so negatively. Remote workers (just like on-site) have goals and expectations. They are also likely on company chats, answering phone calls, video meetings, etc. If the expected quantity of work is not getting done, I think this is a problem with this employee and should be looked into. Don't cast a blanket statement over every remote working because this is not the norm.
notfromhere 7y ago
Very very few people do this. If people are unproductive, they'll be just as unproductive in the office as they would be at home.
- anovikov 7y ago
  No they are very productive. Just work for several people at once and eventually turn from 1 super productive person into 3-4 barely acceptable ones. They also gain job security this way. And get paid way more.
  - yowlingcat 7y ago
    Kind of curious here -- do you mean they're making valley level salaries doing remote work and basically "available" to all four companies at the same time and just juggle tasks as they come in? What happens if they double book a meeting? What do they do at standup?

dadarepublic 7y ago

Someone on this thread brought up trust as an aspect of successful organization remote work. I do like this take. As a manager I have observed that trust can be hard to come by if there's not a solid metric that can help establish trust where there is none. And one bad miscommunication experience can erode trust that has been built up for months. Face-to-face is always one of the highest fidelity mediums for communication in expressing the verbal & non-verbal. And I would agree with the resounding opinion in this thread that periodic meet-ups are very good for keeping trust relations higher in the times when remote is the norm. Sometimes even that is hard if you're managing a team from across the globe, and then trust is reduced to a metric of some kind - work output, quality of work, etc. I like working with remote teams and I've had great and horrible experiences with them - first and third party. It can sometimes be cultural but oftentimes I've found it can be isolated to the individual - and working to remedy that weak link can oftentimes (but not always) turn a situation around. Understanding how to build a team, identifying the needs of the team, and establish trust within that team, whether co-located or remote is important. It's also important to understand how those needs and methods are differ between co-located and remote work.

trollied 7y ago
I've found that frequent face-to-face video calls works well to establish a rapport & make the remote working experience seem more "local".
- dadarepublic 7y ago
  I would definitely agree with this. Video conference has helped immensely. A good example would the time my team (spread out in 4 different countries) was crunching for a launch where we set up a 'virtual' mega war room connecting 4 war rooms across the globe with live video feeds. Worked wonders for open communication when there was overlap in time zone working hours.

eledumb 7y ago

I've worked in 4 very successful organization that were almost 100% remote work, the percentage of remote work employees by company, 98%, 99%, 92%, 98%. These companies were no different than the 3 successful companies that didn't support remote work at all. All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense. I've worked at 4 unsuccessful companies 2 that were almost 100% remote, and 2 that were almost 100% not remote. What these 4 companies had in common was a lack of process, or discipline. Chasing the "next thing", blowing up schedules because "we need it now", zero planning. These companies need everyone in the same location because nothing is written down, everything is rumor, tribal knowledge is key and if you don't get to sit in a room and look at everyone to figure out the politics nothing works. Bottom line is if you want to be successful you need to plan, have process and be disciplined in your approach to running the business. If you do these things managing remote employees is no different than having everyone in the same room. If however your company is a mess, trying to manage remote employees is next to impossible.

cdavid 7y ago
> All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense. That sounds like a strict requirement for remote work to work, and intuitively so. In your experience, how was the training done for less experienced IC ?
- crustacean 7y ago
  I’m just as curious about how the managers were trained to be process-driven. Manager behavior seems to me just as if not more important than IC behavior here. Since managers have power, and engineers usually don’t personally know their skip levels, managers can easily replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings. And they can silence dissent! They can wreak havoc in a way no IC could ever do.

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

I've managed multiple remote, distributed, asynchronous teams over my career. When remote teams work well, it's a great experience for everyone. However, I'm more convinced than ever that these pop-culture articles and thought pieces about remote work are counterproductive for remote workers. Most of the remote work thought pieces that make it to the HN front page are very one-sided; They make remote work sound like a panacea, or a way to boost productivity and happiness with zero downsides. This creates very unrealistic expectations of remote work for job seekers, especially the more junior remote devs that I've worked with in recent years. When it comes to remote work, we want to believe that it's the golden ticket to solving all of the problems of the modern workplace. In my experience managing remote, on-site, and mixed teams: It's much more difficult to make remote teams work well. Some key things to watch out for with remote employees: - Communication is everyone's job. Async, text-only communication can be more efficient when done right, but it's much more difficult to foster friendly, accurate, and rapid shared understanding over Slack or e-mail than in a well-run face to face meeting. Successful remote work depends on everyone making an effort to seek out information they need, proactively share understanding via accessible documentation, and develop healthy relationships with their peers and managers. - Remote employees are not contractors. A common misconception is that remote work equals total freedom about when, where, and how you do your job. Pick your own hours, vacation without taking PTO as long as you respond to e-mails once a day, batch your e-mails to once a day or less, and work on your own terms. This can work in certain situations if everyone agrees to it, but it's not a given. If you're a remote employee, the only guarantee is that your working location is not at the office. Having the team working together during specific core hours is hugely valuable if any collaboration is required. It's not efficient to have two people ping-ponging e-mails back and forth with one response per side per day when they could hash things out with a 5-minute chat during overlapping business hours. - Some people can't handle remote work. It just doesn't work for everyone. My biggest surprise as a remote manager was how many people's productivity dropped off a cliff after they went remote, yet they were convinced they were being more productive than ever. Some of these employees can be trained to be productive remotely with intense hands-on management, but it's a lot of work. I give new remote employees very explicit instructions about expectations for process, check-ins, and team discipline when we start. Continually update these remote onboarding documents as you learn how your remote team works best. - Remote job listings attract a lot of bad apples. Remote jobs are synonymous with slacking off in some circles. Watch out for digital nomads who want to collect a paycheck while they travel the world. Avoid startup founders who think they can put in a couple hours of remote work and collect a paycheck and benefits while they focus on building their startup on someone else's dime. Watch out for remote applicants who try to work two jobs at once, doing the bare minimum for whichever of the two companies is paying the least attention to their work. When hiring remote at scale, you'll run into more of these bad actor applicants and employees than you might expect. - Meetings are still helpful in remote teams. There's another common misconception that remote work == no meetings. Some conversations are still most efficiently handled as an N-way video call for 15-30 minutes, rather than a never-ending Slack conversation where participants are half-distracted as they alt-tab between Slack and their work.

bogomipz 7y ago

I thought this post had some good insights and am looking forward to seeing the finished book. I had a question about the following statement: >"For example, I’d argue that Slack is a tool that has made the idea of remote work much more realistic for people on the manager’s schedule. While it’s technically an asynchronous communication tool, it’s also used as an alternative to being in the same room, powering constant back-and-forth communication (which can be annoying)." I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office defeats one of the key benefits of remote work.

52-6F-62 7y ago
> I remember this being an issue when I was doing remote work. I would be curious what the fix is for this. It does seem like simply moving the interrupt driven physical office to an interrupt driven virtual office defeats one of the key benefits of remote work. Maybe. In some offices, it only means that you get both: constant pings from even unrelated teams' chats, etc, and the in-office interruptions. I'd like if this were limited to one form...

WhompingWindows 7y ago

I was told when I started my current position that remote work would be available for any employee with 12 months of experience. Then, upper management changed, and my boss's hands are tied: he can only request remote for special circumstances. All of my older co-workers were grandfathered in with their old remote access, granted before I arrived, but I essentially have zero chance of gaining remote work, all due to upper management not trusting its employees to know what's best for themselves.

ilaksh 7y ago
Now is a good time to start looking for a better job. And be sure to tell them when you leave what the reason was.

trollied 7y ago

2 moths ago I started a work from home role (dev) for a company that is 200 miles away. I didn't even need to go to the office as everything was done via video call & they couriered me a decent MacBook Pro. Having come from a company that was dead against working from home, it's a breath of fresh air and has completely changed my life. I work 8-4. Finishing at 4 feels like I actually have part of the day left. No more commuting & setting off early in the morning / later at night to avoid traffic. I don't have to sit in a car for 2 hours a day. I can go to the gym and get home again before the masses start turning up at 5:30. Technology is such a massive enabler. Need to talk to a team member? Video call them. I've never met any of them, but it feels like we're colleagues and know each other well. I'm more productive not sitting in an office - No interruptions because someone is bored or wants to talk utter nonsense. I'm in a relaxed atmosphere, I don't have to wear a shirt and trousers, don't get dragged into pointless meetings all the time etc etc. Video call meetings seem to get straight to the point & speed along. People seem less inclined to go off-topic and faff - a big productivity boost. I will never understand the mindset of the previous employer that had a natural mistrust of remote working. They've lost many employees because they haven't embraced flexible working, and that trend will continue. Granted, it's not for everyone. You have to be mindful that you're at work (I have a separate space), and ensure that you're not disconnected from your colleagues. I find that making sure that I have a few video calls a day with a colleague keeps me in check.

Spooky23 7y ago

I'd argue that the tools and lack of understanding re: how to use them, and not understanding people's needs are holding back remote work. The standard stack that companies use is Office 365. The tools in there are really awful and unreliable in many scenarios, and add friction to most interactions. The other thing that an individual contributor won't grok is that your people are usually on a bell curve. Your most self-motivated workers thrive remote and often are more productive. But many workers either don't perform as well without direct human-to-human feedback or don't perform well remote for various reasons. We tend to assume that people have home lives and environments that are stable and amenable to work -- many do not. Many people have difficulty being alone all day. Still others fear (rightfully) that they will be held to a higher standard of performance/accountability because they aren't present to informal conversation.

markbnj 7y ago

It seems unlikely that differences in management schedules are the big issues holding remote work back. I mean, perhaps the first question to answer is whether anything is holding remote work back. It was my impression that it is gaining popularity, but I know there are companies and segments where it just isn't culturally a thing people do much of yet. Maybe I'm a cynic (oh heck I should just be honest and say I'm a cynic), but I suspect that the big issues in those places that are resistant to remote work are about power, control and trust. I work on what I would say is a very successful fully remote team. However, we're small (~30 people), tightly knit, our work is essentially self-organizing with a little steering from above, and each of the people responsible for components of it is a domain expert with a lot of experience and little need for hands-on coaching. Our managers know every one of us personally and they know we're doing our best every day. There are no trust issues. We collaborate pretty effortlessly using the usual tools, and our ability to do these things has allowed us to keep our overhead low and attract skilled people from all over the world. In short I think we're essentially a different kind of organization, and it would not surprise me to find out that it is hard to nearly impossible to convert an old-style organization, especially a larger and older one with hidebound traditions, into a new-style fully remote thing.

crtlaltdel 7y ago

this is interesting, and something i've experienced from both ends of the conversation. from the perspective of managing technical teams i've only found the "manager's schedule" (as described) to be a bother to _me_ and _my_ time management. this has been a major pain in the ass when i had to kick out feature work and caused me to spend several super late nights to wrap things up. this didn't affect my team directly; no doubt my exhaustion impacted my mood and thus my interactions. not sure if i was a total dick (never got that kinda feedback, direct or indirect...but how knows...), but i certainly more than once had the posture of defeat as i shuffled from a pairing session to a strategy meeting. i tried my hardest to create a big sandbox the devs could own and (mostly) self organize. with the help of sympathetic product managers we switched from scrum to kanban and dropped physical standups (and their associated shitty conference call experience) for a dedicated slack channel. we leaned heavily on tech and a couple basic asks such as "try to post status around the same time every day", "important communication goes in email, not in slack", "if you know your schedule, add it to the team calendar" and so on. it was not perfect but it worked out...for the that team, project and business conditions. now, i have also certainly (and most commonly) experienced shitty remote situations where people on the speakerphone are forgotten, work from home is viewed as a negative and local time is gravely disrespected.

ineedasername 7y ago

Where I work all remote work was recently outright banned. Because one single person was found to be neglecting their work for years in favor of their second job, collecting two pay checks. Pretty absurd, considering that issue was at least as much the result of poor managerial supervision as it was unethical employee activity. I used to work from home frequently when my kids were home sick from school, it allowed me to put in at least a half day of work. Now, the work just has to wait, because unless there's an emergency I won't let myself be taken advantage of.

matwood 7y ago
Given how poor the management sounds, that person could have worked a second job without too much trouble while in the office. I've seen it done in multiple companies.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Yes, though actually it's upper (the very top) level management that isn't so great. Many mid level are good, my boss included, who is understanding on this issue and says, "yeah, absolutely don't do work from home if you're not allowed to claim the time." She's also extremely supportive of family time, taking an hour off to leave early for a kid's event, etc. She allows a very healthy work/life Ballance, which is part of why I stay.

ummonk 7y ago

>For some, the idea of working remotely is equivalent to laying around, watching Netflix (while working of course), and happy hour at 3pm Ironically, when I need to draft some long write up (e.g. perf evaluation, speech, etc.), I have the easiest time when I lie in bed watching some pausable movie or show. Nothing like passive entertainment to help me work through writer’s block.

Matticus_Rex 7y ago
After years of remote work and guilt over doing stuff like this, I've come around to the idea that -- for some types of tasks -- there's no more efficient way of plowing through it than laying around on the couch with something pausable on the TV, or occasionally even a video game. I always end up spending much more time on pause than not, and it actually gets done. It has to be a pretty specific type of thing, but I no longer feel guilty about it.

bernierocks 7y ago

I see two problems with remote work being the norm at most companies: 1) most people don't have the discipline to work remotely. I've been working remotely for a decade. I'm a self-starter and have run my own businesses. I find that the same discipline needed to build a company is almost the same as it is to work remotely. You don't have the possibility of the boss coming in to see what you are doing or a manager right across the hall. Many people have a hard time succeeding in this environment, especially if you are working from home with lots of distractions. I've seen many companies struggle to keep remote employees because if this. 2) Managers need to be excellent communicators to manage a remote team. At my last remote gig, I eventually had to quit because the manager was extremely introverted and passive aggressive, which made working remotely almost an impossibility. I think if we were in an office, I might be able to work with his personality, but instead he just avoided any sort of non-slack chatting and intentionally assigned me tickets that had misinformation or left out important details for a task that I needed to complete (and then acted shocked when I missed them). After it happened the first time, I thought I was the problem and tried to get more information about specific tickets. Something important would always be left out...and then I was always blamed for the mis-communication. It finally came to a breaking point when I worked on a month-long project and was asked to merge it with a junior developer's work right before a vacation. The Junior developer's work broke everything. I explained the situation and asked the manager if he wanted me to fix the code that was a result of our merge, when I came back. He said 'no' and then sent me a long list of issues while I was gone (I saw them in the airport on the way home..1 day before I was returning to work)..which all resided in the junior developer's code base. He then had a conversation with me about not being a 'senior' enough developer and that they felt they were paying me 'too much'. This conversation was odd and funny at the same time because In the previous 6 months, I had written large additions to the application, which were still in production with almost no issues and I was praised by the owner of the company. I was also getting paid 60% less than my market value, which I negotiated because their original offer was laughable. I only took the job when my business had a couple of slow months. I should also add that the manager built the application we were all working on 7 years prior..and it was steaming pile of garbage. Spaghetti code, bad practices, and I would find so many bugs that needed to be fixed when I was working on a feature request, it would delay everything. It's been a couple of years since I worked there and they still haven't gotten out of beta and launched. I'm guessing it's because of the managers inability to communicate and effectively manage a team.

philfreo 7y ago

There's a big difference between remote work (which can function 100% perfectly fine in the "Manager's schedule") from "remote work across varying timezones". In my experience (3+ years working fully remotely, 10+ years working partially remotely), timezones (overlap of working hours) matter much more than physical geography. Even among remote work in different timezones, there's still a huge difference between say a 4 hour timezone (say, covering all of North America) working with people from potentially ANY timezone where you have potentially 0 hours per day of overlap. Even in an organization that does asynchronous work really well, very few organizations can do everything effectively in async, meaning that you'll always want to have some overlap for synchronous discussions. My advice for any company concerned about expanding remote work would be to simply limit/restrict which time zones you're comfortable people working in. Our all-remote person team at Close.com has scaled up to 15+ engineers, 40+ people overall. We do have people all over the world, but we tend to focus our hiring around American & European Timezones, which provides a nice balance of covering a huge percentage of the world's population while still providing enough overlap to have synchronous meetings.

pc86 7y ago
Or just require that people keep a schedule for your timezone. So you can be in whatever timezone you want provided you're working 8-5 UTC-8, for example. Requiring someone be in a specific timezone is just a slightly less of a burden than requiring they be local enough to commute it. You're still excluding a huge swath of potential employees.
- philfreo 7y ago
  Yes, I'm using "timezone" as shorthand for "the timezone of your working hours", which occasionally can/does include people who want to work odd hours to accommodate. That said, we are always a little skeptical of people who are willing to work very odd hours (e.g. throughout their night), because for many people it's not sustainable for them long-term.

archeantus 7y ago

I worked as a fully remote software engineer for a very large company for several years and it worked great. Engineering is something that can be done well remotely. It was on me to build and maintain important relationships via Slack or occasional travel, but I made it work very well. So well that they decided to promote me to manager of my team, which is arguably more risky than working as a remote engineer. They took a bet on me, and I think it has worked out well. I encourage my team to work at home as much as they would like to, and have even started hiring remotely. I stand by remote work. Work is about more than enslaving code monkeys to do your bidding. It is a partnership that works well when you trust your engineers to get their work done, regardless of where they are located.

setgree 7y ago

I was looking for a bit more insight into why these diverging preferences have developed and didn't see it. My 2c on that: The chairman of the board at a company I know well has been in business for like 40-50 years and he reckons that CRM software has been transformational for managers. Apparently, before Salesforce, you had little idea what your salespeople were doing with their days -- especially if they were regional specialists (re: remote employees). Salesforce keeps them on track, keeps them disciplined, provides strategists with better on-the-ground facts, etc. And that's had huge effects, according to him. But, if you're a chief marketing officer or biz dev person, and your success depends on engineers, you don't have a SF equivalent. Sure you can look at their Jira tickets or whatever, but if don't really understand what they're working on, that won't provide a lot of clarity. So maybe you look for clarity by asking them to be in the same room -- but ultimately that doesn't help much either (they just put on their headphones, deliberately avoid you, etc.). So you give up that battle. But with product people -- you don't have a salesforce-type system to keep eyes on what they're doing. But neither is their work totally incomprehensible. So, drawing on how helpful SF has been, you conclude that transparency and oversight are needed to keep things on track. So you develop a strong preference for face to face conversations. This is a theory to explain how a startup I know well has decided that its challenges getting to PMF are (in part) about a WFH policy that was 'too liberal' (CEO's words).

kube-system 7y ago

> I find this is more prevalent for non-technical people. The boss allows remote work up to a certain point, but they can’t cross over into being fully remote. > That would be too scary. We can’t have that! It could also be that non-technical members of the team don't have the combination of tools, technical ability, and training to make remote meetings effective. I've seen a lot of remote meetings completely wrecked by inability to use the meeting software, failure to adjust audio settings properly, faulty or improper hardware, inappropriate use of hardware, etc. After a few frustrating interactions, many might conclude that this mode of communication isn't effective. This is definitely a cultural issue that needs to be addressed from the top -- these people need to be assigned the proper tools, trained to use them, and expected to use them.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago

I used to show up between 10:00-10:20 AM, after all the 5 managers got their morning gripe emails together and caught up on all the work I had gotten done and reported on overnight. The highest of the managers had a question for me at 9:30 AM and got mad I wasn't at my desk. New policy: everyone is at their desk by 8 AM. I explained to the 2 other higher managers that I work basically all night long, and during the day at the office, I'm constantly distracted because I seem to be the only person who knows anything. My direct supervisor completely understood my process and schedule and couldn't be happier with my production. The CEO as well, but this manager and his "butts in chairs at 8am" policy couldn't be stopped. I happily accepted and explained I would be leaving every day sharply at 5 PM and leaving my laptop at my desk. The manager and the policy were both fired about a month later.

FpUser 7y ago

All my work ( my own ventures and consulting ) was remote since 2000. Sure there were some real meetings with subcontractors and customers but I think it was less the 3% time wise in total.

alexellisuk 7y ago

It took me until 2019 to discover Paul's blog post - Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule and it has been invaluable http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html I now run a mix of densely packed manager schedule and maker schedule whilst maintaining a number of large OSS projects and a consultancy business.

ken 7y ago

They're using a different measuring stick for these cases. They equate being in the office with "being constantly interrupted". Well, sure. Obviously that's bad! But does it have to be that way? In other words, remote work is how people give themselves private offices when their company refuses to. For 10 years, I've seen people write articles which dance around this fact. Everybody is afraid to say "private offices", even when that's exactly what they're describing.