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What you're saying makes no sense. Suppose remote work was the norm. Your comments somehow imply moving work to be on-premise would be an improvement. Let's ex

What you're saying makes no sense. Suppose remote work was the norm. Your comments somehow imply moving work to be on-premise would be an improvement. Let's examine your claims one by one. > 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. In a remote-only organization, communication is necessarily all done in a matter that's transparent and not transient like face-to-face communication. You claim doing so remotely is more difficult but do not substantiate this. You claim that face-to-face discussions are effective... for what reason? What about face-to-face communication makes this more effective? Just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims made here. > 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. If remote were the norm you could easily make this same claim about the lone on-premise team whose communication is isolated from the rest of the organization. This has more to do with the fact that remote teams are rare and less with the fact that they're remote. In fact what you're saying here is what often happens with satellite offices. Again, nothing here you're saying is unique to a remote team. > 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. Again, assuming remote was the norm your claims make no sense. It would be trivial to see how much workers were communicating with each other in a remote team. In fact, I don't know how you would even get your purported "useful information" unless as a manager all you're doing is micromanaging your employees all day? TLDR - all of your claims against remote work are trivially countered. Remote work has no disadvantages except the loss of (important) non-verbal information when communicating.

cdavid 7y ago
> In a remote-only organization, communication is necessarily all done in a matter that's transparent and not transient like face-to-face communication. You claim doing so remotely is more difficult but do not substantiate this. You claim that face-to-face discussions are effective... for what reason? What about face-to-face communication makes this more effective? Just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims made here. The problem is when communication are broken, you don't even know who you are supposed to talk to. In that case, I think it is quite obvious that doing it remotely is harder than if everybody is on the same building. > If remote were the norm you could easily make this same claim about the lone on-premise team whose communication is isolated from the rest of the organization. That's correct, the problem is the same. It has been my experience that as soon as things go south in a company, you have a vast advantage if you and your team work in HQ. It has almost always been my experience that the projects that got the most pull politically (and hence resources) were the one pushed by managers in HQ, or with an existing strong relationship that was created... by being at HQ. > Again, assuming remote was the norm your claims make no sense. It would be trivial to see how much workers were communicating with each other in a remote team. You are the first manager I have met who claims this is trivial, remote or not.
- workremotely 7y ago
  > The problem is when communication are broken, you don't even know who you are supposed to talk to. In that case, I think it is quite obvious that doing it remotely is harder than if everybody is on the same building. Again, unsubstantiated. Why is it harder than if everyone is on the same building? >That's correct, the problem is the same. It has been my experience that as soon as things go south in a company, you have a vast advantage if you and your team work in HQ. It has almost always been my experience that the projects that got the most pull politically (and hence resources) were the one pushed by managers in HQ, or with an existing strong relationship that was created... by being at HQ. Again this has less to do with remote work and more to do with the fact that remote isn't the status quo. > You are the first manager I have met who claims this is trivial, remote or not. It would be trivial. Inherently to remote work would be an online record, whether that's Slack, Discourse or email to record all communication. You've yet to actually bring up issues inherent with remote work. All of the claims you've brought up thus far wouldn't apply in an organization that's already remote-only. Would there be difficulty to transitioning a non-remote org to be entirely remote? Of course, but this is an issue with making any large sweeping change. In another comment you make this claim: > but things like mentoring, quality of code review, etc. are hard to measure if you are not observing them directly. I would argue that all of this would be much easier to observe in a remote only organization as said communication would need to be made available through some record-keeping. Where-as in a on-premise organization code review and mentoring can occur behind closed doors and would be very transient. How would you know how well your engineers are mentoring each other?

cdavid 7y ago

> In a remote-only organization, communication is necessarily all done in a matter that's transparent and not transient like face-to-face communication. You claim doing so remotely is more difficult but do not substantiate this. You claim that face-to-face discussions are effective... for what reason? What about face-to-face communication makes this more effective? Just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims made here. The problem is when communication are broken, you don't even know who you are supposed to talk to. In that case, I think it is quite obvious that doing it remotely is harder than if everybody is on the same building. > If remote were the norm you could easily make this same claim about the lone on-premise team whose communication is isolated from the rest of the organization. That's correct, the problem is the same. It has been my experience that as soon as things go south in a company, you have a vast advantage if you and your team work in HQ. It has almost always been my experience that the projects that got the most pull politically (and hence resources) were the one pushed by managers in HQ, or with an existing strong relationship that was created... by being at HQ. > Again, assuming remote was the norm your claims make no sense. It would be trivial to see how much workers were communicating with each other in a remote team. You are the first manager I have met who claims this is trivial, remote or not.

workremotely 7y ago
> The problem is when communication are broken, you don't even know who you are supposed to talk to. In that case, I think it is quite obvious that doing it remotely is harder than if everybody is on the same building. Again, unsubstantiated. Why is it harder than if everyone is on the same building? >That's correct, the problem is the same. It has been my experience that as soon as things go south in a company, you have a vast advantage if you and your team work in HQ. It has almost always been my experience that the projects that got the most pull politically (and hence resources) were the one pushed by managers in HQ, or with an existing strong relationship that was created... by being at HQ. Again this has less to do with remote work and more to do with the fact that remote isn't the status quo. > You are the first manager I have met who claims this is trivial, remote or not. It would be trivial. Inherently to remote work would be an online record, whether that's Slack, Discourse or email to record all communication. You've yet to actually bring up issues inherent with remote work. All of the claims you've brought up thus far wouldn't apply in an organization that's already remote-only. Would there be difficulty to transitioning a non-remote org to be entirely remote? Of course, but this is an issue with making any large sweeping change. In another comment you make this claim: > but things like mentoring, quality of code review, etc. are hard to measure if you are not observing them directly. I would argue that all of this would be much easier to observe in a remote only organization as said communication would need to be made available through some record-keeping. Where-as in a on-premise organization code review and mentoring can occur behind closed doors and would be very transient. How would you know how well your engineers are mentoring each other?