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Ask HN: What are your war stories for converting teams to remote?

108 points by vsareto 7y ago

Stories for starting remote teams also welcome!

mmastrac 7y ago
I've built (not converted) and managed two NA-wide remote teams of high-performers in the last decade (once at my own startup DotSpots, second time here at FullStory). I don't have any particular stories, but happy to answer any questions.
- vsareto 7y ago
  Did anyone struggle with converting to remote work themselves? Or was everyone already comfortable with it?
  - tjr225 7y ago
    I've found almost everyone struggles converting to remote work and empathized a lot with my colleagues as we on boarded together. Some of them didn't like it and went back to Amazon or Google or some other startup. My advice if you're starting a remote job for the first time- give it a chance even if goals and communication seem unclear at first. You have to develop an entirely new way of communicating and it is hard.
    - muratk 7y ago
      Did they prefer the huge company because of perks/salaries/tech, or actually because of being office-based? If remote, what was their #1 issue?
      - bostik 7y ago
        As someone who did 7 years remote-only, I have gathered some insights. 1: Synchronisation of effort for a team is absolutely crucial. 2: The top priority is for the teams to communicate amongst themselves fluently, and feel comfortable to communicate with practically anyone at the company at large. 3: If you don't live in a tech hub or a large city (which, to be honest, are mostly the same things), the life as a remote-only can get really lonely. 4: In a profession with a pretty big fraction of existentialists, learning to keep office hours and being able to turn off from work mode is essential for long-term stability. 5: You need a separate workspace for an office. I learned this the hard way. The ability to walk away from work after the day is important. And you really should have a separate computer for work, so you don't even accidentally look up the work stuff outside of office hours. 6: Everyone needs hobbies. If a person lives their life through their screen, it is very unlikely that they are suitable for long-term remote-only work. If you're a manager at an office, you usually want to know what makes your team members tick. If you're a non-junior at a remote-only company, it is absolutely essential that you learn what makes your team mates tick. 7: Teams need to meet up in person frequently. A day or two every 3-4 weeks is good. Several days at least twice a year is essential. Because there are no watercooler or office corridor moments, the company needs to provide an environment where something like this can take root spontaneously. 8: Meta-review for code review can be surprisingly helpful, even after the onboarding. The truth is, not everyone is cut out for remote work. Because long-term mental health depends on being able to turn off and walk away, you are automatically selecting for wealthier individuals. I know this sounds really harsh, but it's true. A person who can afford the space for a dedicated office for their working hours is several times more likely to stay around and grow into a bigger role in the company. A person whose hobbies involve physical activity and getting out of their house is far more likely to be a good remote-only employee than someone who at the end of the day switches from emails and code to computer games and Netflix. Loneliness and detachment are the biggest problems, at least in my experience.
        muratk 7y ago
        Hm, some of those points I've experienced, too, or make sense to me. 3: You mean “professionally lonely” as not physically meeting enough other, say, devs? Why can't you get your tech interactions online and satisfy your need to meet people with non-tech people? That would remove the requirement for a tech hub. 8: That isn't specific to remote? I very much agree that remote work isn't for everyone. But then, nothing is. Not even mango float, and that's a _fantastic_ dessert. I don't agree with your reasoning, though. Many people are in horrible office-type jobs and their sanity would depend on them walking away. They don't, often for the same reason. Wealth helps because it gives freedom, but this isn't specific to remote. Also, depending on what you define as remote work. In a not-so-rich country, remote work helps people in more remote and hence usually poorer regions get jobs. Yes, those aren't always great jobs—but they're in line with qualifications, and they do enable people to live better lives.
        bostik 7y ago
        For number 3, I mean lonely in general. I've experienced it myself and witnessed a number of good people get burned. As engineers, makers, tinkerers and creators, we tend to find our social networks among like-minded folk. When I was remote, I was living in a smaller town, where not much happened. There were a number of IT employers, but nothing particularly interesting. So I didn't have much "professionally aligned" groups to hang out with. Working from home also allowed to skip trivial outdoorsy stuff, and the weather being inhospitable for >6 months a year didn't help. At the office we meet like-minded people all the time. Those at the company who lived in large cities (3 in the entire country that qualify) could meet in person outside of company activities, and they had groups of other makers to socialise with. Where you have a tech scene, you tend to have lots of nicely aligned activities. Living in a more distant location, you're alone. As for number 8, you're of course right. It's not specific to remote, but I've found that at an office environment talking about some tricky problem that has surfaced during code review happens automatically, and discussing wider aspects of the code review in general tends to be part of workflow/tooling. Yes, I do review code review at the office but it's not essential. (Important, sure.) But when your communication channels are not in-person, going over code review as matter of course becomes critical. Not being able to walk over and chat about engineering practices is something you will only miss once you've seen both sides for long enough. The selection for wealth? Here I'm talking about jobs that require deep concentration. Tech is notorious for our constant search for the flow state. Interruptions and bad ergonomics can be devastating. But more than that, in order to remain mentally stable at a remote-only job for a long time, you need to be able to respect office hours and have a clear way to cut yourself off of the work environment. If your work machine is the same as your personal use machine, those lines can get awfully hazy. Not good for mental wellbeing in the long run.
  - mmastrac 7y ago
    I found that almost everyone quickly got used to working remotely - at least within the first few months. We hired more on the senior end, so that might also be a factor. Managing performance and setting expectations is probably a little more important than in-office work. Learning how to "yield the floor" for more extroverted team members and how to find a quiet moment to pop in for more introverted members is something that remote workers _need_ to learn quickly. Offering remote employees a stipend for a co-working space is something we do today at FullStory. Some of my team members choose to make use of that to get more socialization. Others will just occasionally work from coffee shops. I think that managers are the ones who struggle most in the conversion - you need to trust that people are getting work done and that can be difficult.
    - numbsafari 7y ago
      The stipend for co-working is a good one. In general, if you are hiring remote, it’s good to plan to do things like this, plus have stipends for office supplies / equipment (buy people a nice chair and/or standing desk, send them good headphones). Replace the “free lunch and beer” budget with things like that. It helps with retention and a sense of belonging and team identity... eg, if you send a “branded gift box” with AirPods Pro to each team member unannounced, they’ll probably really appreciate that, plus you can toss in some swag, like a branded case or bag, t-shirts. Just because folks are remote doesn’t mean you should treat them any less like an employee. Retention is key.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Agreed. It’s a nice touch to receive swag as remote worker. At my company they often forget the remote people with stuff like this. But most people are onsite and only a few are remote.
        dvtrn 7y ago
        At my company they often forget the remote people with stuff like this. This is my biggest fear having recently been asked to make a few infrastructure changes to allow remote workers. My company is beginning to allow support staff to work and connect to key systems remotely, and while I can’t say how effective the individual workers will be, after a few years here (and soon about to depart) I have to place a vote of no confidence in my leadership to actually put any meaningful weight behind their words of “we are now supporting remote workers”. the reality is they’re now allowing remote workers in a part of the company that sees the most attrition, has the lowest promotion numbers and historically has not received near the same treatment as other departments. I don’t have confidence they’ll be well supported judging from how other remote teams are “supported”, mine included.
  - nickbauman 7y ago
    Currently managing an all remote team. All senior devs and a fantastic product manager, QA and analyst; all people I've known for more than a decade. I honestly don't know how I would do this with junior devs. Not their fault; my fault. The only problem was my father died while I was visiting relatives in France in December and it really threw people on the team off what they were supposed to be doing heading into the holidays. I was focusing on how to store a dead body from across the ocean for about a week. My takeaway: uncertainly can knock you for a loop in an expensive, subtle and quick way. Work to eliminate uncertainly for your team and if they're good, they will be happy and healthy.
    - mmastrac 7y ago
      > I honestly don't know how I would do this with junior devs. Not their fault; my fault. Ditto. I'm still pondering how working with junior folks might work. In-office teams _may_ be able to absorb and level-up more junior people. Would love to spitball ideas on this with anyone else interested in that topic.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        That’s a good point. All my remote experiences have been with pretty experienced and self sufficient people. I would think that bigger remote companies like basecamp or Gitlab or Automattic have experience with onboarding junior people. Or maybe they also hire only experienced people.
        nickbauman 7y ago
        I know a bit about basecamp's hiring from a few years back through a friend of an employee. They have a lot of trouble getting people hired. Mostly because they seem to have a unicorn list of things each hire has to come in the door with.
        jeanduplessis 7y ago
        I’m a hiring manager at GitLab and we currently don't hire junior engineers: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/career-development/#junior-engineers https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/career-develop... That said we are trying to bring in more junior engineers via our internship program: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/internships/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/internships/ If our internship pilot is successful we hope that this will be a feasible way to bring in more junior engineers.
- mnky9800n 7y ago
  how do you facilitate coffee break/after work beers/etc creativity?
  - mmastrac 7y ago
    We have a private slack channel for banter. We all get on-site 5-6 times/year where we front-load our team-building via beers/activities and get face time. We've also found that there is some informal coffee talk with people who get to our occasional video call meetings early. Other members of the team have just started doing random 1:1s with each other to replace "coffee collisions". Our culture at FS involves something called "RAEB" (the redundant array of expensive brains) and we'll often just drop half-baked ideas into slack with the expectation that nobody _has_ to evaluate it, but it may occasionally spark future work. We will also go back from time-to-time and search thru Slack history to see if there was anything that popped up that we should dig into more deeply. I think that creativity just takes on a different form in a remote team.
  - numbsafari 7y ago
    Two things I’ve tried (neither of these are ideas original to me, just things I’ve been a part of and brought with me to multiple orgs): - office hours: this is not a meeting ... it’s just a team dialed into a hangout or other voice chat for an hour. Totally optional. Folks can talk while working, talk about work, talk about not work, whatever. Just share the virtual space for a bit. This can be really helpful for “serendipity”, building trust and depth in interpersonal communication, cross-training, and otherwise just de-tensioning if you are involved in a high-stakes activity. - BOF/hack-a-thon/quarterly on-site... basically, everyone meets somewhere in meatspace for a week (Monday PM to Friday AM). Good things to do during this time: planning, team-building, demos, tech-talks, bring in an outsider or trainer, etc. Lots of larger OSS projects do this.
    - mike_h 7y ago
      Any interesting outsider / trainer experiences?
      - 7y ago
toyg 7y ago
My war stories are only about remote-first teams slowly perverted into office-based ones... sadpanda.jpg
- vsareto 7y ago
  I agree with you there. Were there any major reasons why they were converted?
  - toyg 7y ago
    In one case, sales & admin felt “uneasy” not having a real office where to invite customers and partners. I honestly don’t see how a crappy shared-space office is better than no office, but I’m not in sales... Another case, ISO-8000something about controlling infrastructure from which you access customer sites; which is kinda stupid in the third millennium, but there you go. The problem is that, as soon as you have expensive real estate paid for, you get all sort of pressure about actually using it, so new hires are placed there 100% etc etc, until “grandfathered remotes” are effectively considered legacy.
- muratk 7y ago
  Can be fast, too. I once interviewed an Indian dev who was telling me that in his remote startup, they grew so quickly to 200+ people that management got overwhelmed and figured they better have everyone in an office. Canceled remote for everyone, just like that.
muratk 7y ago
We had a colocated team in Cebu, Philippines. Turns out, not too many Go devs in Cebu, so went remote. Now UTC+1 to UTC+8. Bigger challenges: - the utter unfairness that some people are really effective (possibly because experienced) remotely and can just do it while others are not. The latter we gradually “released” into remote work, with a lot of feedback. - Biggest skill to be learnt, of course: communication. so much patching up is possible by just noticing someone is in a bad mood, or switching to a live discussion. Doesn't work with remote. - hard to support juniors: they need to learn both work skills and communication—and often even don't realize it. - learning to take responsibility. You're Internet at home doesn't work today? Too bad—I'm not fixing it for you. You're remote, you figure it out. - currently: the realization that most things are _not_ urgent. Going more and more async. edit: late-night formatting
- jcagalawan 7y ago
  Have contact info? Exploring opportunities in Cebu.
  - muratk 7y ago
    Well, we're a remote team. ;) Incidentally, I'm still in Cebu, but it wouldn't matter where you are.
    - jcagalawan 7y ago
      I’m just a Cebuano finding excuses to visit home bai :). How’s the tech scene over there?
      - muratk 7y ago
        Not too sure. You'll likely find stuff for PHP, but a bunch of meetups have gone dormant AFAIK. High paying jobs here are scarce if they exist at all, probably same as when you left.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  Your last two points contradict each other. If it's not urgent, they can be gone for a few hours or days. If it's a consistent problem, that's a different discussion.
marcinzm 7y ago
Converting a team is difficult because you: a) Already have ways of communicating that aren't particularly friendly to being remote b) Presumably have a lot of people on a few locations so remote employees outside those areas can feel left out of the loop The question I have is, why do you want to convert to remote? What is the drive and goal?
gtirloni 7y ago
Lack of trust by management quickly turning into micromanagement which turns into resentment. It's really hard to stop it once it starts.
dnautics 7y ago
Does anyone have a concrete set of requirements before going remote? My managers want to do this but I'm not convinced we have the right stuff, in terms of process. Stuff like: How should we/should we not set up our git repo? How should we organize our slack channels, meetings, team documentation, etc.
- s1k3s 7y ago
  Honest question: why would those things be different? I mean, of course meetings can't happen if everyone is in a different timezone, but everything else should be just the same as with a non-remote team.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    I don't know, that's why I'm asking.
- codingdave 7y ago
  I have been remote for almost a decade, in a few different organizations, and your toolkits and documentation really aren't as big a factor as you would think. Slack, git repos, etc... those are already asynchronous communication, so whatever you have, if it works already, will still work remotely. Meetings, however, need to change a bit... 1) They are now your only time for socialization. Let them wander a bit more, be tolerant of personal talking and catching up as everyone gets into them. Find the right balance of focus of your agenda and letting people interact with each other. 2) Do not trash people's focused time by spreading meetings out over the entire week. Being remote, you'll learn that you have focused times, and less effective times, and will learn how to let everyone have flexible schedules to both work at their ideal times, and have some shared time online for communications. Don't wreck this process by getting into the habit of thinking that a 5-day 8-hour workweek is all equally good for meetings. It is not. Talk to the team and find common blocks of time when people are comfortable working, but not at peak efficiency (Early Tuesday afternoons, for example.) Fill those times with meetings, and leave the rest of the times open. This lets the team truly capture the focus and flexibility that is possible when working from home, and gets the meetings done at a time when people are happy to be there.
williesleg 7y ago
Worked at VMware in 2016. They fired all of us and told us that in order to collect any severance we would have to train our Chinese replacements. It was a fuck you moment as I trained my Chinese team all I knew about VMWare workstation kernel in a month, fuckers didn't understand any of my deep institutional knowledge at that level, I didn't care. Got my severance and they do literally nothing except new splash screens and GUI elements. I guess that's Dell/EMC/VMware in a nutshell. Wouldn't trust anything to them anymore.
s1k3s 7y ago
I didn't start a remote team myself but for the past few months I've been trying to get into one.. Honestly the worst thing that I'm facing at the moment is lack of trust. I've passed interview tests, showcased code, showcased apps already running in production, went through dozens of meetings and for some reason people still think I'm there to scam them.
- muratk 7y ago
  Curious, how do you know that lack of trust is the reason? I mean, they wouldn't tell you, right? Maybe it's something simpler like, salaries, timezone, ...?
dominotw 7y ago
I've worked with teams in india and employees there ( rightly) feel no involvement/empathy for the project. They just wanted to write software to spec, go home, get paid. And writing software specs doesn't really work. I don't see why someone getting paid to write software to spec doesn't do exactly that.
MatekCopatek 7y ago
Disclaimer: not an intentional fully onsite to fully remote conversion, but a gradual transition of existing and addition of new, fully remote members. - People miss socializing in the office. We've addressed it by actually drinking coffee and chatting on camera for about 15 minutes after the daily. Also considering regular team-based video game sessions, though the question here is whose time they're on (the company isn't too excited to fund weekly counter-strike time and team members aren't to happy to spend their free time to improve work relations). - Daily meetings become way more valuable, as you can no longer just turn to people and go "Hey, Julia, what was that flaky integration test you were fixing yesterday?". It takes a lot of adjustment to figure out when it's worth interrupting people and when you should just write something down and ask on the daily. - It's more difficult to effectively manage people. You notice everything on site - sighs, high fives, facial expressions, keyboard rattling, all the things that can help you recognize whether people are happy, stressed, bored, productive etc. Being remote, you need to develop processes to get that information "manually" and in a way that respects your team members (i.e. without constantly breathing down their necks).
- em-bee 7y ago
  i don't get why text chat message about that flaky test is any issue. send it and let the person respond when they are free. doing that in remote work all the time
jnwatson 7y ago
The company I work for is 100% remote. 100% remote is far easier than 10% remote, because all of your processes must evolve around that. My general observation is that the worse your processes are before your transition, the worse the conversion will go. "By the skin of your teeth" and informal processes are less efficient. Communication must be documented and asynchronous. We use a typical scrum process. We do daily (short!) standups to keep in touch with each others' stuff. We're all expected to be on voice chat during work hours. (We have multiple channels for side discussions, meetings, etc). This helps a lot with the feeling of isolation. We get together in meat space twice a year. The biggest challenge going forward is growth. We're now too big for one scrum. Even the voice chatter has lessened now, because radio discipline is more important te
- ptcampbell 7y ago
  Is voice chat always on?
  - alexpapworth 7y ago
    No, that would be absurd.
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    Push to talk.
    - dividedbyzero 7y ago
      What software solution and hardware are you using for this?
      - StavrosK 7y ago
        I don't know what the OP uses, but I used Mumble and it was fantastic. Super light, and unbelievable quality.
- muratk 7y ago
mnm1 7y ago
We went from partial remote to full remote with zero issues. Our team was half or more remote by the time of the transition. Everyone worked remotely at least part of the time before the switch. We already had remote processes in place. Frankly, it doesn't have to be a war story. It can be a smooth transition. We don't force socialize people. We don't force video on people. We don't force schedules, other than a daily and weekly meeting, although even that early forced start time leads to lost productivity from the engineering team members that prefer to start later. But we had the same problem before the change. The managers run the scrum meeting simply for their own benefit to the detriment of the team. So just like everywhere else. Other than that, it works great. Few meetings outside of this. A lot less time wasted lollygagging around the water cooler, playing games, going to lunch, and so many other useless activities that chew up a typical day on site. I will never go back to an on-site company if I can help it.
- house9-2 7y ago
  > We don't force socialize people That's good. I prefer to keep work and normal life separate. Of course you can develop great friendship through work, no need to force it. > We don't force video on people Once you are established that seems fine, but when bringing on new members I get a better feeling that I am dealing with another human being instead of some random person bugging me on slack. > I will never go back to an on-site company if I can help it. Same
jwsteigerwalt 7y ago
In an office setting, A lot of personality tendencies (To excel or slack off) are tamped down. I’ve caught myself more than once in a position where I waited too long and let too many red flags pass by telling me that a team member could not cut it as we reorganized with more or all remote work. I wish I had cut them or decided to make the difficult investment to coach back towards success earlier.
bitL 7y ago
A good manager is one whose absence doesn't affect performance. Most managers are there for power, game of control, therefore hate remote work. At best they micromanage - "Did your Slack status turn to 'Away' for a few seconds? Here is an urgent message from me!"
planetzero 7y ago
I've been working remotely for the past decade. Some issues I think any company will deal with: At most places, I never felt connected to the company. Since I didn't have that social aspect of talking face-to-face every day. The amount of discipline it takes to work remotely is the same as starting your own company. You need to be able to keep working, knowing that there isn't someone watching you all day. Most people can't handle this and end up getting very distracted at home. One company where I worked went through many employees because of this. Communication is key and you need a manager that can communicate very well. In my experience, introverts were the worst remote managers. Passive aggressiveness and poor communication went hand-in-hand with introverted managers. One manager was poor at communicating, wouldn't take the blame for issues with his own code, and I had to initiate all communication regarding projects and tasks because there would always be something intentionally or unintentionally missing. I would complete a task/project and then after it was completed, the manager would reprimand me because something was missing. I always try to fix these situations, so in future tasks, I would have a voice call and go over everything that needed to be completed. This really didn't change anything. I left the company over frustration and within 6 months, it went out of business.
znq 7y ago
We started as an "office company" in 2011, turned partly remote in 2014 and fully remote in 2018. Being all in an office worked great. Fully remote worked great. Anything in between is difficult. Remote workers are just not fully integrated, no matter being it things happening spontaneously in the office or social events. Also in confirmation of one of the sibling comments these have been for us the main issues as well: • Communication is a skill that most engineers don't possess and have difficulty learning. • We stopped working with junior people. It's just too time-consuming grooming them remotely. • Teaching team members that they are responsible for their own working environment. Shitty Internet and working from a loud coffee shop is just not acceptable. Still, they do it. To onboard new team members and even as guidelines on a daily basis we've written and published an extensive company handbook (used to be a not so visually appealing internal wiki): https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf/ https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf/
nojvek 7y ago
I’ve been working remote for over 5 years. Here are my lessons. 1) work from home is really hard. Home is home, work is work. You need either a fully isolated work room where you only work or go to some co-working space which is work. Dress like you’re going to work. No pajama work days. Best is when you have couple of folks in same city that make a remote satellite office. I’ve seen great success with many satellite offices. 2) ensure you have good internet connection, a good headset with noise cancellation mic and speakers, a good camera that works in low light. A good powerful machine. MacBook pros are prolly the most popular. 3) Out of sight, out of mind is a real thing. Reply to messages within a certain timeframe, say an hour. I used to have morning hours which was reviews and discussion. I replied immediately and was open to any interruptions. Evening hours I liked to get 3-4 hours of in the zone focus. 4) write things down. Google docs, slack, wikis are great tools. For every project I used to have a team doc with overall eagle eye plan + weekly notes. What happened last week? what metrics/impact we moved? What we’re gonna do this week, why we’re gonna do it and what metrics/impact we think will be made. Anyone could look at the doc and had a good idea where things were headed. Documenting progress is just as important as actually making the progress. 5) There’s usually some work timezone where everyone is expected to have at-least 4 hours in common. Make use of that. Set 1:1s, talk about feelings, ideas, overall health of business, kitchen sink conversations etc. 6) remote folks sometimes end up being over worked. Know when to shut off and switch to “non-work” mode. It’s important.
hef19898 7y ago
My favorite anecdote is from adding an on-site intern to a remote team. So, it started with my team being split accross three locations, including the main office where I was. Then we finally got a working student / intern as support who was placed at the main office. As luck would have it, the project he could best support the team was handled by one of the remote team members. long story short, I was so used to manage the team remotely, that it took me almost two months to realize the intern, as far as HR was concerned my intern, was remotely managed by someone who was remotely managed by me. despite the intern sitting right across my desk. Embarassing when I realized it, but it showed what a damn good team it was.
tonicb 7y ago
I love this question so much and have been thinking about it for the past few days (especially as I just put out a four-part guide on remote work). Here are a few stories I picked up in the past five years: I was an executive at a tech company which had a HQ in California. I joined to lead our European expansion so from the outset it was clear that I was going to be defacto ‘remote’. Although, at the time it wasn’t discussed as such. What was very obvious was that at the start the responsibility was very much on me to get in front of the people I needed, be heard, aggressively communicate what I wanted/needed, wake up early, stay online late, set reminders to ping people before I would go to bed... Then in order to acquire the best talent, the company decided to become remote-friendly (and later remote-first). And more or less immediately I felt the burden of responsibility lifting form our small European team because I (and the European team) was no longer alone in the remote work situation. The moment the company was clear on its intention, the habits started to settle in and everyone seemed to get on the same page. It was quite impressive to watch. But this shift was absolutely intentional and top-down driven. One interesting impact the shift to remote-friendly (which lead us to become remote-first) was the following: An increasing number of people took advantage of this shift, the HQ office slowly started to empty and lost the upbeat and busy atmosphere it once had. The remote attitude also started to extend to people working at HQ and remote became synonymous for ‘Work from home’ and making this a recurring habit was tempting. Seeing as the default was starting to be remote, it mattered far less if the HQ people were physically in the office because all those habits necessary for remote work had settled in. I would certainly avoid the blend of remote work and centralised office because right from the outset it creates two separate cultures. I would advocate for going all in if you are doing in. While we were transitioning we certainly had two cultures. Common mistakes: - not being explicit and intentional with the decision - not knowing why you are doing this shift in the first place - seeing it as a perk rather than a fundamentally new way of working - not preparing for such a shift - being very clear on what 'remote' means for your company (how are you defining it)

108 points by vsareto 7y ago

Stories for starting remote teams also welcome!

I've built (not converted) and managed two NA-wide remote teams of high-performers in the last decade (once at my own startup DotSpots, second time here at FullStory). I don't have any particular stories, but happy to answer any questions.

vsareto 7y ago
Did anyone struggle with converting to remote work themselves? Or was everyone already comfortable with it?
- tjr225 7y ago
  I've found almost everyone struggles converting to remote work and empathized a lot with my colleagues as we on boarded together. Some of them didn't like it and went back to Amazon or Google or some other startup. My advice if you're starting a remote job for the first time- give it a chance even if goals and communication seem unclear at first. You have to develop an entirely new way of communicating and it is hard.
  - muratk 7y ago
    Did they prefer the huge company because of perks/salaries/tech, or actually because of being office-based? If remote, what was their #1 issue?
    - bostik 7y ago
      As someone who did 7 years remote-only, I have gathered some insights. 1: Synchronisation of effort for a team is absolutely crucial. 2: The top priority is for the teams to communicate amongst themselves fluently, and feel comfortable to communicate with practically anyone at the company at large. 3: If you don't live in a tech hub or a large city (which, to be honest, are mostly the same things), the life as a remote-only can get really lonely. 4: In a profession with a pretty big fraction of existentialists, learning to keep office hours and being able to turn off from work mode is essential for long-term stability. 5: You need a separate workspace for an office. I learned this the hard way. The ability to walk away from work after the day is important. And you really should have a separate computer for work, so you don't even accidentally look up the work stuff outside of office hours. 6: Everyone needs hobbies. If a person lives their life through their screen, it is very unlikely that they are suitable for long-term remote-only work. If you're a manager at an office, you usually want to know what makes your team members tick. If you're a non-junior at a remote-only company, it is absolutely essential that you learn what makes your team mates tick. 7: Teams need to meet up in person frequently. A day or two every 3-4 weeks is good. Several days at least twice a year is essential. Because there are no watercooler or office corridor moments, the company needs to provide an environment where something like this can take root spontaneously. 8: Meta-review for code review can be surprisingly helpful, even after the onboarding. The truth is, not everyone is cut out for remote work. Because long-term mental health depends on being able to turn off and walk away, you are automatically selecting for wealthier individuals. I know this sounds really harsh, but it's true. A person who can afford the space for a dedicated office for their working hours is several times more likely to stay around and grow into a bigger role in the company. A person whose hobbies involve physical activity and getting out of their house is far more likely to be a good remote-only employee than someone who at the end of the day switches from emails and code to computer games and Netflix. Loneliness and detachment are the biggest problems, at least in my experience.
      - muratk 7y ago
        Hm, some of those points I've experienced, too, or make sense to me. 3: You mean “professionally lonely” as not physically meeting enough other, say, devs? Why can't you get your tech interactions online and satisfy your need to meet people with non-tech people? That would remove the requirement for a tech hub. 8: That isn't specific to remote? I very much agree that remote work isn't for everyone. But then, nothing is. Not even mango float, and that's a _fantastic_ dessert. I don't agree with your reasoning, though. Many people are in horrible office-type jobs and their sanity would depend on them walking away. They don't, often for the same reason. Wealth helps because it gives freedom, but this isn't specific to remote. Also, depending on what you define as remote work. In a not-so-rich country, remote work helps people in more remote and hence usually poorer regions get jobs. Yes, those aren't always great jobs—but they're in line with qualifications, and they do enable people to live better lives.
        bostik 7y ago
        For number 3, I mean lonely in general. I've experienced it myself and witnessed a number of good people get burned. As engineers, makers, tinkerers and creators, we tend to find our social networks among like-minded folk. When I was remote, I was living in a smaller town, where not much happened. There were a number of IT employers, but nothing particularly interesting. So I didn't have much "professionally aligned" groups to hang out with. Working from home also allowed to skip trivial outdoorsy stuff, and the weather being inhospitable for >6 months a year didn't help. At the office we meet like-minded people all the time. Those at the company who lived in large cities (3 in the entire country that qualify) could meet in person outside of company activities, and they had groups of other makers to socialise with. Where you have a tech scene, you tend to have lots of nicely aligned activities. Living in a more distant location, you're alone. As for number 8, you're of course right. It's not specific to remote, but I've found that at an office environment talking about some tricky problem that has surfaced during code review happens automatically, and discussing wider aspects of the code review in general tends to be part of workflow/tooling. Yes, I do review code review at the office but it's not essential. (Important, sure.) But when your communication channels are not in-person, going over code review as matter of course becomes critical. Not being able to walk over and chat about engineering practices is something you will only miss once you've seen both sides for long enough. The selection for wealth? Here I'm talking about jobs that require deep concentration. Tech is notorious for our constant search for the flow state. Interruptions and bad ergonomics can be devastating. But more than that, in order to remain mentally stable at a remote-only job for a long time, you need to be able to respect office hours and have a clear way to cut yourself off of the work environment. If your work machine is the same as your personal use machine, those lines can get awfully hazy. Not good for mental wellbeing in the long run.
- mmastrac 7y ago
  I found that almost everyone quickly got used to working remotely - at least within the first few months. We hired more on the senior end, so that might also be a factor. Managing performance and setting expectations is probably a little more important than in-office work. Learning how to "yield the floor" for more extroverted team members and how to find a quiet moment to pop in for more introverted members is something that remote workers _need_ to learn quickly. Offering remote employees a stipend for a co-working space is something we do today at FullStory. Some of my team members choose to make use of that to get more socialization. Others will just occasionally work from coffee shops. I think that managers are the ones who struggle most in the conversion - you need to trust that people are getting work done and that can be difficult.
  - numbsafari 7y ago
    The stipend for co-working is a good one. In general, if you are hiring remote, it’s good to plan to do things like this, plus have stipends for office supplies / equipment (buy people a nice chair and/or standing desk, send them good headphones). Replace the “free lunch and beer” budget with things like that. It helps with retention and a sense of belonging and team identity... eg, if you send a “branded gift box” with AirPods Pro to each team member unannounced, they’ll probably really appreciate that, plus you can toss in some swag, like a branded case or bag, t-shirts. Just because folks are remote doesn’t mean you should treat them any less like an employee. Retention is key.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      Agreed. It’s a nice touch to receive swag as remote worker. At my company they often forget the remote people with stuff like this. But most people are onsite and only a few are remote.
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        At my company they often forget the remote people with stuff like this. This is my biggest fear having recently been asked to make a few infrastructure changes to allow remote workers. My company is beginning to allow support staff to work and connect to key systems remotely, and while I can’t say how effective the individual workers will be, after a few years here (and soon about to depart) I have to place a vote of no confidence in my leadership to actually put any meaningful weight behind their words of “we are now supporting remote workers”. the reality is they’re now allowing remote workers in a part of the company that sees the most attrition, has the lowest promotion numbers and historically has not received near the same treatment as other departments. I don’t have confidence they’ll be well supported judging from how other remote teams are “supported”, mine included.
- nickbauman 7y ago
  Currently managing an all remote team. All senior devs and a fantastic product manager, QA and analyst; all people I've known for more than a decade. I honestly don't know how I would do this with junior devs. Not their fault; my fault. The only problem was my father died while I was visiting relatives in France in December and it really threw people on the team off what they were supposed to be doing heading into the holidays. I was focusing on how to store a dead body from across the ocean for about a week. My takeaway: uncertainly can knock you for a loop in an expensive, subtle and quick way. Work to eliminate uncertainly for your team and if they're good, they will be happy and healthy.
  - mmastrac 7y ago
    > I honestly don't know how I would do this with junior devs. Not their fault; my fault. Ditto. I'm still pondering how working with junior folks might work. In-office teams _may_ be able to absorb and level-up more junior people. Would love to spitball ideas on this with anyone else interested in that topic.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      That’s a good point. All my remote experiences have been with pretty experienced and self sufficient people. I would think that bigger remote companies like basecamp or Gitlab or Automattic have experience with onboarding junior people. Or maybe they also hire only experienced people.
      - nickbauman 7y ago
        I know a bit about basecamp's hiring from a few years back through a friend of an employee. They have a lot of trouble getting people hired. Mostly because they seem to have a unicorn list of things each hire has to come in the door with.
      - jeanduplessis 7y ago
        I’m a hiring manager at GitLab and we currently don't hire junior engineers: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/career-development/#junior-engineers https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/career-develop... That said we are trying to bring in more junior engineers via our internship program: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/internships/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/internships/ If our internship pilot is successful we hope that this will be a feasible way to bring in more junior engineers.
mnky9800n 7y ago
how do you facilitate coffee break/after work beers/etc creativity?
- mmastrac 7y ago
  We have a private slack channel for banter. We all get on-site 5-6 times/year where we front-load our team-building via beers/activities and get face time. We've also found that there is some informal coffee talk with people who get to our occasional video call meetings early. Other members of the team have just started doing random 1:1s with each other to replace "coffee collisions". Our culture at FS involves something called "RAEB" (the redundant array of expensive brains) and we'll often just drop half-baked ideas into slack with the expectation that nobody _has_ to evaluate it, but it may occasionally spark future work. We will also go back from time-to-time and search thru Slack history to see if there was anything that popped up that we should dig into more deeply. I think that creativity just takes on a different form in a remote team.
- numbsafari 7y ago
  Two things I’ve tried (neither of these are ideas original to me, just things I’ve been a part of and brought with me to multiple orgs): - office hours: this is not a meeting ... it’s just a team dialed into a hangout or other voice chat for an hour. Totally optional. Folks can talk while working, talk about work, talk about not work, whatever. Just share the virtual space for a bit. This can be really helpful for “serendipity”, building trust and depth in interpersonal communication, cross-training, and otherwise just de-tensioning if you are involved in a high-stakes activity. - BOF/hack-a-thon/quarterly on-site... basically, everyone meets somewhere in meatspace for a week (Monday PM to Friday AM). Good things to do during this time: planning, team-building, demos, tech-talks, bring in an outsider or trainer, etc. Lots of larger OSS projects do this.
  - mike_h 7y ago
    Any interesting outsider / trainer experiences?
    - 7y ago

toyg 7y ago

My war stories are only about remote-first teams slowly perverted into office-based ones... sadpanda.jpg

vsareto 7y ago
I agree with you there. Were there any major reasons why they were converted?
- toyg 7y ago
  In one case, sales & admin felt “uneasy” not having a real office where to invite customers and partners. I honestly don’t see how a crappy shared-space office is better than no office, but I’m not in sales... Another case, ISO-8000something about controlling infrastructure from which you access customer sites; which is kinda stupid in the third millennium, but there you go. The problem is that, as soon as you have expensive real estate paid for, you get all sort of pressure about actually using it, so new hires are placed there 100% etc etc, until “grandfathered remotes” are effectively considered legacy.
muratk 7y ago
Can be fast, too. I once interviewed an Indian dev who was telling me that in his remote startup, they grew so quickly to 200+ people that management got overwhelmed and figured they better have everyone in an office. Canceled remote for everyone, just like that.

muratk 7y ago

We had a colocated team in Cebu, Philippines. Turns out, not too many Go devs in Cebu, so went remote. Now UTC+1 to UTC+8. Bigger challenges: - the utter unfairness that some people are really effective (possibly because experienced) remotely and can just do it while others are not. The latter we gradually “released” into remote work, with a lot of feedback. - Biggest skill to be learnt, of course: communication. so much patching up is possible by just noticing someone is in a bad mood, or switching to a live discussion. Doesn't work with remote. - hard to support juniors: they need to learn both work skills and communication—and often even don't realize it. - learning to take responsibility. You're Internet at home doesn't work today? Too bad—I'm not fixing it for you. You're remote, you figure it out. - currently: the realization that most things are _not_ urgent. Going more and more async. edit: late-night formatting

jcagalawan 7y ago
Have contact info? Exploring opportunities in Cebu.
- muratk 7y ago
  Well, we're a remote team. ;) Incidentally, I'm still in Cebu, but it wouldn't matter where you are.
  - jcagalawan 7y ago
    I’m just a Cebuano finding excuses to visit home bai :). How’s the tech scene over there?
    - muratk 7y ago
      Not too sure. You'll likely find stuff for PHP, but a bunch of meetups have gone dormant AFAIK. High paying jobs here are scarce if they exist at all, probably same as when you left.
celticmusic 7y ago
Your last two points contradict each other. If it's not urgent, they can be gone for a few hours or days. If it's a consistent problem, that's a different discussion.

marcinzm 7y ago

Converting a team is difficult because you: a) Already have ways of communicating that aren't particularly friendly to being remote b) Presumably have a lot of people on a few locations so remote employees outside those areas can feel left out of the loop The question I have is, why do you want to convert to remote? What is the drive and goal?

gtirloni 7y ago

Lack of trust by management quickly turning into micromanagement which turns into resentment. It's really hard to stop it once it starts.

dnautics 7y ago

Does anyone have a concrete set of requirements before going remote? My managers want to do this but I'm not convinced we have the right stuff, in terms of process. Stuff like: How should we/should we not set up our git repo? How should we organize our slack channels, meetings, team documentation, etc.

s1k3s 7y ago
Honest question: why would those things be different? I mean, of course meetings can't happen if everyone is in a different timezone, but everything else should be just the same as with a non-remote team.
- dnautics 7y ago
  I don't know, that's why I'm asking.
codingdave 7y ago
I have been remote for almost a decade, in a few different organizations, and your toolkits and documentation really aren't as big a factor as you would think. Slack, git repos, etc... those are already asynchronous communication, so whatever you have, if it works already, will still work remotely. Meetings, however, need to change a bit... 1) They are now your only time for socialization. Let them wander a bit more, be tolerant of personal talking and catching up as everyone gets into them. Find the right balance of focus of your agenda and letting people interact with each other. 2) Do not trash people's focused time by spreading meetings out over the entire week. Being remote, you'll learn that you have focused times, and less effective times, and will learn how to let everyone have flexible schedules to both work at their ideal times, and have some shared time online for communications. Don't wreck this process by getting into the habit of thinking that a 5-day 8-hour workweek is all equally good for meetings. It is not. Talk to the team and find common blocks of time when people are comfortable working, but not at peak efficiency (Early Tuesday afternoons, for example.) Fill those times with meetings, and leave the rest of the times open. This lets the team truly capture the focus and flexibility that is possible when working from home, and gets the meetings done at a time when people are happy to be there.

williesleg 7y ago

Worked at VMware in 2016. They fired all of us and told us that in order to collect any severance we would have to train our Chinese replacements. It was a fuck you moment as I trained my Chinese team all I knew about VMWare workstation kernel in a month, fuckers didn't understand any of my deep institutional knowledge at that level, I didn't care. Got my severance and they do literally nothing except new splash screens and GUI elements. I guess that's Dell/EMC/VMware in a nutshell. Wouldn't trust anything to them anymore.

s1k3s 7y ago

I didn't start a remote team myself but for the past few months I've been trying to get into one.. Honestly the worst thing that I'm facing at the moment is lack of trust. I've passed interview tests, showcased code, showcased apps already running in production, went through dozens of meetings and for some reason people still think I'm there to scam them.

muratk 7y ago
Curious, how do you know that lack of trust is the reason? I mean, they wouldn't tell you, right? Maybe it's something simpler like, salaries, timezone, ...?

dominotw 7y ago

I've worked with teams in india and employees there ( rightly) feel no involvement/empathy for the project. They just wanted to write software to spec, go home, get paid. And writing software specs doesn't really work. I don't see why someone getting paid to write software to spec doesn't do exactly that.

MatekCopatek 7y ago

Disclaimer: not an intentional fully onsite to fully remote conversion, but a gradual transition of existing and addition of new, fully remote members. - People miss socializing in the office. We've addressed it by actually drinking coffee and chatting on camera for about 15 minutes after the daily. Also considering regular team-based video game sessions, though the question here is whose time they're on (the company isn't too excited to fund weekly counter-strike time and team members aren't to happy to spend their free time to improve work relations). - Daily meetings become way more valuable, as you can no longer just turn to people and go "Hey, Julia, what was that flaky integration test you were fixing yesterday?". It takes a lot of adjustment to figure out when it's worth interrupting people and when you should just write something down and ask on the daily. - It's more difficult to effectively manage people. You notice everything on site - sighs, high fives, facial expressions, keyboard rattling, all the things that can help you recognize whether people are happy, stressed, bored, productive etc. Being remote, you need to develop processes to get that information "manually" and in a way that respects your team members (i.e. without constantly breathing down their necks).

em-bee 7y ago
i don't get why text chat message about that flaky test is any issue. send it and let the person respond when they are free. doing that in remote work all the time

jnwatson 7y ago

The company I work for is 100% remote. 100% remote is far easier than 10% remote, because all of your processes must evolve around that. My general observation is that the worse your processes are before your transition, the worse the conversion will go. "By the skin of your teeth" and informal processes are less efficient. Communication must be documented and asynchronous. We use a typical scrum process. We do daily (short!) standups to keep in touch with each others' stuff. We're all expected to be on voice chat during work hours. (We have multiple channels for side discussions, meetings, etc). This helps a lot with the feeling of isolation. We get together in meat space twice a year. The biggest challenge going forward is growth. We're now too big for one scrum. Even the voice chatter has lessened now, because radio discipline is more important te

ptcampbell 7y ago
Is voice chat always on?
- alexpapworth 7y ago
  No, that would be absurd.
- jnwatson 7y ago
  Push to talk.
  - dividedbyzero 7y ago
    What software solution and hardware are you using for this?
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      I don't know what the OP uses, but I used Mumble and it was fantastic. Super light, and unbelievable quality.
muratk 7y ago

mnm1 7y ago

We went from partial remote to full remote with zero issues. Our team was half or more remote by the time of the transition. Everyone worked remotely at least part of the time before the switch. We already had remote processes in place. Frankly, it doesn't have to be a war story. It can be a smooth transition. We don't force socialize people. We don't force video on people. We don't force schedules, other than a daily and weekly meeting, although even that early forced start time leads to lost productivity from the engineering team members that prefer to start later. But we had the same problem before the change. The managers run the scrum meeting simply for their own benefit to the detriment of the team. So just like everywhere else. Other than that, it works great. Few meetings outside of this. A lot less time wasted lollygagging around the water cooler, playing games, going to lunch, and so many other useless activities that chew up a typical day on site. I will never go back to an on-site company if I can help it.

house9-2 7y ago
> We don't force socialize people That's good. I prefer to keep work and normal life separate. Of course you can develop great friendship through work, no need to force it. > We don't force video on people Once you are established that seems fine, but when bringing on new members I get a better feeling that I am dealing with another human being instead of some random person bugging me on slack. > I will never go back to an on-site company if I can help it. Same

jwsteigerwalt 7y ago

In an office setting, A lot of personality tendencies (To excel or slack off) are tamped down. I’ve caught myself more than once in a position where I waited too long and let too many red flags pass by telling me that a team member could not cut it as we reorganized with more or all remote work. I wish I had cut them or decided to make the difficult investment to coach back towards success earlier.

bitL 7y ago

A good manager is one whose absence doesn't affect performance. Most managers are there for power, game of control, therefore hate remote work. At best they micromanage - "Did your Slack status turn to 'Away' for a few seconds? Here is an urgent message from me!"

planetzero 7y ago

I've been working remotely for the past decade. Some issues I think any company will deal with: At most places, I never felt connected to the company. Since I didn't have that social aspect of talking face-to-face every day. The amount of discipline it takes to work remotely is the same as starting your own company. You need to be able to keep working, knowing that there isn't someone watching you all day. Most people can't handle this and end up getting very distracted at home. One company where I worked went through many employees because of this. Communication is key and you need a manager that can communicate very well. In my experience, introverts were the worst remote managers. Passive aggressiveness and poor communication went hand-in-hand with introverted managers. One manager was poor at communicating, wouldn't take the blame for issues with his own code, and I had to initiate all communication regarding projects and tasks because there would always be something intentionally or unintentionally missing. I would complete a task/project and then after it was completed, the manager would reprimand me because something was missing. I always try to fix these situations, so in future tasks, I would have a voice call and go over everything that needed to be completed. This really didn't change anything. I left the company over frustration and within 6 months, it went out of business.

znq 7y ago

We started as an "office company" in 2011, turned partly remote in 2014 and fully remote in 2018. Being all in an office worked great. Fully remote worked great. Anything in between is difficult. Remote workers are just not fully integrated, no matter being it things happening spontaneously in the office or social events. Also in confirmation of one of the sibling comments these have been for us the main issues as well: • Communication is a skill that most engineers don't possess and have difficulty learning. • We stopped working with junior people. It's just too time-consuming grooming them remotely. • Teaching team members that they are responsible for their own working environment. Shitty Internet and working from a loud coffee shop is just not acceptable. Still, they do it. To onboard new team members and even as guidelines on a daily basis we've written and published an extensive company handbook (used to be a not so visually appealing internal wiki): https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf/ https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf/

nojvek 7y ago

I’ve been working remote for over 5 years. Here are my lessons. 1) work from home is really hard. Home is home, work is work. You need either a fully isolated work room where you only work or go to some co-working space which is work. Dress like you’re going to work. No pajama work days. Best is when you have couple of folks in same city that make a remote satellite office. I’ve seen great success with many satellite offices. 2) ensure you have good internet connection, a good headset with noise cancellation mic and speakers, a good camera that works in low light. A good powerful machine. MacBook pros are prolly the most popular. 3) Out of sight, out of mind is a real thing. Reply to messages within a certain timeframe, say an hour. I used to have morning hours which was reviews and discussion. I replied immediately and was open to any interruptions. Evening hours I liked to get 3-4 hours of in the zone focus. 4) write things down. Google docs, slack, wikis are great tools. For every project I used to have a team doc with overall eagle eye plan + weekly notes. What happened last week? what metrics/impact we moved? What we’re gonna do this week, why we’re gonna do it and what metrics/impact we think will be made. Anyone could look at the doc and had a good idea where things were headed. Documenting progress is just as important as actually making the progress. 5) There’s usually some work timezone where everyone is expected to have at-least 4 hours in common. Make use of that. Set 1:1s, talk about feelings, ideas, overall health of business, kitchen sink conversations etc. 6) remote folks sometimes end up being over worked. Know when to shut off and switch to “non-work” mode. It’s important.

hef19898 7y ago

My favorite anecdote is from adding an on-site intern to a remote team. So, it started with my team being split accross three locations, including the main office where I was. Then we finally got a working student / intern as support who was placed at the main office. As luck would have it, the project he could best support the team was handled by one of the remote team members. long story short, I was so used to manage the team remotely, that it took me almost two months to realize the intern, as far as HR was concerned my intern, was remotely managed by someone who was remotely managed by me. despite the intern sitting right across my desk. Embarassing when I realized it, but it showed what a damn good team it was.

tonicb 7y ago

I love this question so much and have been thinking about it for the past few days (especially as I just put out a four-part guide on remote work). Here are a few stories I picked up in the past five years: I was an executive at a tech company which had a HQ in California. I joined to lead our European expansion so from the outset it was clear that I was going to be defacto ‘remote’. Although, at the time it wasn’t discussed as such. What was very obvious was that at the start the responsibility was very much on me to get in front of the people I needed, be heard, aggressively communicate what I wanted/needed, wake up early, stay online late, set reminders to ping people before I would go to bed... Then in order to acquire the best talent, the company decided to become remote-friendly (and later remote-first). And more or less immediately I felt the burden of responsibility lifting form our small European team because I (and the European team) was no longer alone in the remote work situation. The moment the company was clear on its intention, the habits started to settle in and everyone seemed to get on the same page. It was quite impressive to watch. But this shift was absolutely intentional and top-down driven. One interesting impact the shift to remote-friendly (which lead us to become remote-first) was the following: An increasing number of people took advantage of this shift, the HQ office slowly started to empty and lost the upbeat and busy atmosphere it once had. The remote attitude also started to extend to people working at HQ and remote became synonymous for ‘Work from home’ and making this a recurring habit was tempting. Seeing as the default was starting to be remote, it mattered far less if the HQ people were physically in the office because all those habits necessary for remote work had settled in. I would certainly avoid the blend of remote work and centralised office because right from the outset it creates two separate cultures. I would advocate for going all in if you are doing in. While we were transitioning we certainly had two cultures. Common mistakes: - not being explicit and intentional with the decision - not knowing why you are doing this shift in the first place - seeing it as a perk rather than a fundamentally new way of working - not preparing for such a shift - being very clear on what 'remote' means for your company (how are you defining it)