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I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'sh

I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. It's why I think outsourcing often doesn't work out. Outsourced workers lack an understanding of this shared context which makes for a high level of friction and impairs their ability to deliver the work as imagined by the organization. Right now, IME we're still in the sweet spot of being able to work from this shared context, which I think means the benefits of working from the same physical space are not appreciated. It'll be interesting to see how things play out if remote work becomes the norm. I do think remote work can be successful, if the effort is put in to make sure that collaboration etc. still occurs. However, if companies stay remote and try to run on the fumes of the previously held shared context from pre-COVID then I think it will mean disaster for them.

cma 5y ago
Maybe companies could cycle into a building every 3 years or so like cicadas.
- swader999 5y ago
  Every three years seems to long a gap. But two week stretches every few months might be perfect.
- beckingz 5y ago
  I think every 3 months is optimal, but I like the metaphor.
flowerlad 5y ago
Agree regarding shared context. The question though is, how close do you have to be to your coworkers, to create that shared context? Do you have to be in the same room and overhearing conversations? Is it enough to be in the same building? Or is it enough to video conference several times a week? In my experience, video conferencing several times a week is enough to build shared context. Open floor plan not needed.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  I think it varies on the organization and individuals. For me, "shared context" is a general feeling that people can ask questions and ask for help and can expect to get a productive response in a reasonably timely manner. Organizations have absolutely managed to establish that online using tools like video conferencing (as you mention). For me though, I find relying heavily on asynchronous communications insufficient, and synchronous remote communications deeply frustrating (i.e., natural turn-taking cues aren't present in video calls). I end up feeling disconnected from the people I work remotely with, even though they didn't do anything wrong. I can only establish "shared context" with people who have spent enough time with me in the same space with ample frictionless face-to-face conversations.
- curun1r 5y ago
  One crucial bit of shared context that gets mostly missed…lunch. Not having lunch together has been, IME, the single biggest indicator of a dysfunctional team. The neat thing about lunch is that the conversations are entirely non-directed without feeling like the time is being wasted in a meeting. Conversations can cover a specific project, when a high degree of coordination is necessary, generalized venting, when there are shared frustrations or just be about non-work topics that help a team bond and get to know each other as people rather than workers. It’s like a meeting that doesn’t feel like a meeting that can be strategic or therapeutic as needed. There’s really no way to replicate the beneficial effects of eating lunch together when workers are remote. As a manager, this has also been one of my go-to tricks for successful cross-team projects lasting any significant amount of time. I tell one of my team members to setup a lunch with at least one member of the other team on a weekly basis and use the incentive of authorizing the company to pay for it. For ~$20/person/week, the cross-team communications issues basically disappear. It’s ridiculously cost effective and almost magical in how well it works.
  - flowerlad 5y ago
    There are online alternatives to lunch. Such as online games. Try it, it is great for team building.
smichel17 5y ago
Mixed onsite/remote doesn't work because the remote folks become second class citizens. Missing out on conversations that happen in person prevents them from working as effectively. Fully remote takes more explicit focus on making sure necessary communication happens. It's harder to make work than in person. But I don't think it's impossible. Also, in my opinion, remote work works better when team members have met in person. It's easier to pick up on certain ways that they communicate, which help understanding in online communications.
- dagmx 5y ago
  Mixed can work if either some higher up employees are remote or some meaningful percentage of employees are remote (even if a minority). It's about the communication paradigm. If people consider communication to be only local, then it falls apart when people are in multiple locations (including multi site offices). However if people default to remote compatible communication, it scales really well to people working from home and multi site offices.
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    Depends on the type of company. At a sufficient size you end up with offices worldwide and where you are matters less
    - dagmx 5y ago
      I think that largely depends on the location of leadership. If all leadership is in one location, yes, it'll get one sided. If leadership are spread out, I think it works out fine. I've spent the last decade working with large multi site companies in the "lesser" location, and was able to move up from a junior to senior/supervisor roles at each company. Obviously my anecdote doesn't scale out uniformly, but I've seen it work out fine for many employees as long as leadership was adequately spread out.
- danenania 5y ago
  Does anyone have thoughts on hybrid? Like 1-2 days per week in the office. You lose the geographic flexibility, but apart from that, it seems like it could potentially offer the best of both worlds?
seibelj 5y ago
My company is hiring Remote Forever https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 We have shared office pods in cities where we reach critical mass, currently Boston and Miami. The experiment right now is between companies that stick to office requirements and those that decentralize. I hired a high-level Amazon engineer because they did not want to commute back into the office. We pay good money for top talent. The best time for startups to poach high-end talent is now!
naravara 5y ago
> I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. Strong agree here. My company has hired a bunch of new people over the course of the pandemic and the same level of acculturation into the internal culture and way of doing things is just not there for them. A fair number of our team has actually been 100% remote all along before the pandemic, but I think having a core contingent of (particularly operation and project management) people sharing space over the workday did a lot to spread that shared context around and loop the fully remote members of the team in. Over the COVID period I’ve noticed newer team members just having a lot more trouble adjusting and settling in because all that in acknowledged cultural and context dissemination wasn’t happening. I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore. For me that’s less of a deal but, for example, imagine being in the shoes of a junior business development person. For them their career progression and skill development depends on picking up a lot of the lingo and philosophy around how development works by osmosis. The absence of that is pretty fatal for cross team collaboration. Lots of big companies are heavily silo’d in this way where everyone just does their specific job description thing, and I’ve worked in many such companies. I really didn’t like it. Those environments have always felt less dynamic and creative to me. Obviously that’s just one man’s opinion and experience, but I really don’t think I’d be as happy in a fully remote team.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  > I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore This is what I really dislike about remote work. I was looking forwards to mingling with non-programmers, but when you're new to the company and working remotely that's basically impossible.
  - remoquete 5y ago
    That’s simply not true. It’s as easy as joining their channels in Slack.
ilaksh 5y ago
Outsourcing usually doesn't work out because of poor management, such as the first principle and primary driver of a project being to cut costs. And the reason for that is often because budgets are insufficient. They try to find cut-rate programmers by going overseas, then try to save more money by finding the less expensive outsourcing agency. Then, instead of engaging with the problem, they hire a third party middleman who takes a big cut and has no stake in the actual outcome. This is a horrible incentive structure and usually results in poor communication. The fact that they are from another country is irrelevant. The language skills could be very relevant, but again it is usually so poorly managed that none of the people that should be communicating directly with developers even try or are given an opportunity.

cma 5y ago

Maybe companies could cycle into a building every 3 years or so like cicadas.

swader999 5y ago
Every three years seems to long a gap. But two week stretches every few months might be perfect.
beckingz 5y ago
I think every 3 months is optimal, but I like the metaphor.

flowerlad 5y ago

Agree regarding shared context. The question though is, how close do you have to be to your coworkers, to create that shared context? Do you have to be in the same room and overhearing conversations? Is it enough to be in the same building? Or is it enough to video conference several times a week? In my experience, video conferencing several times a week is enough to build shared context. Open floor plan not needed.

the_snooze 5y ago
I think it varies on the organization and individuals. For me, "shared context" is a general feeling that people can ask questions and ask for help and can expect to get a productive response in a reasonably timely manner. Organizations have absolutely managed to establish that online using tools like video conferencing (as you mention). For me though, I find relying heavily on asynchronous communications insufficient, and synchronous remote communications deeply frustrating (i.e., natural turn-taking cues aren't present in video calls). I end up feeling disconnected from the people I work remotely with, even though they didn't do anything wrong. I can only establish "shared context" with people who have spent enough time with me in the same space with ample frictionless face-to-face conversations.
curun1r 5y ago
One crucial bit of shared context that gets mostly missed…lunch. Not having lunch together has been, IME, the single biggest indicator of a dysfunctional team. The neat thing about lunch is that the conversations are entirely non-directed without feeling like the time is being wasted in a meeting. Conversations can cover a specific project, when a high degree of coordination is necessary, generalized venting, when there are shared frustrations or just be about non-work topics that help a team bond and get to know each other as people rather than workers. It’s like a meeting that doesn’t feel like a meeting that can be strategic or therapeutic as needed. There’s really no way to replicate the beneficial effects of eating lunch together when workers are remote. As a manager, this has also been one of my go-to tricks for successful cross-team projects lasting any significant amount of time. I tell one of my team members to setup a lunch with at least one member of the other team on a weekly basis and use the incentive of authorizing the company to pay for it. For ~$20/person/week, the cross-team communications issues basically disappear. It’s ridiculously cost effective and almost magical in how well it works.
- flowerlad 5y ago
  There are online alternatives to lunch. Such as online games. Try it, it is great for team building.

smichel17 5y ago

Mixed onsite/remote doesn't work because the remote folks become second class citizens. Missing out on conversations that happen in person prevents them from working as effectively. Fully remote takes more explicit focus on making sure necessary communication happens. It's harder to make work than in person. But I don't think it's impossible. Also, in my opinion, remote work works better when team members have met in person. It's easier to pick up on certain ways that they communicate, which help understanding in online communications.

dagmx 5y ago
Mixed can work if either some higher up employees are remote or some meaningful percentage of employees are remote (even if a minority). It's about the communication paradigm. If people consider communication to be only local, then it falls apart when people are in multiple locations (including multi site offices). However if people default to remote compatible communication, it scales really well to people working from home and multi site offices.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  Depends on the type of company. At a sufficient size you end up with offices worldwide and where you are matters less
  - dagmx 5y ago
    I think that largely depends on the location of leadership. If all leadership is in one location, yes, it'll get one sided. If leadership are spread out, I think it works out fine. I've spent the last decade working with large multi site companies in the "lesser" location, and was able to move up from a junior to senior/supervisor roles at each company. Obviously my anecdote doesn't scale out uniformly, but I've seen it work out fine for many employees as long as leadership was adequately spread out.
danenania 5y ago
Does anyone have thoughts on hybrid? Like 1-2 days per week in the office. You lose the geographic flexibility, but apart from that, it seems like it could potentially offer the best of both worlds?

seibelj 5y ago

My company is hiring Remote Forever https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 We have shared office pods in cities where we reach critical mass, currently Boston and Miami. The experiment right now is between companies that stick to office requirements and those that decentralize. I hired a high-level Amazon engineer because they did not want to commute back into the office. We pay good money for top talent. The best time for startups to poach high-end talent is now!

naravara 5y ago

> I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. Strong agree here. My company has hired a bunch of new people over the course of the pandemic and the same level of acculturation into the internal culture and way of doing things is just not there for them. A fair number of our team has actually been 100% remote all along before the pandemic, but I think having a core contingent of (particularly operation and project management) people sharing space over the workday did a lot to spread that shared context around and loop the fully remote members of the team in. Over the COVID period I’ve noticed newer team members just having a lot more trouble adjusting and settling in because all that in acknowledged cultural and context dissemination wasn’t happening. I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore. For me that’s less of a deal but, for example, imagine being in the shoes of a junior business development person. For them their career progression and skill development depends on picking up a lot of the lingo and philosophy around how development works by osmosis. The absence of that is pretty fatal for cross team collaboration. Lots of big companies are heavily silo’d in this way where everyone just does their specific job description thing, and I’ve worked in many such companies. I really didn’t like it. Those environments have always felt less dynamic and creative to me. Obviously that’s just one man’s opinion and experience, but I really don’t think I’d be as happy in a fully remote team.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore This is what I really dislike about remote work. I was looking forwards to mingling with non-programmers, but when you're new to the company and working remotely that's basically impossible.
- remoquete 5y ago
  That’s simply not true. It’s as easy as joining their channels in Slack.

ilaksh 5y ago

Outsourcing usually doesn't work out because of poor management, such as the first principle and primary driver of a project being to cut costs. And the reason for that is often because budgets are insufficient. They try to find cut-rate programmers by going overseas, then try to save more money by finding the less expensive outsourcing agency. Then, instead of engaging with the problem, they hire a third party middleman who takes a big cut and has no stake in the actual outcome. This is a horrible incentive structure and usually results in poor communication. The fact that they are from another country is irrelevant. The language skills could be very relevant, but again it is usually so poorly managed that none of the people that should be communicating directly with developers even try or are given an opportunity.