3 ms·

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but a few observations: 1) Starting remote seems tougher than going remote. It’s a bit rough on families but maybe an e

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but a few observations: 1) Starting remote seems tougher than going remote. It’s a bit rough on families but maybe an extended in person onboarding trip is a good compromise. 2) Face to face connections have to be renewed every once in a while. Co-location trips are going to become a cost of being remote, I think. 3) Some people come across badly over video. Not sure if there’s some kind a training and/or technological answer but it’s a problem and if it can’t be solved those people are not going to thrive remote even if everything else lines up. 4) All other things being equal the relationship is always going to be more transactional for remote workers. It’s just human nature to feel closer to people you regularly bump into and eat meals with. That’s not necessarily a horrible thing in an industry that blurs the line between work and life, but it does mean you need to be on the top of your game in terms of being productive and making sure people know it.

MattGaiser 5y ago
I started a job remotely. A lot of the problems with remote onboarding to me were because of broken things that conversations could quickly fix, making fixing it properly too onerous. For example, when I was setting up my local environment I needed a token. What token? Not specified. So I had to ask someone else and wait for a reply. It turns out I could have gotten the token myself. In a prior job, I needed at least 10 instructions from senior developers on setting up my local environment as the readme was very out of date. It caused a lot of problems for the next guy coming on board.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  That’s the kind of thing that can and should be fixed by every person that gets onboarded updating the onboarding docs. The thing I find more problematic with remote onboarding followed by remote work is that there’s no relationship building. There needs to be some play in the joints for a team to work. Getting to know teammates as real people, and not just an image on a screen and some IM messages, makes it more likely you will give them the benefit of the doubt.

MattGaiser 5y ago

I started a job remotely. A lot of the problems with remote onboarding to me were because of broken things that conversations could quickly fix, making fixing it properly too onerous. For example, when I was setting up my local environment I needed a token. What token? Not specified. So I had to ask someone else and wait for a reply. It turns out I could have gotten the token myself. In a prior job, I needed at least 10 instructions from senior developers on setting up my local environment as the readme was very out of date. It caused a lot of problems for the next guy coming on board.

bradleyjg 5y ago
That’s the kind of thing that can and should be fixed by every person that gets onboarded updating the onboarding docs. The thing I find more problematic with remote onboarding followed by remote work is that there’s no relationship building. There needs to be some play in the joints for a team to work. Getting to know teammates as real people, and not just an image on a screen and some IM messages, makes it more likely you will give them the benefit of the doubt.