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>I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no reason you have to share working hours with anyone. Whoooboy d

>I think async is the next thing that will happen. If you’re building software there’s really no reason you have to share working hours with anyone. Whoooboy do I ever disagree with you there. We have never had offices, so everyone has always been remote, but we absolutely could NOT get in a groove with our former Indian subsidiary. There were a LOT of issues with us and them, some cultural and some just expertise-based (I don't think we had a great lead over there, and I DO think he was afraid of hiring people smarter than he was), but a HUUUUUGE chunk of the issue was that any issue became much harder to resolve because of the lack of meaningful time zone overlap. We ended the experiment and hired up more US folks, at greater cost, but with drastically better cohesion. I get that anecdotes aren't data, but I do not think I would join any team that was spread over more than 4 or 5 time zones. The lack of overlap makes meaningful collaboration too difficult.

ryanSrich 4y ago
> The lack of overlap makes meaningful collaboration too difficult. Please describe in detail what meaningful collaboration even means. The reason why people don’t often explain what it means (especially in threads like this) is because if they actually write it out, they’ll realize how completely unimportant and unnecessary it is.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Peak HN right here. There's this vision that a Good Dev doesn't ever need to talk to anyone, because they'll always get the Perfect Specification, and no business needs will ever intrude and force adjustments, and no meetings will ever need to happen. Candidly, that's crap. If the spec is written well, there will STILL be points where you need to discuss things interactively. Bouncing emails back and forth during a workday is inefficient anyway; it's CRAZY inefficient if the time zones don't overlap, because then you're really only going to get one volley a day. Sometimes, TALKING is the right answer. If your dev team is working a day that is totally outside the rest of the company's working hours, then somebody is going to be working weird times to have that meeting, and that sucks for somebody. The hassle of setting UP that sort of call means people don't want to do it, and so cans of misunderstanding get kicked down the road. I'll never hire offshore again, and I won't work in an org that does it.

ryanSrich 4y ago

> The lack of overlap makes meaningful collaboration too difficult. Please describe in detail what meaningful collaboration even means. The reason why people don’t often explain what it means (especially in threads like this) is because if they actually write it out, they’ll realize how completely unimportant and unnecessary it is.

ubermonkey 4y ago
Peak HN right here. There's this vision that a Good Dev doesn't ever need to talk to anyone, because they'll always get the Perfect Specification, and no business needs will ever intrude and force adjustments, and no meetings will ever need to happen. Candidly, that's crap. If the spec is written well, there will STILL be points where you need to discuss things interactively. Bouncing emails back and forth during a workday is inefficient anyway; it's CRAZY inefficient if the time zones don't overlap, because then you're really only going to get one volley a day. Sometimes, TALKING is the right answer. If your dev team is working a day that is totally outside the rest of the company's working hours, then somebody is going to be working weird times to have that meeting, and that sucks for somebody. The hassle of setting UP that sort of call means people don't want to do it, and so cans of misunderstanding get kicked down the road. I'll never hire offshore again, and I won't work in an org that does it.