4 ms·

For people talking about the lack of face time for remote workers, might I suggest proposing to potential employees that they spend 80-90% of their time offsite

by tibbon 15y ago

For people talking about the lack of face time for remote workers, might I suggest proposing to potential employees that they spend 80-90% of their time offsite, and 10-20% of their time working onsite? I live in Ohio for example. At some point I really wouldn't mind working for a company in NYC, SF or Boston. Actually, I'd enjoy it since it would give me a chance to escape the midwest with a greater frequency. I'd have zero problem working a week a month in one of those cities. I just can't move to a new location fulltime right now. I have good friends in all of those cities and don't need hotels every time (just pay for my transit costs and I'm set). Yet, hiring employers view location of workers as being a binary of 0 for always offsite, and 1 for always onsite. The most reasonable thing appears to be striking a middleground.

noonespecial 15y ago
Funny thing I've found though, a company that will gladly drop $3k to change a few colors and a font on a web form will sometimes throw a fit over reimbursing a $350 plane ticket. Not all dollars are equal.
- jebblue 15y ago
  I think that's a brilliant observation and accurate.
- baddox 15y ago
  That's the cheapest round trip plane ticket I've ever heard of.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I just punched in an arbitrary roundtrip from Columbus, OH to NYC and got several options at $355 including all taxes and fees.
    - baddox 15y ago
      Not being sarcastic, I had just never seen one that low. I've flown only a handful of times (between SF and Missouri, usually booked about a month or two in advance), and the cheapest round trip option I had ever seen is $600.
      - mikeash 15y ago
        Understandable, then. Roundtrip fares are so heavily dependent on the individual route and when you travel. I did a quick search from SF to DC and got prices as low as $319, despite being considerably farther than MO. I often do roundtrips from DC to South Florida for under $200. But pick the wrong pair of cities and you can definitely be hurting.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      That's even a somewhat uncompetitive route; if you're doing a city pair with a lot of competition, it's more like $200s; e.g. Atlanta<->Houston is typically $200-250 roundtrip.
  - tibbon 15y ago
    Average tickets that I see from Columbus to NYC, Boston or SF are between $310 and $375
dhh 15y ago
It's a great setup. We get remote workers to come into the Chicago every once in a while for a few days or a week. Good boost of energy, but doesn't need to happen more often than once every few months.
- tibbon 15y ago
  For cultural and team building, have you experimented at all with having employees attend an event like SXSW or something even less work-related like PAX so that people can get to know each other personally better in something that is at best tangentially related to work? Or, does it seem to generally be a waste of capital and time that isn't worth it? I've personally experienced that I can really get to know people when spending an entire week hanging out with them in this manner, and that it seems to have very positive impacts on efficiency of my later interaction with them.
  - dhh 15y ago
    Yeah, we generally use RailsConf as a team-building exercise. Didn't get much out of SXSW, though. Liked meeting up somewhere just the team better.
- mhartl 15y ago
  Do they all come in at once, or one at a time? The former seems a lot harder to coordinate.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  Mozilla has all-hands "work weeks" a couple times a year. The location changes each time, so employees can visit different cities and offices.
zecho 15y ago
This is how we do it. Most employees work in the office, but we're fine with people who choose to work remotely, either in part or in full. But sometimes we expect staff to come into the office. Speaking as a manager, building a team of only remotely people can be more difficult than building a team of employees who see each other face-to-face. Face time helps us considerably with junior developers, which are much easier to find than senior developers (and, really, the senior programmers and designers are the people who tend to work best remotely, which brings us back to the problem of the difficulty of hiring senior staff). We can pair juniors with seniors at the office and the juniors will come up to speed much more quickly. It's all about finding a cultural stride in the team. There needs to be a solid core and where they work doesn't matter, so long as that culture permeates. But email and Basecamp and IRC or whatever tools are used aren't necessarily the best place to build that culture--they're merely communication tools. Culture is as much about intangibles like friendship and understanding the company politics beyond the dev team as it is about raw programming ability. And then there's the fact that when I have a team member standing in front of me talking through a problem or just shooting the shit, they've got my full attention, because they're standing in front of me. When a team member sends me an email, I only have their email to look at. That's probably my personal failing as a manager, but there's something to be said about human interaction, beyond cranking out product.
- tibbon 15y ago
  I've been working with a company now remotely for about 3 years. We've only all met in person with 100% of the team maybe 3 times since I started. Partial team meeting with more than 2 people perhaps 6 times. I do agree that culturally it can make for a weaker culture. I'm not really "friends" with any of my co-workers like I have been at all my prior companies. I've never worked on side projects with my coworkers after-hours like I have prior. It isn't the same. Yet, I think its really the culture that we set because of the people we have and/or the tone set by management, not because remote working is a bad idea. We probably could be all a lot closer if management set that as a cultural goal. I agree, there is certainly a difference between having someone come in your office and sending you an email. It would seem the solution, as you've identified, is to have some scheduled and semi-frequent in-person interaction in a non-rushed manner.

by tibbon 15y ago

noonespecial 15y ago

Funny thing I've found though, a company that will gladly drop $3k to change a few colors and a font on a web form will sometimes throw a fit over reimbursing a $350 plane ticket. Not all dollars are equal.

jebblue 15y ago
I think that's a brilliant observation and accurate.
baddox 15y ago
That's the cheapest round trip plane ticket I've ever heard of.
- mikeash 15y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I just punched in an arbitrary roundtrip from Columbus, OH to NYC and got several options at $355 including all taxes and fees.
  - baddox 15y ago
    Not being sarcastic, I had just never seen one that low. I've flown only a handful of times (between SF and Missouri, usually booked about a month or two in advance), and the cheapest round trip option I had ever seen is $600.
    - mikeash 15y ago
      Understandable, then. Roundtrip fares are so heavily dependent on the individual route and when you travel. I did a quick search from SF to DC and got prices as low as $319, despite being considerably farther than MO. I often do roundtrips from DC to South Florida for under $200. But pick the wrong pair of cities and you can definitely be hurting.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    That's even a somewhat uncompetitive route; if you're doing a city pair with a lot of competition, it's more like $200s; e.g. Atlanta<->Houston is typically $200-250 roundtrip.
- tibbon 15y ago
  Average tickets that I see from Columbus to NYC, Boston or SF are between $310 and $375

dhh 15y ago

It's a great setup. We get remote workers to come into the Chicago every once in a while for a few days or a week. Good boost of energy, but doesn't need to happen more often than once every few months.

tibbon 15y ago
For cultural and team building, have you experimented at all with having employees attend an event like SXSW or something even less work-related like PAX so that people can get to know each other personally better in something that is at best tangentially related to work? Or, does it seem to generally be a waste of capital and time that isn't worth it? I've personally experienced that I can really get to know people when spending an entire week hanging out with them in this manner, and that it seems to have very positive impacts on efficiency of my later interaction with them.
- dhh 15y ago
  Yeah, we generally use RailsConf as a team-building exercise. Didn't get much out of SXSW, though. Liked meeting up somewhere just the team better.
mhartl 15y ago
Do they all come in at once, or one at a time? The former seems a lot harder to coordinate.
cpeterso 15y ago
Mozilla has all-hands "work weeks" a couple times a year. The location changes each time, so employees can visit different cities and offices.

zecho 15y ago

This is how we do it. Most employees work in the office, but we're fine with people who choose to work remotely, either in part or in full. But sometimes we expect staff to come into the office. Speaking as a manager, building a team of only remotely people can be more difficult than building a team of employees who see each other face-to-face. Face time helps us considerably with junior developers, which are much easier to find than senior developers (and, really, the senior programmers and designers are the people who tend to work best remotely, which brings us back to the problem of the difficulty of hiring senior staff). We can pair juniors with seniors at the office and the juniors will come up to speed much more quickly. It's all about finding a cultural stride in the team. There needs to be a solid core and where they work doesn't matter, so long as that culture permeates. But email and Basecamp and IRC or whatever tools are used aren't necessarily the best place to build that culture--they're merely communication tools. Culture is as much about intangibles like friendship and understanding the company politics beyond the dev team as it is about raw programming ability. And then there's the fact that when I have a team member standing in front of me talking through a problem or just shooting the shit, they've got my full attention, because they're standing in front of me. When a team member sends me an email, I only have their email to look at. That's probably my personal failing as a manager, but there's something to be said about human interaction, beyond cranking out product.

tibbon 15y ago
I've been working with a company now remotely for about 3 years. We've only all met in person with 100% of the team maybe 3 times since I started. Partial team meeting with more than 2 people perhaps 6 times. I do agree that culturally it can make for a weaker culture. I'm not really "friends" with any of my co-workers like I have been at all my prior companies. I've never worked on side projects with my coworkers after-hours like I have prior. It isn't the same. Yet, I think its really the culture that we set because of the people we have and/or the tone set by management, not because remote working is a bad idea. We probably could be all a lot closer if management set that as a cultural goal. I agree, there is certainly a difference between having someone come in your office and sending you an email. It would seem the solution, as you've identified, is to have some scheduled and semi-frequent in-person interaction in a non-rushed manner.