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I'm an employer. Quick background: We're a small Django consultancy/web app development company based in the UK. 7 people, all remote, split as three developer

I'm an employer. Quick background: We're a small Django consultancy/web app development company based in the UK. 7 people, all remote, split as three developers, one frontend dev, one designer, one sales, one administrator. I'm a developer/managing director. Our experience with remote working has been largely very positive. - It keeps our overheads very low. I think that when we remove our staff wage bill, our operating expenses are about £200 a month, which is mainly service subscriptions. If we accommodated everyone in an office, we'd be looking at spending at LEAST £3000/month on rent alone. This cash being available has meant that we can expand the company quickly, pay developers well, and still afford to take the team out to conferences and the occasional get-together and night out. - Remote working means that your processes and working practices need to extremely well defined from the outset. All our interactions are online, so clear, unambiguous communication and good project organisation and management are essential. Of course, there is an overhead in this level of communication that might not be necessary if we were colocated, but I think that overall it benefits us. - We are also able to expand our hiring pool. We've recently taken on a freelancer in Poland part-time (we knew him from when he lived in the UK), and we're not making adjustments to suit him; we're already well adapted. - The tools which exist make up for a great deal of the shortcomings of remote working (we use Skype, Trello and HipChat mainly, with the occasional VNC/Skype screenshare session). This is a huge contrast to even a couple of years ago, The disadvantages are almost entirely human factors: - I think it's easy to 'hide' from the team if a developer is having a problem (either with their code, or their motivation). It's easy to coast through an unproductive day and there is often a delay in the other team members realising that a project is falling behind schedule. - Sometimes working remotely can feel isolating. A few of our developers who live near to each other sometimes meet up at one location and work for a day, and I get feedback that everyone feels refreshed after. We have quarterly 'get together days', where we talk mainly about strategy and review our processes and performance, but I think we need to start having 'work together days', just to keep the morale and motivation high.

mootothemax 15y ago
Hi Jon, would you be interested in hiring another Poland-based freelancer? Sorry to hijack your thread, I was trying to find a direct email address for you via your profile/linked site :)
- JonAtkinson 15y ago
  jon@testled.com
gexla 15y ago
"- I think it's easy to 'hide' from the team if a developer is having a problem (either with their code, or their motivation). It's easy to coast through an unproductive day and there is often a delay in the other team members realising that a project is falling behind schedule." I understand the code part of this problem. I think it's good to have a set estimate on how long the item should take so that as soon as you hit that tripwire you stop, send a notification out to the rest of the team, explain the situation and ask for feedback. Perhaps a good way to help with this would be to setup a "feature timer" which automatically hits an "oh shit" button and sends out the notifications automatically.
- JonAtkinson 15y ago
  It's a problem which we're mainly trying to solve with visibility. We have a HipChat bot (which shares commit messages, Jenkins feedback etc), and we're considering having it just post "What are you working on" into the group chatroom once an hour. Like most problems, I think it can be solved with a bit of self-reflection and better communication.
- nulluk 15y ago
  I have to disclose I am a remote worker for JonAtkinson. I believe set estimates are not the best way to approach this problem because how do you estimate it? If you are in new territory then what seems trivial to one person may require some research and extra understanding by another. Also when you set a deadline it becomes more of a target for the individual action and instills a time wasting mentality. It's especially difficult when a new employer enters the company as they feel under pressure that this is the expected deadline. One of the most helpful things Jon has done to elevate this situation when it arises is allow honest conversations without any fear which come from I guess a personal understanding/experience. I also don't believe this problem is specific to remote working, it's simply a managerial problem within the industry as I am willing to openly admit this (having a problem and not speaking up) also happened at my previous job but the openness didn't exist hence a lot of dodging and ducking was performed until the task at hand was accomplished.
  - gexla 15y ago
wiradikusuma 15y ago
how do you convince your clients if you don't have physical "centralized" location? i think it depends on the culture, but in here (asia) people will hesitate doing business with a company with "scattered" team.
- JonAtkinson 15y ago
  It probably is a cultural difference. I think in the last year or so we have maybe lost a couple of potential customers because we use a distributed team, but it's not been a major problem. For us, our specific geography is also a factor; my business partner, who also runs 95% of our sales activity, is based in London, and his sales activity is centred around there. Our developers (myself included) are based on the north-west, where developer salaries are lower than in the south. I know that we have used that fact in sales pitches, and it has helped us win work based on that lower total cost of a project.
zeynalov 15y ago
How do you solve legal issues? If you don't have any contract with your employees, what if they contact personally your consumers and the work personally done? I have visited the countries where our employees are, registered our startup there and made a non-compete contract ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause )with them. But this costs me time and money. If you don't have any agreements with them, how do you manage your works and where/how do you find good employees over internet?
- JonAtkinson 15y ago
  I should probably clarify; with one exception, all of our current team are salaried employees of our limited company, and we pay their NI etc. Our contracts have the usual non-compete for 12 months after ending employment stuff in there, but so far no-one has left the company, so we haven't had to deal with anything like that yet. Finding workers hasn't been a problem to date, as we have generally grown organically, and most people have freelanced with us before they became employees, or we have worked with them in some capacity before we started the company. I think it's more accurate to say that while our team is geographically distributed, we share a really close social network. I did a really quick blog post about this last week: http://jonatkinson.co.uk/talent-spotting/ http://jonatkinson.co.uk/talent-spotting/
Vivtek 15y ago
I would like to note that I've worked both remotely and on-site and that hiding a lack of motivation or results from the team is not a remote-only problem. It does sneak up on you a little easier if you're remote, but we all know That Guy that looks really productive until you realize he's been playing Minesweeper for three months. (Not making that one up - in his defense, Minesweeper was new and exciting at the time...)
- ryanwaggoner 15y ago
  Now it's minecraft :)
  - JonAtkinson 15y ago
    We do have a company Minecraft server!
tankenmate 15y ago
On the point of organisation, it reminds me of the Chinese proverb; Even the faintest ink is better than the best memory.

mootothemax 15y ago

Hi Jon, would you be interested in hiring another Poland-based freelancer? Sorry to hijack your thread, I was trying to find a direct email address for you via your profile/linked site :)

JonAtkinson 15y ago
jon@testled.com

gexla 15y ago

"- I think it's easy to 'hide' from the team if a developer is having a problem (either with their code, or their motivation). It's easy to coast through an unproductive day and there is often a delay in the other team members realising that a project is falling behind schedule." I understand the code part of this problem. I think it's good to have a set estimate on how long the item should take so that as soon as you hit that tripwire you stop, send a notification out to the rest of the team, explain the situation and ask for feedback. Perhaps a good way to help with this would be to setup a "feature timer" which automatically hits an "oh shit" button and sends out the notifications automatically.

JonAtkinson 15y ago
It's a problem which we're mainly trying to solve with visibility. We have a HipChat bot (which shares commit messages, Jenkins feedback etc), and we're considering having it just post "What are you working on" into the group chatroom once an hour. Like most problems, I think it can be solved with a bit of self-reflection and better communication.
nulluk 15y ago
I have to disclose I am a remote worker for JonAtkinson. I believe set estimates are not the best way to approach this problem because how do you estimate it? If you are in new territory then what seems trivial to one person may require some research and extra understanding by another. Also when you set a deadline it becomes more of a target for the individual action and instills a time wasting mentality. It's especially difficult when a new employer enters the company as they feel under pressure that this is the expected deadline. One of the most helpful things Jon has done to elevate this situation when it arises is allow honest conversations without any fear which come from I guess a personal understanding/experience. I also don't believe this problem is specific to remote working, it's simply a managerial problem within the industry as I am willing to openly admit this (having a problem and not speaking up) also happened at my previous job but the openness didn't exist hence a lot of dodging and ducking was performed until the task at hand was accomplished.
- gexla 15y ago

wiradikusuma 15y ago

how do you convince your clients if you don't have physical "centralized" location? i think it depends on the culture, but in here (asia) people will hesitate doing business with a company with "scattered" team.

JonAtkinson 15y ago
It probably is a cultural difference. I think in the last year or so we have maybe lost a couple of potential customers because we use a distributed team, but it's not been a major problem. For us, our specific geography is also a factor; my business partner, who also runs 95% of our sales activity, is based in London, and his sales activity is centred around there. Our developers (myself included) are based on the north-west, where developer salaries are lower than in the south. I know that we have used that fact in sales pitches, and it has helped us win work based on that lower total cost of a project.

zeynalov 15y ago

How do you solve legal issues? If you don't have any contract with your employees, what if they contact personally your consumers and the work personally done? I have visited the countries where our employees are, registered our startup there and made a non-compete contract ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause )with them. But this costs me time and money. If you don't have any agreements with them, how do you manage your works and where/how do you find good employees over internet?

JonAtkinson 15y ago
I should probably clarify; with one exception, all of our current team are salaried employees of our limited company, and we pay their NI etc. Our contracts have the usual non-compete for 12 months after ending employment stuff in there, but so far no-one has left the company, so we haven't had to deal with anything like that yet. Finding workers hasn't been a problem to date, as we have generally grown organically, and most people have freelanced with us before they became employees, or we have worked with them in some capacity before we started the company. I think it's more accurate to say that while our team is geographically distributed, we share a really close social network. I did a really quick blog post about this last week: http://jonatkinson.co.uk/talent-spotting/ http://jonatkinson.co.uk/talent-spotting/

Vivtek 15y ago

I would like to note that I've worked both remotely and on-site and that hiding a lack of motivation or results from the team is not a remote-only problem. It does sneak up on you a little easier if you're remote, but we all know That Guy that looks really productive until you realize he's been playing Minesweeper for three months. (Not making that one up - in his defense, Minesweeper was new and exciting at the time...)

ryanwaggoner 15y ago
Now it's minecraft :)
- JonAtkinson 15y ago
  We do have a company Minecraft server!

tankenmate 15y ago

On the point of organisation, it reminds me of the Chinese proverb; Even the faintest ink is better than the best memory.