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For those who are replying with "all my projects were remote before anyway" or "I was on video conference before fully remote work too!" - how many of these co-

by bri3d 4y ago

For those who are replying with "all my projects were remote before anyway" or "I was on video conference before fully remote work too!" - how many of these co-workers on video were at another office site, or had worked at an office site before "going remote?" Before 2020, I also had video attendees in almost every meeting, but they were either at another office site where they still had a peer group and some co-located team members, or had a long tenure at the company and had been "allowed" to work remotely. In my opinion these previous remote-attendee situations are totally different dynamics from running a fully remote team. There is a special, major challenge in managing a team where many team members have never met one another, a coworker of any kind, or their management in person. It's a surmountable challenge and I think some of this can be explained by the cynical "employers would rather let remote employees go than learn something new" take, but working in and managing a remote team is still a unique experience IMO.

wankle 4y ago
I've worked on fully remote teams since the mid-2000's.
tonnydourado 4y ago
Fully remote teams didn't come out of Zeus head fully formed in March, 2020. There was less of them, but they existed. I consider the dynamic you described, of local teams in separated locations that have to work as one, actually to be a major antipattern. The communication doesn't flow as well between locations as it does inside each location. It's much better to shape the teams to the geographic organization.
- bri3d 4y ago
  I think the worst anti-pattern is the "soft return to work" pattern that's sprung up, where one cohort of people have met and work together in person while the rest remain distributed and have never met. I think that "partially distributed" works if the team have all met and worked together in person at some prior date, but otherwise it's a minefield which demands very careful management and ideally (if possible), periodic in-person meetups.
ktosobcy 4y ago
it's funny that some assume that before 2019 remote work didn't exist and everything was done in-office... :-)
- bri3d 4y ago
  Of course remote work existed before 2019, but there are also an enormous wealth of statistics indicating that it was not very common. On the flip side, some Hacker News users assume that because they had an extremely rare remote job before 2019, it's the "normal state" of the world.

by bri3d 4y ago

wankle 4y ago

I've worked on fully remote teams since the mid-2000's.

tonnydourado 4y ago

Fully remote teams didn't come out of Zeus head fully formed in March, 2020. There was less of them, but they existed. I consider the dynamic you described, of local teams in separated locations that have to work as one, actually to be a major antipattern. The communication doesn't flow as well between locations as it does inside each location. It's much better to shape the teams to the geographic organization.

bri3d 4y ago
I think the worst anti-pattern is the "soft return to work" pattern that's sprung up, where one cohort of people have met and work together in person while the rest remain distributed and have never met. I think that "partially distributed" works if the team have all met and worked together in person at some prior date, but otherwise it's a minefield which demands very careful management and ideally (if possible), periodic in-person meetups.

ktosobcy 4y ago

it's funny that some assume that before 2019 remote work didn't exist and everything was done in-office... :-)

bri3d 4y ago
Of course remote work existed before 2019, but there are also an enormous wealth of statistics indicating that it was not very common. On the flip side, some Hacker News users assume that because they had an extremely rare remote job before 2019, it's the "normal state" of the world.