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Have you worked in startups though? Organizations of 1-20 people where the whole company doesn't know who its customers are, why they would buy the product, or

Have you worked in startups though? Organizations of 1-20 people where the whole company doesn't know who its customers are, why they would buy the product, or how to make money? In my experience it's basically impossible to "plan, execute, and communicate effectively" in these environments, because if people knew what the plan was or how to execute it, someone would already have done it. The company relies on quick and efficient feedback between employees, leadership, and potential customers. That's the part that's much harder with remote work. In a startup, if you tell an engineer to do something and it turns out it's impossible, you will see him grimace and cuss you out in person, and you can adjust the plan accordingly. With remote work, you don't get that body-language feedback, and he'll probably say yes while looking for other jobs and posting about how incompetent his manager is on Hacker News.

vinnymac 3y ago
It is especially true for startups to be open minded and flexible. If engineers aren’t having those kinds of conversations, perhaps they do not feel comfortable being open and honest. If we create an environment where engineers feel comfortable enough that body language isn’t required as the sole feedback indicator in this scenario, perhaps the entire workplace would benefit.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  I agree with all that, but it's also significantly easier to build trust in an in-person environment where the employee can read the leader's body language and judge for themselves whether leaders authentically believe in the mission that they're having the employees execute, as well as their chances of success. There's a reason why generals who lead from a desk aren't really trusted, or why when executives skip off to New Zealand it corrodes morale in their organizations.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I don't think that most people are disputing that it can work either way. But enough people are invested in staying remote themselves (I'm one!) that it turns into remote is better in all circumstances and people who want to be in an office are just as well-off as well.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
I work for a remote startup and no, the parent, is correct. The company was previously languishing until they replaced the tech lead and hired me. Both of us can get shit done without being told what to do every 5 minutes. The previous people couldn’t. We’ve since increased our customer base and service usage massively, without any issues.
- esafak 3y ago
  That is just a question of experience. A junior engineer needs hand-holding and a senior one does not. They had the former, and needed the latter.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    The people we replaced were both mid-career. Just not good at taking initiative or anticipating future needs.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      It's not like you're a junior until 28 and then you're a senior. You can retire a junior if your skills are that.
j4yav 3y ago
How would you explain GitLab or other all remote companies that have been successful since 1-20 employees, given your analysis here?
- tedivm 3y ago
  The people pushing RTO have to ignore a huge amount of data in order to make their point.
presentation 3y ago
I’m running engineering at a small startup that’s full remote, it’s working fine for us. Don’t agree that remote work means you can’t have dynamic communication. It just means you need to choose the right employees and have an higher bar of alignment on how you work and communicate. Don’t hire people who don’t value synchronous communication. People who want all communication to be async and don’t plan to respond promptly to messages (like the work/life balance crowd on HN) will not produce a dynamic team because that’s not the strong point of async communication. Do quick calls when text conversation gets too long, build a team where you can expect people to actually make an effort to show up to the calls. For us we also have strategy calls with video regularly (but not too frequently), and make sure everyone is aligned to the plan and concerns are resolved before building. Make sure the team understands that for anything where they are unsure what to do or have any ambiguity around requirements, that they proactively ping the right people. Doesn’t mean you need to be on all the time and that async communication is not valuable, but you need everyone to know when it is and isn’t the right way to go. So long as people are making a best effort to value communication speed it works out. Hire people who are motivated enough to form opinions, and confident enough to say they really think. Most people are not invested in their work, or not invested in the problem space enough to bother making the mental and research effort to form valid opinions on your problem space. This is fine for when things just need to get done (not everyone on the team needs to be a decision maker), but foster those who are ready to invest. Make it clear it’s a good thing if they do form opinions and are willing to express their doubts about the strategy to others/leadership. For us we also have very clear owners of different aspects of our operations and product. Someone will make the final decisions on those aspects. This doesn’t mean they make all choices, they can choose to defer to someone they trust to make the call. But someone needs to be clearly responsible, and others need to know that if a conversation is not resolving that they can pull the right person in to resolve it efficiently. People need to agree to disagree at some point once those responsible make a choice. This general approach works for us, people don’t tend to hate their managers if they understand why choices are made, feel that their concerns are heard, and are aligned ideologically with the approach and way of working. But it does require choosing the right people and setting a higher bar for yourself on alignment.
- theonething 3y ago
tedivm 3y ago
> Have you worked in startups though? Organizations of 1-20 people where the whole company doesn't know who its customers are, why they would buy the product, or how to make money? That sounds like an amazingly poorly run startup with horrible leadership. The startups that I've seen that are successful purposefully try to fix that problem. We flew people out to customers, had them shadow them to see how they worked, and had a group of customer advisors. Out of all the startups I've been involved with the remote ones have done the best. Honestly, the manager you're describing is incompetent. Why is that manager relying on reading body language instead of building enough trust with their engineers where the engineers would just say "that's impossible?". It seems like that manager is doing a poor job and is using remote work as an excuse for their own lack of ability.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jayd16 3y ago
  Why fly them out and not just video call? But jokes aside, I think this is really unkind. You're never going to have perfect people or perfect situations. Saying a process works great under the best conditions is only looking at things inside a small sliver of reality.
theonething 3y ago
> he'll probably say yes while looking for other jobs and posting about how incompetent his manager is on Hacker News. I feel this to the core.
taway1874 3y ago
If one joins an org of 1-20 people without understanding "who its customers are, why they would buy the product, or how to make money" then it is on them.
ath3nd 3y ago
Disclaimer: Head of Engineering, been working in startups only. > In a startup, if you tell an engineer to do something and it turns out it's impossible I see a problem with that approach. To me, it's not about you telling the engineer what to do, they are not a tool to execute your bidding, they are a colleague with ideas how to achieve the goal you are striving for. What is great about remote is that it kind of forces you to write down your ideas in some format, in PRs, in proposals, in documents. That gives the space and time for others to chime in, at their own pace, without your "body language" or your "room presence" shutting them down. Granted, it's not the American way with a top-down approach to startups, but if your working model is you simply tell your engineers what to do and they execute it, then imo you are missing 90% of their value. > you will see him grimace and cuss you out in person, and you can adjust the plan accordingly....you won't get that body-language feedback I have never had anyone at work "cuss me out", whether that's been remote or in the office. That sounds like a very unhealthy culture to me. Additionally, I stipulate that looking for inscrutable clues in people's faces can instead be replaced with building a culture where you reward people for speaking (or writing down) their mind and all contributing towards the common goal, and there is a healthy amount of discussion (preferably written). As a technical manager, your role is to provide a clear goal to your teammates, and work with them to a good solution, not analyze their body language and making decisions based on that... > yes while looking for other jobs and posting about how incompetent his manager is on Hacker News. I'd be doing the same if my manager's main job is observing my every facial expression and I am not allowed to say no or at least explain why I don't think the task that's been presented to me is possible to be achieved in the proposed way.
- notabee 3y ago
  > Additionally, I stipulate that looking for inscrutable clues in people's faces can instead be replaced with building a culture where you reward people for speaking (or writing down) their mind and all contributing towards the common goal, and there is a healthy amount of discussion (preferably written). As a technical manager, your role is to provide a clear goal to your teammates, and work with them to a good solution, not analyze their body language and making decisions based on that... To add to that, a lot of engineering types are also very neurodivergent and just do not communicate on that level the same way as other people, leading to copious misunderstandings and miscommunications when it's not a "say what you mean, and mean what you say" sort of environment. That probably makes a certain other type of person uncomfortable, when their main skill is social hacking and not necessarily efficient management, planning, or collaboration.
veidr 3y ago
OK, so... remote work isn't suitable for companies/startups with incompetent managers? But then... what kind of work really is

vinnymac 3y ago

It is especially true for startups to be open minded and flexible. If engineers aren’t having those kinds of conversations, perhaps they do not feel comfortable being open and honest. If we create an environment where engineers feel comfortable enough that body language isn’t required as the sole feedback indicator in this scenario, perhaps the entire workplace would benefit.

nostrademons 3y ago
I agree with all that, but it's also significantly easier to build trust in an in-person environment where the employee can read the leader's body language and judge for themselves whether leaders authentically believe in the mission that they're having the employees execute, as well as their chances of success. There's a reason why generals who lead from a desk aren't really trusted, or why when executives skip off to New Zealand it corrodes morale in their organizations.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I don't think that most people are disputing that it can work either way. But enough people are invested in staying remote themselves (I'm one!) that it turns into remote is better in all circumstances and people who want to be in an office are just as well-off as well.

bugglebeetle 3y ago

I work for a remote startup and no, the parent, is correct. The company was previously languishing until they replaced the tech lead and hired me. Both of us can get shit done without being told what to do every 5 minutes. The previous people couldn’t. We’ve since increased our customer base and service usage massively, without any issues.

esafak 3y ago
That is just a question of experience. A junior engineer needs hand-holding and a senior one does not. They had the former, and needed the latter.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  The people we replaced were both mid-career. Just not good at taking initiative or anticipating future needs.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    It's not like you're a junior until 28 and then you're a senior. You can retire a junior if your skills are that.

j4yav 3y ago

How would you explain GitLab or other all remote companies that have been successful since 1-20 employees, given your analysis here?

tedivm 3y ago
The people pushing RTO have to ignore a huge amount of data in order to make their point.

presentation 3y ago

I’m running engineering at a small startup that’s full remote, it’s working fine for us. Don’t agree that remote work means you can’t have dynamic communication. It just means you need to choose the right employees and have an higher bar of alignment on how you work and communicate. Don’t hire people who don’t value synchronous communication. People who want all communication to be async and don’t plan to respond promptly to messages (like the work/life balance crowd on HN) will not produce a dynamic team because that’s not the strong point of async communication. Do quick calls when text conversation gets too long, build a team where you can expect people to actually make an effort to show up to the calls. For us we also have strategy calls with video regularly (but not too frequently), and make sure everyone is aligned to the plan and concerns are resolved before building. Make sure the team understands that for anything where they are unsure what to do or have any ambiguity around requirements, that they proactively ping the right people. Doesn’t mean you need to be on all the time and that async communication is not valuable, but you need everyone to know when it is and isn’t the right way to go. So long as people are making a best effort to value communication speed it works out. Hire people who are motivated enough to form opinions, and confident enough to say they really think. Most people are not invested in their work, or not invested in the problem space enough to bother making the mental and research effort to form valid opinions on your problem space. This is fine for when things just need to get done (not everyone on the team needs to be a decision maker), but foster those who are ready to invest. Make it clear it’s a good thing if they do form opinions and are willing to express their doubts about the strategy to others/leadership. For us we also have very clear owners of different aspects of our operations and product. Someone will make the final decisions on those aspects. This doesn’t mean they make all choices, they can choose to defer to someone they trust to make the call. But someone needs to be clearly responsible, and others need to know that if a conversation is not resolving that they can pull the right person in to resolve it efficiently. People need to agree to disagree at some point once those responsible make a choice. This general approach works for us, people don’t tend to hate their managers if they understand why choices are made, feel that their concerns are heard, and are aligned ideologically with the approach and way of working. But it does require choosing the right people and setting a higher bar for yourself on alignment.

theonething 3y ago

tedivm 3y ago

> Have you worked in startups though? Organizations of 1-20 people where the whole company doesn't know who its customers are, why they would buy the product, or how to make money? That sounds like an amazingly poorly run startup with horrible leadership. The startups that I've seen that are successful purposefully try to fix that problem. We flew people out to customers, had them shadow them to see how they worked, and had a group of customer advisors. Out of all the startups I've been involved with the remote ones have done the best. Honestly, the manager you're describing is incompetent. Why is that manager relying on reading body language instead of building enough trust with their engineers where the engineers would just say "that's impossible?". It seems like that manager is doing a poor job and is using remote work as an excuse for their own lack of ability.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jayd16 3y ago
Why fly them out and not just video call? But jokes aside, I think this is really unkind. You're never going to have perfect people or perfect situations. Saying a process works great under the best conditions is only looking at things inside a small sliver of reality.

theonething 3y ago

> he'll probably say yes while looking for other jobs and posting about how incompetent his manager is on Hacker News. I feel this to the core.

taway1874 3y ago

If one joins an org of 1-20 people without understanding "who its customers are, why they would buy the product, or how to make money" then it is on them.

ath3nd 3y ago

Disclaimer: Head of Engineering, been working in startups only. > In a startup, if you tell an engineer to do something and it turns out it's impossible I see a problem with that approach. To me, it's not about you telling the engineer what to do, they are not a tool to execute your bidding, they are a colleague with ideas how to achieve the goal you are striving for. What is great about remote is that it kind of forces you to write down your ideas in some format, in PRs, in proposals, in documents. That gives the space and time for others to chime in, at their own pace, without your "body language" or your "room presence" shutting them down. Granted, it's not the American way with a top-down approach to startups, but if your working model is you simply tell your engineers what to do and they execute it, then imo you are missing 90% of their value. > you will see him grimace and cuss you out in person, and you can adjust the plan accordingly....you won't get that body-language feedback I have never had anyone at work "cuss me out", whether that's been remote or in the office. That sounds like a very unhealthy culture to me. Additionally, I stipulate that looking for inscrutable clues in people's faces can instead be replaced with building a culture where you reward people for speaking (or writing down) their mind and all contributing towards the common goal, and there is a healthy amount of discussion (preferably written). As a technical manager, your role is to provide a clear goal to your teammates, and work with them to a good solution, not analyze their body language and making decisions based on that... > yes while looking for other jobs and posting about how incompetent his manager is on Hacker News. I'd be doing the same if my manager's main job is observing my every facial expression and I am not allowed to say no or at least explain why I don't think the task that's been presented to me is possible to be achieved in the proposed way.

notabee 3y ago
> Additionally, I stipulate that looking for inscrutable clues in people's faces can instead be replaced with building a culture where you reward people for speaking (or writing down) their mind and all contributing towards the common goal, and there is a healthy amount of discussion (preferably written). As a technical manager, your role is to provide a clear goal to your teammates, and work with them to a good solution, not analyze their body language and making decisions based on that... To add to that, a lot of engineering types are also very neurodivergent and just do not communicate on that level the same way as other people, leading to copious misunderstandings and miscommunications when it's not a "say what you mean, and mean what you say" sort of environment. That probably makes a certain other type of person uncomfortable, when their main skill is social hacking and not necessarily efficient management, planning, or collaboration.

veidr 3y ago

OK, so... remote work isn't suitable for companies/startups with incompetent managers? But then... what kind of work really is