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Of course. That is presumed. I am confident I have found the right people; I really believe they "get it." What I wonder is whether this system will somehow

Of course. That is presumed. I am confident I have found the right people; I really believe they "get it." What I wonder is whether this system will somehow fail to produce the results I need despite that.

mtkd 18y ago
It does work, I've been working from home for almost 2 years - leading a team who partly work in an office and partly work at home. Not everyone may want to work from home though. Campfire + VOIP works well to manage everything. We all run on a central network using VPN but we're slowly starting to use more external services - and I hope we can ditch the VPN for most stuff in a few months - using Google Apps, Github and some proprietary web apps. It gives more time to work as you're not commuting and if you have a young family it means you get to see the kids more.
- abalashov 18y ago
  Not everyone may want to work from home? Really? While, admittedly, I've met some people that consciously or unconsciously value the social and possibly collaborative aspects of working in an office with others, they tend to be the kind that just get their social needs fulfilled at work without doing a whole lot of actual work. There are some exceptions in passionate people who are also extroverted and aware of the extrinsic dimensions of what they do, but they are not common enough to be statistically meaningful in my experience. Can you elaborate more on what kind of person you think wouldn't want to work from home? I've hardly met anyone who wouldn't.
jacquesm 18y ago
If it is at all feasible I'd suggest you get people together periodically, that will go a long way towards building a lasting configuration. Whether that's feasible or not you'll have to make sure that people know that their contributions are being noted and to stimulate frequent contact between your team members. I've had a (small) office in Toronto (about 10 people) and we worked from home as well for a while, it was quite interesting to see some of the best performers in the office environment turn into absolute sloths when given the freedom and vice versa.
- abalashov 18y ago
  Yeah, I think regular get-togethers are pretty much a must for the reasons you mention. Can you elaborate more on the people that were good performers in an office environment and turned to sloths at home? What sort of qualities or peculiarities of their character made them do that?
  - jacquesm 18y ago
    Yes, at the risk of identifying one or two of them: I think that the biggest part of it was the presence of temptations in the home environment not present in the office environment that they found hard to resist, as well as a 'home front' that was pushing in the wrong direction. All this in an office of about 10 people, for 6 of them it worked very well, 2 were so-so in the working from home environment and 2 didn't work out at all. We had some good conversations about that and parted friends (still in contact) so it was quite clear that nobody really was at fault, it's just a situational thing. I can see why you would be concentrating on the 'bad apples', but the best bit in my opinion is that for a larger than the majority section it actually worked out very well, better than I ever expected. Right now I'm working together with people across 6 time zones, we don't even have a formal office and it feels pretty good. Regular meetings are a little harder for us though :)

mtkd 18y ago

It does work, I've been working from home for almost 2 years - leading a team who partly work in an office and partly work at home. Not everyone may want to work from home though. Campfire + VOIP works well to manage everything. We all run on a central network using VPN but we're slowly starting to use more external services - and I hope we can ditch the VPN for most stuff in a few months - using Google Apps, Github and some proprietary web apps. It gives more time to work as you're not commuting and if you have a young family it means you get to see the kids more.

abalashov 18y ago
Not everyone may want to work from home? Really? While, admittedly, I've met some people that consciously or unconsciously value the social and possibly collaborative aspects of working in an office with others, they tend to be the kind that just get their social needs fulfilled at work without doing a whole lot of actual work. There are some exceptions in passionate people who are also extroverted and aware of the extrinsic dimensions of what they do, but they are not common enough to be statistically meaningful in my experience. Can you elaborate more on what kind of person you think wouldn't want to work from home? I've hardly met anyone who wouldn't.

jacquesm 18y ago

If it is at all feasible I'd suggest you get people together periodically, that will go a long way towards building a lasting configuration. Whether that's feasible or not you'll have to make sure that people know that their contributions are being noted and to stimulate frequent contact between your team members. I've had a (small) office in Toronto (about 10 people) and we worked from home as well for a while, it was quite interesting to see some of the best performers in the office environment turn into absolute sloths when given the freedom and vice versa.

abalashov 18y ago
Yeah, I think regular get-togethers are pretty much a must for the reasons you mention. Can you elaborate more on the people that were good performers in an office environment and turned to sloths at home? What sort of qualities or peculiarities of their character made them do that?
- jacquesm 18y ago
  Yes, at the risk of identifying one or two of them: I think that the biggest part of it was the presence of temptations in the home environment not present in the office environment that they found hard to resist, as well as a 'home front' that was pushing in the wrong direction. All this in an office of about 10 people, for 6 of them it worked very well, 2 were so-so in the working from home environment and 2 didn't work out at all. We had some good conversations about that and parted friends (still in contact) so it was quite clear that nobody really was at fault, it's just a situational thing. I can see why you would be concentrating on the 'bad apples', but the best bit in my opinion is that for a larger than the majority section it actually worked out very well, better than I ever expected. Right now I'm working together with people across 6 time zones, we don't even have a formal office and it feels pretty good. Regular meetings are a little harder for us though :)