6 ms·

>There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them can be talked into moving to the valley. For all this "we work remote" stuff that is flying aro

by Xdes 13y ago

>There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them can be talked into moving to the valley. For all this "we work remote" stuff that is flying around this seems to be a direct contradiction. Is moving to the valley really necessary? I can postulate coming for a face-to-face interview, but I would never want to move to California.

AnimalMuppet 13y ago
It's all about communication bandwidth. How well can I communicate with you face-to-face, via voice, or via text? Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language. If you're not face-to-face, your communication bandwidth drops dramatically. But if you're both online at the same time, and you have videoconferencing or some equivalent, you can talk "face-to-face" without being on the same continent. I don't know how efficient that is compared to being in the same room, but I suspect it's somewhat less (you have to activate the app before you can have the conversation, and you never have a useful but accidental conversation because you ran into each other in the lunchroom).
- falcolas 13y ago
  I work with a 90% remote, 10% local team, and due to the nature of engineering work, I find that the daily standup and and hour of shared development time while on a Hangout shares as much information as I share locally. This matches up with the amount (and quality) of interaction I had with a 100% local team as well.
- nawitus 13y ago
  >Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language. Source? I'm pretty skeptical of these kinds of numbers. If you say 100 bits worth of words face-to-face, what is exactly the content of the remaining 1428 bits?
  - Domenic_S 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication
  - gjm11 13y ago
    The claim (ascribed to Albert Mehrabian) is much more limited than that. Those are the alleged percentage influences on how much we like a person on the basis of a conversation with them. See, e.g., http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html (which I think is Mehrabian's own site) which says "Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking" and adds: "Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable". I'm frankly doubtful even about that much, but Mehrabian certainly never claimed that any such equation holds for more "contentful" communication.
- vellum 13y ago
  You don't need face-to-face for everything. A lot of communications would be better off being rerouted to asynchronous, low-fidelity mediums like chat. When you try to jam everything into face-to-face + email, you create a lot of flow-destroying side effects, like meeting hell and frequent "do you have a minute?" drivebys. For remote to work, the company should be remote native or majority remote. If 95% of the people and conversations are onsite, the remote team is going to end up being second class citizens.
  - gaius 13y ago
    It is much easier to remote-work with people you already know in person pretty well. Remote work from the outset is much harder.
- wiredfool 13y ago
  If that's the case, then why can we generally replace a 3 person conference call or a 7 person meeting with a quick email?
compuguy 13y ago
Agreed, I understand the reasoning for basing so many start ups on the west coast, but not everyone wants to live there. It would be nice to have some more focus on the east coast...
integraton 13y ago
The Bay Area tech community has a widely-held dogmatic bias against remote teams due to a widespread belief that remote teams make it difficult to communicate and create a company culture. Outside of the Bay Area remote work is more acceptable for startups and small companies, and most of the advocates for remote teams are in cities like Chicago and New York.
- rhizome 13y ago
  The Bay Area tech community has a widely-held dogmatic bias against remote teams due to a widespread belief that remote teams make it difficult to communicate and create a company culture. To be sure, this could also be seen as an acknowledgement of their own weaknesses. In modern business, shouldn't a contingency to reduce burn rate by hiring from lower cost-of-living areas be a valid option? If so, then why shouldn't management be able to communicate well enough to execute on that? Are they so vain to think that not only should the company be viable and successful, but that they should succeed at the highest cost possible?

by Xdes 13y ago

AnimalMuppet 13y ago

It's all about communication bandwidth. How well can I communicate with you face-to-face, via voice, or via text? Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language. If you're not face-to-face, your communication bandwidth drops dramatically. But if you're both online at the same time, and you have videoconferencing or some equivalent, you can talk "face-to-face" without being on the same continent. I don't know how efficient that is compared to being in the same room, but I suspect it's somewhat less (you have to activate the app before you can have the conversation, and you never have a useful but accidental conversation because you ran into each other in the lunchroom).

falcolas 13y ago
I work with a 90% remote, 10% local team, and due to the nature of engineering work, I find that the daily standup and and hour of shared development time while on a Hangout shares as much information as I share locally. This matches up with the amount (and quality) of interaction I had with a 100% local team as well.
nawitus 13y ago
>Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language. Source? I'm pretty skeptical of these kinds of numbers. If you say 100 bits worth of words face-to-face, what is exactly the content of the remaining 1428 bits?
- Domenic_S 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication
- gjm11 13y ago
  The claim (ascribed to Albert Mehrabian) is much more limited than that. Those are the alleged percentage influences on how much we like a person on the basis of a conversation with them. See, e.g., http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html (which I think is Mehrabian's own site) which says "Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking" and adds: "Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable". I'm frankly doubtful even about that much, but Mehrabian certainly never claimed that any such equation holds for more "contentful" communication.
vellum 13y ago
You don't need face-to-face for everything. A lot of communications would be better off being rerouted to asynchronous, low-fidelity mediums like chat. When you try to jam everything into face-to-face + email, you create a lot of flow-destroying side effects, like meeting hell and frequent "do you have a minute?" drivebys. For remote to work, the company should be remote native or majority remote. If 95% of the people and conversations are onsite, the remote team is going to end up being second class citizens.
- gaius 13y ago
  It is much easier to remote-work with people you already know in person pretty well. Remote work from the outset is much harder.
wiredfool 13y ago
If that's the case, then why can we generally replace a 3 person conference call or a 7 person meeting with a quick email?

compuguy 13y ago

Agreed, I understand the reasoning for basing so many start ups on the west coast, but not everyone wants to live there. It would be nice to have some more focus on the east coast...

integraton 13y ago

The Bay Area tech community has a widely-held dogmatic bias against remote teams due to a widespread belief that remote teams make it difficult to communicate and create a company culture. Outside of the Bay Area remote work is more acceptable for startups and small companies, and most of the advocates for remote teams are in cities like Chicago and New York.

rhizome 13y ago
The Bay Area tech community has a widely-held dogmatic bias against remote teams due to a widespread belief that remote teams make it difficult to communicate and create a company culture. To be sure, this could also be seen as an acknowledgement of their own weaknesses. In modern business, shouldn't a contingency to reduce burn rate by hiring from lower cost-of-living areas be a valid option? If so, then why shouldn't management be able to communicate well enough to execute on that? Are they so vain to think that not only should the company be viable and successful, but that they should succeed at the highest cost possible?