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I have been working remote for two years now. The office is 800 miles away and I stop in four times a year to say hello. My experience has been that a good num

by bowlich 12y ago

I have been working remote for two years now. The office is 800 miles away and I stop in four times a year to say hello. My experience has been that a good number of smaller companies in smaller cities (U.S. Midwest, cities with populations under 100,000), that just can't find local talent and so reluctantly pick up remote workers to fill their ranks. As another poster said. It is lonely. I pay for a co-working office out of pocket so I can get out of the house. If most of the team is in-house and management didn't really "want" to be managing a remote team, then you end up being treating as a kind of necessary evil whose sidelined and left out of the loop most of the time.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
{ Shameless Plug } Its better if you can interest the main office in a collaboration tool, such as Sococo offers. It may improve your feeling of being included. It certainly increases the opportunity for communication. Sococo tries hard to remove friction from remote collaboration, without sacrificing privacy. For instance folks can see you are working in your virtual office, but your door is closed so they have to knock to talk to you. I work with engineers in three states. We're all in a virtual office space, talking as needed (with webcam if desired) and sharing documents. Or just chatting on a variety of channels. I honestly don't know who is in which state, without asking.
- bowlich 12y ago
  Thanks! I realize there's a slew of technologies out there for alleviating this problem and there's plenty of virtual teams that do a great job at it. That said, I've come to the conclusion that for a virtual team to really work the company culture really has to be on board with the idea. Particularly I think it works best when the whole team or a majority is working remotely or semi-remotely. The two firms that I've been with so far had only one or two remote workers on an otherwise in-house team that was managed very much in the 9-5 butt-in-seat tradition. They reluctantly went with remote workers out of necessity and with management that isn't too hot on communicating other than in person and firing up a webcam is considering something worthy of planning out days in advance and reserving a conference room. Needless to say, I'm looking for a more remote-friendly team these days, but I do think it's a good warning to anyone looking into remote work. Find out what proportion of the team is working remote, really try to access the team culture for supporting those remote workers, and do concern yourself with how much buy-in management has to the idea.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Right on all counts. We've had to train our 'home office' folks to have only virtual meetings. Every time they tried to gather and include us, it was a tragedy of seeing the backs of people's heads and hearing only mumbling from the audience. If everybody is on board with the tools, then you hear all the comments, see who said what, and can chat privately too. Definitely BETTER than in-person meetings in many ways.

by bowlich 12y ago

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

{ Shameless Plug } Its better if you can interest the main office in a collaboration tool, such as Sococo offers. It may improve your feeling of being included. It certainly increases the opportunity for communication. Sococo tries hard to remove friction from remote collaboration, without sacrificing privacy. For instance folks can see you are working in your virtual office, but your door is closed so they have to knock to talk to you. I work with engineers in three states. We're all in a virtual office space, talking as needed (with webcam if desired) and sharing documents. Or just chatting on a variety of channels. I honestly don't know who is in which state, without asking.

bowlich 12y ago
Thanks! I realize there's a slew of technologies out there for alleviating this problem and there's plenty of virtual teams that do a great job at it. That said, I've come to the conclusion that for a virtual team to really work the company culture really has to be on board with the idea. Particularly I think it works best when the whole team or a majority is working remotely or semi-remotely. The two firms that I've been with so far had only one or two remote workers on an otherwise in-house team that was managed very much in the 9-5 butt-in-seat tradition. They reluctantly went with remote workers out of necessity and with management that isn't too hot on communicating other than in person and firing up a webcam is considering something worthy of planning out days in advance and reserving a conference room. Needless to say, I'm looking for a more remote-friendly team these days, but I do think it's a good warning to anyone looking into remote work. Find out what proportion of the team is working remote, really try to access the team culture for supporting those remote workers, and do concern yourself with how much buy-in management has to the idea.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Right on all counts. We've had to train our 'home office' folks to have only virtual meetings. Every time they tried to gather and include us, it was a tragedy of seeing the backs of people's heads and hearing only mumbling from the audience. If everybody is on board with the tools, then you hear all the comments, see who said what, and can chat privately too. Definitely BETTER than in-person meetings in many ways.