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>Use WordPress and P2, use Slack, use G+ Hangouts, use Skype, use any of the amazing technology that allows us to collaborate as effectively online as previous

by jasode 12y ago

>Use WordPress and P2, use Slack, use G+ Hangouts, use Skype, use any of the amazing technology that allows us to collaborate as effectively online as previous generations of company did offline. I've been a 100% remote worker for 5+ years but I think we have to be honest here. All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. Yes, they do help mitigate many issues of isolation and they do help collaboration but there's still some "bandwidth loss" when people are not in the same room or even down the hall from each other. I'm not advocating an open floor plan with noise and distractions. Even a set of private offices that share a common corridor to facilitate spontaneous conversation with a side conference room for group brainstorming, is superior to keeping Skype windows open. Yes, there are the common examples of virtual remote workers at basecamp, Automattic, github etc. Those are not billion dollar companies. A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges and you can't compete with a team made up of 99% remote workers. I see no evidence that this has ever been successfully done. Small scale modest businesses, yes, but not big ones. Maybe you can hire a 5-person 100% remote team to launch a new web magazine. Journalists and editors by their nature seem to fit the remote work paradigm quite nicely. At first glance, it seems programming also fits, but only for modest projects. Yes, the remote workers themselves will insist "I'm 100% just as effective offsite as onsite -- in fact, I'm more productive because I'm not interrupted by office nonsense." No doubt they feel that way but the whole team isn't more effective. Remote workers even with today's fanciest collaboration technology is not the answer to finding the best talent.

photomatt 12y ago
Not that valuations are the end-all be-all, but Automattic was valued above a billion earlier in the year, and has risen since then: http://www.techmeme.com/140505/p14#a140505p14 http://www.techmeme.com/140505/p14#a140505p14
kareemm 12y ago
> A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges and you can't compete with a team made up of 99% remote workers. I see no evidence that this has ever been successfully done. MySQL was a 1B company and built with a remote team: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1826212/former-mysql-ceo-mrten-mickos-talks-about-managing-remote-workers-video http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1826212/former...
- jasode 12y ago
  If you're bringing up MySQL as a counterexample, I think we've lost sight of the original conversation. The original Paul Graham essay[1] had a lot of focus on "startups". The companies in the early days scratching and clawing trying to make things work. I thought that was the context. MySQL was started by 3 guys in Sweden working in the same office. Even if they wanted to have everyone working remotely in 1995, there was no technology (high speed internet) at the time to do it. Sure, as a company becomes bigger, and also as technologies improve, there are possibilities for organizing remote work. Anyways, back to the context and constraints of startups: If you're a startup, it would be great to recruit the "exceptional" talent in South Africa, Ukraine, China, New Zealand, etc (because 95% of the best programmers are not in the USA). The MA.TT says remote work is the answer. I don't see how because I've not seen any evidence of any billion-dollar American startup that was built by a 100% virtual team from multiple timezones of Europe/Africa/Asia. If you're creating a 24/7 tech support department that "follows the sun", having staff in far off timezones is awesome and necessary. If you're trying to build a product with hard challenges for the team to solve, MA.TT's "answer" of international remote workers is not an answer. [1]http://paulgraham.com/95.html http://paulgraham.com/95.html
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Here at Sococo we hope to be that team! We're in several time zones, 6 states and three countries. Not to a billion yet; not hardly. But growing!
  - gclaramunt 12y ago
    While I concede that's not the "billion-dollar American startup that was built by a 100% virtual team", I've worked for a startup where half of the team was distributed across america and europe. It was an amazing team, highly collaborative and flexible, successfully tackling a hard problem. (I used to joke that the code base was CS funland: all the interesting problems in one place) We failed mostly because our product was overly ambitious, solving a broad problem. Yes, is just an anecdote, but my point is that distributed team can run circles around most of colocated teams and we wouldn't have been able to assemble that team if we insisted that everybody had to be on the same place.
drawkbox 12y ago
So as a remote worker, you would be more productive in the office 5 days a week? If everyone on the team has a 2 hour commute, that is a guarantee that there will be less time available to the individual and thus the team. Commutes are a big problem aside from the communication. I have also found that companies that do remote or allow it, just communicate better, to all parties, even clients or stakeholders. They are more external focused companies without internal blinders, they take an external view of the company instead of internal. Lots of employees time is commuting and dealing with office politics which become a bigger part of your job than working at some places. Personally I think companies that are remote or allow remote are much better at communication overall and have a saner external view of themselves coupled with the internal view, rather than just an internal view of what matters. I have seen this across many companies I have worked for or with. Some internal places I have worked that didn't allow remote made it very hard to get information because they expect people to barge into offices to ask. Overall I feel remote companies have the benefit here and make for more robust teams if they do it right, not to mention the benefit of attracting great developers all over the country or world. Today, virtual communication is how we communicate to most of our clients, customers and stakeholders. Companies that allow remote just do this better because they also communicate that way. Remote companies value external views of the company and communication much higher than non remote capable companies. Two more benefits of remote capable: When you setup another office upon growth the new office will not have the virtual communication problem (office to office within the same company is typically virtual communication and non remote companies do this badly), also remote companies root out non-contributors more quickly as you can't just hide behind being there physically as work you must contribute and build. VCs are so against remote that it seems like they almost have some tax hookups and own lots of real estate in SF as some of the logic makes no sense, ultimately labor costs would be cheaper and the companies would be more robust to changes.
- learnstats2 12y ago
  "If everyone on the team has a 2 hour commute, that is a guarantee that there will be less time available to the individual and thus the team." I am willing to sacrifice 2-4 hours of personal time per day commuting => I am willing to sacrifice myself to the company's wishes => I am a 'good employee' A portion of the advantage of office work comes down to employer control of employee. The differing communication systems with clients, customers and stakeholders illustrate the different balances of power accurately. As such, I agree that remote companies make for more robust teams if they do it right - but it's much harder to do it right. Remote companies lose some advantage of easy communication (in order to survive as a remote, you have to be better at communication), and you lose some advantage of having a clearly indicated power structure.
mgkimsal 12y ago
"A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges" And those companies aren't billion dollar companies either. "All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace" But they're more effective than those people not working together at all. "Remote workers even with today's fanciest collaboration technology is not the answer to finding the best talent." You have to define 'best'. If the definition of 'best' has to include "people who are willing to uproot their entire life to spend a portion of it in someone else's office", then yes, you're correct. "I see no evidence that this has ever been successfully done. Small scale modest businesses, yes, but not big ones." I see little evidence that co-located teams are all that much more successful at becoming billion dollar behemoths than virtual teams. You get access to a wider breadth of experience of worker when you embrace remote. Just because management hasn't had enough experience with the model yet to be able to grow a billion dollar company doesn't mean a) it's bad or that b) it may not happen in the future.
- hckr1292 12y ago
  Videoconferencing sucks -- it's not as effective as having your coworker come over to your screen for pair programming, or talking face-to-face with your UXer. Anyone who has done any amount of remote work will realize that the OP is dramatically overstating the value of teleconferencing solutions compared to working in house.
  - falcolas 12y ago
    Videoconferencing _used_ to suck. Four years ago, having a voice conversation while sharing a screen was neigh on impossible. Now, however, it's dirt simple and works really well.
    - tracker1 12y ago
      I'm kind of split... I think it depends on your home environment. Spouse, kids, other distractions? Sometimes the workplace has fewer distractions than home.
ergo14 12y ago
> A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges and you can't compete with a team made up of 99% remote workers Sorry, this just isn't true, the IT team in my old place was 100% remote (there were sales and marketing in local office), and we had very big growth and success solving quite a few technical problems scaling the business for millions of users. It's more of recruiting people with right skills and right mindset. After scrums/whatever we spend 90% of our time solving the problems - being on site doesn't really help unless you do do some specific R&D that requires constant team consultation - which 99.99% of startups here DON'T do.
rebelidealist 12y ago
Github was valued at $750mil in 2012, should be worth a whole lot more now. Basecamp, has not gotten outside valuation for a long time, but they are just as if not popular that Asana who was valued at $280mm back in 2012.
henrik_w 12y ago
Yes, it's a matter of how much the team gets done, not only how much you personally get done. I used exactly this example in "Programmer Productivity – Interruptions, Meetings and Working Remotely" http://henrikwarne.com/2013/04/02/programmer-productivity-interruptions-meetings-and-working-remotely/ http://henrikwarne.com/2013/04/02/programmer-productivity-in...
walshemj 12y ago
Yep its buying into the hype of teleconferencing that the Big Telcos sell to the CEO on the Golf course. The REAL point here is to build software you need teams that work well together not a bunch of solo contributors
cgh 12y ago
Harder problems than the Linux kernel? I've been remote for eight years now and I work on a codebase so huge that no one person understands it all beneath the 10,000 foot level. Nearly all of us are remote (only the managers are "local" to San Jose). Once a quarter we get together and meet up, coming from Vancouver, Toronto, Bangalore, Colorado and northern California.
- diydsp 12y ago
  > the Linux kernel? Although it's insanely technically challenging, many computer science projects are more difficult than the Linux kernel to do remotely. For example, watching users interact with the software, anything that involves expensive test equipment, anything that runs on embedded/custom hardware.
  - soperj 12y ago
    Because no one has ever run the linux kernel on embedded/custom hardware?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- gaius 12y ago
  Yes, kernels are not difficult because most of the problems are purely technical problems, that programmers can just decide for themselves any ambiguities, and many of the parts can be worked on separately. Software with users is 10-100x more difficult. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayrollHard http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayrollHard
  - cgh 12y ago
    Sorry if I was unclear. I was just using Linux as an example. The product I work on has plenty of users. I don't agree that it's orders of magnitude more difficult but that's beside the point.
falcolas 12y ago
As another veteran of working remotely, I disagree. Conscious use of collaboration tools offsets not being in the same office together nicely. Real time communication via Hangouts or Skype are at a level where you can hold a good conversation without having to be in the same physical location. Also, most offices (and businesses) are not really built to support proper collaboration and working conditions. As an example, due to a recent job move, I'm stuck in an office 80% of the time right now, and it's pretty miserable. It's an open office plan so there's constant noise and visual distractions, my boss can (and does) come over and interrupt me constantly on issues completely unrelated to my work, and in a former life the office was a welding garage, so I'm pretty cold most days this winter. I hear of the unicorn offices, where they were built to support collaboration and focused development work, but I've always found reality has more in common with Dilbert than Valve.
- davidw 12y ago
  > Real time communication That implies a time zone with a lot of overlap. Rome/Berlin time is 9 hours ahead of San Francisco, meaning there really isn't a lot of overlap. Real time communication also means that you need to consciously set up the call and pay attention to it. Sometimes I overhear something at work, or we talk about something interesting at lunch, or there's an "oh shit" moment (not often:-) when it's really convenient to have everyone jump in. I've been doing open source and IRC and 'the internet' for more or less 20 years, so I'm pretty comfortable with the whole thing, and happy with it, but when there is a sense of urgency, it can sometimes be less efficient.
  - zanny 12y ago
    Run a mumble server and give each developer their own "office" as a chat room. If you chose not to talk casually when remote that is really up to you.
  - falcolas 12y ago
    Yeah, time zones are easily the biggest problem. Even then, however, it's not that hard to find an overlap. I worked successfully with developers from England, Ukraine, and India for several years. Took effort on both of our parts to make it work, but work it did.
ryandvm 12y ago
Agreed. I don't have a solution, but this frustrates me to no end. As a software engineer that previously worked in an open floor plan I can testify that they absolutely crush individual productivity. Headphones are no solution. I think I'd need a potato sack on my head too. But as a software engineer that currently works with geographically distributed teams, there's no way to deny that certain elements of communication can't be reproduced with chats and hangouts. It's not just technical discussions either - it's much harder to build cultural cohesion in distributed teams as well. Which is a bummer because it's a lot easier to engage in blame and scapegoating when the guy that wrote something is just some email address and not a friend. I wonder if anybody has had success with some sort of 80/20 (remote/on-site) model...
- rumcajz 12y ago
  What you typically do is work remote and meet in person once in a (long) while. This is how lot of open source projects work.
- meanv 12y ago
  hand raised I have been doing 4 days remote, 1 at the office for 7 years. I live 150 miles from the office. That once a week face time is very helpful. I haven't read the entire thread of comments, but as I read about the mishmash of remote tools, I'll throw in an endorsement for Microsoft Lync. The full blown integration of email, video, audio, screenshare works really well.
the_arun 12y ago
I am in bay area & do not work remote, but I often think future is all about working remote to avoid commute & pollution. Software Engineering is one such job where we can get things done remotely. Like open source community :)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rumcajz 12y ago
Having experienced different setups, it seems that collaboration is OK if everyone is at the same place. It's also OK is everyone is remote. Where it gets troublesome is when part of the team is collocated and part is remote. What you get is two unequal classes of employees which leads to all kinds of problems.
- jkmcf 12y ago
  I work part time remotely, and we have other devs full time remote. I definitely feel like I'm "missing out" just being OOO part time, be it the hoc discussions or just going out for beers. Of course, it only matters if you let it matter. Some people don't care or need that stuff. They worry about their own work and leave work at work, which I'm working on doing :)
fsloth 12y ago
I think you might be falling into the trap of overt generalization. I agree that remote removes critical bandwidth for cross team communications. On the other hand, lots of programming projects are parallizable to n crafty individuals who need colocate only once in a while to " totally sync their mindstate" and can communicate effectively enough in the mean time using other ways without loss of critical bandwidth if the need for that bandwidth is not needed. Not all teams need the same kind of cross individual bandwidth. Of course loss of colocation leads to loss of serendiptuous talks to create novel insights but if the insividuals working together were located far apart in the first place then they might not be working together at all if not remote. Personal anecdote to give a practical example: I recently moved to another team within the same organization working on the same product but on a different level. The team from where I moved developed the stuff that got CI:d to customer builds and it would have been really difficult for me to imagine working remotely there as the work required often going around the floor asking about stuff (lots of undocumented legacy). My new team focuses on tech and middleware and creates libraries for downstream to consume. Programmers work on their own libraries and I can go on for days without requiring input from anyone. On this team I could easily work remotely. Based on my experience I would claim it depends on the designed team duties wether remote works or not. And I think this means that team organization must be tightly coupled with the software architecture design. I have no idea which should drive which but I'm pretty sure any changes in one should also be consciously reflected in another.
zippergz 12y ago
I feel the same way. I have lived in a tech hub city and worked on-site for major tech companies. I now live in a non-tech hub, with very few technology jobs to choose from, but I live here for personal quality of life reasons. Since I've lived here, I've worked both remotely and on-site for a few different companies. Selfishly, I'd like to see far more companies allow remote workers, because it would give me so many more job opportunities. But I also have to admit that my experience is that overall team/company productivity is markedly better when the people are all in the same location. I know that there are exceptions, but I really don't think they're the norm.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> I've been 100% remote worker for 5+ years but I think we have to be honest here. All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. As someone who worked remote for 6 years (with a few face to face meetings over those years) and now works in an office I think each have their trade offs and it balances out largely. In an office you can get quick questions answered much faster. If you forget to ask something in a meeting you can find the person and quickly get the answer later that day. Discussions are more natural too. However I've found that when working via email or Skype discussions are much more focussed. We ask our questions, get out answers and get back to work. In a face to face discussions people tend to add words to their sentences to make what they're saying seem longer/more important. Discussions deviate from their intended purpose. Sometimes that can be useful but often it's a waste of time. I've been in meetings which I could have wrapped up in under 5 mins - and the people I'm with are there for 30-60 mins. They talk about irrelevant things, repeat themselves with slight variations etc. etc. Sometimes this can be necessary if you're building a relationship with someone but most of the time it's a waste of time.
larrys 12y ago
"are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. Yes, they do help mitigate many issues of isolation and they do help collaboration but there's still some "bandwidth loss" when people are not in the same room or even down the hall from each other." Agree. Which, in fact, was one of the reasons that both Bell Labs and the Manhattan Project achieved what they did. (For sure a different time which lacked many of the advantages we have today.) And you could also argue about the negatives, the distractions etc. [1] But there is no question that in many cases it's an advantage to be located near others working in the same area and not in near isolation. [1] If you don't like listening to music (I don't) use a set of 3M "tarmac" grade earmuffs which will block out nearly everything.
- jleyank 12y ago
  "Which, in fact, was one of the reasons that both Bell Labs and the Manhattan Project achieved what they did." Err, no. The Manhattan Project succeeded because it has most of the available physicists of the world, a blank-check budget, top priority and rather severe real-world pressure. No startup idea will ever have that kind of staff...
  - nicktix 12y ago
    +1
frostmatthew 12y ago
> All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. Totally agree. But also feel collaborative periods make up a small amount of our time - remote workers allow having more/better/cheaper developers (whichever of the three you want) which can easily offset the less effective collaborative times. If software development were a field where we spent most of our time collaborating with others remote work wouldn't make sense. But most developers are spending most of their time alone at their desk coding or communicating with others in a manner that doesn't differ based on location (i.e. you still email people in the same office).
jleyank 12y ago
Couple of thoughts to throw out: (1) retention, keeping somebody in the family who has or wants to move out of SV/NYC. (2) Getting that 35x rockstar on board who's not interested in SV/NYC. (3) Stretching the $$ (of company or staff), as most parts of the US if not the world are cheaper than these two areas. (4) Customer proximity, in that there are markets that aren't the (western) US, etc.
fencepost 12y ago
Mullenweg is in kind of a unique situation with WordPress/Automattic - they have regular staff meetings all over the world, under the monicker "WordCamp". Sure they don't have all the staff at any of them (except SF, presumably), but a lot of the people working for the company attend various ones regularly, so they can get together in-person for periodic meetings, while at the same time keeping people in touch with what their users are doing.

by jasode 12y ago

photomatt 12y ago

Not that valuations are the end-all be-all, but Automattic was valued above a billion earlier in the year, and has risen since then: http://www.techmeme.com/140505/p14#a140505p14 http://www.techmeme.com/140505/p14#a140505p14

kareemm 12y ago

> A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges and you can't compete with a team made up of 99% remote workers. I see no evidence that this has ever been successfully done. MySQL was a 1B company and built with a remote team: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1826212/former-mysql-ceo-mrten-mickos-talks-about-managing-remote-workers-video http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1826212/former...

jasode 12y ago
If you're bringing up MySQL as a counterexample, I think we've lost sight of the original conversation. The original Paul Graham essay[1] had a lot of focus on "startups". The companies in the early days scratching and clawing trying to make things work. I thought that was the context. MySQL was started by 3 guys in Sweden working in the same office. Even if they wanted to have everyone working remotely in 1995, there was no technology (high speed internet) at the time to do it. Sure, as a company becomes bigger, and also as technologies improve, there are possibilities for organizing remote work. Anyways, back to the context and constraints of startups: If you're a startup, it would be great to recruit the "exceptional" talent in South Africa, Ukraine, China, New Zealand, etc (because 95% of the best programmers are not in the USA). The MA.TT says remote work is the answer. I don't see how because I've not seen any evidence of any billion-dollar American startup that was built by a 100% virtual team from multiple timezones of Europe/Africa/Asia. If you're creating a 24/7 tech support department that "follows the sun", having staff in far off timezones is awesome and necessary. If you're trying to build a product with hard challenges for the team to solve, MA.TT's "answer" of international remote workers is not an answer. [1]http://paulgraham.com/95.html http://paulgraham.com/95.html
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Here at Sococo we hope to be that team! We're in several time zones, 6 states and three countries. Not to a billion yet; not hardly. But growing!
- gclaramunt 12y ago
  While I concede that's not the "billion-dollar American startup that was built by a 100% virtual team", I've worked for a startup where half of the team was distributed across america and europe. It was an amazing team, highly collaborative and flexible, successfully tackling a hard problem. (I used to joke that the code base was CS funland: all the interesting problems in one place) We failed mostly because our product was overly ambitious, solving a broad problem. Yes, is just an anecdote, but my point is that distributed team can run circles around most of colocated teams and we wouldn't have been able to assemble that team if we insisted that everybody had to be on the same place.

drawkbox 12y ago

So as a remote worker, you would be more productive in the office 5 days a week? If everyone on the team has a 2 hour commute, that is a guarantee that there will be less time available to the individual and thus the team. Commutes are a big problem aside from the communication. I have also found that companies that do remote or allow it, just communicate better, to all parties, even clients or stakeholders. They are more external focused companies without internal blinders, they take an external view of the company instead of internal. Lots of employees time is commuting and dealing with office politics which become a bigger part of your job than working at some places. Personally I think companies that are remote or allow remote are much better at communication overall and have a saner external view of themselves coupled with the internal view, rather than just an internal view of what matters. I have seen this across many companies I have worked for or with. Some internal places I have worked that didn't allow remote made it very hard to get information because they expect people to barge into offices to ask. Overall I feel remote companies have the benefit here and make for more robust teams if they do it right, not to mention the benefit of attracting great developers all over the country or world. Today, virtual communication is how we communicate to most of our clients, customers and stakeholders. Companies that allow remote just do this better because they also communicate that way. Remote companies value external views of the company and communication much higher than non remote capable companies. Two more benefits of remote capable: When you setup another office upon growth the new office will not have the virtual communication problem (office to office within the same company is typically virtual communication and non remote companies do this badly), also remote companies root out non-contributors more quickly as you can't just hide behind being there physically as work you must contribute and build. VCs are so against remote that it seems like they almost have some tax hookups and own lots of real estate in SF as some of the logic makes no sense, ultimately labor costs would be cheaper and the companies would be more robust to changes.

learnstats2 12y ago
"If everyone on the team has a 2 hour commute, that is a guarantee that there will be less time available to the individual and thus the team." I am willing to sacrifice 2-4 hours of personal time per day commuting => I am willing to sacrifice myself to the company's wishes => I am a 'good employee' A portion of the advantage of office work comes down to employer control of employee. The differing communication systems with clients, customers and stakeholders illustrate the different balances of power accurately. As such, I agree that remote companies make for more robust teams if they do it right - but it's much harder to do it right. Remote companies lose some advantage of easy communication (in order to survive as a remote, you have to be better at communication), and you lose some advantage of having a clearly indicated power structure.

mgkimsal 12y ago

"A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges" And those companies aren't billion dollar companies either. "All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace" But they're more effective than those people not working together at all. "Remote workers even with today's fanciest collaboration technology is not the answer to finding the best talent." You have to define 'best'. If the definition of 'best' has to include "people who are willing to uproot their entire life to spend a portion of it in someone else's office", then yes, you're correct. "I see no evidence that this has ever been successfully done. Small scale modest businesses, yes, but not big ones." I see little evidence that co-located teams are all that much more successful at becoming billion dollar behemoths than virtual teams. You get access to a wider breadth of experience of worker when you embrace remote. Just because management hasn't had enough experience with the model yet to be able to grow a billion dollar company doesn't mean a) it's bad or that b) it may not happen in the future.

hckr1292 12y ago
Videoconferencing sucks -- it's not as effective as having your coworker come over to your screen for pair programming, or talking face-to-face with your UXer. Anyone who has done any amount of remote work will realize that the OP is dramatically overstating the value of teleconferencing solutions compared to working in house.
- falcolas 12y ago
  Videoconferencing _used_ to suck. Four years ago, having a voice conversation while sharing a screen was neigh on impossible. Now, however, it's dirt simple and works really well.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    I'm kind of split... I think it depends on your home environment. Spouse, kids, other distractions? Sometimes the workplace has fewer distractions than home.

ergo14 12y ago

> A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges and you can't compete with a team made up of 99% remote workers Sorry, this just isn't true, the IT team in my old place was 100% remote (there were sales and marketing in local office), and we had very big growth and success solving quite a few technical problems scaling the business for millions of users. It's more of recruiting people with right skills and right mindset. After scrums/whatever we spend 90% of our time solving the problems - being on site doesn't really help unless you do do some specific R&D that requires constant team consultation - which 99.99% of startups here DON'T do.

rebelidealist 12y ago

Github was valued at $750mil in 2012, should be worth a whole lot more now. Basecamp, has not gotten outside valuation for a long time, but they are just as if not popular that Asana who was valued at $280mm back in 2012.

henrik_w 12y ago

Yes, it's a matter of how much the team gets done, not only how much you personally get done. I used exactly this example in "Programmer Productivity – Interruptions, Meetings and Working Remotely" http://henrikwarne.com/2013/04/02/programmer-productivity-interruptions-meetings-and-working-remotely/ http://henrikwarne.com/2013/04/02/programmer-productivity-in...

walshemj 12y ago

Yep its buying into the hype of teleconferencing that the Big Telcos sell to the CEO on the Golf course. The REAL point here is to build software you need teams that work well together not a bunch of solo contributors

cgh 12y ago

Harder problems than the Linux kernel? I've been remote for eight years now and I work on a codebase so huge that no one person understands it all beneath the 10,000 foot level. Nearly all of us are remote (only the managers are "local" to San Jose). Once a quarter we get together and meet up, coming from Vancouver, Toronto, Bangalore, Colorado and northern California.

diydsp 12y ago
> the Linux kernel? Although it's insanely technically challenging, many computer science projects are more difficult than the Linux kernel to do remotely. For example, watching users interact with the software, anything that involves expensive test equipment, anything that runs on embedded/custom hardware.
- soperj 12y ago
  Because no one has ever run the linux kernel on embedded/custom hardware?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
gaius 12y ago
Yes, kernels are not difficult because most of the problems are purely technical problems, that programmers can just decide for themselves any ambiguities, and many of the parts can be worked on separately. Software with users is 10-100x more difficult. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayrollHard http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayrollHard
- cgh 12y ago
  Sorry if I was unclear. I was just using Linux as an example. The product I work on has plenty of users. I don't agree that it's orders of magnitude more difficult but that's beside the point.

falcolas 12y ago

As another veteran of working remotely, I disagree. Conscious use of collaboration tools offsets not being in the same office together nicely. Real time communication via Hangouts or Skype are at a level where you can hold a good conversation without having to be in the same physical location. Also, most offices (and businesses) are not really built to support proper collaboration and working conditions. As an example, due to a recent job move, I'm stuck in an office 80% of the time right now, and it's pretty miserable. It's an open office plan so there's constant noise and visual distractions, my boss can (and does) come over and interrupt me constantly on issues completely unrelated to my work, and in a former life the office was a welding garage, so I'm pretty cold most days this winter. I hear of the unicorn offices, where they were built to support collaboration and focused development work, but I've always found reality has more in common with Dilbert than Valve.

davidw 12y ago
> Real time communication That implies a time zone with a lot of overlap. Rome/Berlin time is 9 hours ahead of San Francisco, meaning there really isn't a lot of overlap. Real time communication also means that you need to consciously set up the call and pay attention to it. Sometimes I overhear something at work, or we talk about something interesting at lunch, or there's an "oh shit" moment (not often:-) when it's really convenient to have everyone jump in. I've been doing open source and IRC and 'the internet' for more or less 20 years, so I'm pretty comfortable with the whole thing, and happy with it, but when there is a sense of urgency, it can sometimes be less efficient.
- zanny 12y ago
  Run a mumble server and give each developer their own "office" as a chat room. If you chose not to talk casually when remote that is really up to you.
- falcolas 12y ago
  Yeah, time zones are easily the biggest problem. Even then, however, it's not that hard to find an overlap. I worked successfully with developers from England, Ukraine, and India for several years. Took effort on both of our parts to make it work, but work it did.

ryandvm 12y ago

Agreed. I don't have a solution, but this frustrates me to no end. As a software engineer that previously worked in an open floor plan I can testify that they absolutely crush individual productivity. Headphones are no solution. I think I'd need a potato sack on my head too. But as a software engineer that currently works with geographically distributed teams, there's no way to deny that certain elements of communication can't be reproduced with chats and hangouts. It's not just technical discussions either - it's much harder to build cultural cohesion in distributed teams as well. Which is a bummer because it's a lot easier to engage in blame and scapegoating when the guy that wrote something is just some email address and not a friend. I wonder if anybody has had success with some sort of 80/20 (remote/on-site) model...

rumcajz 12y ago
What you typically do is work remote and meet in person once in a (long) while. This is how lot of open source projects work.
meanv 12y ago
hand raised I have been doing 4 days remote, 1 at the office for 7 years. I live 150 miles from the office. That once a week face time is very helpful. I haven't read the entire thread of comments, but as I read about the mishmash of remote tools, I'll throw in an endorsement for Microsoft Lync. The full blown integration of email, video, audio, screenshare works really well.

the_arun 12y ago

I am in bay area & do not work remote, but I often think future is all about working remote to avoid commute & pollution. Software Engineering is one such job where we can get things done remotely. Like open source community :)

deleted 12y ago

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rumcajz 12y ago

Having experienced different setups, it seems that collaboration is OK if everyone is at the same place. It's also OK is everyone is remote. Where it gets troublesome is when part of the team is collocated and part is remote. What you get is two unequal classes of employees which leads to all kinds of problems.

jkmcf 12y ago
I work part time remotely, and we have other devs full time remote. I definitely feel like I'm "missing out" just being OOO part time, be it the hoc discussions or just going out for beers. Of course, it only matters if you let it matter. Some people don't care or need that stuff. They worry about their own work and leave work at work, which I'm working on doing :)

fsloth 12y ago

I think you might be falling into the trap of overt generalization. I agree that remote removes critical bandwidth for cross team communications. On the other hand, lots of programming projects are parallizable to n crafty individuals who need colocate only once in a while to " totally sync their mindstate" and can communicate effectively enough in the mean time using other ways without loss of critical bandwidth if the need for that bandwidth is not needed. Not all teams need the same kind of cross individual bandwidth. Of course loss of colocation leads to loss of serendiptuous talks to create novel insights but if the insividuals working together were located far apart in the first place then they might not be working together at all if not remote. Personal anecdote to give a practical example: I recently moved to another team within the same organization working on the same product but on a different level. The team from where I moved developed the stuff that got CI:d to customer builds and it would have been really difficult for me to imagine working remotely there as the work required often going around the floor asking about stuff (lots of undocumented legacy). My new team focuses on tech and middleware and creates libraries for downstream to consume. Programmers work on their own libraries and I can go on for days without requiring input from anyone. On this team I could easily work remotely. Based on my experience I would claim it depends on the designed team duties wether remote works or not. And I think this means that team organization must be tightly coupled with the software architecture design. I have no idea which should drive which but I'm pretty sure any changes in one should also be consciously reflected in another.

zippergz 12y ago

I feel the same way. I have lived in a tech hub city and worked on-site for major tech companies. I now live in a non-tech hub, with very few technology jobs to choose from, but I live here for personal quality of life reasons. Since I've lived here, I've worked both remotely and on-site for a few different companies. Selfishly, I'd like to see far more companies allow remote workers, because it would give me so many more job opportunities. But I also have to admit that my experience is that overall team/company productivity is markedly better when the people are all in the same location. I know that there are exceptions, but I really don't think they're the norm.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> I've been 100% remote worker for 5+ years but I think we have to be honest here. All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. As someone who worked remote for 6 years (with a few face to face meetings over those years) and now works in an office I think each have their trade offs and it balances out largely. In an office you can get quick questions answered much faster. If you forget to ask something in a meeting you can find the person and quickly get the answer later that day. Discussions are more natural too. However I've found that when working via email or Skype discussions are much more focussed. We ask our questions, get out answers and get back to work. In a face to face discussions people tend to add words to their sentences to make what they're saying seem longer/more important. Discussions deviate from their intended purpose. Sometimes that can be useful but often it's a waste of time. I've been in meetings which I could have wrapped up in under 5 mins - and the people I'm with are there for 30-60 mins. They talk about irrelevant things, repeat themselves with slight variations etc. etc. Sometimes this can be necessary if you're building a relationship with someone but most of the time it's a waste of time.

larrys 12y ago

"are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. Yes, they do help mitigate many issues of isolation and they do help collaboration but there's still some "bandwidth loss" when people are not in the same room or even down the hall from each other." Agree. Which, in fact, was one of the reasons that both Bell Labs and the Manhattan Project achieved what they did. (For sure a different time which lacked many of the advantages we have today.) And you could also argue about the negatives, the distractions etc. [1] But there is no question that in many cases it's an advantage to be located near others working in the same area and not in near isolation. [1] If you don't like listening to music (I don't) use a set of 3M "tarmac" grade earmuffs which will block out nearly everything.

jleyank 12y ago
"Which, in fact, was one of the reasons that both Bell Labs and the Manhattan Project achieved what they did." Err, no. The Manhattan Project succeeded because it has most of the available physicists of the world, a blank-check budget, top priority and rather severe real-world pressure. No startup idea will ever have that kind of staff...
- nicktix 12y ago
  +1

frostmatthew 12y ago

> All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. Totally agree. But also feel collaborative periods make up a small amount of our time - remote workers allow having more/better/cheaper developers (whichever of the three you want) which can easily offset the less effective collaborative times. If software development were a field where we spent most of our time collaborating with others remote work wouldn't make sense. But most developers are spending most of their time alone at their desk coding or communicating with others in a manner that doesn't differ based on location (i.e. you still email people in the same office).

jleyank 12y ago

Couple of thoughts to throw out: (1) retention, keeping somebody in the family who has or wants to move out of SV/NYC. (2) Getting that 35x rockstar on board who's not interested in SV/NYC. (3) Stretching the $$ (of company or staff), as most parts of the US if not the world are cheaper than these two areas. (4) Customer proximity, in that there are markets that aren't the (western) US, etc.

fencepost 12y ago

Mullenweg is in kind of a unique situation with WordPress/Automattic - they have regular staff meetings all over the world, under the monicker "WordCamp". Sure they don't have all the staff at any of them (except SF, presumably), but a lot of the people working for the company attend various ones regularly, so they can get together in-person for periodic meetings, while at the same time keeping people in touch with what their users are doing.