5 ms·

Remote Working – 3 Year Retrospective

32 points by eloycoto 12y ago

32bitkid 12y ago
I've been working remotely exclusively for about the past 9 months (before that I have been doing it off and on for about a year and a half), and I think the piece that really strikes a chord with me in this article is the "Communication" section. If you have a clear understanding of what you are building/creating then working remotely can be a boon; I think of it as working in some kind of hyper office. I can find times when I am hyper productive with heads down development, or pairing with another developer. What I think is difficult to reproduce are the shared working spaces/open-office floor plans. To be specific, I find meaningful collaborative communication to be the most difficult for me. The tips presented here will help, but still leave a lot to be desired. I think one of the hardest things with a distributed team is brainstorming. Maybe it's just a tooling thing, for example: I have yet to find a decent digital replacement for a whiteboard. Being able to scribble down idea, then go grab someone and talk through thoughts, erase, redraw, discuss. This all seems way more awkward than it should be online. It seems like a medium that could be much improved digitally, but I have yet to find a tool that really works. I also wish more audio conferencing software supported positional audio. Perhaps this is insane, but I miss being able to overhear other conversations, but I don't want them blaring directly in my ear (as if they are standing 6 inches away from ear. I want to be able dynamically group people, and place voices within a virtual spatial domain. Having every voice come from the same "place" is really unnerving for me.
- lighthazard 12y ago
  I agree with the shared working spaces being missing from a remote position, but that can be simulated by using things that support screen sharing, Skype comes to mind, as does Google Hangouts. Alternatively, you can use something like Join.me to have a full collaboration effort on one screen, together. The white board issue - this is something I haven't been able to reproduce either, but I think I've changed my workflow to follow it. Right now, for a remote position, I sketch out my ideas/structures on paper, take a picture, and share it with the team. If it makes sense to them, we're golden, if not, they can each modify the image and share with the team again (and now we have a 'version controlled' 'whiteboard.' In truth, I think the focus should be on finding an alternative workflow than finding a replacement for a whiteboard. Don't ask me though, I have no idea what an alternative would be. Finally, audio conferencing - I had my team set up Teamspeak which does a fantastic job with positional awareness in a ['3D' environment](http://i.imgur.com/pc3EG3b.png http://i.imgur.com/pc3EG3b.png). Of course, this is a setting that needs to be constantly changed/updated based on the conversations, but it works well in large groups where members need to talk to each other, but still hear other conversations that are happening on the side (or 'behind' you).
  - 32bitkid 12y ago
    I pair a lot and, most of the time, I use ScreenHero. I think is a great tool, and before yesterday would have recommended it without hesitation. I have mixed feelings about the recent Slack acquisition, but I'd rather see a tool like that get rolled into another tool than run out of money and die. I do something similar for a whiteboard replacement. I use IPEVO Ziggi-HD High-Definition USB Document Camera [1], a sharpie and a nice sketchbook. I'll switch between my macbook webcam and that for sketching/drawing. Which helps a lot, but still feels very one sided; like I am presenting an idea rather than collaborating on an idea. I'm a very visual communicator, so there are times when I feel very handicapped by a lack of a good collaborative sketching tool. I've tried using TeamSpeak, but in my experience it was a pain to set up for non-gamers. It can be great once you get it tuned just right, however, I think there is a broader (more accessible) niche that could appeal to a lot of people -- they just don't know it yet. Having the ability to simply and quickly, spawn a side conversation within a bigger meeting would be ideal for me. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Camera-CDVU-04IP/dp/B008DBF5Z8/ref=sr_1_1 http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Came...
Touche 12y ago
> Again unique to my particular work situation, my team are at work roughly between 2PM and 11PM UK time. Ugh, that's terrible. I also work remote. The thing that's never changed is that people always talk about time in reference to themselves. "Can we have the meeting at 3:30?" means 3:30 my time. And they usually do not think about how that matches up to your schedule. It's something I've constantly had to deal with. Working with people only a time zone or 2 away makes this much easier.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  I'm based in the UK but have a few clients in NYC. To be honest, translating from UTC to EST barely requires any thought at all for me now, and I always work to my clients' timezones, not mine - though, to be clear, I would usually phrase a meeting request like, "How about we have a call first thing in the morning your time, 9am EST?" (whilst in my head I'm thinking, "Yes, 2pm should fit nicely with my lunch plans"). Admittedly it does require more effort - and a little googling - when the clocks change; and I have definitely had issues with misunderstandings between iCal and Outlook over what timezone a meeting is in... which you'd think would be a solved problem in 2015, but seemingly not. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but the people I deal with have always been able to understand that a late afternoon meeting for them would mean a very late evening call for me - and if that's the best that they can do, they are always apologetic and appreciative of my being accommodating enough to do that.
  - Touche 12y ago
    Yeah it's more of the constantly having to remind people that is annoying. You constantly have to be the person that forces a meeting to be rescheduled. The first remote job I had I worked at a startup in SF and typically everyone started work at 1 or 2pm. They'd schedule standups for 4:30 or 5:00. Of course I worked on the east coast and am a morning person. But what was I supposed to do (having just started)? Of course I'd attend the 8:00pm meetings (my time) even though I started work 12 hours earlier. It's been much easier in my experience where most people overlap at least 4 hours.
drewg123 12y ago
I worked remotely for 12 years for a fairly small tech company. The keys to being successful, as I saw it, were - Be very active in your team. Comment on code changes. Be on every conf call. Be on skype, IRC, or whatever mechanism your team uses to stay in touch. You have to make up for the missing facetime by being that much more active in other ways. - Have a regular schedule that you stick to & make sure your teammates know what your schedule is. Just because you work remotely does not mean you're always on call. Conversely, working remotely isn't a license to watch TV & play video games all day. - Have a dedicated home office (or at least a workspace) that is for work only. When you're in this space, treat family and/or roommates as you would if they showed up unannounced at your office. Be polite, but let them know you're working. Similarly, try to avoid working during your downtime. Unless there is a severe crunch, you probably would not go into your office at 9pm, so stay out of your home office.
- Touche 12y ago
  > Have a dedicated home office (or at least a workspace) that is for work only. When you're in this space, treat family and/or roommates as you would if they showed up unannounced at your office. Be polite, but let them know you're working. It's crazy how hard it is for people to realize that just because you work from home doesn't mean you are always available. I don't know how many time I've had a family member knock on the door 2 minutes before I have a meeting or get a call from my wife just to chat about her day... there's got to be some major misunderstanding in the general public about what working from home means. It feels like people think it means there's no structure at all.
supergeek133 12y ago
I like this.. Most of the corporate type jobs I've worked in over the years afforded lots of responsibility for flexible work location. Some of those jobs I could never work from home and get anything done, others was just fine. The other key is the folks you have to interact with on a regular basis. Do they communicate well over email/chat/phone or are they only useful in person? I've seen companies hire people in remote jobs that have no business working remote (bad communication) and some people that would improve productivity if allowed to just stay home when they felt necessary. Especially in the world of every office moving to open areas with little room for escape. Noise pollution is a big problem. Edit: Also to the point of expenses. This one ALWAYS throws me for a loop. You're not having to pay for a desk, office, etc for them. Pay for something! Internet, travel, etc. You're saving money with your remote employee in most cases.
e0m 12y ago
To echo the point on video conferencing, this is why I love Sqwiggle! (not affiliated!) The activation energy is a single "click" instead of: 1. turn on TV 2. switch input 3. enter name of hangout 4. wait to connenct 5. wait for the other person to connect 6. "can you hear me?" Not to mention the fact that the constant presence of the slowly updating picture reminds everyone that the person exists and is "present". The only thing I hate about Sqwiggle is the ability to turn auto-updating photos off. That one feature completely destroys the major benefit of using it as a reliable indicator that someone is or is not afk.
- joesmo 12y ago
  To me, having this ever present picture sounds worse than an open office. I would absolutely hate it if someone was staring at me (or potentially so) every minute of every day and would be much less productive about it (same thing in a real office). Even in meetings, I find video to be useless and actually an impediment to expressing myself well.
jcastro 12y ago
Been doing this ~7 years and here's an easy tip I learned from someone: When taking a phone call stand up and walk around. Sometimes it's easy to get into a zone and not realize you've been sitting for a long period of time, if you train yourself to walk around when you're on a call it helps loosen things up. And here's my tip: Absolutely invest in yourself. If you're going to spend hours there, make sure you do it right. It's not just getting a nice chair, monitors, and workspace; you need to spend the time to set them up right and in a way that is healthy. You don't have people dropping by and interrupting you for a coffee or meeting so it's easy to stay immobile. Little things can make the difference between staying healthy or (in my case) having to go to a few weeks of physical therapy because your sexy new monitors arms were positioned all wrong. Lots of ergonomic resources on the web, make sure to use them! (This obviously applies to office workers as well but at home it's easy to think you can grab a notebook and sit weird in a couch all day for an entire week and be fine.)
sctb 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886073
matnyfr 12y ago
Insightful input !
Killswitch 12y ago
This info is very interesting to me, because I'm a month away from leaving the company office I've been at for a year now to working remote and I'm very worried about my productivity and how to handle working from home.

32 points by eloycoto 12y ago

I've been working remotely exclusively for about the past 9 months (before that I have been doing it off and on for about a year and a half), and I think the piece that really strikes a chord with me in this article is the "Communication" section. If you have a clear understanding of what you are building/creating then working remotely can be a boon; I think of it as working in some kind of hyper office. I can find times when I am hyper productive with heads down development, or pairing with another developer. What I think is difficult to reproduce are the shared working spaces/open-office floor plans. To be specific, I find meaningful collaborative communication to be the most difficult for me. The tips presented here will help, but still leave a lot to be desired. I think one of the hardest things with a distributed team is brainstorming. Maybe it's just a tooling thing, for example: I have yet to find a decent digital replacement for a whiteboard. Being able to scribble down idea, then go grab someone and talk through thoughts, erase, redraw, discuss. This all seems way more awkward than it should be online. It seems like a medium that could be much improved digitally, but I have yet to find a tool that really works. I also wish more audio conferencing software supported positional audio. Perhaps this is insane, but I miss being able to overhear other conversations, but I don't want them blaring directly in my ear (as if they are standing 6 inches away from ear. I want to be able dynamically group people, and place voices within a virtual spatial domain. Having every voice come from the same "place" is really unnerving for me.

lighthazard 12y ago
I agree with the shared working spaces being missing from a remote position, but that can be simulated by using things that support screen sharing, Skype comes to mind, as does Google Hangouts. Alternatively, you can use something like Join.me to have a full collaboration effort on one screen, together. The white board issue - this is something I haven't been able to reproduce either, but I think I've changed my workflow to follow it. Right now, for a remote position, I sketch out my ideas/structures on paper, take a picture, and share it with the team. If it makes sense to them, we're golden, if not, they can each modify the image and share with the team again (and now we have a 'version controlled' 'whiteboard.' In truth, I think the focus should be on finding an alternative workflow than finding a replacement for a whiteboard. Don't ask me though, I have no idea what an alternative would be. Finally, audio conferencing - I had my team set up Teamspeak which does a fantastic job with positional awareness in a ['3D' environment](http://i.imgur.com/pc3EG3b.png http://i.imgur.com/pc3EG3b.png). Of course, this is a setting that needs to be constantly changed/updated based on the conversations, but it works well in large groups where members need to talk to each other, but still hear other conversations that are happening on the side (or 'behind' you).
- 32bitkid 12y ago
  I pair a lot and, most of the time, I use ScreenHero. I think is a great tool, and before yesterday would have recommended it without hesitation. I have mixed feelings about the recent Slack acquisition, but I'd rather see a tool like that get rolled into another tool than run out of money and die. I do something similar for a whiteboard replacement. I use IPEVO Ziggi-HD High-Definition USB Document Camera [1], a sharpie and a nice sketchbook. I'll switch between my macbook webcam and that for sketching/drawing. Which helps a lot, but still feels very one sided; like I am presenting an idea rather than collaborating on an idea. I'm a very visual communicator, so there are times when I feel very handicapped by a lack of a good collaborative sketching tool. I've tried using TeamSpeak, but in my experience it was a pain to set up for non-gamers. It can be great once you get it tuned just right, however, I think there is a broader (more accessible) niche that could appeal to a lot of people -- they just don't know it yet. Having the ability to simply and quickly, spawn a side conversation within a bigger meeting would be ideal for me. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Camera-CDVU-04IP/dp/B008DBF5Z8/ref=sr_1_1 http://www.amazon.com/Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Came...

Touche 12y ago

> Again unique to my particular work situation, my team are at work roughly between 2PM and 11PM UK time. Ugh, that's terrible. I also work remote. The thing that's never changed is that people always talk about time in reference to themselves. "Can we have the meeting at 3:30?" means 3:30 my time. And they usually do not think about how that matches up to your schedule. It's something I've constantly had to deal with. Working with people only a time zone or 2 away makes this much easier.

bshimmin 12y ago
I'm based in the UK but have a few clients in NYC. To be honest, translating from UTC to EST barely requires any thought at all for me now, and I always work to my clients' timezones, not mine - though, to be clear, I would usually phrase a meeting request like, "How about we have a call first thing in the morning your time, 9am EST?" (whilst in my head I'm thinking, "Yes, 2pm should fit nicely with my lunch plans"). Admittedly it does require more effort - and a little googling - when the clocks change; and I have definitely had issues with misunderstandings between iCal and Outlook over what timezone a meeting is in... which you'd think would be a solved problem in 2015, but seemingly not. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but the people I deal with have always been able to understand that a late afternoon meeting for them would mean a very late evening call for me - and if that's the best that they can do, they are always apologetic and appreciative of my being accommodating enough to do that.
- Touche 12y ago
  Yeah it's more of the constantly having to remind people that is annoying. You constantly have to be the person that forces a meeting to be rescheduled. The first remote job I had I worked at a startup in SF and typically everyone started work at 1 or 2pm. They'd schedule standups for 4:30 or 5:00. Of course I worked on the east coast and am a morning person. But what was I supposed to do (having just started)? Of course I'd attend the 8:00pm meetings (my time) even though I started work 12 hours earlier. It's been much easier in my experience where most people overlap at least 4 hours.

drewg123 12y ago

I worked remotely for 12 years for a fairly small tech company. The keys to being successful, as I saw it, were - Be very active in your team. Comment on code changes. Be on every conf call. Be on skype, IRC, or whatever mechanism your team uses to stay in touch. You have to make up for the missing facetime by being that much more active in other ways. - Have a regular schedule that you stick to & make sure your teammates know what your schedule is. Just because you work remotely does not mean you're always on call. Conversely, working remotely isn't a license to watch TV & play video games all day. - Have a dedicated home office (or at least a workspace) that is for work only. When you're in this space, treat family and/or roommates as you would if they showed up unannounced at your office. Be polite, but let them know you're working. Similarly, try to avoid working during your downtime. Unless there is a severe crunch, you probably would not go into your office at 9pm, so stay out of your home office.

Touche 12y ago
> Have a dedicated home office (or at least a workspace) that is for work only. When you're in this space, treat family and/or roommates as you would if they showed up unannounced at your office. Be polite, but let them know you're working. It's crazy how hard it is for people to realize that just because you work from home doesn't mean you are always available. I don't know how many time I've had a family member knock on the door 2 minutes before I have a meeting or get a call from my wife just to chat about her day... there's got to be some major misunderstanding in the general public about what working from home means. It feels like people think it means there's no structure at all.

supergeek133 12y ago

I like this.. Most of the corporate type jobs I've worked in over the years afforded lots of responsibility for flexible work location. Some of those jobs I could never work from home and get anything done, others was just fine. The other key is the folks you have to interact with on a regular basis. Do they communicate well over email/chat/phone or are they only useful in person? I've seen companies hire people in remote jobs that have no business working remote (bad communication) and some people that would improve productivity if allowed to just stay home when they felt necessary. Especially in the world of every office moving to open areas with little room for escape. Noise pollution is a big problem. Edit: Also to the point of expenses. This one ALWAYS throws me for a loop. You're not having to pay for a desk, office, etc for them. Pay for something! Internet, travel, etc. You're saving money with your remote employee in most cases.

e0m 12y ago

To echo the point on video conferencing, this is why I love Sqwiggle! (not affiliated!) The activation energy is a single "click" instead of: 1. turn on TV 2. switch input 3. enter name of hangout 4. wait to connenct 5. wait for the other person to connect 6. "can you hear me?" Not to mention the fact that the constant presence of the slowly updating picture reminds everyone that the person exists and is "present". The only thing I hate about Sqwiggle is the ability to turn auto-updating photos off. That one feature completely destroys the major benefit of using it as a reliable indicator that someone is or is not afk.

joesmo 12y ago
To me, having this ever present picture sounds worse than an open office. I would absolutely hate it if someone was staring at me (or potentially so) every minute of every day and would be much less productive about it (same thing in a real office). Even in meetings, I find video to be useless and actually an impediment to expressing myself well.

jcastro 12y ago

Been doing this ~7 years and here's an easy tip I learned from someone: When taking a phone call stand up and walk around. Sometimes it's easy to get into a zone and not realize you've been sitting for a long period of time, if you train yourself to walk around when you're on a call it helps loosen things up. And here's my tip: Absolutely invest in yourself. If you're going to spend hours there, make sure you do it right. It's not just getting a nice chair, monitors, and workspace; you need to spend the time to set them up right and in a way that is healthy. You don't have people dropping by and interrupting you for a coffee or meeting so it's easy to stay immobile. Little things can make the difference between staying healthy or (in my case) having to go to a few weeks of physical therapy because your sexy new monitors arms were positioned all wrong. Lots of ergonomic resources on the web, make sure to use them! (This obviously applies to office workers as well but at home it's easy to think you can grab a notebook and sit weird in a couch all day for an entire week and be fine.)

sctb 12y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886073

matnyfr 12y ago

Insightful input !

Killswitch 12y ago

This info is very interesting to me, because I'm a month away from leaving the company office I've been at for a year now to working remote and I'm very worried about my productivity and how to handle working from home.