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Based on my 10+ years experience of working remotely, I agree 100% with this article. My observation has been that distributed teams work well when the majority

by jhund 12y ago

Based on my 10+ years experience of working remotely, I agree 100% with this article. My observation has been that distributed teams work well when the majority of the team is remote. It makes written communication inevitable. However when I was the only remote person in a team of 4 or more people, I felt left out. Conference calls with everybody else on one side and me on the other were quite frustrating. I missed out on the informal watercooler talk and conversations in the team office. I never felt that remote work works well in an asymmetric situation. On the other hand, I think every team benefits from clear written communications. Having a remote team enforces this best practice where having a co-located team lets communication practices slip and become sloppy.

sanderjd 12y ago
As someone with far more experience with this than me, I'm interested in your perspective on a couple things that I've noticed: It seems to be more difficult to come to consensus in purely written communication, and more awkward for decision-makers to assert themselves. I'm not sure why this is true, or if it is only my anecdotal experience and outside the experience of most, but I've been in many long github/irc/whatever threads where parties seem to only grow increasingly intransigent, and many phone and in-person meetings where the same topic is dispensed with in less than 10 minutes of actual discussion. Is this phenomenon real in your experience? If so, have you found any good techniques for controlling it?
- jhund 12y ago
  > It seems to be more difficult to come to consensus in purely written communication I agree that some conflicts are much better handled via synchronous voice conversation. And I think that's acceptable, if not desirable. However, I make sure that after the call we write down some notes what decision we made, and why we decided the way we did. This makes sure that parties not present at the meeting (i.e. other developers, and our future selves) can pick up the context quickly and save us the pain of working through the decision process again. And then there is always the issue of dysfunctional team communications where the channel doesn't matter. In asynch conversations poor/obstinate communicators don't need everybody in the room to keep adding to a controversial conversation. So you just can't stop them.. And I just learned a new word: 'in·tran·si·gent': unwilling or refusing to change one's views or to agree about something. Thanks. > more awkward for decision-makers to assert themselves That has probably more to do with team culture than the communication channel used. I'd think that a capable and respected decision maker can assert themselves easily via written word.
  - mason55 12y ago
    > However, I make sure that after the call we write down some notes what decision we made, and why we decided the way we did. This makes sure that parties not present at the meeting (i.e. other developers, and our future selves) can pick up the context quickly and save us the pain of working through the decision process again. In the same way that you should comment your code with the "why" and not just the "what" you also should comment your non-code decisions with the "why" and not just the "what". Otherwise someone in the future will try to overhaul a process without knowing about some of the previous pitfalls that were discovered.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    Thanks for your comment, and glad to be able to teach you a great word! I've honestly never run into a person who is persistently obstinate in in-person conversations, but I've met many (including myself) who sometimes are in asynchronous text. > That has probably more to do with team culture than the communication channel used. I'd think that a capable and respected decision maker can assert themselves easily via written word. I think the second sentence of that is true, but that my point stands that it is more difficult for them to do so. I believe that's because facial language plays a large role in interactions, and even more so in potentially tense ones, and it can be very difficult to strike the right tone textually. It is much easier to get across "I've heard your point of view, but I'm taking my prerogative to make a different decision this time" without hurting feelings in person than it is in text. It's very possible that it's just harder to run a remote-first team effectively and that's the trade-off you accept for the myriad benefits. That has been my perspective on it for awhile, but I'm always curious if there are ways to alleviate that cost.

by jhund 12y ago

sanderjd 12y ago

As someone with far more experience with this than me, I'm interested in your perspective on a couple things that I've noticed: It seems to be more difficult to come to consensus in purely written communication, and more awkward for decision-makers to assert themselves. I'm not sure why this is true, or if it is only my anecdotal experience and outside the experience of most, but I've been in many long github/irc/whatever threads where parties seem to only grow increasingly intransigent, and many phone and in-person meetings where the same topic is dispensed with in less than 10 minutes of actual discussion. Is this phenomenon real in your experience? If so, have you found any good techniques for controlling it?

jhund 12y ago
> It seems to be more difficult to come to consensus in purely written communication I agree that some conflicts are much better handled via synchronous voice conversation. And I think that's acceptable, if not desirable. However, I make sure that after the call we write down some notes what decision we made, and why we decided the way we did. This makes sure that parties not present at the meeting (i.e. other developers, and our future selves) can pick up the context quickly and save us the pain of working through the decision process again. And then there is always the issue of dysfunctional team communications where the channel doesn't matter. In asynch conversations poor/obstinate communicators don't need everybody in the room to keep adding to a controversial conversation. So you just can't stop them.. And I just learned a new word: 'in·tran·si·gent': unwilling or refusing to change one's views or to agree about something. Thanks. > more awkward for decision-makers to assert themselves That has probably more to do with team culture than the communication channel used. I'd think that a capable and respected decision maker can assert themselves easily via written word.
- mason55 12y ago
  > However, I make sure that after the call we write down some notes what decision we made, and why we decided the way we did. This makes sure that parties not present at the meeting (i.e. other developers, and our future selves) can pick up the context quickly and save us the pain of working through the decision process again. In the same way that you should comment your code with the "why" and not just the "what" you also should comment your non-code decisions with the "why" and not just the "what". Otherwise someone in the future will try to overhaul a process without knowing about some of the previous pitfalls that were discovered.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Thanks for your comment, and glad to be able to teach you a great word! I've honestly never run into a person who is persistently obstinate in in-person conversations, but I've met many (including myself) who sometimes are in asynchronous text. > That has probably more to do with team culture than the communication channel used. I'd think that a capable and respected decision maker can assert themselves easily via written word. I think the second sentence of that is true, but that my point stands that it is more difficult for them to do so. I believe that's because facial language plays a large role in interactions, and even more so in potentially tense ones, and it can be very difficult to strike the right tone textually. It is much easier to get across "I've heard your point of view, but I'm taking my prerogative to make a different decision this time" without hurting feelings in person than it is in text. It's very possible that it's just harder to run a remote-first team effectively and that's the trade-off you accept for the myriad benefits. That has been my perspective on it for awhile, but I'm always curious if there are ways to alleviate that cost.