I really like the article but I’m really not sure about:
>> Chat works so well at communicating with the team that we’re all available 24/7/365
We’re fully remote at my job - no 2 people are in the same state in the whole, small, org. And I think we work well.
But people sign off at 6:30 in their own timezone by and large - and while they’ll check slack as much as they’d check email, slack is not going to cut for 24 hour access.
And it shouldn’t - we don’t want a culture of no downtime at all. If it’s an emergency use their pager* - which yes does get expensive for foreign employees but really the company is fine picking up those charges.
Even if you are remote quality of life matters - and people’s timezones, and schedules should be respected.
* Note that everyone does have a "pager number"- including our support reps. But most people haven’t been paged in more than a year. We consider this to be the right way to do things.
Yeah sorry if my GOOD/BAD wasn't clear. But I was trying to convey that if that's the kind of response a company gives then you should take it as a warning. I've had companies say things like that in interviews when I asked them questions about remote communication and I think it means their management has not matured yet.
"How many full time remote people do you currently have working for you?"
GOOD: "We have about 25% of our workforce remote."
BAD: "You would be the first one and really, we just listed remote to get
more applicants. Are you open to relocation?"
I thought it was just me that happens to. And employers never cease to be amazed when candidates react poorly to it. Shout out to the liars at DataBricks who played this game with me.
With close to a decade of remote work experience under my belt at companies that are more than 50% remote (GitHub) down to being the only remote guy, I have concluded that some things are best left in the physical world...
There is an actual whiteboard on my wall and a webcam on a stand. When I want to whiteboard something, I get up, switch camera angles, and literally draw it out. I have found this to be far more productive than any whiteboard apps out there.
For something more interactive, Google Draw isn't awful, but it's not a pen and paper.
Thanks for commenting! That's true, I do have a whiteboard within arms reach in my home office. Sometimes I'll take a picture of it and send it along when talking about a problem.
I had really good luck with the one built into google hangouts. I think it depends on what you're trying to convey. Sometimes just sharing mockups works really well too.
I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on what it's like being remote when a team is partially remote - say, 30% are remote - vs when a team is fully remote.
I've never worked remote in either situation, but I'm kind of inclined to think that being remote on a fully remote team is much, much better. I would think that a partially remote team would have a hard time fully committing to using remote work flows and tools, and the remote workers would inevitably always be a little out of the loop. Of course, if you're cool with that, and are happy with something more like a consultant role then maybe that's fine. If you're looking for a bigger or more central role in the org, then you'll have a hard time being remote in a partially remote org. Does that perception seem accurate? Or do I have the wrong impression?
In my humble experience, I've found that there are two paths that seem to be traversed and work. 1. It doesn't matter how many people work remotely but everyone is committed to participating and communicating through distributed means(chat, email, etc). That usually works pretty well. 2. Depending on the company culture, you'll need to have different amounts of the work force remote to get critical mass of adoption.
I was surprised at the quality of this article given the clickbait title.
As an anecdotal case, I recently started working remote most days of the week at my job, and it's been dramatically successful compared to the occasional days I'd do it at my last job. So far as I can tell, the reasons are subtle:
* Hipchat/slack integration: My current job does exactly what is listed in the article: even when sitting next to someone, we rely on the IM client for most conversation. Meanwhile, at my previous job, Such tools were rarely used: IM or email, you'd expect a 24 hour response time, so most questions were handled in person.
* Hours. My current job has remote offices, but only spanning a 3 hour time difference. My past job had offices in Seattle, Detroit, and two areas of India (Pune and Bangalore), so a 12 hour time shift was normal. This made ANY remote action difficult, so teams got more insular, so coordination took more time.
* Lots of Remote-ness. My current team is spread across 4 cities. My previous job had everyone local, except for several people in Pune, India. Thus, the difference to my team in having me work from home rather than office is very little: only one person would actually be in the same office as me anyway.
* VPN. My current job has VPN feel exactly like being there. My previous job had VPN be extremely slow, and some crippling dependencies. We had some workarounds, but basically working remote felt like something you suffered through, not something sustainable.
* Monitors/Home Office. My wife recently redid my office, and as such I have a private space to work from at home, and can plug my laptop into a preferred mouse/keyboard/monitor. This makes me much more productive than I'd be before.
> I was surprised at the quality of this article given the clickbait title.
Thanks!
Great reply btw. I think there really is something to remote work once everything starts working together. But it's definitely a more than one ingredient cake.
No problem! I appreciate criticisms and perspectives as long as they're constructive! Titles are really hard for me so feedback is good. Thanks for reading it!
The title may be a bit misleading, "What questions to ask when interviewing for remote job" would be a better description.
Would have been helpful to explain why some answers are bad, why they show a bad "fully-remote" environment. Otherwise good post. The 1st item is very important: being the first/only fully remote employee is really tough.
Yeah, I agree. I updated the title here, but I just need to pay more attention to titles+content in general I think. I'm trying to get back into blogging so I really like this feedback!
Also, I totally agree on the being the first employee is a tough one. I've done that 2 times now and it's not easy.
There was a good comment about how I used the terms "perk" and "dream" that was made. (https://medium.com/@martinb3/i-think-you-ve-come-up-with-som...) I agree with this. I could be wrong but I think a lot of people view it that way. I had hoped that the article would bring the tone around to make it sound less like a "dream" or a "perk" and more like a work environment decision. Either way excellent point!
Now that I'm back off the top page, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone! I really enjoyed the dialog and hopefully we can all talk more next time!
>> Chat works so well at communicating with the team that we’re all available 24/7/365
We’re fully remote at my job - no 2 people are in the same state in the whole, small, org. And I think we work well.
But people sign off at 6:30 in their own timezone by and large - and while they’ll check slack as much as they’d check email, slack is not going to cut for 24 hour access.
And it shouldn’t - we don’t want a culture of no downtime at all. If it’s an emergency use their pager* - which yes does get expensive for foreign employees but really the company is fine picking up those charges.
Even if you are remote quality of life matters - and people’s timezones, and schedules should be respected.
* Note that everyone does have a "pager number"- including our support reps. But most people haven’t been paged in more than a year. We consider this to be the right way to do things.