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by nmcfarl 3738 days ago
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.

2 comments

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.
Looks like I got the wrong end of the stick on this one :-)
haha, I'll take the blame, I probably should format it better.
That was given as a "Bad" thing- so if a company says "Oh yeah everyone's 24/7/365" then that's a red flag/ run away situation.
If you need to be have your team banging on the keyboard 24/7/365 then you have the wrong people or the wrong management.

We all keep forgetting John Henry ultimately lost the race :)