[tcrews]

I've been working remotely for 2 years now and my team has people from all over the world. People mostly talk on IRC but not a lot (about important stuff) and there is a HUGE number of periodic meetings. I can't stand them. What's worse, every time things start to appear to be going off track, the initial reaction is to always set up a new periodic meeting about topic X... this is supposed to bring people together but useful interaction never happens on meetings (too many people trying to save face). It's horrible.

When talking to external partners, our management brags about having a remote team with people from all over the world, but I don't think they understand how to make this work.

Sometimes I feel we should all be in a single office because of this, but then I remember other companies have figured this out so I don't have to feel bad about wanting to work remotely.

[jobvandervoort]

Periodic meetings mean the end to remote work. Avoid them whenever possible.

I try to be proactive about cancelling the periodic meetings that we do have, whenever there's nothing to talk about.

Traditional meeting strategies also work well: never start a meeting without an agenda, set a short and fixed time slot for it and always end when the time is over.

[dhd415]

My team has a daily 15-minute scrum meeting that I haven't found overly burdensome. We're spread over a 4-hour time difference, so the time of day isn't really an imposition on anyone. It's also no big deal if someone misses from time to time but I've found it generally helpful for keeping up with what the team is doing.