[sdtsui]

Hands down, screen-sharing software that "just works" would be awesome. Our team uses Screenhero over hangouts, and even when everyone has rock-solid internet there are connection/stability issues. Pretty much anything that can help remote teams collaborate effectively is great. If it was quantifiably better (fewer dropped calls, required restarts), we'd pay anywhere from $10-$100/user/mo. We're an dev team of 10-20 and use a paid Slack channel. We like InVision's new Inspect feature. We (the eng team) also do a lot of whiteboarding on Sketch.

I've done more lifetime remote dev work than onsite work. Happy to answer more detailed questions if you're interested. Have fun!

[nanospeck]

I believe, your answer is here now: https://chime.aws/

[nanospeck]

Surprised to hear there are still working solutions not available for efficient screenshare. Also interested to learn more about "anything that can help remote teams collaborate". I guess that will be really great niche area to focus on. What more do you expect than the present day available google docs kind of apps. Thanks for your suggestions.

[mod]

What's wrong with the normal screenshare on hangouts?

My company uses that fairly extensively with no issues.

[sdtsui]

Interesting. Is your entire company distributed, or is there the option to have some face-to-face collaboration?

I haven't worked on a team where everyone was happy with hangouts. Yeah, maybe a few people go "eh, works, no major issues", but that's different from "we like using this software and increases our productivity". There's always some humor/a running joke when someone's sound dies, or we need to restart the call.

I also haven't observed any distributed company in my network where they had >15 engineers and haven't invested in some paid software with collaboration features beyond hangouts: Zoom, Bluejeans, Screenhero (if a face-to-face video isn't needed, or rarely). One example, pairing: being able to "drive" your coworker's screen for a few minutes without no setup is better than Floobits. Hangouts does not allow this. I believe on some browsers you also can't see the sharer's mouse.

Does that answer your question? Defnitely curious, to learn of other remote teams' tools, and what works for them. I'd love to hear more about what your workflow is like and what you like about it.

[mod]

We have offices in different regions and some workers are fully remote (and others are sometimes-work-from-home).

Our hangout usage is mostly for meetings, which are just check-ins and planning meetings. Typically during the course of a meeting several people will briefly screenshare what they're working on, and a typical meeting involves multiple time-zones and states (although we're all US-based).

Sometimes pairing is done using hangouts, which isn't the best solution, but also isn't overly inhibiting. We are a small company, but > 15 developers.

I've never wanted to drive the coworker's screen, however I could see how that could be useful in many cases.

I'm not particularly thrilled with hangouts, in the same way I'm not particularly thrilled with, say, ssh--but it has always gotten the job done and allowed me to share my screen with others painlessly.

[sdtsui]

Neat-o, thanks for sharing! I can see why you'd be happy with hangouts, it does get the job done.

For us, where everyone is remote (I haven't seen my team's faces for over 6 months), the marginal utility of a tool's delightfulness/stability is quite high. Maybe we're just picky. :)

[coppolaemilio]

For me one of the biggest issues is not being able to show my face/hands while I'm sharing my screen.