[farslan]

We do it here are DigitalOcean and it's just awesome. We have people in NYC HQ and remote all over the world (for example I'm working from Turkey). The key is not only over communication, also to care about your remote employees, let them feel like they're really a part of the company, bring them to the HQ, not per year, multiple times, etc.. There are many things but so far DigitalOcean is one of the best companies I've worked remotely (and I'm working remotely for almost 5 years for different companies).

[cookiecaper]

I'll be contrarian here and say that I actually hate that most remote companies make frequent on-site travel part of the job and pretend like it's a perk. Travel, including on-site visits and "group retreats", are not perks for me.

I have a family and a life where I'm at and part of the reason I like to be remote is because it allows me to be productive with minimal impact on other things (e.g., don't have to waste 2 hours in commute time each day). Places that require quarterly visits to the home office are kind of just aggregating all of that disruption into a single week. Still better than doing it every day, but not a thing to tout as a benefit.

[ghaff]

It is contrarian. As someone who has worked remotely to a significant degree for quite a while, I also find face to face get togethers (whether in an office or elsewhere) incredibly valuable.

You're welcome to your own preferences of course but, as someone on a largely remote team, I consider regular get-togethers in various forms pretty much essential.

[cookiecaper]

Just curious, what specific value do you derive from these events that makes them "essential"? While I understand that a lot of people who may not have a lot going on at home may find them enjoyable, I really don't think it can be characterized as essential for accomplishing the job tasks.

If face-to-face communication is "pretty much essential", what's the argument for continuing to run the company as a remote/distributed enterprise? Isn't the whole concept of telecommuting predicated on the fact that face time is not essential to performing the job function?

Leaving aside the personal interruption represented by such events, I don't understand the philosophical underpinnings. To me, it seems like someone said "There's not enough chance for politics and cliques to emerge over IRC [which is incorrect btw], let's make sure we all get together physically at least once every 3 months so we can find new things to take petty offense at."

Again, I think that well-run open-source projects provide some really good examples of the right way to do a distributed company. They usually have one big pow-wow per year, and it's a convention with planned talks, networking events, etc., and of course, attendance is voluntary and the meetings are transcribed and broadcast. Debate and consideration occurs online where everyone can participate.

If a massive project like the Linux kernel can get by without having such events every 3 months, why can't $Random_Startup?

I've been a full-time remote worker at the same company for the last few years. I'm the only remote worker on my team and one of a small handful dispersed throughout the company. I've been back to the head office once. It's absolutely true that there are negatives and downsides to being remote, but nothing that jeopardizes my ability to perform my duties.

Beyond that, I did several years fully remote as a full-time contractor. Some clients were local and I would meet with them face-to-face up to a couple of hours a week, but the majority were non-local. I only met a few of these people in person and I don't feel that impacted my ability to do my job.

Like so much else in contemporary tech culture, my opinion is that it traces back to putting single 24-year-olds at the helm and making everything subservient to their whims. They think it's cool to rent out a vacation home on a beach in Belize and fly 10 people out to set up camp in there for 2 weeks. Grown-ups with spouses and kids or other significant non-work obligations are likely to be less enthusiastic.

[nnq]

Some people like me dislike working fully remote just as much as they do full-time in-office... a hybrid approach is only thing that can work for me. "Constant consistent variety" is what keeps me ticking and productive. Also, just as you want to take time off from work, don't you also feel the need to take some time off from family too ? ;)

[ghaff]

I value variety as well. I mostly work from home when I'm not traveling but I like to go into the office at least one day a week even when I don't really need to. I'm similar with traveling. There are times when it really wears me down but then I'm doing the routine day-to-day in the office/home for three weeks and I'm ready for a change.

[ghaff]

>If face-to-face communication is "pretty much essential", what's the argument for continuing to run the company as a remote/distributed enterprise? Isn't the whole concept of telecommuting predicated on the fact that face time is not essential to performing the job function?

I think it's predicated on face time being not necessary on a day to day basis given the tradeoffs associated with requiring it.

A lot obviously depends on the task and individual preferences. I probably shouldn't have used the word "essential." However, I've found some level of F2F very useful and I'd probably encourage teams that weren't too distributed to get together physically on a semi-regular basis (as most want to do anyway).

It's funny that you mention the Linux kernel. I've heard GKH on a panel at a LinuxCon explicitly say that he thought one of the reasons that Linux development was so robust was because there was enough money in the ecosystem to get people to events like he was attending.

[emj]

Could we quantify this a bit more? A largely remote team for me is a 3-7 person teams, all but project lead are remote. The regular get together are 4-8 hours every month plus some annual dinners. The remote distance is just 20km - 500km

I think our face time is abit excessive but it's ok, even nice, but that's because it fits into my workday and family life, and it's always paid travel time.

[ghaff]

It probably depends a lot on the nature of the work and working styles but having a F2F sync every month or two seems pretty reasonable for a not too geographically distributed team.

[farslan]

I also have a son and I understand you. You don't have to go btw and it's not mandatory. However it's encouraged and you're welcome to go and visit. So there is a big difference there!

[peterjmag]

Can confirm—DigitalOcean is great at remote work. I'm consistently impressed by how well connected I feel, despite being across the ocean from our HQ in NYC. People really care and put in the effort to make it work. It also definitely helps that both "sides" are well represented—we're almost exactly 50% remote at the moment.

And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we're hiring. =)

https://www.digitalocean.com/company/careers/#current-openin...

[bogomipz]

I applied to Digital Ocean and the recruiter before even speaking to me sent me a link to an online test that tested exclusively for knowledge of how to automate things using Chef. Nowhere is Chef mentioned on my CV as I have not worked with that config management tool, although I have with worked with others Puppet/Ansible. Needless to say I deleted the email. Talk about ridiculous. What a massive fail.

This was the second such miserable experience I had with D.O. I assumed that my first bad experience may have been due to a lack of maturity at the time with the interview process and so applied again a couple years later. Wow, was I was wrong.

[vonmoltke]

> And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we're hiring. =)

Yeah, and your hiring process is rife with stupid biases like autorejecting people based on who they worked for in the past.

[Perihelion]

Could you elaborate on this? I think DO has a right to hire however they want to but I'm curious about who they're auto-rejecting/why.

[vonmoltke]

Last year I had my resume submitted by a third-party recruiter for a role there. My resume was rejected out-of-hand by the hiring manager because the companies/customers I had worked for were "too enterprisey" (i.e. I had only worked for government contractors at that point). The "too enterprisey" quote came directly from the recruiter. I suppose he could have been blowing smoke up my ass, but I don't think he would have said that if he was.

[Perihelion]

Ah, okay. Sounds like they were trying to focus on people with a specific type of experience and not blacklisting people based on a specific employer or anything.

[vonmoltke]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply they were blacklisting specific companies.