[eledumb]

I've worked in 4 very successful organization that were almost 100% remote work, the percentage of remote work employees by company, 98%, 99%, 92%, 98%.

These companies were no different than the 3 successful companies that didn't support remote work at all.

All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense.

I've worked at 4 unsuccessful companies 2 that were almost 100% remote, and 2 that were almost 100% not remote. What these 4 companies had in common was a lack of process, or discipline. Chasing the "next thing", blowing up schedules because "we need it now", zero planning. These companies need everyone in the same location because nothing is written down, everything is rumor, tribal knowledge is key and if you don't get to sit in a room and look at everyone to figure out the politics nothing works.

Bottom line is if you want to be successful you need to plan, have process and be disciplined in your approach to running the business. If you do these things managing remote employees is no different than having everyone in the same room. If however your company is a mess, trying to manage remote employees is next to impossible.

[bryanrasmussen]

What do you mean by success? I have worked at three highly successful companies by the metric most people quantify success in a company - making lots and lots of money - and process at these companies was something of a joke.

I have also worked at companies that were highly successful and followed processes as you say religiously.

I haven't ever worked anywhere with a sizable remote worker employee pool though.

[heymijo]

That Andy Rachleff quote about product/market fit comes to mind "when you have it, you can screw up almost everything and still succeed"

An example: Larry and Sergey deciding to do away with managers back in the early 00's would have decimated a startup that didn't have a burgeoning monopoly. Was barely a bump in the road for Google.

[bryanrasmussen]

I think it might be more like what I read in a book about Hughes one time, that basically when he was at his craziest he was still making incredible amounts of money and the theory was that once you reach a certain size/power it takes on a life of its own and you continue to make money despite fucking up a lot - although one can see a lot of countervailing examples I think in a case of some of the companies I've been at simple economic inertia meant they still did well.

[ivanhoe]

> and if you don't get to sit in a room and look at everyone to figure out the politics nothing works

This is actually a big problem in my experience, because remote workers are cut out of the "inner-circle of people" when office politics kick in. Face to face time helps networking a lot and creates much stronger ties than slack chats ever can.

[LegitShady]

The flip side of that is being remote and away from the politics can sometimes mean y u get work done when those in the thick of bullshit don't.

[Aeolun]

Which is worse, because you’ll have done all the work, but get none of the reward.

[xwdv]

As long as they pay me I don’t give a fuck. Don’t patronize me with pats on the back for doing what I agreed to do, just pay me.

Don’t get emotional, when you get bored and it’s time to move on get a better offer from somewhere and tell them to counter it or you walk, then follow through.

When you’re a remote worker you must learn to not play any sort of games. Say what you mean and mean what you say and you’ll be respected in the industry.

At the end of the day, all that matters is getting paid.

[ithkuil]

Sure. And to get paid well you have to be given the opportunity to do work that matters. What you described is a perfectly valid way of doing office politics: being a no-bs person that people respect for the ability to get the job done and have canidid conversation with. But that's also politics.

[LegitShady]

When you're the only one doing work you're the only one doing work that matters.

Been there done that left for a higher paying job where other people worked too.

[ivanhoe]

Depends, if you are a contractor then yes. As an employee you probably also hope to earn some raises and promotions, as the only way to get paid more. And that always involves a lot of politics.

[xwdv]

The way to get paid more is to leave that remote job for another remote job that pays better.

Don’t “hope” for raises or promotions, ask for them. And if they aren’t given, start looking.

This is how you develop a powerful remote career.

[cdavid]

> All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense.

That sounds like a strict requirement for remote work to work, and intuitively so. In your experience, how was the training done for less experienced IC ?

[crustacean]

I’m just as curious about how the managers were trained to be process-driven. Manager behavior seems to me just as if not more important than IC behavior here.

Since managers have power, and engineers usually don’t personally know their skip levels, managers can easily replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings. And they can silence dissent! They can wreak havoc in a way no IC could ever do.

[52-6F-62]

> replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings.

This has been a particular pain-point for me at times. Example: two meetings with the same team members on two connected subjects of about 45mins to an hour in length, spaced half an hour apart when they could easily be combined. That's just in one day. There are others that have mirrored those throughout a week. The meetings don't need to be as long as they are, but they're scheduled for that long and the rest of the time is often filled with awkward chit-chat. But it fills the manager's calendar slots so that they appear effective, even if a lot of time is being squandered. Add on all the frustration of the back and forth across floors, wandering the halls looking for a meeting room that isn't double-booked or waiting on people to vacate rooms, etc etc.

IC time is more directly controlled this way. Occasionally it makes sense, but the amount of duplication is, at times, staggering and can be frustrating.

[shantly]

We had a client one place I worked that liked to schedule 1-2hr meetings, never bring up the topic at hand, and then the three or four folks from their company would just chat things through on the phone with one another, mostly unrelated to anything we could conceivable influence or care about, while we sat there twiddling our thumbs. This was probably a majority of their irregularly scheduled meetings. One or more of us would get roped into one of these every week or two. A couple of their folks also liked to schedule 30min calls with 3-4 people in response to Slack questions that should have been answerable in under 5min (total time spent, not necessarily within 5min, not everyone's always ready to respond on Slack at the drop of a hat) with no phone call. I strongly suspect they had a culture that rewarded their middle managers for having calendars full of meetings, with no regard whatsoever for whether the meetings accomplished anything.

Their core business was management consulting.

[papln]

I'd love to hear from managers and others who saw compensation increases from having their meeting calenders arificially full, and not from what that managers got from those meetings.

Has anyone ever promoted a manager because they have so many meetings?

[Foobar8568]

Consider yourself lucky if your co-workers could connect these two meetings/subjects...

[52-6F-62]

They're smart people, so I'm sure that's not the issue.

My complaints are probably less about co-located offices and more just corporate cruft.

[crustacean]

I think you’re right to connect “co-location” with “cruft”, though. “Co-location for the sake of the flourishing of cruft” is a management philosophy.

[scruple]

It also doesn't help that, at least it seems that, most organizations are, or are close to becoming, manager top-heavy these days.

[paulkearney]

The only point I'd disagree with is "these days". Overmanagement is the perennial problem in my experience. More do'ers less say'ers is my proposed solution.

[scruple]

That's true. I wrote that because I was thinking specifically about the concept of the PMC and the estimate I recall reading in the WikiPedia article.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional-managerial_class

[ben_jones]

If anyone else was wondering, IC seems to mean Independent Contractor.

[bdickason]

Can’t speak for OP but at my company IC stands for ‘individual contributor’ (as opposed to a manager)

[mekoka]

I don't know why this comment was downvoted for trying to provide clarity, because I too, started scanning OP's reply in search of a meaning for that acronym that appeared from thin air. If someone disagrees then they should simply state what they think is the correct definition. But in my opinion this comment contributes value by making it clear that not everybody is familiar with this jargon.

[NoodleIncident]

Incorrect definitions should be downvoted to make it clear that they're mistaken.

[necovek]

Uhm, I would expect a reply to provide that clarification.

I expect to find useless and inappropriate comments downvoted, but there is no official policy that I remember, so those are only my ideas of how downvoting would help moderate a discussion.

[SignalsFromBob]

Then the people that downvoted should provide a correction. I still don't know what IC is supposed to stand for. I'm assuming it's not integrated circuit which is what I think about when I see IC.

[notbryan]

IC typically means 'individual contributor'.

[enraged_camel]

In my experience, tribal knowledge is the biggest issue. Some people (and teams) hold on to critical pieces of information and treat it as political and social currency in order to climb the ladder. You know the type: they might casually drop hints that they are in-the-know, or humbly brag about having been made privy to certain important information. This tends to build up their perceived image in the workplace, as everyone starts to see them as an influencer and gatekeeper, and try to gain their favor.

Good processes, specifically those that favor radical transparency, are a good way of getting in front of these types of issues, and are especially important for making remote setups work well.

[soneca]

Not that relevant, but caught my eye. A 98% or 99% remote company is effectively a 100% company right? 1% or 2% is not enough to be considered a "headquarters".

[WorldMaker]

There's an old adage that headquarters is wherever the CEO works. Most major corporate headquarters moves are to be closer to wherever the CEO calls home. Taking that adage to its literal extreme there will only ever be 99% remote companies as effectively the corporate headquarters is still the CEO's home. Though of course the adage isn't meant to be taken solely literally, and its more just a lens into a power relationship, and even a "majority remote" company may still need (or unintentionally build) the power of a headquarters on paper. (Maybe not directly to make the CEO happy, but accountants for tax reasons, shareholders for accountability reasons, or other reasons.)

[hammock]

>There's an old adage that headquarters is wherever the CEO works.

Is that an adage or it is the literal meaning of the word "headquarters"? The head's quarters - and the premier definition of headquarters if you look it up in Merriam.

[pgwhalen]

I've worked for a company where the CEO's home office had less than 10% of employees, and the HQ (for lack of a better term) halfway across the country had greater than 70% of employees.

[kaikai]

Seems like it would depend on role distribution. If all the senior leadership work from an office together and everyone else is remote, I'd call that office the headquarters regardless of employee percentage.

[gizmo385]

Even a 92% remote-working company would seem to me to be functionally indistinguishable from a 100% remote work company. You still need to have the processes and practices in place to support an almost entirely remote team.

[papln]

They'd be quite different because the 8% who are together would tend to have a cabal of connectedness.

[gtirloni]

> Chasing the "next thing", blowing up schedules because "we need it now", zero planning.

You're describing operations in most "agile" companies.

[loceng]

I wonder why most companies can't operate separate teams with these different flows? The "we need it now" crew having their own team who tries to line up dev with the upcoming, etc? I can understand needing functionality "urgently" - in an agile manner, however that will certainly have more costs short-term and potentially long-term if cutting corners.

[hinkley]

Every successful or even sane team I’ve worked on had discipline first and Agile second.

[notbryan]

Agile processes still require disciplined management. If you have hurricane leadership, it'll still fuck everything up, and you won't deliver any value.

[option_greek]

Very well put. My current company falls in the category of tribal knowledge. It's chaos :). People work 10 hours a day with more than 4 hours of meetings and nothing gets done. People at all levels delegate work downward and setup meetings to get 'status'.

[papln]

> 98%, 99%, 92%, 98%.

How were those extremely precise measurement obtained?

What's it like moving from a 98% remote company to a 99% remote company, and then back to a 98% remote company?

What in your opinion is holding companies back from getting past 2 9's remote?

[kenhwang]

I would assume that most companies have a physical location somewhere and it wouldn't be difficult to track the number of employees that regularly report on-site.

[posedge]

I'm sure you can have an equally controversial discussion on process-driven vs. non-process-driven companies.

[StavrosK]

Can you post an example of the sort of processes that were in place in these companies?

[eweise]

The only thing holding back remote work is leadership's ego. Remote is cheaper, more productive and healthier yet there's something about walking through an open office and not seeing a buzz of activity that makes leadership feel like nothing is happening.

[marcoseliziario]

It could be survival instinct instead of egos. Most companies have too many managers. There are places where you have one manager for every 5 engineers. Bonkers!

[aogl]

I work on a software project where I was the only dev, with a scrum master, 2 BAs, and 3 project managers. Along with 4 representatives from Business. It's an absolute nightmare! Recently another dev joined me, but so did about 6 other non devs, I don't even know what they so. This is all to deliver a software feature. I feel I strongly need to get a new job... Someone cry for me.

[marcoseliziario]

Funny thing is that in the beginning of agile, scrum master was hardly a dedicated position, it was more of a role. But then, agile at that time was a movement by developers, now it became the turf of project managers.

[eweise]

True. Middle managers probably feel more worth when the five engineers are huddled in a pod around them, usually with headphones on so they can concentrate.