Sococo has been around forever and always gets a major eye-roll from the HN community whenever mentioned in a thread.
But I don't think I know a single engineer that has actually used it.
I like the idea of seeing who is chatting with who. If I'm working on something, and I have two colleagues that are also working on the same project and I can virtually see them chatting, I'd probably approach to see if there's anything I know or if they're discussing ideas.
How about be willing to hire experienced engineers who don't have remote experience?
Every time I've applied for a remote job, this seems to have been the sticking point. I'd just like employers to start with the assumption that I'm a professional who wouldn't slack off all day if I didn't have someone to babysit me.
I think this just depends on the employer. I saw that statistic from an Upwork report. 40% of companies are not good with remote. If you have ever worked out of a coffee shop or home, you have remote experience!
The things you need to do to succeed may not be different, but how you go about it obviously is. So I don't think it's fair to say that it's "no different".
Also, your posts you linked to are kind of fluff pieces (no offense intended). For example "By creating a strong community feeling and a sense of commitment to your company, your employees are excited about team calls and much more open with one another". Yeah ok, but how? I don't think creating community is a point of contention, but you're not explaining how to do so in a distributed environment.
One thing I have been thinking about is that remote companies will have difficulty with leadership that doesn’t understand the tech they are working with. When I look at my current company even one or two levels up there are people who have no understanding of a lot of technology and aren’t able to make quick judgement calls. So they need a lot of meetings and salesmanship within the company to make decisions. When I look at successful remote companies like Automatic, 37 Signals or StackOverflow they all have very strong leaders who can’t be bullshitted in technology but have a pretty good idea what they want to do. They also can judge the output of their people. It’s hard to be the boss of a remote worker whose work you don’t understand. How can you tell if somebody is good or not?
15 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 49.4 ms ] threadWith over 40% of companies allowing some weekdays to be at home, this is the future!
But I don't think I know a single engineer that has actually used it.
I like the idea of seeing who is chatting with who. If I'm working on something, and I have two colleagues that are also working on the same project and I can virtually see them chatting, I'd probably approach to see if there's anything I know or if they're discussing ideas.
Every time I've applied for a remote job, this seems to have been the sticking point. I'd just like employers to start with the assumption that I'm a professional who wouldn't slack off all day if I didn't have someone to babysit me.
It's about culture, and about setting the right processes with the right toolset.
Establishing a great communication flow [1] is key for remote companies, and you have to help your teams to:
· Create a community feeling
· Get to see each other face-to-face daily
· Be open about feelings
I recently wrote a few tips on how to set the right environment for remote work [2].
[1] https://standups.io/blog/communicating-better-in-distributed...
[2] https://standups.io/blog/a-productive-environment-for-remote...
something where we can visually structure our work.
for the rest we have etherpad (as alfernative to google docs) and gitlab with all its tools to structure issues