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Ask HN: Managers of remote employees, what's hard for you?

8 points by colinhowe ↗ HN
I've been a remote person for a little while now and a big advocate for it. I've thought a lot about what's hard for me, but, I'd love to hear the other side of it. What's hard about managing a remote person?

7 comments

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boghy8823
I found out that developing trust with other people is much harder remotely
colinhowe
Interesting! What makes it hard for you to develop trust? For me, I think that if I can't trust someone than I don't want them working for me in any capacity (office or remote!)
kohanz
Not the OP, but I would imagine part of this comes from the fact that when you work side-by-side with someone, your level of non-verbal communication and just the ability to get to know one another is generally going to be a lot higher. You trust someone through getting to know them better. I'm not saying you can't achieve this level of communication, familiarity, and trust remotely, but I would assume it takes more planned effort to do so.
lambda_func
I guess this boils down to difficulties in building strong relationships remotely. I would definitely recommend traveling occasionally to build relationship with your remote folks.
radiogen
We are keeping person in the office at least half a year (6 payrolls). During this time they are trained and you can understand if she/he/it fit your company. After that period we can give remote login only.
[dead] roundthecorner
Synching up is a challenge. I am remotely managing a team of mostly young, inexperienced but highly motivated individuals at a very early stage startup. I have to spend a lot of time on calls and in chats to understand their individual contexts, coordinate work, provide guidance where necessary. I also sometimes am late responding to their queries over chat when busy with technical work, which adds to their problems at times. I also find that i have to put in a greater effort to win and keep their trust and that even small mistakes at my end create a greater trust deficit which needs to be breached somehow. There are times when i feel that i am not doing justice to the team and that it would be easier for them to be managed by someone who was colocated with them.
actionowl
I manage and work on a small team of 4 people. Myself and one other are remote, I am at a 13 hour time difference from all of them(!) The hardest part for me is knowing what's going on during their normal workday. Something can come up that de-rails their whole day and I'm not there to be their buffer or to help prioritize. So I guess the hardest part for me, isn't my employees, it's the other employees in the company that distract them or take up their time.