At my current company, we worked together on-site for about a year and a half. The last three and a half years, I moved off and worked remotely. While I can agree that there are benefits, I think the company would have been better served to have me local. This is all anecdotal, of course, but I think younger, smaller companies should consider the tradeoffs carefully before having remote co-founders/management. A mostly remote team can and has worked, but it's not going to be the right fit for every company. Even if you really want it to work out, and give it your best shot.
Yes, you do the Video calls and you've got HipChat and email. But there's something about being there down in the muck with the rest of the team that builds cohesion, camaraderie, and enthusiasm. I say this as someone who doesn't like crowds or lots of noise. It's also really easy to lose the pulse of the group being remote. I can't easily tell how morale is, what the team's general perception of our future is, and I can't head off issues that would have been obvious in person from 180 miles away.
Perhaps some of this is exacerbated by being a remote Co-founder, but I wouldn't do it again if I had the choice. I wouldn't hesitate to hire the right remote developer, but they probably wouldn't ever enter management or be a partner. You really need to be around each other because of all of those side conversations that happen outside of the meetings. That's where the best brainstorming, dreaming, and bonding happens.
It sounds to me like you expected managing remotely to be exactly the same as managing locally. You expected to be able to gauge the morale of the team, to know what people though of the groups future, etc without having to actually DO anything. When working with people locally, you at least get the impression that you understand these things from general interactions. You are wrong, of course, as your intuition is just as terrible as everyone elses, but you at least get the feeling that you know the situation.
Of course managing remotely is different from managing locally. Coding, and actually being a productive knowledge worker, however, really isn't. Luckily, managers already make a large multiple more than most others in the organization, so asking them to adapt and work harder to accomplish their responsibilities should be less of a big deal than dumping that kind of thing on lower level employees who area already generating far more value for the company than they're being paid for.
edit: Oh, and brainstorming is a terrible waste of everyones time and is worse than a total lack of it. Multiple studies have been done and show that brainstorming results in groups taking far worse actions than if they use other methods of coming up with solutions.
Would you have any links or references elaborating on brainstorming being a hindrance toward finding ideas or solutions? I'm interested in learning about this.
It's funny, because "brainstorming" means different things to different people/companies in different contexts. For us, it's sitting with a coffee and talking about a problem and possible solutions randomly. It's not even a formal process. This kind of thing just naturally happens when you are on-site.
This guy is just looking to be contrarian to be contrarian. I'm not sure you're going to want to take his reply as potentially useful.
> It sounds to me like you expected managing remotely to be exactly the same as managing locally. You expected to be able to gauge the morale of the team, to know what people though of the groups future, etc without having to actually DO anything.
No, I think this is pretty far off. I knew it'd be different being remote, and I knew I'd have to work harder to be in touch and involved. Being remote ended up working OK, it just wasn't as optimal as being on-site. I missed being there on-site, and felt like I could have been more effective had I been. It wasn't for any lack of desire or effort, it's just a sub-optimal arrangement for us in particular.
The rest of your reply seemed to assume that I thought there'd be no difference in remote vs on-site (which is incorrect), so I won't respond to the rest.
Yes, you do the Video calls and you've got HipChat and email. But there's something about being there down in the muck with the rest of the team that builds cohesion, camaraderie, and enthusiasm. I say this as someone who doesn't like crowds or lots of noise. It's also really easy to lose the pulse of the group being remote. I can't easily tell how morale is, what the team's general perception of our future is, and I can't head off issues that would have been obvious in person from 180 miles away.
Perhaps some of this is exacerbated by being a remote Co-founder, but I wouldn't do it again if I had the choice. I wouldn't hesitate to hire the right remote developer, but they probably wouldn't ever enter management or be a partner. You really need to be around each other because of all of those side conversations that happen outside of the meetings. That's where the best brainstorming, dreaming, and bonding happens.