On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 7:15 AM, Mark A. Kruger <[email protected]> wrote: > When we mad telecommuting available and stopped worrying about relocation > things got a lot easier for us.
I'll +100 on this. At Broadchoice, we figured out who we'd like to work for us and conducted screening interviews, then flew in our top picks (from the list of candidates who had expressed interest) for a two-day mini-conference with the full company team - and we made the candidates present to the team! We had no plans to make anyone relocate - we already let people telecommute a few days a week even if they lived locally. At World Singles, most of the company were telecommuting when I joined because we're a (small) global company. We quickly gave up the office in So. Cal. and let everyone work from home full time. Now, when we hire someone, location is simply not an issue: if you're right for us, we'll hire you (and you get to work in PJs or whatever you want). We plan to have an all-hands company meeting once or twice a year and fly everyone in for the event, but we rely on Yammer! and Unfuddle / git and mailing lists and Skype and iChat and so on. We can pair remotely as engineers whenever we want - not as good as pairing face-to-face but it works well enough. > We play to these strengths whenever we can. We provide a model that is > focused on the work performed not hours at a desk. We make their families > important to us. We provide them with a steady flow of positive > reinforcement. Out of a staff of 18 nearly half are now remotely working in > various parts of the country. +1 on all of that. > 1) How do you develop community and facilitate knowledge sharing with a > remote staff. Regular interaction via Skype, mailing lists, wikis. > 2) How do you manage meetings and stakeholder interaction. Keep them to a minimum - and use video conference calls when you do them at all. > 3) What technology is the most helpful with a remote staff. Keep all your resources in the cloud - use a hosted bug tracker / version control system. Use IM a LOT. Use Skype (with video). Use iChat (chat, audio, video, screen sharing - Mac rocks!). > 4) How do you overcome the hesitancy of potential customers who are > uncomfortable with a remote staff. Seriously? You still encounter this? I've worked remotely for customers for years - I've *never* seen resistance to this. -- Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/ World Singles, LLC. -- http://worldsingles.com/ Railo Technologies, Inc. -- http://www.getrailo.com/ "Perfection is the enemy of the good." -- Gustave Flaubert, French realist novelist (1821-1880) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:345558 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
