I love this topic. On one hand, many tech giants spent an exorbitant amount of money hiring and bringing their technical talent to one location. Easy examples such as Google and especially Amazon come to mind. On the other hand, any studies on the subject strongly imply anyone farther than 50 feet rarely speaks anyway so you are better off with remote teams as they are setup with better tooling (slack, et tal).
As a single data point my experience as a hiring manager and allowing remote candidates allowed for a much higher level of talent to draw upon.
Furthermore, I have had remote teams develop a great culture merely by turning on their cameras during the daily standup.
Finally, I also question the productivity of team building 'dinners' and other one-off activities. Having been part of teams with lots of corporate dinners and teams without its hard for me to really call out any specific value.
I truly do want to be convinced otherwise, but the strongest argument I have seen here so far is a vague 'Face to face is superior' when I have had great remote teams with cameras on. Anyone have a more data driven argument? Even if its a few data points?
I'm all for being remote (been working from home for about 8 years now for 3 different companies).
Two scenarios where face-to-face wins:
1. "Onboarding + noob training". Sure, this can be done remotely but it's vastly more effective face-to-face especially when the tech isn't limited to the computer and there are "real life" gadgets involved in getting set up for development.
2. If the team isn't 100% remote it takes extra effort for those in the office to be "inclusive" so that remote folks are 100% up to speed. Just like with any extra effort in an already busy environment this doesn't always happen. Can't really blame them either - if a decision is made on the fly between two busy devs hacking their asses off and they rely on you seeing their PR to derive what they decided on that's just how things go sometimes.
For #1, it's enough to not make the team remote 100% of the time. If you get everybody together for a week or so every few months, you'll get those activities done.
Sure it's doable. Getting everyone together often can get pretty expensive though (flights, hotels, less stuff gets done), flying the noob over to shadow an experienced person 1-on-1 is probably a better way to go.
The point is there are cases where face to face is preferable.
of course, all you're saying is right. we are 100% remote, have been for about 2 years.
the only thing i'd add/modify is i do like to meet up with everyone at least once every 12-24 months, usually in a town where a convention is happening.
note we don't actually go to the convention, which i think are largely pointless, but it's good to take advantage of when a bunch of colleagues are in town. that's when we bring the new hires in to meet the team and network with the industry at large.
https://goo.gl/bvNXHQ
As a single data point my experience as a hiring manager and allowing remote candidates allowed for a much higher level of talent to draw upon. Furthermore, I have had remote teams develop a great culture merely by turning on their cameras during the daily standup.
Finally, I also question the productivity of team building 'dinners' and other one-off activities. Having been part of teams with lots of corporate dinners and teams without its hard for me to really call out any specific value.
I truly do want to be convinced otherwise, but the strongest argument I have seen here so far is a vague 'Face to face is superior' when I have had great remote teams with cameras on. Anyone have a more data driven argument? Even if its a few data points?