Slashdot Mirror
Remote Work Works, a New Google Study Finds (fastcompany.com)
Working remotely can be really tough. To get some insight into how to do it better, Google conducted a two-year study involving data from 5,600 employees across the U.S., Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. From a report: Approximately 30% of the company's meetings involve staff in more than two time zones, and 39% involve more than two cities. Veronica Gilrane, manager of Google's People Innovation Lab, oversaw the study and has written a guide for how to make the most of distributed teams. Last week, she released a report of her findings. On the outset of the study, the team hypothesized that distributed teams might not be as productive as their centrally located counterparts. "We were a little nervous about that," says Gilrane. She was surprised to find that distributed teams performed just as well. Unfortunately, she also found that there is a lot more frustration involved in working remotely. Workers in other offices can sometimes feel burdened to sync up their schedules with the main office. They can also feel disconnected from the team. Gilrane says there are three key tricks to optimizing a remote workforce.
The first is being flexible about time zones. For her own teams meetings, which has people on the West Coast and East Coast, she makes sure meetings are at different times every week and are equally convenient for workers in each time zone. If workers extend into more varied time zones, like Greenwich mean time or China standard time, she says to make sure that a manager should alternate meeting times so that one time zone isn't inconvenienced more than another. Next, she suggests making time for team members across the globe to get to know one another. She thinks managers should be really thoughtful about when they use technology for meetings and when its more appropriate to fly out team members to meet in person. Though distributed teams cannot meet in person often, she thinks managers should encourage workers to get to know one another. Her team meets once a week for 30 minutes with no express agenda over video chat.
The first is being flexible about time zones. For her own teams meetings, which has people on the West Coast and East Coast, she makes sure meetings are at different times every week and are equally convenient for workers in each time zone. If workers extend into more varied time zones, like Greenwich mean time or China standard time, she says to make sure that a manager should alternate meeting times so that one time zone isn't inconvenienced more than another. Next, she suggests making time for team members across the globe to get to know one another. She thinks managers should be really thoughtful about when they use technology for meetings and when its more appropriate to fly out team members to meet in person. Though distributed teams cannot meet in person often, she thinks managers should encourage workers to get to know one another. Her team meets once a week for 30 minutes with no express agenda over video chat.
It's amusing that they seem to be so concerned about making sure the meeting schedules work for people in different time zones.
Because, in my experience, meetings are absolutely useless. I've never been to a meeting that accomplished anything that couldn't be accomplished with a brief e-mail, or at WORST a brief phone call.
Meetings are nothing more than a way for middle-management-types to justify their existence.
You tried to export a toxic work culture to a place where people don't have to put up with it. They didn't put up with it.
From their perspective, they tried to tell you there was no need to hit yourself repeatedly in the head with a hammer. For unfathomable reasons you bought a new hammer and hit yourself in the head with it repeatedly.
I do a lot of remote work and, for me, it is very productive. The idea of getting dressed up, getting in my car, driving through traffic and sitting in a grey cubicle all day is a complete waste of time. Management tend to be the biggest opponents of remote work. Not all managers but the old school type that want to know what time you arrived at work and how long you took for lunch.
The unspoken truth is that people like this don't trust you. If they can't come out of their office and see you in the little grey cubicle you can't possibly be working. You must be goofing off. The only way they can ensure that you are actually working is to exert a measure of control by requiring you to be in your seat for a given number of hours every day so they can stop by whenever they like and watch you work. This visit will be disguised as some sort of colloquial chit chat or team bonding exercise. The true intent, of course, is to try to catch you off guard (i.e. goofing off) thus providing self validation to support their worker theory.
Sadly I actually worked for an idiot like this for a period of time. He didn't hire me but I soon found myself as part of his group. I eventually grew weary of trying to drag him out of his 1950s mentality and into someone that was actually cool. Someone that I could respect and actually work hard for. He would have meetings for the sake of meetings. His calendar was consistently double or even triple booked, allowing him to blow off meetings that required decisions or * gasp * leadership. The whole thing was an attempt to make him appear more important than he really was. Self preservation and empire building. In short, he was the most worthless piece of shit I ever worked with.
Nonetheless, it was a valuable experience. It taught me to ask a prospective employer about their remote work policy very early in the discussions. If their response is "we don't allow it" or "we'll see" then I don't want to work for them. If you don't trust me then don't hire me. It will save both of us a lot of time.
Open source communities have been working efficiently for years while being scattered around the globe. Most do not even do meetings.