I'm working you could say remotely all my life (from my own “office at home”), yet I own and run my company.

OptimusCrime said:
Firstly, my original thought was a team needed to coordinate in person in order to be really effective. We increased the number of touch points in our day to accommodate this assumed drop in communication.

No, that is a common misconception. As long as team members are responsible adults, that know what they are doing - you don't need coordination in person at all.

Increasing number of (regular) touch points inevitably leads to one thing, decreasing time for work. Also as these are regular - it may cause more harm than single meeting a day (simply because everyone has to “stop work and go to meeting”. This is by far one of the most harmful things that can be done in areas like software development (imagine situation - you're thinking up new algorithm, but right now a meeting pings you - so you leave your work, unless you finished it it will take more for you to get back into it).

OptimusCrime said:
This also goes hand in hand with knowing where someone is 100% of the time.

This is currently illegal in my country (it is called Surveillance of employees and you can end up in prison for that) - this being said, I personally don't care whether other parties I work with are working from their office or while sitting on the garden (or whatever) - as long as they do their work, and are reachable/communicate.

OptimusCrime said:
This leads to people being barraged by IMs and side chats.

Yes, that is the downside of home office. Although from experience of my in-office friends - it doesn't really matter whether you ping colleague with IMs or go talk to them at the table. Result is pretty much the same.

OptimusCrime said:
I noticed you miss out on social queues when speaking through chat programs like Slack. We've done a pretty good job managing discussion where no one is awkwardly cutting each other off and not straying too far off topic. But I'm worried we are missing empathy in our chats. It's not the best solution but we are working to get everyone a webcam so we can at least see each other.

This is about what you get used to. There are people who dislike socializing, there are those who like it, then there are those who don't care (my personal opinion - younger people and older who are “tech” types generally don't care … older people prefer to meet in person if possible (also it might be cultural - like in Japan), and of course genders do play a role too - men generally care less than women (please don't call me out on this, it is personal opinion and experience)).

Webcams are a good thing assuming you want to see the other party - I've worked with parties which asked me to, but most of the longer term ones doesn't (also mainly because it is preferable to share screen when you're showing something).

My personal advice is - give them the option, if they want to use it - they can. If they don't want to use it - they don't need to.

OptimusCrime said:
From the start we have tried to structure the day to have a clear starting and ending point. We have stand up first thing in the AM and a end of day check in the PM. The end of day would be simply to see how everyone feeling. This has been really successful so far.

This is quite good and will work properly as long as you're all in the same time zone. I once worked with a party which was located in Australia while I'm located in Europe. Such meetings would be impossible (you have to find a compromise for such situation).

OptimusCrime said:
I have a lot more respect for external partners who work remotely 100% of the time. There is an art to communicating like this. I'm still learning with my team and documenting as we go. While I love being in the office, there are some team members who would prefer to WFH where they can be more productive. I feel this is going to be an ongoing topic even after the dust has settled on this situation.

Work from office will be phased out. Productivity with WFH is generally higher, and costs are lower (you don't pay for office) - especially as real estate costs were skyrocketing. Of course it doesn't suit all the people (so I expect there will be offices still around, but slowly phased out).

This also reduces lost time.

In cities commuting can take hours each day. Time is (often underestimated) commodity, and office work actually costs each person the actual working hours time plus commuting time.

The easiest way to put you out of business is offering same services as your company, paying out same salaries to employees but letting them all work from home. First of all my profit will be higher (no office costs), and employees will inevitably have higher income (they don't waste their hours commuting). At that point I can literally price dump you out of market (by both, reducing salaries - so that my employees will still have higher rate per working hour (+ commuting hours) … and by offering my services at cheaper rate because I don't need to pay for office space).

I've always worked from home (15 years), regardless of corona virus.

I work in a big IT company with a very fixed enterprise culture.

I would say that the keys to productivity when working from home are:

1. Isolatiing yourself from your home environment
   1. I can't work when I need to deal with my kids/cook/whatever else there is to around the house.
   2. Make sure your employees have good headsets. Noise isolation + directional microphone. This really helps in isolation. My company chipped in for a 150$ professional teleconferencing headset.
   3. Leaving webcams on, encourages your employees to isolate themselves. Setting up shop in a closed bedroom where your kids can't see you is much better then working from the kitchen table where everyone is passing next to you.
   4. IMPORTANT: That said Covid times have caught all of us with our “pants down”. It is a short term thing. I would not expect everyone to be able to isolate themselves from their households now that there are no schools and such. So keep in mind that working from home because of COVID is not exactly the same as working from home in the short term. Be flexible! If someone is unable to setup a productive work enviorment, don't stress them out. You might lose them as an employee in the long run.
2. Flexible work hours: My boss company me work flexible times. What they gave up: I am not always available in the afternoons when I come out of my cave and I join my family. What they got in return: I voluntarily put in “overtime” during the night. In total, this allows me to work more hours. It also helps me communicate with employees in other timezones.
   1. Instead of having a “no-comms” day - Have a window of hours where people can setup meetings. Make sure these times are predictable and people know that they have to be online. After these times (which should not be too long!), allow people to set their own hours.
3. Desktop sharing and high friction meetings: People have a tendency to chat/whatsapp/slack. When communicating in small groups (3 or less): These methods of communications are a huge time waste! You should definitely encourage people to talk to eachother instead with desktop sharing when people can see what you're doing it saves so much time explaining. I would say that chatting instead of talking/showing is the single most important time sink of working remotely. People fell in love with this method of communication because it's easy, but it isn't very good.

I managed a 100% remote team of 12 (spread from Athens in the east to Perth, WA in the west – from my point of view) for a few years. It was a remote work oriented company, so we already had processes and technology in place to maximize productivity.

What you describe would have been seen as gross micromanagement. If I managed a team that way it would quickly end up with zero members and even less productivity.

Our most successful set up was to always be on IRC for immediate communication, have a daily video standup (well, two daily standups 12 hours apart, for different combinations of team members, because timezones) using Google Hangouts, use email and bug tickets for non-immediate communications, and hop on an impromptu video call when there was some immediate problem to discuss. We would meet in the flesh twice a year for a week or so. The company had a functioning SSO system, which turns out was one of the most valuable things. Where I work now has a “separate sign on” where you need 3 or 4 passwords, and every page requires logging on again even if it's using your domain authentication. Built more for collecting data on what you're doing than on securing assets.

I currently work in a cube farm (well, maybe not right this moment with everyone sequestered). I get a lot of immediate interruptions for things that could wait because people can stop by my cube and force a context switch. My colleagues and I take hourly coffee breaks and shoot the breeze. I waste 2 hours a day in my car. My equipment is second-rate (no clicky keyboards allowed!) and they won't even let me nap when I get sleepy – I just have to look busy, not be busy.

So, my experience tell me this.

1. Don't micromanage. You hire skilled and qualified people because they know how to do their job.Don't tell them how to do their job, they know how better than you do.
2. Keep immediate communications immediate, and non-immediate communications non-immediate. Having frequent work stoppages so your manager can feel in control is counter-productive.
3. Don't have fixed rigid work times. Have fixed synchronization points (like standups) and delivery deadlines (like sprint ends) and otherwise let the team members do their work when they're at their peak. No more than one synch point per employee per day.
4. Don't make it about you, the manager, and fulfilling your needs. Your need as manager is to lubricate the job of the workers building the product so it's about their needs. Oh, and your own manager's needs. As a manager your job is to organize work and administrative items for your reports, and to generate plans and reports for your manager. It's not to control anyone.

OptimusCrime said:
This is a very odd thing to take out of context.

I did that intentionally and on purpose (and I kind of knew you will point this out) - mainly because laws in countries do differ. In my country (Czech Republic) the law is retarded to say at least.

‘Employee surveillance’ by law IS NOT when boss stands behind you and watches your monitor.

But ‘Employee surveillance’ by law IS when he looks at your screen through remote desktop, even while in work (fun fact - the law does put it in way, that even sharing screen during the meeting is technically illegal).

The problem is - the law is bad. It was written down by people who have no understanding of how remote work should be treated … politicians (sometimes I wonder why we always elect people dumber than brick to create laws, no matter what party they are in).

For me personally - it was always mainly about discussion and finding a proper way to manage everyone's time and work.

• If we decided to have meeting hours in the morning and evening - we were there, when someone couldn't make it for any reason, we caught up later/earlier
• If we decided to be available for support throughout whole day - we were available
• If some colleague had to go away (holiday, family, etc.), someone else made time for support
• Etc.

I never viewed employer-employee as master-slave (which is often viewed as in my country, and I consider that quite a bit sad). I always viewed it as a contract - employee is someone willing to do the work, while employer is someone who needs some work done.