Ask HN: Managers of remote employees, what's hard for you?

8 points by colinhowe 6 years ago | 6 comments

I've been a remote person for a little while now and a big advocate for it. I've thought a lot about what's hard for me, but, I'd love to hear the other side of it. What's hard about managing a remote person?

boghy8823 6 years ago |

I found out that developing trust with other people is much harder remotely

colinhowe 6 years ago | |

Interesting! What makes it hard for you to develop trust? For me, I think that if I can't trust someone than I don't want them working for me in any capacity (office or remote!)

kohanz 6 years ago | | |

Not the OP, but I would imagine part of this comes from the fact that when you work side-by-side with someone, your level of non-verbal communication and just the ability to get to know one another is generally going to be a lot higher. You trust someone through getting to know them better. I'm not saying you can't achieve this level of communication, familiarity, and trust remotely, but I would assume it takes more planned effort to do so.

lambda_func 6 years ago | |

I guess this boils down to difficulties in building strong relationships remotely. I would definitely recommend traveling occasionally to build relationship with your remote folks.

actionowl 6 years ago |

I manage and work on a small team of 4 people. Myself and one other are remote, I am at a 13 hour time difference from all of them(!) The hardest part for me is knowing what's going on during their normal workday. Something can come up that de-rails their whole day and I'm not there to be their buffer or to help prioritize. So I guess the hardest part for me, isn't my employees, it's the other employees in the company that distract them or take up their time.

radiogen 6 years ago |

We are keeping person in the office at least half a year (6 payrolls). During this time they are trained and you can understand if she/he/it fit your company. After that period we can give remote login only.