Global communications failure story

My company has been using non-US resources more and more, and it can work well or very painfully. What applies to people working from home also applies to those working overseas, and those working with them. I've successfully trained some of our global folks and they've become very valuable members of the team. The most recent failure is one that I didn't personally train, but did have to work with frequently. Perhaps I share some of the blame for not pushing them harder, but not everyone is willing to change.

The first clue of trouble I had with this particular employee was a couple months after they started. They had become familiar with most of the routine aspects of the job, and ready to take on some simple development work. I gave them a spec sheet with the objectives of what the program had to do, the target for the data, and a sample of what one of the output files should look like. I could have banged it out in a week, but we decided to give him a couple months so he could become more familiar with the system and use whatever tech he thought was appropriate for the job.

I go on vacation for a week, answering the occasional email and then spend the next week catching up. The following Monday I offhand ask him how the task is going and what he's decided to use. He says that he's decided to use Perl (like something similar I wrote) and hasn't found any information on one aspect that's available in the documentation. This pattern continues to repeat every few days for another month until I finally talk to our mutual manager about the situation.

A week after that, he messages me with some very specific questions about implementation which makes me wonder how much he' actually got written. The following day I get a message from him saying that he's got a script but is having trouble resolving a bug and leaves for home due to the time difference. Until this point, I haven't seen any of his actual code.

It doesn't even compile. I spend 2 hours even getting it to a point that it does, and it takes him almost another 2 weeks to make it functional.

One year later he is removed from the project, with very little changing in work habits. This pattern continued to repeat over and over for even simple tasks where they would get stalled as long as possible. More communication on either side of the equation could have prevented this, but the organization is largely made of people who can work relatively independently. Perhaps he'll find a position where daily updates and checks are the norm instead of viewed as an impediment to actual work.

What we've got here is failure to communicate

A remote worker lives and dies by communication. Some people do this very effectively without much trouble, and others have to learn it. I had to learn it. For a long while I actually avoided 'wasting time' on more idle communication and focused on completing the tasks at hand so I could get them done faster. Sometimes that worked, but often your co-workers do actually have valuable information to share with you, and some will be happy to help out to make things easier. The reverse holds true as well. Being able to tell the boss you were able to save the company a couple hundred hours worth of work over the next year is worth it, even if it's not your work.

It took me a long time to realize exactly how much simply talking with your co-workers factors in to how you are viewed in the company and develop some really simple ways of keeping on top of staying in the loop. Simply getting your job done isn't always enough. It's certainly easier to get the basic work done if you've set up your home office or remote workplace appropriately, but staying interconnected with everyone else becomes the harder part since people don't just drop by anymore.

It's slightly different for larger and smaller companies. With a larger company there are more opportunities to grab someone's attention for a few minutes. With a smaller company, it might be harder but it's even more important! You shouldn't let a day go by without discussing something with a co-worker via IM or phone. It doesn't matter if it's a work question along with a quick weather discussion, but formal meetings of 3+ people do not count.

It's not that easy

When people ask about my job, there's still an aura of amazement around getting to work out of the home office on a regular basis. I've never even met most of the people I work with in person, but still enjoy a good working relationship with them. However, the opinion that it's easy is far from the truth. If anything, it's more work but you gain a lot of external benefits to compensate.

If this blog will scare you or inspire you, I don't know. You're welcome to ask questions and come along for the ride.