Year: 2011

Here are a few notes on working remotely from a person who has first hand experience with that:

In terms of communication I think remote employees are a massive benefit to a company, it is easy in an office to forget about proper communications channels because you can bypass them and tap somebody on the shoulder, which leads to confusion as people are now out of the loop and without information they need to work, this problem becomes even worse as your company grows. Working remotely is impossible without proper communication channels, seperate mailing lists for different working groups, bug trackers, project management tools and chat rooms for quick messaging. Everyone will be forced to use these as a part of their daily workflow which helps combat the usual lack of adoption with office tools, when I am working remotely I feel a lot more confident I know what I need to do than in an office. There are times when its easier to work face to face particularly with more high level discussions and planning so I make sure to use as much of my time visiting the office to get these done.

I wish more people considered it.