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Comment by LordFast | Hacker News Reader

Managed mixed teams before. Best of luck to FB management on getting things right.

I would prefer either one without mixing. One shoe in one shoe out is a great way to make it extra hard to manage.

As a remote worker I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly. I think you have to go remote first, with all meetings and communicating being inclusive for the whole team. If you decide something face to face, send a summary via slack or email.

Anyway details aside, it can be done, it's just it has to be a deliberate effort from everyone in the office.

Totally correct. The default modes of communication should be asynchronous, or if a real-time meeting is required then everyone should be on video in separate places, even if most are in the office. This prevents situations where the remote workers are at a disadvantage because of a bad audio or video setup. If the audio sucks for everyone, they'll find a way to fix it (plus it's way easier to capture individual audio than a room full of people).

The benefits are also there for people who go to the office since there ends up being less tribal knowledge and more written down or documented somewhere.

My employer is going to 2 days a week in-office for the technical staff because WFH has gone so well. Allows us to work and do some planning remotely and to get together to plan large projects so we can whiteboard effectively.

Facebook has been managing distributed teams for a long time. Nothing new for them.

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