Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

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That's the FUD factor talking. The OP reported none of this happening. Its an unfounded fear.

Anyway its the same problem whether or not they work from home - some people will underperform and have to be let go.

Finally, use some collaboration software and folks 'working from home' or from other sites will seem as connected as people working in the office. Even more so - a meeting of remote workers works better in fact, because each one has a headset and can be clearly heard and distinguished. Instead of for instance a crowd of people 'in the office' sharing a desktop microphone and heard as a babble by everyone remote.

We use Sococo (I work there). Its got the best presence information in the industry. Its clear who's working and who isn't. You can see everybody in the area, who's active and who's idle, whom they are talking to and what meetings are going on. Managers love it!

Working 'remotely' for 5 years now, in a company where everyone does it. Its superior in almost every way.

I work remotely right now. We have 2-3 people call in and 4-5 people who are sitting together in person in a conference room in the office. The problem is that you lose the physical cues that indicate when it's someone's turn to talk. The remote workers end up trouncing all over everyone else when they try to speak, because they don't have the cues that the people in the conference room are using to determine it's someone's turn to talk. Remote people talk far less than they would otherwise because they can't tell when it's safe to interject. The meetings still function, but it's a significant disadvantage over being present in the same room. It can also be hard to appropriately distinguish speakers until you learn the voices of your colleagues really well.

Exactly. Get them out of the conference room and back at their desks. They can put on headsets, run a collaboration tool (like Sococo) and turn on their video cameras. Now everyone is on an even footing! And its actually better than what you're doing now - everyone can share docs with everyone else; others can be called into the meeting in seconds; folks can chat privately and get their stories straight so presentations go smoother.

Even though we make Sococo, we had to train our management to ONLY do Sococo conferences for exactly the reasons you mention. Everything went much faster after that.

In fact we have to train them to stop calling it a 'conference call'. Its just a meeting, like any other meeting you ever held before. Except everyone can hear everyone perfectly; more than one person can share docs (at the same time!) and everyone can keep in sync effortlessly.

You might make everyone on an even footing; but the people around the table would have been more effective around the table than in their separate cubes with a headset.

Deny! That's exactly what I'm getting at. With a good thorough always-on collaboration tool, you can actually share better and easier than crowded around a table trying to share a document, or fool with a projector, or waiting for somebody to arrive, or a hundred other time-wasting things that happen in physical conference rooms.

At work we don't use Sococo but instead rely on Skype, Google Hangouts or Lync (depending on the project/client), but our experiences have matched what JoeAltmaier has said so far.

Whenever possible we prefer everyone be connected individually as opposed to sitting together in a conference room. The conference room becomes a distraction, impedes proper communication between all members and the attention spans increased when everyone connects from their workstation. The conference room creates two areas with two distinct conversations so if we're really aiming for an integrated environment we enforce people connecting from their workstations as opposed to using a conference room.

Culturally it also spreads that idea that those sitting together are better than the remote workers, which given our line of work is an unproductive idea to keep propagating. And while there might be differences, they pale in comparison to the negative impact that ignoring or discriminating remote workers has in our projects.

Video conferencing is a huge improvement over conference calls. There is something humanizing about seeing the people you're talking to. It's easier to see and hear who is talking, too. (Conference calls have terrible fidelity and user interface.)

Right. Our product (to toot my own horn) has 4X voice quality over phone. Everybody can see all the videos (up to 20 people). It also keeps you connected by aggressively rerouting traffic as bandwidth grows and adapts to changing network connectivity (wireless roaming, plugging/unplugging, on/off VPNs etc) transparently. All to take the meeting tool out of the way and let the meeting happen.

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