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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

> There is the wide-held belief that remote teams are less productive than co-located ones.

This is true in my experience. I've worked in on many remote teams and colocated ones and colocated ones have always been more productive. Sure remote teams are sometimes equally as productive but thats in select circumstances.

I am on 100% remote team now for past 3 yrs and remote teams lack any human connection, team culture or shared struggle. Sure I know where everyone lives and how many kids they have but I don't have any real connection with any of them. There is no random conversations/ideas to be shared at lunch ect.

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I sort of like that part of remote life. As horrible as it may sound, I never really cared for my coworkers lives outside of work. I have enough friends and family to worry about that remote life gives me way more time to spend with them.

I was implying that you work better with people you really know vs acquaintances. Not, I need friends from work.

If you and management are both pro-social, with a lot of contact time that will ammount to decisions being tilted in your favor. If you are not so social (i.e. the person who usually turns out to be the other end of the zero sum game) then by virtue of handicapping the social interaction advantages of others you will come out ahead in remote work.

I never understood this. I mean, I was in teams that cooperated well and I did not even knew whether they are married. And in bad team with a lot of personal knowedge and out of work time spend.

ok?

It doesn't sound horrible. I work in a lab environment most of the time, and I hear my coworkers' conversations, and I don't really care about their lives outside of work either. The ones my age are always talking about stuff like their yards or home improvement projects, which I don't care at all about, and they have zero interest in hearing about my foreign travel. The younger ones are better but only so much, plus the generation gap makes it hard to really relate.

I'm curious if your team is ever able to be together in the same location and how often if you do? I'm a firm believer that remote can work, but by getting a chance to spend some time face to face, have dinner or a beer together, you learn a bit more about each other than you can via phone and video calls. That face time is very humanizing. You don't have to learn all about their family, dogs and cats, but you do learn more about their body language, how they like to work, many little things you just don't get when you're not face to face.

> I'm curious if your team is ever able to be together in the same location and how often if you do?

We met once in about 3 yrs. Management is super stingy with any travel thats not absolutely necessary.

> I am on 100% remote team now for past 3 yrs and remote teams lack any human connection, team culture or shared struggle. Sure I know where everyone lives and how many kids they have but I don't have any real connection with any of them. There is no random conversations/ideas to be shared at lunch ect.

Man, this, 100%. We have solid communication as a team, lots of slack or hangouts/webex/skype/go2meeting/whatever, but no one really interacts in a social sense. All communications feel like talking to a customer, and there is a constant CYA vibe that makes routine questions feel like walking on eggshells.

HR meanwhile keeps blasting us with emails about the Ugly Sweater parties or bake-offs in the HQ office that doesn't apply to any of the technical teams. Only reinforces the disjointed feeling, tbh.

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