Ask HN: Managers of remote employees, what's hard for you?

8 points·colinhowe··6 comments

I've been a remote person for a little while now and a big advocate for it. I've thought a lot about what's hard for me, but, I'd love to hear the other side of it. What's hard about managing a remote person?

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I found out that developing trust with other people is much harder remotely

Interesting! What makes it hard for you to develop trust? For me, I think that if I can't trust someone than I don't want them working for me in any capacity (office or remote!)

Not the OP, but I would imagine part of this comes from the fact that when you work side-by-side with someone, your level of non-verbal communication and just the ability to get to know one another is generally going to be a lot higher. You trust someone through getting to know them better. I'm not saying you can't achieve this level of communication, familiarity, and trust remotely, but I would assume it takes more planned effort to do so.

I guess this boils down to difficulties in building strong relationships remotely. I would definitely recommend traveling occasionally to build relationship with your remote folks.

I manage and work on a small team of 4 people. Myself and one other are remote, I am at a 13 hour time difference from all of them(!) The hardest part for me is knowing what's going on during their normal workday. Something can come up that de-rails their whole day and I'm not there to be their buffer or to help prioritize. So I guess the hardest part for me, isn't my employees, it's the other employees in the company that distract them or take up their time.

We are keeping person in the office at least half a year (6 payrolls). During this time they are trained and you can understand if she/he/it fit your company. After that period we can give remote login only.

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