Mythbusting: Biggest Myths about Remote Dev Teams

The first 4 myths are busted but I don't agree with the 5th one here: Myth 5: Communication and Culture suffers.

I'm apart of a 2 remote teams and its obvious to me that the team chemistry ends when the work day ends. I rarely see remote workers willing to take their relationships offline, and this isn't to disparage them, but before the pandemic I remember in-person devs would usually grab a beer or hang out every once in a while. The online nature of dev work now has made the work transactions i.e. people do their work, then they go home. And that's fine, maybe thats a better way for things to work, but culture certainly does suffer in a remote team, especially in startup teams that don't have the funds or money to be able to fly everyone around the world just to hangout for a few days.

I work in several remote teams (as a part-time dev). Myth 4 isn't just a myth, it's an outright lie. Personally I find I'm much more productive when I do async communication. Synchronous communication (scheduled meetings) simply kills me.

We have experienced developers who write FAQs for their colleagues - they understand that the exchange of experience at a remote site needs to be encouraged; it will not happen by itself. Meetings three times a week also help.

By the way, joint programming saves from isolation. The atmosphere is like in the office: you work for a couple of hours. Then someone notices a colleague's poster with a movie on the wall. Everyone discusses the trailer for the new film for a few minutes.

Have you ever tried it? It's suitable for sharing experiences, too.

Nice post Alex. I agree that it's likely the number of remote teams will continue to increase across all industries where working this way is viable (e.g. excluding jobs like doctors, dentists, chefs etc...who necessarily need to be on-site to perform their jobs).

But studies like the one you mentioned (Gitlab's 2021 Remote Work Report), always make me wonder what's actually going on in terms of performance. For example, the study found that the majority of workers prefer working remotely. So, it's difficult not to question their methodology, which was:

"GitLab Inc. surveyed 3,900 adult professionals, aged 21 and older across the
US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and South Korea, from
February 12, 2021 to March 10, 2021, who were currently working remotely and
will continue to after the COVID-19 pandemic."

If Gitlab knows most people prefer working remotely, surely surveying them to see whether they think their "productivity has increased" isn't the best way to obtain impartial results...of course, they're likely to say their productivity has increased because they want to keep working remotely...

An analysis of Gitlab's report by Bloomberg found:

"There's a disconnect between the ostensibly high levels of satisfaction with
remote work and the actual pain people are feeling day-to-day. While 4 in 5
would recommend remote working to a friend and 81% of people are satisfied
with the level of productivity, teamwork across organizations is struggling.
Just over a third (37%) report that their organization does a good job of
aligning work across projects."

So, I'm not saying workers who work remotely aren't largely more productive. I just don't think the report answers the question reliably...are they actually more productive or do they just say they are?