Archive for August, 2010

  • Building an Intentional Culture

    Building an Intentional Culture

    Aug 5, 10 • In Practices

    Distributed organizations can have a team culture every bit as vibrant as their collocated equivalent. All it takes is the conscious effort of the team members, and the willingness to take a little extra time. In collocated teams, corporate culture tends to emerge organically and automacally. Through hallway conversations, Happy Hour outings, and lunchtime chatter friendships are made and the team’s unique spirit emerges. Dispersed teams are not so fortunate. Corporate culture can grow slowly or not at all in the thin soil of remote work. And when culture does develop, it may not be of the healthiest variety: plenty of distributed team veterans can tell stories about distrust, resentment, and miscommunication. What do do? Do we just leave the culture out of work, look at it as “just a job”, and get our camaraderie elsewhere? That’s

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  • Landing a Job on a Wide Team

    Landing a Job on a Wide Team

    Aug 4, 10 • In Basics

    A reader emailed me, asking for advice on finding a job with a dispersed team. While I can’t claim to be an expert on the subject, I’m happy to share what I know. Start a Telework Movement at Your Current Job While I’ve never tried to do this myself, some people are successful lobbying for a telework policy at their current place of a employment. This will only become more common as new government regulations and the financial realities of collocation force more and more organizations to consider the remote option. Be Visibly Awesome For many employers, hiring a remote worker can seem like a risky venture. Employers need assurance that you are worth the risk. That’s why I recommend that you start your job search at home, by picking a niche that you love

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  • Wide Teams Podcast, Episode 8: Interview with Loren Johnson

    Wide Teams Podcast, Episode 8: Interview with Loren Johnson

    Aug 2, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

    Today’s interview is with Loren Johnson, a Ruby on Rails developer and a remote worker for most of his career. I talked to Loren at RailsConf 2010 about some of the tradeoffs involved when choosing to live and work in a geographically isolated area, and the challenges of being the sole remote worker on a team

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