[Phoenix]

Good to finally see some more replies
Even if the idea ultimately won't work for some reason, the thought experiment is useful and could shed light on something else that would work.

(03-16-2017 01:47 PM)rafaeld Wrote:  

1. You have to either work harder or be a lot better than average to compensate for the lack of facetime. Most people spend most of the day in the office doing nothing. This is a lot more obvious when you aren't there, so you have to outproduce everyone else on your team.
2. The isolation becomes insufferable. For my industry (software development) it can become impossible do your best work when you are communicating over IM or email all the time, you need facetime with your client/team.
3. You miss out on networking/career opportunities big time.

Could you detail a bit what kind of communication flows are involved? Also is scheduling VOIP calls / video calls / teleconferences not enough, and if so why?

(03-16-2017 03:46 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Phoenix, what you are talking about is a corporate structure, not a business. There isn't much to comment on it because it isn't a business.

The business should dictate the structure, not the other way around.

Naturally the business is the most important part, but I disagree that it's as simple as "the business is the starting point". After all, all men go into business because they think it will better meet their personal needs than the alternatives. Themselves and their desires are the starting point.

Also businesses are successful based on having higher revenue than costs: and if you are self-outsourcing yourself and your team, you can happily lower your salaries due to cost of living differences, and therefore business costs, which increases the competitiveness or profit margin and therefore viability no matter what the business type is.

(03-16-2017 03:46 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Good partnerships are people that bring differing skillsets to the table. I am assuming what you laid out would be people with the same skillset rolling in every 3 months to work.

Basically 4 different managers working 3 month shifts.

That is all fine and dandy when the business is up and running profitably. You have a lot of work before you get to that point. Having 4 people with the same skillsets won't help you get to that point.

You would be better off building up a business and hiring a CEO or manager to take care of the day to day activities. That still means a lot of dedication on your part to get it up and running before you hand it over.

Don't kid yourself, even with 4 other partners you won't be working offsite for most of the year starting out. That may happen once you get it profitable and worked out all the logistics but that will probably be many, many years away before you can start living overseas.

Actually it would be a standard skill mix, the only requirement is that any given partner's work could be telecommuted.

Also there is no reason the business needs to be made afresh. An existing small business, so long as all the work could be effectively telecommuted, would actually be the best candidate. You then already have an active business, which you simply start to pull geographically elsewhere as much as you can.

On the question of the CEO, these are their typical core duties:
1. Receiving reports
2. Planning
3. Decisions
4. Commands / delegation

I see little reason this can't all be done online, and mostly through emails or calls or team management software. In cases where only a meeting will suffice (he needs rapid back-and-forth interaction with team members in order to plan or reach a decision or ask questions about a report etc), services like this can be used: https://www.gotomeeting.com/

So the CEO doesn't need to remain a local partner, he just has to be very reliably able to be reached, i.e. having good internet connection with good redundancy protections. It's common for the CEO to assign the role of chief representative of the company, i.e. in meetings with clients, banks, etc, to a President anyway, so he would just make one of the temporary local partners President each time.

[rafaeld]

(03-17-2017 12:21 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

Could you detail a bit what kind of communication flows are involved? Also is scheduling VOIP calls / video calls / teleconferences not enough, and if so why?

I'm guessing you haven't worked remotely before. For some types of work VOIP/video calls are fine. I have developed software and worked day jobs for two years almost entirely using these methods. There are two major problems doing it like this:

Firstly, Skype/hangouts/whatever are STILL not mature solutions. Crappy internet connections, random dropouts, lag etc can make communicating like this a frustrating experience. It's 2017 and we still haven't solved the universal teleconferencing problem yet.

Secondly and more importantly, there are intangible benefits of being in the same office as your team and having real face and body time that cannot be clearly defined. Overheard snatches of conversations from other team members, ability to see body language, to communicate at random, to walk over and point to code on a screen, these are all things that cannot possibly be replicated remotely.

You might say that these do not sound important, but trust me over time you come to realise that all these little subconscious and unplanned interactions can actually be more important than the work itself.

The work you are assigned and communicate directly about will get done just fine. But there are long-term ideas and strategies, networking opportunities etc that can only come from being in the same physical location as another person. There are a lot of facets to human communication more than just vision and voice.

So remote work is fine for just earning cash, if you're good. But the cost is unknown and potentially large. Maybe you might make a friend in the office and through general awareness of the industry afforded to you by your physical presence, after two years you start a consultancy business in a niche field with this friend. This can't happen with remote work, so how much did it cost you? Maybe millions.

Quote:

Naturally the business is the most important part, but I disagree that it's as simple as "the business is the starting point". After all, all men go into business because they think it will better meet their personal needs than the alternatives. Themselves and their desires are the starting point.

The most important thing is to find a business partner with the same goals and desires as you. Then a lot of this stuff you can work out together.

Quote:

I see little reason this can't all be done online, and mostly through emails or calls or team management software. In cases where only a meeting will suffice (he needs rapid back-and-forth interaction with team members in order to plan or reach a decision or ask questions about a report etc), services like this can be used: https://www.gotomeeting.com/

I've used all these types of online meeting services (and probably several more that you haven't heard of) and I'm telling you, there are elements of communication that happen in meatspace that cannot be replicated over video. The parts that you are losing are the unquantifiable ones, so by definition you will never know exactly what you are losing, only a vague sense that it is there.

I can't define it, but after two years working almost fully remote, I can tell you that it happens.

That's not to say this idea can't work - I think it probably could. Just saying there is a cost to working fully remotely that is not immediately obvious, and it's a large one.

I do however think that you can get 90% of the benefits of meatspace interaction with only 25% of your time physically together - that's why my plan involves a portion of the year spent in the home country (blast) and the rest spent wherever you like (cruise).

[Phoenix]

(03-17-2017 02:07 AM)rafaeld Wrote:  

Secondly and more importantly, there are intangible benefits of being in the same office as your team and having real face and body time that cannot be clearly defined. Overheard snatches of conversations from other team members, ability to see body language, to communicate at random, to walk over and point to code on a screen, these are all things that cannot possibly be replicated remotely.

You might say that these do not sound important, but trust me over time you come to realise that all these little subconscious and unplanned interactions can actually be more important than the work itself.

The work you are assigned and communicate directly about will get done just fine. But there are long-term ideas and strategies, networking opportunities etc that can only come from being in the same physical location as another person. There are a lot of facets to human communication more than just vision and voice.
...
I've used all these types of online meeting services (and probably several more that you haven't heard of) and I'm telling you, there are elements of communication that happen in meatspace that cannot be replicated over video. The parts that you are losing are the unquantifiable ones, so by definition you will never know exactly what you are losing, only a vague sense that it is there.

Well I don't think you really see those aspects as unquantifiable and undefinable, from the very fact you started to define and quantify them. I think it's a valuable thought exercise to try and quantify exactly what they are, to better understand the nature of the problem. This could even indicate new ways it could be mitigated (working remotely is a relatively new development after all).

I'll try to list them, feel free to add:
1. Much of human communication is in body language. You are losing this communication interface when you limit communication to audio+face.
2. We are more sensitive to the communication latency in VOIP than we think we are. When we interact in real life, we often see the "true answer" immediately in peoples facial expression changes well before they speak. The timing of these facial expression changes has a lot of information, and also we have a strong need to receive this feedback instantly.
3. One part of in-office communication is helping and asking for help. Especially junior devs who aren't up to speed yet asking seniors or the original coders of a project for explanations etc. It is much more efficient to deliver this help in person than with any current software.
4. Talking about a problem in the code is still more efficient in person than any screen-cast based system.
5. Even though it risks breaking flow, workers must be able to interact ad hoc, e.g. by going off cues like someone leaning back in their seat, to keep everybody collectively understanding where each other are at, communicating problems and asking questions etc. Scheduling meetings or calls doesn't naturally fit this communication pattern.

If I could pose some corresponding potential solutions, which may or may not already exist:
1. Study or research what exactly people are communicating with body language, and adopt a new verbal communication style to contain that information. I.e. use an unnaturally explicit form of verbal communication. For example, instead of just quietly appearing peeved or pleased about something, just state it outright, and if somebody does don't over react etc. Obviously still won't be as comfortable, only option for the real thing would be wearing motion capture suits etc .
2. Use some kind of video version of linear predictive coding tailored to communicate facial expression changes as rapidly as possible. [obviously if this doesn't already exist this point will remain prohibitive]
3. Use a screen-casting + headset system. Would rely of course on fast internet speeds. Could have a screen-casting application that filters down the screencast into the actual important aspects in a codified format, rather than just basically video broadcasting like TeamViewer etc.
4. Use some kind of IDE-to-IDE sync-up collaboration plugin + headset.
5. Have an application which detects "interruptability" levels of the user, and passes that information to the VOIP call busyness indicator. I.e. if the user is hammering out code, it would turn red; if the user was just chilling reading a blog, it would turn green. It would observe other patterns that indicate intermediate busyness states.

I'm not sure what you mean by the networking part though, do you mean like more socially getting to know your coworkers? I thought networking usually involves meeting new people.

PS your blog link is broken, firefox just shows a page saying it's insecure

[SanMiguel]

Aside from most people doing more talking than real action, I think the main lack of interest is that most men here would prefer to go their own way, make their own decisions and being part of a location dependent business, even though split 4 ways, stops that. If you are working for yourself - online business, living off investments, hands-off property landlord etc. you are more or less completely in control of what you do. Want to move city/country tomorrow, take a week off, return home wherever that is - no problem. Once you have a signed contract with set hours/a 3 month shift/much much bigger responsibilities it is a lot to take on and restricts your options and future decisions massively.

On paper a co-operative with 4 equal partners would be great if you are all like minded, have similar life goals/plans for the future. Everyone would be making serious coin and pushing one another to improve themselves and the business. In practice this would be much harder to accomplish and nowhere near as awesome as the initial idea seemed with lots of potential for things to go wrong. Having said this, for the sake of boredom and my general interest in business, I will add the first thing that comes to mind personally. That would be property investment/rental, more specifically Airbnb mainly because this is a similar thing to what I use to fund my lifestyle. The business plan would be something like this:

Acquire an apartment, preferably 3 bedrooms in major or upcoming tourist destination to rent on short term lettings through Airbnb or similar website. Potential cities would be: Budapest, Krakow, Bangkok, Medellin. Cities chosen based on reasonable local property prices and popularity of cities which equals high demand for rental. Once property is acquired through cash purchase or long term rental a complete refurbishment would be done to bring the unit up to a good standard. As with property rental in general, the higher the standard = higher the rent = (usually) better tenants. Location is key as although outlay will be higher, so will the rental income and demand for the property, so much less time empty between rentals.

I ran some very rough figures after I wrote the above and it doesn’t really work out as a particularly profitable business with just one apartment - especially not something that could be split 4 ways. It’s also a fair amount of risk to take on and being a landlord opens you up to many potential headaches. Clearly some people make very good money doing this but they have scaled to effectively become a letting agency, managing multiple properties for themselves and other landlords. Making profits on their own rental income and taking commission from other peoples rent. This would be difficult to set up in a foreign country without expert local knowledge: to acquire properties/landlords, arrange refurbishments/repairs and to hire local staff to assist in running the letting agency, local red tape etc. Definitely not impossible to do and with the right people could be a very successful lucrative business, really opening up a city to you and potentially allowing free accommodation for the partners at certain times of the year.

For me personally the above would be of interest but would be a lot to take on. I’m at the point now where I’m fairly comfortable financially and not sure I could find people that I could trust and work with. I guess this place is the best there is to finding like minded guys but you never know! However I am ambitious and love working towards something so in the future it would be an option - after writing this post I am not completely against the idea.