WordPress.com is the 15th most trafficked website in the world. It is
run by Automattic Inc, a company that is 100% distributed. That means
everyone works from home, or more precisely, from wherever in the
world they wish. They've been amazingly successful with this strategy,
but I was skeptical about how a distributed company really works.
Being curious, I decided to do the obvious: Work there for a year as a
team leader and find out for myself.
Here's what I learned:
Creativity thrives online. Recently James Surowicki at The New Yorker
claimed remote work inhibits creativity. This is absurd in the age of
the web, where thousands work on brilliant projects, collaborating
with people around the world. It's true that in a distributed company
you can't just walk down the hall to find serendipity, but chat rooms,
social media, and blogs provide many chance encounters and
serendipitous ideas. Dozens of times a day, WordPress.com releases new
features and updates, and they collaborate intensely around them on
internal blogs and in chat rooms. Remote work certainly changes the
nature of interaction, but to assume this inhibits creativity is
ridiculous.
Not all remote work is the same. To evaluate remote work as a singular
idea is a paper tiger. There are many policies to choose from and
those choices matter. Managers of remote workers at older companies
need to make adjustments to enable remote workers to thrive,
especially during a trial period when everyone is experimenting and
learning what will work for them. But to try remote work without
making any allowances or adjustments is foolish. Any progressive idea
can be made to fail if the people in charge don't support it.
Culture is critical. Automattic has many policies designed to empower
employees and remote work is just one of them. They believe individual
workers know best how to be productive and that management's job is to
provide choices and get out of the way. If employees are
self-motivated and empowered, remote work can accelerate productivity.
However in autocratic or bureaucratic organizations the freedom of
remote work runs against the culture. Of course remote workers will be
less productive if they're in environments that depend on centralized,
rule-oriented, or committee heavy processes. But even then it can work
if managers care more about results than pretense.
It should be up to the employee. Workplaces often treat employees like
children. Any wise manager evaluates employees on their results, not
superficially, and physical location might just be one of them. If a
worker proves they can perform as well, or better, from home there's
little reason to complain. Even at a bureaucratic company, a motivated
worker may be able to find ways to do their job productively in a
remote environment. Why not let them try? If they're right everyone
wins. The mistake Yahoo's Marissa Mayer made was to focus on the
means, rather than the ends: The problem she's facing is abuse of
remote work, not remote work itself. Automattic has found they can
hire better people, since they do not need to relocate -- an advantage
more than worth the challenges, if any, that enabling remote work has
cost them.
Tools make a difference. Automattic employees rarely use email.
Instead they use internal blogs, chat rooms, and Skype. A special kind
of blog, called a P2, solves many of the annoyances of email, and
simultaneously facilitates remote work. Conversations on P2s can be
easily linked to via URL, are searchable and are visible to all,
making it easy to catch up on what you've missed. At Automattic, even
when employees meet in person they use the same tools as when working
apart. This helps ensure no one feels left out or misses
conversations, regardless of their time zone.
There are many 100% distributed companies. Dozens of real business
thrive with remote workers. Before abandoning the idea managers should
study how so many successful companies not only allow remote workers,
but also make it an advantage.
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