Why WFH, Hybrid and Remote Work Might Kill your Startup

If there's one thing I remember that stands out as instrumental in the success of our growth in product development at Realhub, it's the tiny office, the overheard conversations and the constant re-aligning and re-development of ideas.

You know I’ve been a huge advocate for close collaboration between engineering, customer support, sales, and business critical teams. So, let’s talk about something that’s been on my mind: why work from home, hybrid, and remote work might be detrimental to your startup.

I know what you’re thinking, but my commute, I prefer a quiet space to focus blah blah blah. That’s not the point of this, so if you want to fight me on WFH being better, come at me on X. This article is about how the benefits of working in a close nit co-located group have massive benefits to early stage startups.

If you think there might be something to learn from that, read on. Otherwise see you over at Elon’s place.

The Importance of Close Collaboration

When you’re in the early stages of a startup, every decision, every conversation, and every interaction can significantly impact your trajectory. Having everyone in the same room can foster a culture of tight feedback loops, quick iterations, and spontaneous idea sharing. But with remote work, we risk losing some of this magic.

The Power of Being in the Same Room

1. Immediate Feedback: When you’re all in the same space, feedback is immediate. You can quickly huddle together to solve a problem, brainstorm an idea, or clarify a misunderstanding. Yes it can be fucking annoying overhearing a sales call, or a customer complaint and being interupted to react immediately to every little thing. You know what else is annoying? Losing a customer you didn’t listen to. Or missing an easy win you could implement to get a new customer.

2. Spontaneous Collaboration: The best ideas often come from casual, spontaneous interactions—those hallway conversations or impromptu “whiteboard” sessions that are hard to replicate virtually. Conversations flow better in person, and if safe collaborative communication is a struggle in your business you’ve got bigger problems than staff wanting a shorter commute. Team members being able to overhear conversations way above their paygrade will level them up faster than any degree or diploma or years of experience, and unless you really fight for public conversations instead of private slack DMs, you’re not getting the same deal remote.

3. Building Relationships: Being physically present helps in building stronger relationships and trust among team members. These relationships are the foundation for effective teamwork and collaboration. And the same can be said for relationships that arn’t going to work out, if you have to sit in the same room as someone you don’t respect or even hate, you’re going to notice much faster co-located. And in software development and team growth, speed is everything. The faster you figure out the team, their quirks, who works and who doesn’t fit… the better.

The Risks of Remote Work

Communication Challenges

Remote work can introduce significant communication barriers. Misunderstandings can arise from delayed responses, lack of non-verbal cues, and the absence of spontaneous discussions. While tools like Slack and Zoom help, they can’t fully replicate the depth of face-to-face interactions.

From personal experience, I’m much more likely to ask a question to someone in the same room, than interupt someone on slack. Yes distractions = bad for focus. But yes speed of information = crucial.

Fragmented Feedback Loops

When teams are dispersed, maintaining a tight feedback loop becomes challenging. Regular touchpoints, customer conversations, and peer reviews can lose their effectiveness if not managed meticulously. This fragmentation can lead to slower iterations and a disjointed understanding of customer needs.

The amount of writing, documentation, recording etc. will slow you down. You’ll tell me but strong documentation will make it easier to scale. Yeah yeah, but half the shit you’re talking about will have changed so much in 3 months it’ll be worthless if you’re developing and growing as the speed a startup needs to sprout out of the ground. Remember, if you’re not growing you’re dying.

Loss of Team Cohesion

Remote work can lead to isolation and a sense of disconnection among team members. I felt this myself during covid when we all went remote for weeks. Without regular in-person interactions, it’s harder to build the camaraderie and team spirit that drive startup success. You lose inertia, you lose a feeling of connectedness. Virtual team-building activities can only go so far in replicating the bonding that happens naturally in a shared physical space.

Slower Decision-Making

Startups need to move fast. Remote work can slow down decision-making processes due to time zone differences, delayed communications, and the absence of quick, informal discussions. This delay can be detrimental when swift action is required to seize opportunities or especially to address issues, yep you might over-do and over-address issues that are knee jerk reactions to things, but the process of doing so will level up everyone involved to know what is, and more importantly isn’t an emergency. You’ve gotta get some runs on the board over-reacting, to know how to react sanely to “emergencies”.

Balancing Remote Work with Startup Needs

I’m not saying remote work is all bad. In fact, it has its benefits—flexibility, access to a broader talent pool, and cost savings, to name a few. But it’s crucial to balance these advantages with the needs of your startup and DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the value of speed.

Foster Strong Communication

So… what can you do if you’re already completely remote, and you feel stuck there, can you get the same benefits… maybe, maybe not. Here’s some things you can try though:

1. Regular Video Meetings: Schedule daily stand-ups and weekly syncs to keep everyone aligned.

2. Effective Communication Tools: Utilize video conferencing, instant messaging, and project management tools to maintain clear and efficient communication.

Maintain Tight Feedback Loops

1. Frequent Check-Ins: Try and keep updates, check-ins, 1 on 1s as public as possible. Yes it’s awkward, yes there will be mistakes, the more everyone collectively learns about each other the better.

2. Direct Customer Interactions: Keep the team connected to customers through virtual interviews and feedback sessions. Let the team feel the burn of failures as much as the wins of success. Don’t shield them from too much, even if it feels like your ego is about to get a check with public failure, let them feel it too. Either they’re your team, and they feel the hurt alongside, or they’re not and they can get out anyway.

Strengthen Team Cohesion

1. Virtual Team Building: These things can be baloney. Or you can make them work. Some people froth on them, but others feel obliged to turn up and waste their time when they’d rather be working. I’d put some serious though into the value of pulling people together in physical locations atleast once or twice a year, if you can’t be co-located this will go further than virtual meet ups.

If you’re going to come together as a team to work, don’t do the work you’d ordinarily be doing. Consider unique project work that collects memebers from disparate teams. Forcing people who don’t work together to come together for shared goals will go along way in minimising the roadblocks/slow downs of communciation that come with remote work, if you know someone personally from a physical meeting in a team, you’ll hit them up faster than if you have to do a long winded “Hey X, I’m Y from Z and P recommended I ask you and T about Project”.

2. Clear Objectives: Individual objectives, mapped to team objectives, tied to very obvious business goals. No wishy washy vision stuff. Make everyone accountable to the profit, growth, churn of the business.

Ensure Quick Decision-Making

1. Asynchronous Communication: Encourage detailed, asynchronous updates to accommodate different time zones without causing delays in PUBLIC CHANNELS. Kill the 2-5 person DMs. They’re killing your business.

2. Empower Teams: Delegate decision-making authority to smaller teams to enable faster responses and actions. If you’ve made them accountable for profit/growth and churn as mentioned above, their decisions should be for the greater good anyway. And if they’re not, bloody tell them that already, stop beating around the bush.

Final Thoughts

Remote work, hybrid models, and working from home all have their place obviously, and some serious benefits, but it’s crucial to be aware of the potential pitfalls, especially for startups where speed is everything. By prioritizing close collaboration, maintaining tight feedback loops, and fostering strong team cohesion, you can maybe mitigate the risks and ensure your startup remains agile and effective. But if I had a crystal ball and I was shown your team, and a similar team with similar experience all sitting in the same room, I know who I’d bet on to get further faster.,

Remember, the magic of a startup often comes from the energy and synergy of being in the same room. While remote work offers flexibility, don’t let it dilute the essence of what makes your startup special.

Hope this helps you navigate the remote work landscape!

Cheers,
Darrell