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Discussion on: If you ever have to lead a remote dev team...

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Warren Parad

I'm really not a fan of what I see here, it is just the same usual advice that always shows up "Task Management" and blah blah blah. With an article title of If you ever have to lead a remote dev team... the advice should be something way more important.

I'll give the following instead:

If you ever have to lead a remote team, make sure you are explicitly available. While co-located, it is easy to see when some one is "available". They may be getting water, or sitting at a lunch table. They could standing around the coffee machine talking about nonsense or walking to their next meeting. When remote, you may get a little green circle next to your name in Slack that tells you "I'm online". But what this doesn't do is tell you I'M AVAILABLE. This is one of the biggest challenges.

It isn't about being available, it is about being available.

Misunderstood those phrases are the same, but really being available means that others can actually come talk to you. If they never do but have a problem, then irrelevant of what you say or how available you think you are, you really aren't.