Hacker Cinema
Outsourced
2010 · TV series · 21 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Bob Borden
A lone American manages the new call center of an American novelties company in Bombay and must explain American popular culture to his employees as he tries to understand Indian culture.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
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2 comments on Hacker News
How the television series Outsourced helped to understand, managers can act as coaches.
In regards to 1 & 3 it sounds like the problems are more your company than the remote engineers.
First of all due to the timezone differences I will assume you are US based and outsourced to somewhere in Asia - this alone without the remote working has its own set of challenges (n.b. there is a good comedy TV show "Outsourced" about this). As an example, if someone in India gets stuck doing something they are unlikely to speak up about it until you ask then about it, this isn't because they are lazy or whatever but just because their culture is a lot different to the West. The way you need to work with a team here is a lot different to how you would work with a team in the West - this alone can be the cause of a good chunk of problems that occur when outsourcing.
As your team is remote you can't ask them a question and expect an answer in 10 minutes, but you shouldn't expect this of a onsite engineer either as you'll just ruin their flow. Have daily stand ups at times that work for both teams and discuss any issues after that.
In regards to the communication just use Skype (audio) and get a good microphone. If you don't have a good internet connection or it's not working, just call them on the phone. Companies have been working with distributed teams long before Skype was even invented...
As to 4, well sorry but that's your problem. No one is stopping you from getting a remote job except yourself :)