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Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

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Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#121

Post by innocentoldguy »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #105
apohn wrote: post #84

> - Posting once a week about what I did for fun over the weekend, usually with photos. Honestly, if I heard about this during the hiring process I'd see it as a red flag. Especially the photos. I once had this terrible VP who was a horrible micromanager and an all around a-hole. For every weekly meeting he'd go around the room forcing people to share what they did on the weekend. It was under the guise of "team buil…

I suspect a lot of folks have some trauma from past bosses that inform how they view relatively tame things. When I start a new job I set myself as away on slack and never change it to active because I had a boss who would message me if I was away for more than 5 minutes during COVID. The green/gray circle is pretty big brothery and feels crazy to me but everyone accepts it. I think I'm hyper sensitive to this becaus…

This sounds exactly like a manager I had before. We called him "Fart" behind his back. He was definitely one of the top-three worst managers of my 30+ year career.

I think anyone who aspires to me a manager should ask themselves, "Where does my leadership 'power' come from?" The answer is NOT:

1. Title/position. 2. Company org chart. 3. Experience. 4. Education.

The "power" of leadership comes from the people you manage. If you treat them right, you will have their loyalty, respect, and good work. If not, you can be King of the World, and nobody will follow you willingly, because you're a dick.

Yes, you can wield your company-power to fire people, similar to the way dictators keep people in line via the threat of physical violence or imprisonment, but that isn't leadership. It's weak and cowardly despotism.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#122

Post by ALittleLight »

apohn wrote: post #84

> - Posting once a week about what I did for fun over the weekend, usually with photos. Honestly, if I heard about this during the hiring process I'd see it as a red flag. Especially the photos. I once had this terrible VP who was a horrible micromanager and an all around a-hole. For every weekly meeting he'd go around the room forcing people to share what they did on the weekend. It was under the guise of "team buil…

I always find "What did you do over the weekend?" type stuff insanely boring. I imagine a website that generates random plausible answers to this question - how much time would I spend generating and reading random responses? Answer: Enough to see whether and how well it worked, and then never again. Why would I care about what my coworkers did over the weekend? It's like using that website for fun. When people ask me this question I always say "I didn't do anything at all" and then fall silent. My hope is that the awkwardness of this response will encourage them to stop talking to me.

In my view this over-familiarity with coworkers is partially a consequence of individual atomization in society. People who have moved across the country to a new city where they have no friends or family try to find surrogates in their company and companies, trying to encourage worker loyalty and sacrifice, promote the idea of being friend or family like. I don't think of my coworkers as friends and certainly not family. My coworkers are strangers who happen to work at the same company. I have to interact with them to do my job but that requires only polite communication about work. I don't need to know anything about their personal lives and prefer not to know.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#123

Post by llIIllIIllIIl »

We have an optional daily 30 minute meeting (happens during my morning, different for others in different time zones) where we chat about everything sipping coffee. Absolutely non-formal, work items come up for discussion usually once per week.

This works quite well for people to better know each other. The best thing is that it's optional.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#124

Post by closeparen »

jh0486 wrote: post #87

The pandemic has made it more challenging. I've worked remotely for over eight years and managed teams for 4 of those years. Engagement feedback has dramatically shifted, with people feeling disconnected and needing more social interaction. Before the pandemic, people leveraged their local social networks and didn't need work to be their source of community. One of the rituals on my team that has stuck for years is a…

Interesting, we’ve found unstructured conversation pretty much impossible on Zoom. No one liked the open ended happy hours, so they stopped. Games actually got people talking.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#125

Post by hn_user82179 »

duped wrote: post #120

Remote work thrives when you optimize for asynchronicity. The things you've listed do the opposite of that and sounds like a massive productivity sink. "Lots of 1:1s" is a red flag for a team that can't work remote well, imo. Fewer 1:1s, optimize async communication (code review, short notes and docs, IMs or emails, a culture of respecting silence or delayed replies), that's great remote. I had a manager earlier in t…

I think "lots of 1:1s" sounds great but is pretty draining to implement. I love chatting with my coworkers 1:1 - I feel like people can't/don't talk as much in group meetings so the 1:1s are nice to maintain a connection with coworkers you haven't met in person.

But! At the end of the week when you realize you spent 6 hours in 1:1s as an IC on top of your regular meetings, it feels very unsatisfying. It takes a lot of time from your work that you're still expected to get done.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#126

Post by anchochilis »

duped wrote: post #120

Remote work thrives when you optimize for asynchronicity. The things you've listed do the opposite of that and sounds like a massive productivity sink. "Lots of 1:1s" is a red flag for a team that can't work remote well, imo. Fewer 1:1s, optimize async communication (code review, short notes and docs, IMs or emails, a culture of respecting silence or delayed replies), that's great remote. I had a manager earlier in t…

I agree with this (and that manager sounds awful). But want to note that having a successful remote/async team has a few prerequisites:

(1) Skilled, engaged contributors. Most high touch management processes (frequent 1-1s, agile ceremonies) exist in order to motivate, guide, and create accountability for mediocre/disengaged employees. High performers can execute successfully in a process vacuum (in fact, they often do their best work with maximal freedom), but unfortunately not all teams are composed exclusively of high performers.

(2) Team members need to have shared values and a baseline level of trust and respect for each other. If they don't trust each other, disagree about technical approaches, or there are power struggles within the team, frequent meetings are often necessary to resolve disagreements that can otherwise spiral and bog everyone down.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#127

Post by bluefirebrand »

michaelt wrote: post #107
SamuelAdams wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I’m curious why young, fresh out of college grads who move across country (and have few / no friends in the new local area) make it their employers responsibility to foster friendships? Don’t get me wrong - it’s great to have genuine friendships with your coworkers. You work better together and have strong recommendations for the next job or have strong referrals to other companies when your friends leave. At…

> I’m curious why young, fresh out of college grads [...] make it their employers responsibility to foster friendships? Personally, I've never heard anyone explicitly say it's their employer's responsibility . But if my employer occasionally offers me the option to leave the office early and go drinking at their expense, while getting paid? Nobody's going to oppose having the option.

As long as I can also choose to leave the office early and not go drinking, I have no problem with that.

But god forbid anyone just want to put in their time and go home, and not socialize with their coworkers after hours. How anti social of me. I clearly am not a team player.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#128

Post by jonjon10002 »

I'm a manager. (Sorry.) I do a weekly Friday "Ask me anything" on Zoom that's basically a free-form training session where people reporting to me (or other teams are fine, too) ask about how to do something or how we should be doing something, and we walk through it in video.

One reason I started this is we had a mix of junior people, people who came in from acquisitions, and people who had changed tools and weren't sure of best practices. This stuff was supposed to be documented in wiki pages, and a lot of times it was, but when we'd run through it hands-on, we'd find details that weren't documented or had gone stale.

Another reason is that formal written-in-advance training sessions are overbearing for everyone involved. They take too much time to prepare, too much time to give, nobody pays attention because they don't like being talked to, and if things go off script, the presenter has to scramble to adapt. It was better for someone to say on Monday "I need to know more about how we're supposed to be doing GitHub PR reviews" and then on Friday, I'd have a post-it of notes and we'd fire up a browser, go through a fake PR or look at an old one, and maybe talk about pain points or what isn't working.

Also, we'd record these and store them for posterity, and so people in other time zones could catch them later.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#129

Post by anchochilis »

anchochilis wrote: post #126
duped wrote: post #120

Remote work thrives when you optimize for asynchronicity. The things you've listed do the opposite of that and sounds like a massive productivity sink. "Lots of 1:1s" is a red flag for a team that can't work remote well, imo. Fewer 1:1s, optimize async communication (code review, short notes and docs, IMs or emails, a culture of respecting silence or delayed replies), that's great remote. I had a manager earlier in t…

I agree with this (and that manager sounds awful). But want to note that having a successful remote/async team has a few prerequisites: (1) Skilled, engaged contributors. Most high touch management processes (frequent 1-1s, agile ceremonies) exist in order to motivate, guide, and create accountability for mediocre/disengaged employees. High performers can execute successfully in a process vacuum (in fact, they often…

I'll also note that I think it's difficult for managers to transition from managing mediocre teams to high-performing ones. The job changes from "telling people what to do and making sure it gets done" to "advocating for my people and empowering them to execute independently." And some managers struggle to recognize that, feel superfluous, and double down on what they know (Jira! Scrums!) in order to feel effective.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#130

Post by jfk13 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #109
jfk13 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We recently introduced doing some planning every 8 weeks; plan is fly to the home office, spend a week having those spontaneous in person conversations You plan to have everyone fly somewhere for a week, every 8 weeks?! Wow. Really glad I'm not on that team.

Every 8 weeks seems quite frequent and exhausting, but I recently met colleges from the wider company in person for the first time and I loved it. I recognise there's value that comes from that!

Sure! Pre-pandemic, my company used to bring people together a couple of times a year, and I agree there was considerable value in it. But every 8 weeks? Maybe that team are all young, energetic, and family-free, but at my stage of life I would find that pretty gruelling.
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