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Remote work: 6 months later

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Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#11

Post by lr4444lr »

it is definitely great to meet in person, to shake hands, grab a coffee together, etc. but what is the value, professionally speaking?

Years of socialization training stemming from childhood to gauge whether it's really worth interrupting people. I do enjoy the opportunity to do remote work, but even in the office, I'm finding an unstated expectation that I should always have a second pair of eyes on my slack notifications. It's not really consistent to praise the elusive "in the zone" state where developers get their most productive work done, and simultaneously expect that they should break what they're doing to bucket the importance of every little IM. The need to walk over to another person when you have something important to say, and use your human senses to determine whether this person should really be distracted for what you think is important at the moment puts the onus and effort of distraction on the asker where I think it best belongs.

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#12

Post by kriro »

It's mentioned in the "myths about remote work" article that's linked but I think for startup-y kind of things social/power norms kind of force you to not work remotely for at least a decent stretch of the time.

o/~ Move to SV, move to SV, move to SV sure there's some poo on the streets but...move to SV. o/~

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#13

Post by RyanZAG »

lr4444lr wrote: post #11

it is definitely great to meet in person, to shake hands, grab a coffee together, etc. but what is the value, professionally speaking? Years of socialization training stemming from childhood to gauge whether it's really worth interrupting people. I do enjoy the opportunity to do remote work, but even in the office, I'm finding an unstated expectation that I should always have a second pair of eyes on my slack notific…

Unlike in real life where someone can come and distract your full attention, IM gives you the ability to set your status to 'Busy'. Seems far better at dealing with interruptions to me.

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#14

Post by agibsonccc »

kriro wrote: post #12

It's mentioned in the "myths about remote work" article that's linked but I think for startup-y kind of things social/power norms kind of force you to not work remotely for at least a decent stretch of the time. o/~ Move to SV, move to SV, move to SV sure there's some poo on the streets but...move to SV. o/~

I run a 16 person 5 timezone startup cofounded in the valley. I moved to asia from SF. The best thing about this is lack of "startup-y things". All of those things are huge distractions to getting things done.

Many companies run remote fine. Schedules allow people to be home with their kids when needed, no commute over head for most. Emphasis is on self management. Communication is async. We have 1 stand up a week.

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#15

Post by chunkiestbacon »

dep_b wrote: post #9

Working with mixed French / German teams seems to be a more interesting problem than having everybody working remote ;)

I can imagine difficulties that happen regularly in those teams not appearing, since remote work probably attracts more internationally minded people with fluent english.

I've had to work with a french dev that only wanted to write emails in english and refused to speak it on the phone, maybe because his office mates could listen.

A francophone boss that was so overconfident in his english ability, that he considered using "yeah" instead of "yes" as rude.

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#16

Post by briandear »

huhtenberg wrote: post #3

> Our only office is Slack. You mistyped Mattermost :) Seriously, no reason to share all your company inner workings with a random 3rd party when it takes literally 5 minutes to set up a completely private (and also free!) clone of the same.

And how much time does it take to manage the required infrastructure?

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#17

Post by artpi »

lr4444lr wrote: post #11

it is definitely great to meet in person, to shake hands, grab a coffee together, etc. but what is the value, professionally speaking? Years of socialization training stemming from childhood to gauge whether it's really worth interrupting people. I do enjoy the opportunity to do remote work, but even in the office, I'm finding an unstated expectation that I should always have a second pair of eyes on my slack notific…

Also, make sure that this "expectation" to respond to pings immediately isn't in your head. I work at Automattic and I usually respond within 15 minutes, but sometimes up to an hour or 5 hours. For remote to make sense, you have to embrace the asynchronous communication as well.

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#18

Post by i__believe »

RyanZAG wrote: post #13
lr4444lr wrote: post #11

it is definitely great to meet in person, to shake hands, grab a coffee together, etc. but what is the value, professionally speaking? Years of socialization training stemming from childhood to gauge whether it's really worth interrupting people. I do enjoy the opportunity to do remote work, but even in the office, I'm finding an unstated expectation that I should always have a second pair of eyes on my slack notific…

Unlike in real life where someone can come and distract your full attention, IM gives you the ability to set your status to 'Busy'. Seems far better at dealing with interruptions to me.

Slack doesn't, unless I'm not finding that feature after a year+ of using it.

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#19

Post by nickpp »

huhtenberg wrote: post #3

> Our only office is Slack. You mistyped Mattermost :) Seriously, no reason to share all your company inner workings with a random 3rd party when it takes literally 5 minutes to set up a completely private (and also free!) clone of the same.

Do they have Reactions already in Mattermost?

Re: Remote work: 6 months later

#20

Post by huhtenberg »

nickpp wrote: post #19
huhtenberg wrote: post #3

> Our only office is Slack. You mistyped Mattermost :) Seriously, no reason to share all your company inner workings with a random 3rd party when it takes literally 5 minutes to set up a completely private (and also free!) clone of the same.

Do they have Reactions already in Mattermost?

As in "emoji"? A critical feature that precludes effective professional communication in work environment?
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