191–200 of 400 posts
Because 'we' prefer it? I like going into the office. The morning walk to the office with its clear demarcation between work and not work, the ritual of grabbing a coffee in the morning with some colleagues and catching up on what's happening in their projects even if they're not directly related to anything I'm working on, having a dedicated space and a dedicated computer that's just for work, all those little thing…
This is not quite a commute.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. " Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time . If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a respo…
I'm going to disagree here. It's entirely possible to work effectively with others via mostly-asynchronous communication. Open source projects, as you point out, can be a pretty good example of this. I'd further argue that for some (I suspect many...) people work much better when they can have long stints of focus without fear of interruptions. Two-minute responses on Slack absolutely is a model that can work, and pe…
I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…
"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. " Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time . If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a respo…
This is pretty much why I don' want to work remotely.
At the office, when busy, I can turn my email and IM off. If people need something, they are welcome to come to me and I'll engage with them. I do not want to deal with urgent issues over any kind of IM. If you are not physically present, then call me and we'll have a voice chat.
My frustration is that IM is used for both urgent requests, as well as non-urgent ones. It's used as an alternative both to phones (immediate need - synchronous) and to email (no rush - asynchronous).
My fear in working remote is that I'll get too many non-urgent interrupts using IM. I cannot see a good reason to use textual IM over a voice chat. If it's not urgent, just use email.
So while I agree that response time can be important, there should be clear policies on the medium used for it. If the team mostly had policies that match my preferences, I could do remote work. But I suspect most teams will disagree with them. Hence I get my way in the office.
Taking 2 hours for a response is often fine at the office, BTW. It all depends on the context.
>Immediate responses is a remote team. Day long responses is contract work. Week long responses is open source projects and government work.
There are very few jobs that really fit this categorization. At my work (in the office), we often respond to things the same day. On the flip side, today I plan to respond to something that had been requested a week ago. I don't work in OS or for the government.
If someone wants a quick response, they have to explain the need for it in the email. If it's open ended, it goes to the bottom of the queue. I'm willing to bet that since they haven't bugged me about it, they either no longer need the information, or it is low priority for them.
I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…
Another huge problem is the transition path from "everyone in the same office" to "everyone working remote". If you have 60% of your team sitting in the office, and 40% remote, you can be absolutely certain that those 40% will be out of touch on all those important decisions that just emerge during a watercooler conversation. (The watercooler also provides a way for different teams to get to know each other, even if…
We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…
To a lot of people 2hr/day commuting is less terrible than the trade-offs associated with living closer to the city.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people say that they can't communicate as well with someone who isn't in the same room that doesn't necessarily mean that a remote setup doesn't work. It could simply mean they're just lazy and not willing to adjust to a different kind of work environment. It could also mean they actually have sufficient social skills that they're able to make full use of the higher bandwidth available face-to-face, and aren't w…
And that they probably are also not afraid to use that 'full bandwidth', disrupting everyone workflow, repeatedly, like calling an hour long team status update meeting for a communication that could have perfectly occurred in a 2 line email message. Which you'll also receive. Oh yeah, who's taking the minutes by the way?
To be frank, people using IM to communicate with me disrupt my flow a lot more. They start a thread/conversation/request, and then are slow to respond, or disappear. You can't do that face to face.
Face to face (or even telephone) forces people to prepare. Rarely do I see people work that way with IM. People tend to realize that they are interrupting someone if it's a face to face. In my experience, many (most?) workers don't view IM as a significant interruption to the other party. So they feel much more free in using it.
I work from home as much as I can, but nothing trumps seeing your colleagues face to face. Text can also cause misunderstandings, and apparently no one likes video, at least in my company. I don't like video much either, though.
You can have misunderstandings face to face. This is a matter of communication skills. Having entire conversation in text form also means you can easily make references and go back to it even weeks later, whereas with face to face conversation you don't have that luxury.