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Remote Only

remoteonly.org

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Re: Remote Only

#331

Post by aeorgnoieang »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #290
kharak wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mildly confused. Your post here seems fine and quit readable. How do you arrive at the conclusion, that you're lacking in written communication skills? (sorry for question instead of tips)

In a sense, your confusion here -is- the problem: "conveying complex subject matter in a succinct way for folks lacking detailed domain knowledge." FWIW, I didn't have the same confusion about the post, so I don't know how lacking the author is in this specific setting. But I have had the same general struggle. I have an MA in English/rhetoric and am a software dev, and even with that nexus of training it has been a…

> So here's my tip: > > smaller sentences. More paragraphs. Simpler language.

I've also found thinking about sensual clues to be helpful, e.g. what would the user/customer/whatever see (or hear or feel) at this point? What (exact) text would they reasonably anchor on based on everything they might see? I also try to visually distinguish different types of info, e.g. exact text of some kind of UI element, code.

Another really helpful tip is to confirm that the user/customer/whatever sees/hears/feels some (exact) specific thing at a specific { step / point in space-time }. If they don't provide the (near) exact response I expect, I try to notice my confusion and debug right then and there until my confusion is resolved.

Re: Remote Only

#332

Post by phyzome »

sologoub wrote: post #137
rwbcxrz wrote: post #66

> Fast internet everywhere - 100Mb/s+ cable, 5GHz Wifi, 4G cellular I used to say that. Now I live in a rural area, and the fastest speed that's even available is 5Mbps (and the uptime isn't great). My house also has zero cell service from any provider. It's also a bit presumptive that everyone can afford a 100Mbps connection. The last place I lived, it was like $120/month for 100Mbps. Not everybody can afford that.…

The sad part is that in many developing countries 100mbps is now quite common. Meanwhile, even in LA it’s not very consistent when you have this speed advertised on your contract. Only place where I reliably saw 100mbps down was in SFO on tmobile LTE by one very specific window. Go figure... EDIT: consumer grade connections - if you have a business, gigabit is easy to get in the office.

Might be time to reassess whether the US is a "developing country", or how we bundle these metrics.

Re: Remote Only

#333

Post by jv22222 »

williamdclt wrote: post #215
jv22222 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> missing real human contacts For me, personally, working from home has amplified the good parts of working with people and human contact and removed the bad parts. When we do meet in person (4-5 times a year) we have a blast. When we communicate via video the communication is a lot of fun and very purposeful at the same time. Sometimes it feels like I speak to remote co-workers by video more than family and people i…

My need for human contact is not only verbal communication: it's cleaning the coffee machine, taking a walk, playing around, throwing a duck, being randomly head-butted by a scrum master, going for an afterwork beer... Lot of interaction with people

Yes, I don't think it's one size fits all by any means. It sounds like any company you work for needs to have real world team interaction as part of the day to day. Nothing wrong with that!

Re: Remote Only

#334

Post by scarecrowbob »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #331
scarecrowbob wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense, your confusion here -is- the problem: "conveying complex subject matter in a succinct way for folks lacking detailed domain knowledge." FWIW, I didn't have the same confusion about the post, so I don't know how lacking the author is in this specific setting. But I have had the same general struggle. I have an MA in English/rhetoric and am a software dev, and even with that nexus of training it has been a…

> So here's my tip: > > smaller sentences. More paragraphs. Simpler language. I've also found thinking about sensual clues to be helpful, e.g. what would the user/customer/whatever see (or hear or feel) at this point? What (exact) text would they reasonably anchor on based on everything they might see? I also try to visually distinguish different types of info, e.g. exact text of some kind of UI element, code. Anothe…

This is useful advice.

If you abstract it, the general form is something like "work with concepts that your audience is already familiar with", which is good advice for any communication. And, similarly, be on the look out for any data that says your communication has started to go awry.

Re: Remote Only

#335

Post by e12e »

warcher wrote: post #11

Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.

> Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working.

Sure, have core hours, and make them known.

If I know someone won't be "at" work for the next 20 hours (part time, different timezone) I can factor that into how the teamwork will... Work.

Is something on fire, and only a single person can put it out? A) that's sad B) sometimes happens anyway (and then you can try and fix A after the fire is out) C) depending on what's on fire, contracts etc - you can always call and wake someone up.

But mostly it's just nice to know people's schedules - so one can plan work.

Maybe there's some pair programming to be done (via shared screen session or whatever) - obviously try and schedule that when both parties are available...

It's really not that different to chasing after a manager that's busy with meetings or a co-worker who's part time out of the office doing on-site consulting work.

Even in a shared office, developers need to plan "deep" time when they have time to focus - or nothing will get done due interruptions.

Just because someone is sitting right there does not mean they're "free" for a chat. They could be deep in the debugger chasing a bug.

Re: Remote Only

#336

Post by hartator »

iandanforth wrote: post #86
hartator wrote: post #6

> Disadvantages > Scares investors - Scares some partners - Scares some customers - Scares some potential employees, mostly senior non-technical hires - Onboarding is harder, first month feels lonely We do a full remote policy at SerpApi.com, however I found this disadvantages list a bit dishonest, they are more way numerous and important, the most obvious are missing real human contacts (and it doesn't get easier wi…

This is a valid criticism of the list. Please submit an issue for further discussion! https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-remoteonly-org/issues/

Added some changes here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-remoteonly-org/merge_reque... (username: hartator)

Re: Remote Only

#337

Post by markkanof »

nvarsj wrote: post #207

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approac…

I agree completely, and to build on that idea, it is extremely valuable to be able to take an idea from your head and write it down in a way that fully explains the idea, but is as concise as possible. I see this go wrong a lot in Slack. Some people will not take the time to completely form a thought and will instead just type everything that is in there head as quickly as they can. Then others react because they have misunderstood the original point. If you have a few people trying to communicate with this method it quickly becomes chaos. The process of untangling some of those types of conversations can take far longer than the original conversation did.

Re: Remote Only

#338

Post by Implicated »

speleding wrote: post #291
yosito wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give people more explicit feedback about their performance and hold them accountable only for their performance regardless of where they get the work done, the problem disappears. I get the sense that you're holding yourself responsible for the performance of your employees, but for remote work to be successful, you need to hold the employees responsible. If you find that some employees aren't responsible enou…

Yes, I came to the same conclusion: I need employees that don't need to be micro-managed. Changing their behaviour (if that is even possible) seemed to require more effort than I was prepared to put in, so I ended up replacing them. However, I haven't found a good way to assess whether potential hires are good at this. Everyone claims to be an independent self-starter who is great at remote work whilst in the hiring…

Potentially filter for people who have a demonstrated history of successfully freelancing. They've likely learned how they work most efficiently already.

Re: Remote Only

#339

Post by nounaut »

organsnyder wrote: post #311
nounaut wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really help to know peoples hours. If they're not overlapping with yours then you have a potentially crazy overhead on time it takes to get responses to issues that could hold up your work completely.

That's a fundamental problem of teamwork. This also happens when the coworker sitting right next to you, working the same hours, has a higher-priority task than the one you're waiting for.

It absolutely does, although in my personal experience far, far more rarely. And even if that person was sitting remotely at their own hours you’ld then have to wait for them to get ”to work” and then do that higher-priority task and then get to your request so the overhead is still waaaaay bigger.
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