Building a walkie-talkie for remote work • Hacker News Board

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#121

Post by IanCal » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

nnq wrote: post #104

> quick, synchronous audio/video communication between teammates ..."kill it with fire" or other equivalent meme is the proper response to this, no matter how wonderfully it is executed. Really, what everyone needs is more asynchronous communication and less attention draining and less interruptions! This can only help very small teams of extroverts with very-very-similar personalities work, it brings HELL for everyo…

I'm not an extrovert and I'd like this for people asking me questions.

Want to disturb me for 2 minutes and ruin my concentration losing me half an hour? If it's going to save you your afternoon - just do it. If you're probably going to send me a message on slack or call me there anyway I'd find this a lot less annoying. My goal should never be to get through the most work myself it's to move the company forwards. Having someone wait until tomorrow to get their job done because I haven't manually gone and checked my emails is a waste of company time.

Each to their own, and I don't think everyone would want to use something like this, but don't assume that it's only small teams and very similar extroverts that could benefit.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#122

Post by cs02rm0 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

nnq wrote: post #104

> quick, synchronous audio/video communication between teammates ..."kill it with fire" or other equivalent meme is the proper response to this, no matter how wonderfully it is executed. Really, what everyone needs is more asynchronous communication and less attention draining and less interruptions! This can only help very small teams of extroverts with very-very-similar personalities work, it brings HELL for everyo…

The remote working place I'm at has a policy of starting with video calls, then voice if video isn't available, down to IM, then email. I'm not an extrovert at all, but I quite like it. We are a relatively small dev team - maybe 5/6 people within a company of 30 or so who we talk to less. It's generally faster to communicate like that, with the benefit that you get to know the people you work with a little.

Just clicking on an individual's face and being able to talk to them without acceptance does feel like a step too far to me though. That said, some years ago now, a colleague and I were saying it might be useful to have a teamspeak-style voice room where anyone in the team could join/leave at will but it meant you could push-to-talk to the room if you wanted to. The idea being that people could share their frustrations easily so the team could help them out rather than have them feeling alone and unable to hit the dial button to ask for help from a specific individual. And you could always leave.

We never got around to setting that up though.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#123

Post by SamuelAdams » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #121

nnq wrote: post #104

> quick, synchronous audio/video communication between teammates ..."kill it with fire" or other equivalent meme is the proper response to this, no matter how wonderfully it is executed. Really, what everyone needs is more asynchronous communication and less attention draining and less interruptions! This can only help very small teams of extroverts with very-very-similar personalities work, it brings HELL for everyo…

I'm not an extrovert and I'd like this for people asking me questions. Want to disturb me for 2 minutes and ruin my concentration losing me half an hour? If it's going to save you your afternoon - just do it. If you're probably going to send me a message on slack or call me there anyway I'd find this a lot less annoying. My goal should never be to get through the most work myself it's to move the company forwards. Ha…

I'm with you on this. I don't understand the HN mentality of "100% performance at all working hours". Many employers do not need you to be highly performant all the time, but they do need you to be available all the time.

I'm also reading the Phoenix Project [1], and there's a worker Brent who knows every system well and can fix any issue. However, he is supposed to be working on the big company project (think like an ERP system). However, he can't get that work done because everyone and their brother keeps asking for a "quick" five minutes of his time, several times a day. All in all, he is not able to get his assigned tasks done because he's so busy with other interruptions.

If that happens then yes, talk to your direct report and come up with a better solution. But you shouldn't need to block out every interruption ever. There are times when it is warranted.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#124

Post by lukethomas » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #119

nnq wrote: post #104

> quick, synchronous audio/video communication between teammates ..."kill it with fire" or other equivalent meme is the proper response to this, no matter how wonderfully it is executed. Really, what everyone needs is more asynchronous communication and less attention draining and less interruptions! This can only help very small teams of extroverts with very-very-similar personalities work, it brings HELL for everyo…

We also need more awareness of when to use async vs sync, and what tools are what. Some people treat email and chat like sync communication, getting annoyed if there isn't a response within a short time. Ever have someone walk up or use chat to ask "did you get my email (that I just sent 5 minutes ago)?" Async is great for initiating conversations or going back and forth a couple times. Go much more than that, and sy…

If anyone wants to dig into when to use sync vs. async, I strongly recommend learning about "grounding" when communicating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounding_in_communication#Gro...

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#125

Post by Zenst » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #121

nnq wrote: post #104

> quick, synchronous audio/video communication between teammates ..."kill it with fire" or other equivalent meme is the proper response to this, no matter how wonderfully it is executed. Really, what everyone needs is more asynchronous communication and less attention draining and less interruptions! This can only help very small teams of extroverts with very-very-similar personalities work, it brings HELL for everyo…

I'm not an extrovert and I'd like this for people asking me questions. Want to disturb me for 2 minutes and ruin my concentration losing me half an hour? If it's going to save you your afternoon - just do it. If you're probably going to send me a message on slack or call me there anyway I'd find this a lot less annoying. My goal should never be to get through the most work myself it's to move the company forwards. Ha…

Instant messaging allows you to set status and busy messages - alas the interface isn't organic as changing it would also disturb your flow.

Also the ability to control actions based upon what status you set is not granular or controllable enough. For example - if busy - only allow some people to send video mail message or IM for later perusal or if some people contact allow them thru if call more than twice, three times.....or if Director - instantly. Equally, to set a response time so if somebody in group A calls, make sure you call them back within an hour, two hours....10 mins etc. Details and control like that.

But back to changing that status, that is the important aspect that needs addressing as currently it in itself distracts from your workflow and having some setup that allows easier access. So if your in say vi, editing a system file - it sets you as busy, if your reading the news - your available, if you're reading email - your semi-busy and some people get thru, some don't.

So a system that detects when your busy, and sets your status would be the biggest improvement in work communications and in effect what we are reproducing is the personal assistant. An intelligence that screens your communications and handles what and when things get to interrupt you.

That is for me the area in most need of some revitalisation.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#126

Post by juandazapata » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

nathancahill wrote: post #113

juandazapata wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used Sqwiggle back in the day until a picture of the naked wife of one of our coworkers got captured and stood there for over 5 minutes. That was the last day we used it.

Oh you're the company from that story? A true urban legend.

I'm sure it happened multiple times in multiple companies.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#127

Post by kilroy123 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #73

ollifi wrote: post #37

I've worked remote with a small team by having image of me on a monitor. I heard what was talked around the monitor and could push-to-talk comment back. It didn't feel distracting the way receiving a phone call while being remote felt. It's clunky enough that people didn't come up unless they had to and I still could keep up with the verbal information that was passed along with the office gossip. Some people get rea…

This is very common in some industries to have always-on two-way screens connected to workers in another office. A company called Tandberg was the main maker of them. It’s owned by Cisco now but everyone still calls them Tandbergs. Typically you would have one at the end of a row of desks to “extend” that row to another row physically located in another office and vice versa

That doesn't sound bad at all. Having a webcam pointed at my face all day and showing on some monitor would be very discomforting.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#128

Post by jrd79 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

My business partner and I have been working remotely with each other for the last 5 years, after a previous 7 years in a shared office.

To make it work, we bought dedicated iPads and put them on stands next to our computer monitors on our desks. We start a FaceTime call at the beginning of each day and literally leave it running all day. We mute when not actively talking, so we can listen to music (and not listen to the other's keyboard noises).

It is amazing. We always can see if the other one is present and/or busy on a phone call. If I want to talk, I just unmute myself and start talking. It is surprisingly similar to being in the same room as someone, without having to agree on the playlist.

Obviously, this particular setup doesn't scale to larger teams, and it does rely heavily on the very high quality and reliability of the audio and video of FaceTime. But I'd recommend it highly for those in the same situation. Made the cross-country move possible without destroying the business.

The dedicated device is key, so that it is always visible and doesn't take CPU or screen real estate on your actual computer. And I can't emphasize enough the importance of the high quality audio in FaceTime. We tried Squiggle back in the day and the audio/video were just not good enough (and the freeze frames were unflattering and distracting in a way that silent video is not, strangely). It would be nice to unmute both sides at once, but FaceTime is obviously not going to add that feature.

We thought about trying to make a product out of our insights/experiences but concluded that it would be a bit like re-implementing MS Word to fix the find dialog (if anyone remembers that issue back in the day).

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#129

Post by marcinzm » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

This seems like something I'd hate. I can at this point triage slack messages without interrupting my flow. Notifications can be trivially ignored or put on hold for 30 seconds or a minute. That's enough time for me to "save" my current mental context and text requires little brain power to triage so I don't lose my saved state for a non-urgent message. Voice is different, suddenly going from quiet to someone talking in my ear will grab my attention. I have to instantly drop my mental context and understand what they're saying. And it involves all the social parts of my brain which again kills my analytical context.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#130

Post by barrkel » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

andyfleming wrote: post #90

steve1977 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?" By then, the damage to concentration has already been made. Yes, you can set your status to "do not disturb". But you have to remember to do that.

Sure, it's still an interruption, but I don't think it's completely derailing. That's why I compared it to stopping by someone's desk. It still requires both parties to be responsible and aware.

Stopping by someone's desk is derailing, FWIW. I frequently find myself losing 30+ minutes before getting flow back from a 2 minute interruption.