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Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#81

Post by remmargorp64 »

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day.

But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed.

I haven't figured out how to solve this, other than by spending a lot more time and effort documenting the numerous little things that cause distractions and exposing that in my daily status updates. I can tell that it's still not as convincing to him though.

So I often end up finding myself working late in the evenings just to finish the actual work that was scheduled to be done that day, even though I've already spent 8 hours dealing with random issues and helping other team mates with things.

I need to find a solution soon before I completely burn out.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#82

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #81

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day. But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed. I haven't figured out how to solve this, other…

I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day, including learning/decisions.

What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there.

Could this be helpful?

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#83

Post by 0xF013 »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #81

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day. But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed. I haven't figured out how to solve this, other…

Unless your boss has no idea how software is built, I would argue that this is mostly about how you feel it looks. I combat this by giving a short list during the daily of things I encountered yesterday, thing I’ve tried but didn’t work and sometimes I ask what should I do (drop a part of a feature or get someone’s help) if the thing is due soon. Generally, this is the kind of issue that should be discussed during 1:1 and retro in order to curb the anxiety. And if the boss is a complete tool then looking for jobs or switching to a stoic attitude are in order.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#84

Post by l3db3tt3r »

It seems to me that there is a use case, or model, for remote work, and is situational in nature. It mostly comes down to a pro/con list, and for me it really boils down to some 'risk assessment' and 'mitigation strategy' in dealing with various levels of Aptitude, Communication, Organization Culture, etc.

As with all jobs, it tends to come down to the individual, are they the correct fit for remote work. Do they have 'non-in-person' communication skills? Do they have the aptitude for self direction? Can they work independently, from their remote environment? Can they contribute/collaborate with a team, from their remote environment? Does the organizations culture accept, and work with remote workflow?

The strongest argument against remote work is: Are you trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#85

Post by remmargorp64 »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #82
remmargorp64 wrote: post #81

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day. But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed. I haven't figured out how to solve this, other…

I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day, including learning/decisions. What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there. Could this be helpful?

That's essentially what I've been doing, and I've been posting it in our daily status slack channel. I need to do a better job of adding more details, but it's a balancing act between spending time on logging work vs doing work, plus if I'm the only person on the team doing it, it looks weird.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#86

Post by simmanian »

minasss wrote: post #64
simmanian wrote: post #15

Online meetings seriously suck still. It's harder to form real relationships with coworkers (some would see this as a plus, but I think it depends on the company/team culture). But the biggest change is forming trust. How do we come to trust in each other and in the mission if we never interact physically? It certainly takes a different kind of leadership.

I can say by experience that being in the same building does not imply that you are building a relationship. Meetings are meetings, you still have to prepare, you still have to communicate well, you will have your turn to speak, if it does not work it is not because you are behind a webcam

I agree with you. I just think there are more reasons why a meeting would not be productive over zoom, especially if you're working with older, non-tech people!

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#87

Post by j283736551538 »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #81

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day. But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed. I haven't figured out how to solve this, other…

Have you considered a tool like Manictime?

It keeps track of what's on screen and you can tag stretches of time.

Taking a screenshot of timeline plus summary is an easy way to say 'look how long I was working' and implies you have data to respond to a challenge regarding what you were working on.

Link: https://www.manictime.com/

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#88

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #85
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day, including learning/decisions. What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there. Could this be helpful?

That's essentially what I've been doing, and I've been posting it in our daily status slack channel. I need to do a better job of adding more details, but it's a balancing act between spending time on logging work vs doing work, plus if I'm the only person on the team doing it, it looks weird.

I have a public (within the company) github repo called "worklog" where everyone can put theirs (it's by name), one file per year.

I usually have 4-5 lines per day, where some days have 15 (rare, but there are those big days).

I don't give the report in slack, since github has track of when stuff was committed (I commit at the end of the day), if people need it, it's on github.

It's great for standups, because I usually forget what I did yesterday. It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated!

Last but not least, I capture breakthrougs and decisions in there, as well as learning, so I can refer to it various months later and tell people exactly what I was doing a certain date.

At some point people asked "why this wasn't already done, what were you doing in August last year"... And I was able to clearly explain what I was doing in August and why things were not prioritized.

Overall, great win!

Just to clarify, I didn't come up with this idea myself, it was suggested to me on the Eventide Slack https://eventide-project.org/#community-section Apparently it's a common practice in engineering (should be in software engineering too!), I currently follow this log structure: https://github.com/eventide-project/project-status/blob/mast...

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#89

Post by Natsu »

twunde wrote: post #78
minasss wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations this is a very very good point! but I don't think that being remote or not make this communication problem worse or not.

It typically does. Most people are used to communicating in-person, often by chatting in casual interactions. Once you go remote, especially on a distributed team, individuals who are used to chatting in-person often don't have the discipline to send messages out to every member of a team. They typically also don't do multiple notifications (for example my company cross-posts announcements in both Slack and via email…

I solve this by keeping a running log of the important things I worked on that day and any questions I'm researching and sending it to my whole team.

A lot of people like it, learn from it, and also provide me with advice when they happen to know something I do not.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#90

Post by youeseh »

youeseh wrote: post #37
rbritton wrote: post #24

Hiring is more difficult. It's not that you can't find applicants, but the people capable of performing without direct supervision is (mostly) a subset of those capable of performing in an office. It can be difficult to identify those who will actually perform well in that environment. It takes some degree of maturity and responsibility to provide value as a remote worker because there's always that temptation to do…

The other side of this is that managers need to be more mature too. There's a fairly significant difference between communicating asynchronously. If you can figure it out, it'll actually increase the company's overall productivity because it'll reduce interruptions. A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with rev…

I meant to say, "There's a fairly significant difference between communicating as needed in the office, and asynchronously when we're remote".
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