Sometimes you need instant answer. You just can't move forward. Then it requires documentation written 'properly'.
Honestly finding programmers with good writing skills too is difficult.
Written communication is remote work super power
141–150 of 194 posts
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#142In my team if someone needs to pick up the kids he just says it in chat or even in a video meeting and gets them. I think webex meetings work better than real live ones. If they are tiring that's positive because meetings last too long. If only one person can speak at a time it prevents people from interrupting and makes them conscious not to hog the mic. Async communication? How would you do that? If you have a ques…
hence the classic:
do you have time for a question?
... that's one. TTYL
[iterate]
Yahoo! had a TLA for it or something. It was the "hey, are you there" syndrome, coined back when their IM was king.
[edit: may have been AOL / same upshot]
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#143Async communication is suitable to resolve some kind of issues. But it has two drawbacks: participants need to be competent at writing and reading prose (it’s harder than it sounds) and even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle. For problems which are not well defined, and where a lot of decisions need to be taken, especially when they verge toward the…
Recently, I was so frustrated with some folks poor reading comprehension that I was thinking about an imaginary communication system that would allow for decision making where there were some rules: - No responding from mobile devices. The poor response rate is just too high. - The reader is quizzed on the the contents of the communication before they can respond (randomly generated quizzes might be amusing). - The r…
This is why Amazon takes the first 20 minutes as time for reading their written communication before big decisions.
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#144I am a firm believer that written communication is the best way to sustain a productive team.
Talking, especially in person, might get you the result you're looking for faster. Look, we decided what we needed to make and skipped the overhead of opening a ticket and capturing the back and forth.
But then you have to revisit your decision and your reasoning behind them 4 months from now. Why didn't we just do that other thing that seems more efficient? Or even worse, someone picks up your work after you leave and they have to do that, without the potential ability to recall the context. Or then you leave a meeting about making any sort of decision and start working and a few days later realize you're not on the same page.
I get that writing might not be some people's best skill, or even their preferred way of communication. We all have to put up with things we don't enjoy and learn skills to work, why should this be any different?
I work for company that is in the process of going remote first, without embracing a culture of writing first and writing everything and it's not very pretty.
Previously, I worked for a company that despite not really prioritizing remote workers, because teams were distributed across the world, had to capture a lot of the things I mentioned in the tickets created for each task. And it was really empowering to have a lot of context as someone who was tasked with maintaining those things.
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, I hear you. The amount of sad encounters (especially lately) that I've had as a result of people not understanding what I'm saying because they don't actually read what I wrote are enraging. I almost quit one client over it because their IT guy is the worst. He will decide ahead of time what your email probably says, and that's what he reads into it even if I wrote the opposite. I try to blame myself first fo…
I'm just starting to dip my toes back into the freelance web development world, after deciding indie game development wasn't for me. My main problem with clients has always been 1) They don't really know what they want, beyond "a website", and 2) The reading comprehension of pretty much everyone I interact with is surprisingly low. I've mostly dealt with small-business owners, whose personalities seem to veer towards…
I've seen people like this doing day to day business: it's absolutely awful. They attend meetings starting with software and ending up with elephants.They can't sit for more than two minutes and there's always phone, email, whatever. To expect for such a personal to produce a written piece on what they want,while they can't even do it verbally,is impossible. These are usually somewhat successful in some sort of a niche but would drown in any other environment.
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#146Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#147Async communication is suitable to resolve some kind of issues. But it has two drawbacks: participants need to be competent at writing and reading prose (it’s harder than it sounds) and even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle. For problems which are not well defined, and where a lot of decisions need to be taken, especially when they verge toward the…
The problem with meetings is when they are the default. I find them much more productive when there has been written communication ahead of time. Writing forces everyone to put their thoughts in order and hopefully come into the meeting with a baseline understanding.
Writing works so well in thought organization that part of my own meeting preparation is to write down my thoughts on the topic, even if just for myself.
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#148Finally, someone came up with a good wording for 'Slack is #1 productivity killer'.
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recently, I was so frustrated with some folks poor reading comprehension that I was thinking about an imaginary communication system that would allow for decision making where there were some rules: - No responding from mobile devices. The poor response rate is just too high. - The reader is quizzed on the the contents of the communication before they can respond (randomly generated quizzes might be amusing). - The r…
This is why Amazon takes the first 20 minutes as time for reading their written communication before big decisions.
I hate this approach (even more so when I was involved in writing the written communication) because it usually turns into idly waiting for others to finish reading, while I get distracted, bored and just plain could be doing something more productive.
I understand the concept and some people must find it useful and valuable, but I’ve personally never got anything of value out of it other than making sure everyone has read the content before the meeting proper starts. Personally, I find asking somebody to attend a meeting, where 20 minutes is just silently reading, rather disrespectful of their time.
Re: Written communication is remote work super power
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullets 2 and 3 combined are actually recommended for spoken communications as well. As the listener, before responding, it's a good habit to say "This is what I understand about your proposal" and proceed to summarize and give the original speaker an opportunity to correct you. Probably over half of the communications problems I've seen at work are because people don't follow this basic practice. They respond based…
> As the listener, before responding, it's a good habit to say "This is what I understand about your proposal" and proceed to summarize and give the original speaker an opportunity to correct you. I find a practice like this is also helpful for following up after a meeting. For meetings that warrant my taking notes, I like to type them up immediately afterwards, send them out to the other attendees, and solicit corre…
I had managers -do-this- (repeat what they understood as the key element) in meetings and thought of it as a very annoying waste of time. With five people in the room, assuming you do, on average, two rounds per agenda item, there are nine repetitions.