Written communication is remote work super power • Hacker News Board

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#151

Post by nahname » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:50 AM UTC

e40 wrote: post #60

nine_k wrote: post #43

Real-time, spoken communication is on-site work super power. When uncertainty is high, and an intense discussion is needed, spoken word is much more efficient, from my experience. People are fundamentally better at speaking quickly and taking proper turns. This all is much slower and more cumbersome in video call, phone call, or a text chat. The perceived sequence breaks, the turn-taking protocol breaks (unless enfor…

I agree with you partially. I found something interesting, with this everyone work from home: I'm able to communicate with certain people more effectively via zoom. I think it boils down to with zoom, you are literally in someone's face, and it's very obvious when you aren't fully focused on them. Perhaps the new way, with zoom, gave some people an opportunity to reset their manners? Not clear what the real reason be…

In a natural conversation, it is rare to have someone stair you in the eyes for more than a couple seconds.

Hadn't considered that for some, this constant stair feels like they are finally being recognized. This makes a lot of sense. You wait for your turn to talk and the stage is yours. In some sense, everything is fairer.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#152

Post by rubidium » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

Kaze404 wrote: post #93

This article is great because it puts into words the relationship I've had with Slack since the beginning of my career. I've been working professionally for 4 years and I cannot remember a single time where I thought "I'm so glad we have Slack". Don't get me wrong, I think the platform itself is a great interpretation of IM, but IM is the absolute last thing I want to use in a work environment. One of the reasons I d…

“ the relationship I've had with Slack since the beginning of my career.“

As someone a bit older, I’m just thinking that maybe it would be helpful to have an on-ramp of business communications course in college or when starting a first job. Start with important things about in person communication. Then with writing a good memo. Learn to make a good phone call. Then write a good email. Then write a good IM/slack/teams message.

Then be taught the strengths and weaknesses of each. Maybe I need to make a course.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#153

Post by bottled_poe » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 12:42 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #26

jackjeff wrote: post #9

Async 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 sounds like a typical engineers approach to solving a social problem. Just hire better staff and pay them what they are worth.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#154

Post by jstummbillig » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 12:42 PM UTC

jackjeff wrote: post #9

Async 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…

> even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle

This is not unique to async communication at all -- it is just becomes more apparent.

I have experienced a lot of sync communication, in which people only seemingly agreed and, when prompted later or as apparent by their resulting actions, quite clearly understood very different things.

There is also the very real issue of people getting increasingly tired and more agreeable during the course of a meeting. In async, when you stumble across something that doesn't gel with you, you might default to taking some extra time to think it through. Poor communication pops out that way. In sync communication you might let the same thing go -- not because of clearer signals or because it leads to a better outcome, but because you want things to end.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#155

Post by mattcwilson » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #99

cperrine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."

Can be shortened to “Hey! Listen!”

Not without loss of several significant subtextual channels: respect, clarity, and intent to name a few. Communication is a discipline; verbal shorthands like these are analogous to copy/paste laziness over thoughtful, intentional code.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#156

Post by u801e » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

sdoering wrote: post #136

abalashov wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's really unfortunate that inline replying effectively died out, replaced by top-posting. I think inline replies, while lending themselves to the selective quotation problem you mention, nevertheless force more careful consideration of the original text.

I agree. I still do this. But nowadays lot of people feedback that they do not understand my way of replying. Compared to many of my early digital acquaintances I was socialized quite late on the internet starting in 97. Compared to my colleagues I often feel old and out of sync with my style of long form written communication.

> nowadays lot of people feedback that they do not understand my way of replying.

Some clients, like Outlook, will actually collapse the original email and only show the top-posted reply. An inline reply would appears as an empty email in their client.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#157

Post by domsom » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

Picking the Slack / Chat argument: I don't think it should be expected to reply immediately. It's more like a lightweight inbox (when being tagged / DMed) that's easy to reply to (no greeting/regards required). Channels are a great place for async discussions that can be linked to and are kind of public so noone needs to decide beforehand whom to engage, and everyone can decide to join or leave the discussion without being cc'd forever.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#158

Post by mkl » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #138

Aeolun wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sure doesn't help that people think they need to greet me and wait for a response before they actually say what they want to say. This is indeed intensely frustrating. It is so ridiculous that when you just don’t respond, you’ll end up with a person just saying only ‘hello’ to you three days in a row...

This is a wide enough pain that someone has created a webpage: https://www.nohello.com/?m=0

Strangely, their own recommended way of linking to the page ("Short link to this page: http://nohello.com/.") leads to a 404 error.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#159

Post by mwcampbell » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #97

DenisM wrote: post #3

We're finding it quite effective to record short 2-minute videos and circulate those. Everyone can talk and point things on the screen, not everyone can write or even read attentively.

> Everyone can talk and point things on the screen I think you may be making some unconscious assumptions about everyone having the same abilities. Deaf or mute people can't talk. Blind people can't point at things on a screen. And even people who can talk might be more comfortable writing, e.g. people who are self-conscious about their accent. For these reasons, I think that the recent increase in remote work, thoug…

On further reflection, I believe I responded uncharitably to the GP, by taking the quoted part of that comment out of context. The GP most likely meant that everyone on their team can talk and point at things on the screen. In that case, doing videos like that is fine, except that the team should be prepared to adapt if anyone who can't use that method of communication joins the team.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#160

Post by adolforismos » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

"The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history. It started with the unification of Mongolia in 1206 and territory of 4 million km² ruled by Genghis Khan, to have 35 million km² in 1279 under Emperor Kublai Khan."

"Here is the thing: all that remote work in one of the biggest empires in history was accomplished without videoconferencing."

Why Videoconferencing Is for Rookies https://medium.com/swlh/why-video-conferencing-is-for-rookie...