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The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

nature.com

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Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#121

Post by lambdasquirrel »

Salgat wrote: post #94
ren_engineer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. This speech from Richard Hamming about Bell Labs sticks in my mind, especially the segment about open vs closed office doors. I'd say remote work is objectively better for pure productivity in terms of getting things done, but you run the risk of limiting innovation I think https://www.c…

>random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. Outside of maybe a very innovative R&D department I don't really see these "brilliant ideas that only smalltalk could achieve" in your typical run of the mill company.

I was going to say. Academia is relatively dispersed, compared to the few tech hubs around the world. Creative people will be creative wherever they are. And there are plenty of cool open-source projects, from k8s to jupyter, that have been built by dispersed teams.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#122

Post by phillipcarter »

meowface wrote: post #81
phillipcarter wrote: post #14

The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…

>say what you want about MS Teams, but they improved their product by leaps and bounds over the pandemic, much of which after the first 6 months Did they? I've been using it at my company for years, since long before the pandemic, and I don't think I've seen any improvements since the first day I started using it until now. Every issue I have with it has gone unchanged. The only change I can think of is when they add…

Several things come to mind:

* UX for sharing from screen underwent a lot of change but I really like where it is now

* Blur/custom backgrouns/together mode additions. The last one actually did help with a feeling of camaraderie

* Switching into a thread-first model really helped conversation continuity on the teams I worked with

* Various smoothing out of integrations; namely with sharepoint. When you're at MS you're using internal sharepoints for docs and slides, and it's nice having access to everything and having it all feel integrated.

* PPT presentation mode, for me, was way better than using actual PowerPoint to present things in my setup. Not sure if others felt that way, but I did.

Prior to the pandemic, it felt like a more-corporate version of slack with less features that ran crappier. But I went from "I don't like using this" to "this is fine and I can get my work done with it" by the end of 2020.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#123

Post by kortilla »

missedthecue wrote: post #75
rybosworld wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more or less the same train of thought that people first had about online dating. "It won't work", "it's not the same", "it's weird to meet someone online" etc. I couldn't disagree more that remote relationships are more difficult. On the contrary, technology continues to make it easier to stay in touch with 500 friends, coworkers from your last 3 jobs etc.

People don't date online. They meet online and go date in person.

That’s not a given.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#124

Post by sneak »

The first line:

> The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused a rapid shift to full-time remote work for many information workers.

Wow, really?

Why is it standard practice to pad these things with useless statements that waste the time of thousands of people? It's disrespectful to your reader to squander their time.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#125

Post by jltsiren »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #121
Salgat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. Outside of maybe a very innovative R&D department I don't really see these "brilliant ideas that only smalltalk could achieve" in your typical run of the mill company.

I was going to say. Academia is relatively dispersed, compared to the few tech hubs around the world. Creative people will be creative wherever they are. And there are plenty of cool open-source projects, from k8s to jupyter, that have been built by dispersed teams.

The academia can handle this, because it focuses on long-term collaborations that may span decades. Your closest coworkers and the topics you work on don't change just because you got a new job and moved to another place. You continue working with the same people on the same topics, and there is an elaborate system of conferences, workshops, guest lectures, research visits, and sabbaticals that keeps the collaborations running.

I'm not sure how much of that is applicable to normal jobs where your employer owns your work.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#126

Post by mianos »

Socketier wrote: post #120
ren_engineer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. This speech from Richard Hamming about Bell Labs sticks in my mind, especially the segment about open vs closed office doors. I'd say remote work is objectively better for pure productivity in terms of getting things done, but you run the risk of limiting innovation I think https://www.c…

Maybe if Microsoft would make an MS teams feature that would operate more like discord then that random smalltalk would happen.

Behind this is one of the problems. In a corporate environment you can't choose the best tool for the job at hand, collaboration. MS Teams is probably the worst tool of its class in this area yet it is, evidently, chosen by people in higher positions who make decisions based solely on their opinion and for the sake of complying with corporate standards, once again, not based on evidence, but, by some MS white paper saying it is. That said I am not sure they should be spending time on more functional over getting the very basics, like video chat, working as well as almost every other platform. Just my personal opinion on what complete garbage it is when you have to use it every day of the week.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#127

Post by xeromal »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #106
ren_engineer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't have to be ground breaking research, could just be ideas for product iteration or for an employees own side project. Benefits individuals more than the company really

The way this benefits the company is that individuals are happy and create relationships with coworkers making work more enjoyable and making it harder to quit. Companies wants you to feel like a family so you'll stay for a lower salary or so you'll accept more grueling conditions. Knowing this, from a company perspective, remote can work if individuals have a way to create relationships. In my experience, some peopl…

Gaming definitely helps. I've been playing through the Halo campaigns with a couple of my coworkers and it's been great.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#128

Post by pdimitar »

ren_engineer wrote: post #87
phillipcarter wrote: post #14

The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…

I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. This speech from Richard Hamming about Bell Labs sticks in my mind, especially the segment about open vs closed office doors. I'd say remote work is objectively better for pure productivity in terms of getting things done, but you run the risk of limiting innovation I think https://www.c…

Most companies are not graciously funded laboratories so to me the argument for "let smart people chat randomly" is moot. Those companies have plenty of creativity-killing processes that make sure people never looked beyond what they have to do today and maybe tomorrow.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#129

Post by mianos »

other_herbert wrote: post #118
Salgat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. Outside of maybe a very innovative R&D department I don't really see these "brilliant ideas that only smalltalk could achieve" in your typical run of the mill company.

I think it can be similar to having your company support slack channel open.. not necessarily subscribed but seeing the issues that customers come to your support staff with… that can provide surprising clarity… maybe product owners should be focused on that sort of thing and maybe this highlights issues with where I am…

At Spriggy we had senior developers enrolled into Intercom chat. This takes agile to a whole another level. I knew with certainty what we had to get done. It was not a jira ticket close but 100s of customers to help. Stressful, yes, but getting real problems solved, double yes.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#130

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

walshemj wrote: post #72
jstx1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument works both ways - some people who like remote will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend WFH when presented with evidence that it isn't ideal.

Just like when OOP was the new hotness any one suggesting that maybe OOP wasn't suitable for 100% of projects - used to get shouted down on slash dot.

Or XML and SOAP slightly later on. Everything had to use XML and SOAP or you weren't one of the cool kids; ugh.
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