11–20 of 408 posts
Thanks for sharing. We sometimes forget that we are fragile. This post needed to be read by all remote teams.
This was heartbreaking to read. What disturbs me most is the lack of any face-to-face time for this distributed team. I understand that not everyone likes to use a webcam, but to have gone 7 years without ever seeing your colleague's face seems, in my opinion, a symptom of a big managerial problem. Software engineers are usually humans, and teams composed of humans should make some effort to interact in a human way -…
Am OP, can speak to the lack of cameras. We actually crafted our process in the Microsoft Lync era. Video was brutal. Also because of the diverse accents (Vietnamese, Portuguese, Russian, Scottish) it was easier to 'listen' without distraction. Obviously if you were starting today, cameras would be on. As you pointed out, probably a mistake.
Thank you for your humane response to Pete's death, for creating room for the team to grieve and official acknowledgement that it was no longer business as usual. This is one of those moments that leadership really matters. There's more to being a leader than shipping a volume of features, you are also an important figure in the lives of your team and they need you in a time of crisis.
I am slowly going blind (long, boring story; only relevance to the topic is during a discussion with the eye-guy consultant he mentioned that he had had a close personal friend of his kill himself the day after a night out and that he (the consultant) wished that he had been able to somehow sense that his friend was so close to the edge....
I looked at him softly and with compassion and said to him that there was no way in hell that he would have ever known or be able to sense something like that because the serious ones don't broadcast their intentions (simply because they don't want to be stopped from doing it).
My heart bled reading this article but having grown up in a life of violence (early start in Africa, a bit of a chequered past led me in to the world of I.T. (machines are better than humans... they can tell you why they are sick, what part(s) are broken and then either report a (1) Fixed or a (2) Not Fixed... any how, that's how I wandered into IT field mixed in with some ex military stuff including a lay-over in Dubai that lasted for two-weeks... the bloke at Heathrow customs glanced at my transit stamps and asked me where the fuck I had been for two weeks (10 day gap in departure from place {x} to arrival at LHR ....
I looked him in the eye and said simply ..... 'Good god, my arms are tired from all that flapping and those head-winds were a bitch!'
He muttered something along the lines of "f*ing smart-arses", stamped my passport and waved me through.
Whole point of the above? I dunno but nick & karma points burnt telling it.
If you take nothing else away from this – Please know that you likely would have had no way of knowing so please don’t feel guilt…. They made a decision and it was one that you (the loved one grieving) would have been unlikely to have changed even if you had have known. At best, you would be likely to have simply delayed it for a while.
YMMV
This was heartbreaking to read. What disturbs me most is the lack of any face-to-face time for this distributed team. I understand that not everyone likes to use a webcam, but to have gone 7 years without ever seeing your colleague's face seems, in my opinion, a symptom of a big managerial problem. Software engineers are usually humans, and teams composed of humans should make some effort to interact in a human way -…
Am OP, can speak to the lack of cameras. We actually crafted our process in the Microsoft Lync era. Video was brutal. Also because of the diverse accents (Vietnamese, Portuguese, Russian, Scottish) it was easier to 'listen' without distraction. Obviously if you were starting today, cameras would be on. As you pointed out, probably a mistake.
I hope I didn't imply that "cameras are required for distributed teams!!" I don't agree with that and you're right that it's super impractical a lot of the time.
I do hope to suggest that in-person team-building shouldn't be overlooked for the success and well-being of distributed teams.
This was heartbreaking to read. What disturbs me most is the lack of any face-to-face time for this distributed team. I understand that not everyone likes to use a webcam, but to have gone 7 years without ever seeing your colleague's face seems, in my opinion, a symptom of a big managerial problem. Software engineers are usually humans, and teams composed of humans should make some effort to interact in a human way -…
I don't know, would it be more awkward for management to force you to turn on your webcam? I think the lack of face to face and the free language of this post shows some empathy. Maybe they could/should have arranged an in person trip sooner than that or something
Can't understate the importance of breaking bread.
But I would like to hear the take from a founder who built an HR team to know if maybe I am missing something.
I'm really curious if it's really different being an employee vs a contractor in that respect.
I've been working a Full Time Employee in the industry for over 8 years at multiple companies. Never once has HR done anything remotely useful to help me when there were family problems or tragedy, except maybe a couple weeks of paid leave. But I would like to hear the take from a founder who built an HR team to know if maybe I am missing something. I'm really curious if it's really different being an employee vs a c…
I’m curious (genuinely) what the company could have done different for you in these cases? Personally I wouldn’t expect anything from the company other than paid leave/general empathy from managers with amount of leave varying depending on the loss (e.g. loss of a partner requiring more time than loss of a grandparent). I’m not sure what else I would want from my company or what they could offer.
It's hard enough to get a social "fix' over video. Audio only? No way. And I say this as an introvert who just knows that sometimes I have to take my "social medicine", because it's good for me.
Maybe you feel connected with only audio. I can pretty much guarantee there's someone on your team for whom you're just some voice with a label (name).
> It’s easy to think that we could have prevented Pete’s death This sounds like guilt, one of the stages of grieving. I hope you get counseling.
This is the second time I've written this in the course of a week, over two different items. Seems it the time for it.
Getting therapy is not a weakness. They're professionals there to help you get the best outcome.