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Mourning loss as a remote team
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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#22That's the very reason why I don't want full remote as a norm. I want to see my people and meet colleagues, for a good laugh or whatever but for human interactions that I value a lot. Very sad story here, twice as sad with that profound lack of human interaction...
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#23Very sad. I'm not sure if this is problem of remote working but more of a relationship / communication / poor company culture issue. But, it clearly does show remote work done wrong. The theme had been set from the interview...
> I was the person who hired him and even during the interview process we didn’t use cameras.
anyways this is why I'm a big fan of hybrid working. We often think about ourselves in this moment but actually it's important for others who may actually need human interaction.
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#24I…was not ready for this one…bit too close to home for me
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#25Quoted post unavailable.
Dude, the guy /died/. We memorialise the people we care about when they pass away.
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#26This 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 -…
You'd be surprised how normal this is, historically, among remote-first companies (pre-pandemic). A decade or so ago, I worked at a remote-only company with 1600 employees and we never cammed up. We had a large number of employees with serious medical conditions or other personal issues that prevented them from holding down normal jobs and really appreciated not having to go on video.
> We had a large number of employees with serious medical conditions or other personal issues that prevented them from holding down normal jobs and really appreciated not having to go on video.
This is the reason I treasure my current company. The work I do works around my disability perfectly, they don't demand I have video on, they're very understanding of my health issues, ... I got seriously lucky and hope I don't have to leave this position for a long time.
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#27That's the very reason why I don't want full remote as a norm. I want to see my people and meet colleagues, for a good laugh or whatever but for human interactions that I value a lot. Very sad story here, twice as sad with that profound lack of human interaction...
For me, "my people" are at home. The transactional work relationships do nothing for me on a human or social level. It's like when a pretty waitress is nice to you, it means little since she is paid to be nice.
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#28Thank you for sharing such an honest piece. Suicide is a tragedy without peer, the result of pain, illness, and some part selfishness. I feel compassion for Pete and his fight with mental illness, sadness for the friends and coworkers left behind, and anger on behalf of his wife and children who will now carry an incredible burden.
Suicide is infectious (as strange as that sounds) and I've found it tough to reconcile that showing compassion for the suicidal can actually encourage more suicide. It's an act I’m not able to comprehend and that paralyzes my response.
I was dismayed to read the section Did We Ignore the Signs?, but I understand. Similarly, I feel a sense of personal responsibility for the well-being of those I've hired. It's common for those left behind due to suicide to carry guilt, but it's neither healthy nor constructive to think that way. Please take the opportunity to be responsible for your own mental health, and that requires you not to feel responsible for the mental health of those around you.
May Pete rest in peace and sincere condolences to the friends and family left behind.
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#29How people can feel connected as a team without even video I'll never understand. 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…
I can remember being on IRC in the mid-90s and hearing that a channel regular had passed away. I'd never met them, heard them, seen their picture, and never even talked to them privately. But somehow there was a real sense of loss and sadness, anyway.
Re: Mourning loss as a remote team
#30This 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 -…
You'd be surprised how normal this is, historically, among remote-first companies (pre-pandemic). A decade or so ago, I worked at a remote-only company with 1600 employees and we never cammed up. We had a large number of employees with serious medical conditions or other personal issues that prevented them from holding down normal jobs and really appreciated not having to go on video.
I'm on a couple of remote teams, and set the expectation that I won't be 'camera on' all the time during meetings. My reasons are more practical than privacy oriented. I'm often pacing during meetings, and connected via phone and desktop. I can see and hear what's going on, and can talk back, but when my camera is 'on' it's just constant movement, which distracts folks.
Every couple of weeks I'll start a meeting with camera on for a minute or so just to say 'hello' to some folks, let them see I'm still 'here' in some sense, then camera off (usually). It feels useful to have some initial face/camera time to get a sense of the other person, but again, it's not something I generally routinely will leave on.
I had a period of a month or so last year where I moved to a Mac mini and... there's no camera. I didn't have a working webcam at all laying around, and it took me a month to bother to get a new one. No one missed anything of value by not seeing my face during that time. :)
Over the last 5-6 years, it's only been a noted issue with a handful of folks, and never been a deal breaker. The compromise is 'on' now and then for the start of a meeting. There's a humanizing aspect which is easy to lose sight of, but in most meetings, it's typically not that useful anyway. When there's more than a handful of folks, not all camera boxes can be see (too small, too many), and if/when you're working with a smaller group, there's usually much more value in sharing a document/editor/whatever.