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Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

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Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#231

Post by credit_guy »

xarope wrote: post #185
snakey wrote: post #163

Forgive me for this digression and for sounding selfish, but as a junior, I’ve really struggled for the last 2+ years to fully adapt to remote / hybrid working. I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how I can continue to grow and become a top-class engineer within a remote environment? Based on my experience so far, it’s very difficult to both onboard and mentor a junior from a remote setting. It’s not impossible, ho…

During COVID, as a CTO, I tell my team to DM me after stand-ups if they aren't sure about their tasks or work, or even how to get started. I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture. Often this then sparks them to go through their own discovery, a…

> I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture.

I'm sure you are.

If you have time.

Thing is, at most companies, most employees are perpetually swamped. Or at least quite frequently.

I'm a new employee (3 months) at a company. The documentation is quite bad. In other words, it's quite standard compared to all other companies out there. There are some wikis, tutorials, confluence pages, etc, but the links tend to get reused, and in the end you have just a handful of true documentation sources, all being 10 or 15 or 20 years old. My team members are friendly and eager to help. They have all gone through the same pains as me. But they are super busy. Some times, I say "hi" on chat, and tell them I have a question, and sometimes they help me, but some times they tell me "can you write your problem in an email, and I'll take a look by tomorrow". And sometimes they tell me they are super-busy "this week".

In the end, I got the most help from another new joiner, who joined 2 weeks after me. He's helping me, I'm helping him. We really depend on each other. Because of him, I'm probably twice as far as where I'd be without him.

But here's the thing: our company has a 3-day-a-week policy. And his desk is just next to mine. Whenever we are physically next to each other, we interact a lot. But when we communicate on zoom, the interaction goes down maybe by a factor of 10.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#232

Post by gitfan86 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #133

As someone who has worked on startups, side gigs, and only around 6 months at a “real” company. I’m always blown away at how many meetings there are in corporate America. What are you even meeting about? Why aren’t you doing hands on keyboard work? Why does a decision need to be made in a room, with everyone pretending to listen? Why are you presenting something to me when I’ll comprehend it far better if I read it,…

I recently started doing part time contracting dev work for a couple companies. The best part is that management doesn't invite me to these bullshit meetings because they know I will be billing them for no value being delivered.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#233

Post by mofosyne »

jiggawatts wrote: post #199
ryanSrich wrote: post #133

As someone who has worked on startups, side gigs, and only around 6 months at a “real” company. I’m always blown away at how many meetings there are in corporate America. What are you even meeting about? Why aren’t you doing hands on keyboard work? Why does a decision need to be made in a room, with everyone pretending to listen? Why are you presenting something to me when I’ll comprehend it far better if I read it,…

Wait till you see government organisations. There are meetings to decide who needs to turn up to a meeting. I thought that was a sick joke until I attended such a thing myself. On one project we had dozens(!) of meetings involving 5-10 people to decide what to call an API endpoint that no human being will ever see again after the initial implementation. A nearly cried. I told them that they could literally mash the k…

Sounds almost like a sitcom...

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#234

Post by erdos4d »

snakey wrote: post #163

Forgive me for this digression and for sounding selfish, but as a junior, I’ve really struggled for the last 2+ years to fully adapt to remote / hybrid working. I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how I can continue to grow and become a top-class engineer within a remote environment? Based on my experience so far, it’s very difficult to both onboard and mentor a junior from a remote setting. It’s not impossible, ho…

This is so different from my first job experience, I can't imagine a more night and day comparison. I literally got stuck at a desk and had no mentoring at all, team meetings were blind leading bling into ditch, and all work was 100% individual. Nobody would have helped me even if I had asked, they probably would have told me to fuck off since they had their own tickets. Since I am really introverted and flat out don't like dealing with people, this was pretty nice for me, bu being remote during the whole thing would have been heaven. I'd still be working there if that were the case.

To your question, what do you want to learn? I can tell you that if you want to broaden out, just do projects in new languages/frameworks. If you want to learn technique, I would suggest you go find quality academic publications on the topics you want. The chances that your teammates are anywhere near as "good" as what you might observe in such books is honestly very low. Most engineers are mediocre, that is just a fact, so your team may not be imparting as much wisdom as you feel it is. I know mine didn't.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#235

Post by parkerhiggins »

credit_guy wrote: post #231
xarope wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During COVID, as a CTO, I tell my team to DM me after stand-ups if they aren't sure about their tasks or work, or even how to get started. I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture. Often this then sparks them to go through their own discovery, a…

> I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture. I'm sure you are. If you have time. Thing is, at most companies, most employees are perpetually swamped. Or at least quite frequently. I'm a new employee (3 months) at a company. The documentation is q…

Always include the question with your greeting.

https://nohello.net/en/

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#236

Post by noloblo »

xarope wrote: post #185
snakey wrote: post #163

Forgive me for this digression and for sounding selfish, but as a junior, I’ve really struggled for the last 2+ years to fully adapt to remote / hybrid working. I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how I can continue to grow and become a top-class engineer within a remote environment? Based on my experience so far, it’s very difficult to both onboard and mentor a junior from a remote setting. It’s not impossible, ho…

During COVID, as a CTO, I tell my team to DM me after stand-ups if they aren't sure about their tasks or work, or even how to get started. I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture. Often this then sparks them to go through their own discovery, a…

how to dm?

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#237

Post by mylons »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #206
closeparen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to build more meaningful relationships with a collection of people that’s essentially random (neighbors) vs. one with a lot of built in common ground (coworkers)?

it used to be incredibly common, in fact normal, to be friendly with your neighbors… dine with them, hang out with them… this has changed dramatically in the last 30 years

yup — I’m a bit old school and keep trying to do this. It’s very “hard,” you can face rejection, but it’s way more interesting than living in a bubble of your work place.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#238

Post by null_shift »

onion2k wrote: post #152
darinf wrote: post #81

I love having lunch with co-workers. It’s a great way to connect. Even though at my office only about 30% of folks are back, it’s roughly the same group each day. So I’m happy being back even if all meetings involve Zoom. At least getting a conference room for all the zoom calls is not too hard :)

Even though at my office only about 30% of folks are back, it’s roughly the same group each day. This an area where companies will see problems with reopening offices - the people who aren't there (eg remote hires who work hundreds of miles away, people who choose not to return, people who still need to isolate, etc) will feel far less included, will see that their prospects at the company are worse, and ultimately a…

i foresee this as the main problem with a distributed, hybrid workforce.

in my experience, you need to be all the way into one camp (remote) or the other (on-site) to reap the full benefits, otherwise you are just getting the downsides of both.

any best practices that others have found for dealing with a distributed, hybrid team? (assuming you don’t have the authority to make everyone onsite/remote)

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#239

Post by GoodJokes »

anothernewdude wrote: post #28
JohnBooty wrote: post #25

I recently spent a week in the office with my team. First time I'd had office time with any team since mid-2018. It was really, really, really nice. I've been a diehard work-from-home guy for ages. Why spend perhaps 10+ hours per week commuting? It's a productivity and environmental nightmare. But... sometimes? Yeah. It's nice to be in the room with other smart people, solving hard problems. I didn't realize I missed…

Some of us have moved to places that aren't a reasonable commute to an office. It's much nicer not having to deal with big city traffic for anything .

No post body was provided.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#240

Post by KptMarchewa »

parkerhiggins wrote: post #235
credit_guy wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more than happy to spend 2-3 hours on a separate remote call with an individual, where we go through a socratic'ish discovery, using things like draw.io or mermaid to quickly sketch out concepts and architecture. I'm sure you are. If you have time. Thing is, at most companies, most employees are perpetually swamped. Or at least quite frequently. I'm a new employee (3 months) at a company. The documentation is q…

Always include the question with your greeting. https://nohello.net/en/

I hate no-question-his because people always assume any response is synchronous after response.
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