Live data from Hacker News

Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

bloomberg.com

251–260 of 265 posts

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

#251
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…

Basically, the code is all there for you to read, and if you can’t, you can’t.

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

#252
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding why this post is so inflammatory, it's just tedious "i hate people" misanthropic posturing from people who still haven't figured out that their problem is them.

Misanthropic? How could you possibly understand that from their comment? I'd really want to see your reasoning...

I think they’re talking about the replies

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

#253
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…

There are many thing to be put into the basket:

- on your side you need two life, if full-remote, two life means a local, physical social life and a remote social life, without both you'll miss a part of humanity that we need to advance well;

- a room, silent/isolated enough, dedicated just to WFH, enough to been able to talk out loud without earpieces etc, with a good conference speaker (just because a good speaker+a good cam that follow you is too expensive for most);

- on the company side remote work should be organized as remote work, not as "the same but in a virtual office", and that's really hard for most companies;

- time to be dedicated to "coffee machine talking" must be considered, it's needed to be an efficient team.

Generally speaking WFH works after a bit of "team experience", few in-person meetings to getting to know each others a bit, a bit of practice to adjust things etc, it means a slower "personal development" but thanks to more free time and home setup you can grow at your personal peace. Self-learning does not means learn alone, without help, means that you evolve alone following external stimulus, desires, needs, but you still have colleagues to talk to around for suggestions, idea exchanges, support etc.

If that's new for you it's "just" a matter of time to learn a new thing, "just" means not exactly automagic or easy but doable.

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

#254
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…

If your team is that busy it’s grossly mismanaged. Get a new job.

I’ve never worked at a company where the programmers were so “busy” they had no time for at least ok documentation and time to train.

It’s simple. You assign an onboarding mentor, and it it one of his deliverables that you get onboarded and proficient in say three to four months.

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

#255
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be an example of Lake Woebegon effect[1], though I'm not sure that's the case here. On the other hand, making broad proclamations about nationalities based on anecdotes has another name. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_...

I've worked on a number of crap, toxic teams over 20+ years. This one's good. I'm absolutely dumbfounded at the replies here. I make an offhand remark about my current team being a pleasure to work with, and I have multiple replies suggesting that there is something fishy afoot? "The Lake Wobegon effect, a natural human tendency to overestimate one's capabilities" Oh, cool. Because I say my coworkers are good and I e…

Respectfully, I was not addressing you, and I think you are reading very different things into my comment than I intended. The connection in my mind was that the Lake Woebegon monologue always ended with "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." I did not agree with this characterization, and I gently took someone to task for making what I considered a bigoted statement.

I have no opinion on your subjective assessment of your current or prior teams. I'm not sure what about my response merits being called bizarre. If I inadvertently touched a nerve, please understand that it was not my intention.

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

#256
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…

There are a lot of companies where, even pre-COVID, the expectation of training or mentorship just isn't there. Startups, small companies, non-tech companies is where this can be common.

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

#257

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,…

It's cargo cult productivity.

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

#258

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.

It's really one of the joys of freelancing.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, but it is reality for millions of public servants and hapless consultants like me.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a great scene[1] from the British show "Yes, Minister". It's from an episode called The Compassionate Society where a minister for Department of Administrative Affairs learns about a newly built hospital which has some 500 employees but no doctors & patients. The scene I linked is a conversation between the minister & his private secretary where the latter explains why administrators are essential…

Wow, I was just thinking about this scene as well! It really is timeless. Especially the bit about measuring success by activity and not results.

I used to think Yes Minister was the least humorous comedy on television, and I could not for the life of me understand why my father liked it so much.

He lived under communism, with its dozen+ levels of government bureaucracy, so you can imagine why he thought it was hilarious.

Once I had worked as a consultant for government departments, I suddenly "got" it, and now Yes Minister is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. The bit about hospitals is all too true.

For example, just recently, I had to fill out a stack of paperwork to provision a virtual server for hosting an archived, read-only web site for data that hasn't changed since 2017 and has three (3) users. Literally a stack. As in, a pile. About a hundred pages, or a short novel. That nobody will ever read, except if the time comes to blame me for a shortcoming that they themselves could not have avoided.

Post reply on HN