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Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

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Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#51

Post by ferryman »

sokoloff wrote: post #32
mulander wrote: post #4

- Meetings are remote first. If at least one person is remote then the whole team video calls in. There is nothing worse than being a person on the virtual end trying to understand a mic grabbing voice from a room full of people. - Schedule peer programming sessions, especially with less senior staff. Without the office environment they have less opportunities to grow. - All meetings should have a note listing all de…

If someone sends me just “Hi” in slack, they’re still waiting to this day.

you should check out https://www.nohello.com/ Some folks at my workplace have been using this to explain their point of view to people who just send Hi/Hello

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#52

Post by Dave3of5 »

Daily

-----

Daily standups 15-30 minutes.

About 2 hours of Adhoc Teams calls.

Lunch - I have to book this into my calendar or else they book meetings and sometimes they still book meeting over this 30 minute period.

Weekly

------

Multiple multi hour refinement sessions up to 3 per week.

1 hour meeting with PO every week.

30 minutes catchup call with all the PE's (some seniors) every week.

Bi-Weekly

---------

30 minutes Status meeting with Head of Dev / Principles on current project every week.

15 minute Scrum of Scrums.

1 hour sprint Review.

30 minutes Sprint review Prep.

1 1/2 hour sprint planning.

1 hour call with CloudOps / DevOps.

Monthly

-------

1 to 1 with my manager.

Quarterly

---------

Company All hands.

Company Engineering conference.

Company COO conference.

I think that's about it but there's probably something I've forgotten.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#53

Post by whywhywhywhy »

mulander wrote: post #4

- Meetings are remote first. If at least one person is remote then the whole team video calls in. There is nothing worse than being a person on the virtual end trying to understand a mic grabbing voice from a room full of people. - Schedule peer programming sessions, especially with less senior staff. Without the office environment they have less opportunities to grow. - All meetings should have a note listing all de…

>There is nothing worse than being a person on the virtual end trying to understand a mic grabbing voice from a room full of people.

I can assure you it’s just as frustrating having to slow an in person meeting down to remote pace because one person didn’t want to show up.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#54

Post by Tainnor »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #42
kh_hk wrote: post #13

Having worked remote for more than 10 years I feel most of these rituals as imposed after the pandemic by the managing layers and people obsessed with work culture. I accept any non mandatory activity and might participate sometimes. But boy, I hate that my week is filled with meetings. At previous full remote positions meetings were the exception and all communication happened either on IRC or hipchat/slack. And tha…

>> but I prefer to fill my social needs outside of work This doesn’t get enough airtime in the whole remote vs in-office debate IMO. I wish this topic was brought up more often because a diverse network of friends is a very special thing in life.

It gets way too much airtime.

Every time someone complains that they miss their coworkers, someone just has to comment that "you should make friends outside your workplace" or, worse, that it's "unprofessional" to socialise at work.

As if those two things were mutually incompatible. You can have friends outside of work (some of them may even be former colleagues!) and you can still be friendly with your coworkers and enjoy seeing them.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#55

Post by SamuelAdams »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #42
kh_hk wrote: post #13

Having worked remote for more than 10 years I feel most of these rituals as imposed after the pandemic by the managing layers and people obsessed with work culture. I accept any non mandatory activity and might participate sometimes. But boy, I hate that my week is filled with meetings. At previous full remote positions meetings were the exception and all communication happened either on IRC or hipchat/slack. And tha…

>> but I prefer to fill my social needs outside of work This doesn’t get enough airtime in the whole remote vs in-office debate IMO. I wish this topic was brought up more often because a diverse network of friends is a very special thing in life.

Agreed. I’m curious why young, fresh out of college grads who move across country (and have few / no friends in the new local area) make it their employers responsibility to foster friendships?

Don’t get me wrong - it’s great to have genuine friendships with your coworkers. You work better together and have strong recommendations for the next job or have strong referrals to other companies when your friends leave.

At the same time though your employer is not your parents. The best thing they can do is respect a healthy work life balance and give you time so that you can establish your own friendships.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#56

Post by pards »

sokoloff wrote: post #32
mulander wrote: post #4

- Meetings are remote first. If at least one person is remote then the whole team video calls in. There is nothing worse than being a person on the virtual end trying to understand a mic grabbing voice from a room full of people. - Schedule peer programming sessions, especially with less senior staff. Without the office environment they have less opportunities to grow. - All meetings should have a note listing all de…

If someone sends me just “Hi” in slack, they’re still waiting to this day.

These "slack farts" really irk me. The first time someone does it, I usually respond with the nohello.com link and a brief note letting them know that the niceties aren't necessary - you can just ask your question.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#57

Post by nonrandomstring »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #44
nonrandomstring wrote: post #27

> rituals have been helpful for your software development teams An interesting choice of word worth exploring. One could have said "activity" or "procedure", but ritual carries some connotations about the state of remote/hybrid working. What I think you're asking is - what ways we can connect/bond in human ways? Group dynamics, team identity, loyalty, non-monetary reward, focus and satisfaction, and much more, are de…

What would you recommend over zoom?

We're big Jitsi users around here. For me the main reason is how WebRTC integrates with my audio visual setup - for teaching music or live jamming there's a good link to my Linux audio environment via Carla and talking to OBS studio. You can get 48KHz almost lossless links over a good connection. That's also great for recording both sides of a podcast interview and stuff like that. Both my partner and I do sensitive work and need good security, so we can spin up our own server and not have to worry about whether Zoom, Google or Microsoft are MITM confidential conversations or selling data that would expose our clients.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#58

Post by overthemoon »

We have a weekly standup with detailed notes, a 30 minute 1:1 with the engineering manager, and a 1 hour shoot the shit meeting midweek, and a 1 hour all-hands every other week. We post a sentence or two daily on what we're doing every day. It's pretty ideal in terms of cutting the fat on meetings, but our team is growing crazy fast, and I don't really feel like I know anybody. The casual meeting is usually dominated by a few talkative people. This is fine! It's a normal dynamic, it would happen IRL to some extent. But it would be nice to figure out how to do more casual 1:1 conversations remotely. Haven't come up with a good idea for that. I've been thinking about reaching out for a casual 30 minute lunch chat or a coffee thing, but I also don't want to interrupt anyone's work.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#59

Post by kayodelycaon »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #55
CraigJPerry wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> but I prefer to fill my social needs outside of work This doesn’t get enough airtime in the whole remote vs in-office debate IMO. I wish this topic was brought up more often because a diverse network of friends is a very special thing in life.

Agreed. I’m curious why young, fresh out of college grads who move across country (and have few / no friends in the new local area) make it their employers responsibility to foster friendships? Don’t get me wrong - it’s great to have genuine friendships with your coworkers. You work better together and have strong recommendations for the next job or have strong referrals to other companies when your friends leave. At…

> I’m curious why young, fresh out of college grads who move across country (and have few / no friends in the new local area) make it their employers responsibility to foster friendships?

Schools provide an easy atmosphere to develop friendships without having to look too hard. College does not help with this.

I suspect some of them don't know how to make friends on their own.

Note: This is from the perspective of someone who didn't have more than one friend as a kid at any time.

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