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Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

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Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#131

> - everyone on the team writing up weekly summaries. What do you write in them that you didn't already mention during the daily standing meetings, the biweekly retrospective, the team meetings, the company meetings, or the Slack channels at the time they were relevant? I've worked with people who wanted more status updates, but all too often those updates just became "No news to report since I've been in status upda…

> What do you write in them that you didn't already mention during the daily standing meetings, the biweekly retrospective, the team meetings, the company meetings, or the Slack channels at the time they were relevant?

Also: Jira ticket updates (e.g. rule to update them at least once a day), commit messages, PR messages, ...

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#132
post #84

> - Posting once a week about what I did for fun over the weekend, usually with photos. Honestly, if I heard about this during the hiring process I'd see it as a red flag. Especially the photos. I once had this terrible VP who was a horrible micromanager and an all around a-hole. For every weekly meeting he'd go around the room forcing people to share what they did on the weekend. It was under the guise of "team buil…

I always find "What did you do over the weekend?" type stuff insanely boring. I imagine a website that generates random plausible answers to this question - how much time would I spend generating and reading random responses? Answer: Enough to see whether and how well it worked, and then never again. Why would I care about what my coworkers did over the weekend? It's like using that website for fun. When people ask m…

Yikes. Some of us are just friendly.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find "What did you do over the weekend?" type stuff insanely boring. I imagine a website that generates random plausible answers to this question - how much time would I spend generating and reading random responses? Answer: Enough to see whether and how well it worked, and then never again. Why would I care about what my coworkers did over the weekend? It's like using that website for fun. When people ask m…

Yikes. Some of us are just friendly.

Small talk enjoyers have the advantage that they can nonconsensually initiate small talk and it's rude for small talk dislikers to even express their dislike. I don't see how unilaterally engaging people in an activity that only you like is "friendly".

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#134
post #2

Most my coworkes are introverts. We do not do anything above. Unexpected enough? And we are lean and mean highly functional team. The most helpful for my team is let people be themselves and not force rituals.

Who talked about "force" here? And why assume introverts don't like these things? If anything, I prefer having an arena to be social, rather than having to take the initiative myself.

Rituals are mandatory by definition, so everything we're talking about is forced

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. Some of us are just friendly.

Small talk enjoyers have the advantage that they can nonconsensually initiate small talk and it's rude for small talk dislikers to even express their dislike. I don't see how unilaterally engaging people in an activity that only you like is "friendly".

How about because an individual puts themself out there to try and build a relationship around shared values, activities, joys? If it's not reciprocated they try something else, or eventually move on.

I think you're using "small talk" pejoratively, but all big and deep things start off small. Example: I met my wife of 20+ years eating lunch at a picnic table over casual conversation, so I'm all-in on small talk.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#136
The rituals that are expected are the bottleneck of truly embracing remote work.

Sure you can write A&Os (Achievements and Objectives) type of status updates, but that's largely on a team by team basis.

Recording every video conference is annoying and wasteful. Do you plan to record every talk you have and assume you're actually going to revisit it one day? 99% of the time my answer would be no.

Having lots of 1:1s screams lead or line manager. If it's your job, then sure! If it's not, then don't force it upon people. Not everyone likes 1:1s because they are hardly used correctly as a tool.

Let's normalize letting people do their job and having their own individual lives outside of work. Let's not let the corporate fun committee creep into everyone's preferred work life balance.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#137
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every 8 weeks seems quite frequent and exhausting, but I recently met colleges from the wider company in person for the first time and I loved it. I recognise there's value that comes from that!

Sure! Pre-pandemic, my company used to bring people together a couple of times a year, and I agree there was considerable value in it. But every 8 weeks? Maybe that team are all young, energetic, and family-free, but at my stage of life I would find that pretty gruelling.

Yeah, I'm 33 and I'm wondering if I'm going to find it too grueling. The detail I'm omitting is that half the team already lives in NY, most of the rest live in driving distance, so there are actually only two of us flying in, and we have the clear option not to fly in. I bring a woman I'm seeing along, we go see plays, it's pretty pleasant. If I had kids I think this would be no fly, so to speak.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#138
I'm a director-level, fwiw. Very little has changed for me with regards to going remote.

I do mostly weekly 1:1s with my reports. I say mostly because I really leave it up to the individual to decide how frequently we want to do it, with a floor of once a month. There doesn't seem to be much of a rhyme or reason as to why some folks want weekly, others want bi-weekly, and the one wants monthly.

My 1:1s are my favorite parts of the week, but I'm keenly aware that not everyone likes them. I try to keep them as productive as possible, and if I think they aren't going to be productive for whatever reason, I'll cancel them ahead of time, or if I think there's something that would make it really productive, I give a head's up so they aren't caught by surprise. Generally speaking, my team seems to enjoy talking with me. It's a mix of small talk and business. The more senior the person, the more likely we are to be talking big ideas and how to solve big problems at a high level, and the less senior, the more likely I am to be helping with specific code problems. And I have folks that do both at different times.

We do have daily standups, although we mix up whether it has to be via Zoom or via Slack, and that usually depends on how autonomous the team can be for a given project or how much risk there is against an on-time delivery. I don't believe in deadlines, but we do have target dates that we try to hit, and if we don't think we're going to hit them, then I want to know ahead of time so I can message that appropriately to the rest of the business. And if we're behind, maybe we'll sync up a bit more often "in-person" just to smooth out any blockers.

I will say that my teams at my current company have the smoothest and most pleasant standups that I've ever had before. I'm sure it's a little annoying for them, but our productivity has shot through the roof, and it's allowing us to work on cooler stuff instead of being constantly behind all of the time. I hope they see that. Something to communicate more...

We never record video conferences. One of my core philosophies as a leader is that as far as the company is concerned, the smallest unit of organization is the Team, and that means everyone on the team needs to be able to do their best without fear of being targeted individually for whatever mistakes may happen. We document our work fairly well, but any extra-team communications explicitly do not mention engineers by name. This is mostly to protect their time by having all requests route through the EM/PM, instead of the biz going directly to certain engineers and asking for requests. This process seems to be working fairly well. Individuals do get shout outs at all-hands meetings and at other team meetings, but when it comes to tickets and code, we try to get the rest of the org to think of it as a single Team and not a group of individuals.

As far as "what did you do this weekend" type things, I keep my work/life pretty separate, but I am the kind of person who loves to learn more about people and share things that I've learned, so a lot of our conversations (especially on Fridays) tend to center around social stuff: what are you doing this weekend, what did you think of Squid Game, did you know the guy who sold all those sea monkeys was actually a Nazi, what languages do you speak, etc. We usually have these kinds of conversations after the business stuff is done, so anyone who doesn't want to talk can just drop off. No judgments either way. But this tends to be a fairly interactive and fun experience for everyone, and participation rates are pretty high. Given that these teams are fully remote, I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.

As far as other rituals go, I think my company has too many all-hands meetings (4 per month with hundreds of employees at each), and I've been pushing for fewer of those, but so far I'm losing that argument.

What would I like to see more of in a remote work environment? I'd love to see some optional remote social activities. Games, trivia, Ted Talk-style events. I like seeing people do demos of their work -- especially if they're super proud of it.

And I think perhaps the thing I'd like to see most of all is for the business to recognize that the world has changed, and that we don't always have to be in the same place at the same time in order to be wildly successful. I love being in the office, but I don't think I want to go back full-time. Hybrid or remote is the future, and we should embrace it.

My two cents.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#139
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…

counter rant: I get great joy at socialization by working with people. It is something I've come to discover about myself, and I am not alone. And "work" doesn't have to include a job, but "working" with people on a sports team, or doing renovation at home or any other thing where we are working together to do something. Many other social things people like to do just doesn't do it much for me, although I've gotten b…

"Working is not anti-human, it is a fundamental component of humanity."

Working is anti-human when that human has no choice but to work or else they become homeless and die in the street. For many, including myself, a job is a means to an end, not an extension of sociality. Apart of being human is understanding that other humans have a different perception of socialization and not being offended when they don't want to join you in small talk.

Re: Ask HN: Hybrid/Remote software team rituals

#140
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…

counter rant: I get great joy at socialization by working with people. It is something I've come to discover about myself, and I am not alone. And "work" doesn't have to include a job, but "working" with people on a sports team, or doing renovation at home or any other thing where we are working together to do something. Many other social things people like to do just doesn't do it much for me, although I've gotten b…

Want to layer onto this as someone with a similar, but slightly different perspective. I have a very active social life, and most of my leisure activities are group ones.

But I also get great joy out of socializing by working. It's completely different from the other sorts of socializing I get, and neither is in any way a substitute for another.

I also am just happier and more productive in a social workplace. I get that not everyone needs or wants that, but it's important to me, and I know for a fact that there are plenty out there like me.

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