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From my first hand experience in managing teams, this article resonates well. The biggest problem my company sees is a low level of trust between team members now that a lot of the tenured engineers have left and new ones joined in a fully remote environment. More than half the team hasn’t met colleagues in person and the culture feels very transactional with shallow bonds, compared to old days when all of us were in…
> How do you build a compelling culture remotely?
> the majority of people seem to want to be remote when we survey them. But are they as engaged? Will they stay? ... how sustainable is that?
> How do you make those people [out of state] still feel like they are part of everything?
> Are people working as hard?
> there’s still just a lot of empty space right now. When I’m in the office, there’s not a lot of people.
> I recently attended an in-person meeting and I loved it. It was great. There are still things that are fun to talk about in-person and we were doing a lot of brainstorming. The time went by like that, and on a Zoom call, it just doesn’t.
Q: did the other people like it, or did they wish they were at home on a Zoom call and that the meeting was dragging on and should have been shorter?
> But I can’t get away from the inescapable reality that there’s still a hit to productivity. It was so scary the first six months of the pandemic and everybody just wanted to keep their job. Now, people are multitasking too much.
Seems this could be measured, and if it's just a problem for the exec internally and not an "inescapable reality", he needs to get over it. If productivity hasn't taken a hit, "people are not multitasking too much": they are able to do the same amount of work more efficiently away from the office, and that allows them to do more other things that may not be work related.
> [On working 4 days vs 5:] We’re not even in a space where you tell me you are just so good and efficient at your job, and you’re willing to work longer days for four days to have a fifth day off. That’s not the situation. I can keep my mind open to that.
In other words, if a smart worker can get their work done in 4 days, the exec expects them to do 25% more work without extra pay.
> Boundaries are being tested all over the place... the workplace was probably out of whack and companies did have too much power... There’s a level of distrust that employees have for their organizations, almost like an old dated image of like fat cats sitting around counting their money
I don't think it's dated considering that the gap between executive compensation and average worker compensation has only increased:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/07/us-wage-gap-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the culture feels very transactional Work should be transactional. It is a transaction. Labor is exchanged for money. Full remote frees us from all the bullshit and let's us focus on just doing the work we're getting paid for. "Deep culture" = bad work/life balance.
Hard disagree. There is a difference between there being a transaction (labour in exchange for money) and it being purely transactional. Take a haircut for instance, it is transactional (you exchange money for a haircut) but often people stick with the same hairdresser for years - e.g. because they have a relationship, have built trust, and often have built a friendship e.t.c. and similarly hairdressers seem to enjoy…
I would absolutely give repeat business to any barber shop whose selling point was “we won’t try to talk to you about last night’s game (you didn’t see) of a sport you don’t care about”.
The would be a substantial improvement on the status quo.
I don't see what's so hard. Give people a choice and leave it at that.
You need to force the senior staff to come (because they want to) or else there's nobody for the junior staff to learn from. That's basically the trade-off: senior freedom vs. junior learning
Because it is broadly true, as the nonsensical, obfuscated-with-bullshit layoff announcements prove - and there is always someone waiting in the hacker news comments to bleat about how corporations must be this way because of “shareholder value”.
Executives need to learn that they can’t have it both ways.
If you think that the complaining workers WANT to go to workplace socials and aren't just feeling obliged, they do not feel grateful. They feel blackmailed.
This wash about consensus is irrelevant. Your culture is only valuable if the workers actually indicate they value it. Listen. To. The. Individual.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>culture feels very transactional with shallow bonds, compared to old days when all of us were in office. Seems like the underlings and management are on the same page now.
I'm still very much an underling, and I resonate with the shallow bonds comment. At my previous role, I was friends with my colleagues. We went to the pub together after work, had each other around for parties, and invited each other to our weddings. Doing any of the above with my current team seems unimaginable - not because I don't like them, but because we've never had the opportunity to break that trust barrier o…
From my first hand experience in managing teams, this article resonates well. The biggest problem my company sees is a low level of trust between team members now that a lot of the tenured engineers have left and new ones joined in a fully remote environment. More than half the team hasn’t met colleagues in person and the culture feels very transactional with shallow bonds, compared to old days when all of us were in…
Hmm. "A low level of trust between team members" sounds like remote work exposed some big defects in your company culture that should be addressed first. Why did "a lot of the tenured engineers" leave? Why weren't they doing more to mentor the newer ones to facilitate knowledge and "lore" transfer? (And don't tell me it can't be done online, because it absolutely can.)
As for why tenured engineers left, they all had spent 3-5 years in this company and it was time to move on just like any other shop in tech. That seems in line with overall tech sector.
And it is borderline impossible to build camaraderie or a well bonded team purely online without any in person interaction for months or years. If you think you have seen that, please share further details about what worked and the name of the company. I am very much interested in learning how to build great teams online. So far, outcomes from even the best practices don’t seem to hold a candle when compared against the in-office experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm still very much an underling, and I resonate with the shallow bonds comment. At my previous role, I was friends with my colleagues. We went to the pub together after work, had each other around for parties, and invited each other to our weddings. Doing any of the above with my current team seems unimaginable - not because I don't like them, but because we've never had the opportunity to break that trust barrier o…
N=1. Colleagues are not my friends. We share a revenue source and common body of work, but my friends are outside of work for a reason. Under exceptional circumstances, a friendship bond that lasts beyond an employer might be established, but in my 20+ years in tech, it’s happened so few times I can count on one hand. And I prefer it that way.