271–280 of 492 posts
Automattic (Wordpress etc) is a great example, and have been doing it for years. However, they are very purposeful about it, including: + Hire for the culture + Commit to awesome, persistent written communication + Meritocracy in which trust can be earned by the work itself + Periodic in-person get togethers (not always to 'do work')
I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…
I can't help but think the reason companies like Apple want employees to return to office is so that managers can "be more on top of them" (aka track their producitivty).
It's interesting to see that at some companies, water cooler talk is encouraged. I used to work for a small mom + pop business where the owner saw every second we weren't working 8 hours a day as a wasted opportunity productivity wise for his wage dollar he was paying us.
That's an extreme example but, where does the answer typically all? How much water cooler talk is encouraged, allowed, monitored, tracked? It's not hard to spend a few hours a day shooting the sh*t on Slack (or get together and go to a 1-2 hour lunch with everybody in office who can't really concentrate/is looking to do anything to pass time)... I don't know if management would like that?
I used to simply dislike remote. Now I hate it with a deeper passion with every additional day that I do it. Other things I'm looking for in a job (apart from a convenient office location) - (1) high pay and (2) stability. Startups just can't offer these things, least of all remote startups.
You can find this but the tech isn't always the sexiest. Look for manufacturing or infrastructure companies. Be prepared for legacy systems, dated IT practices, and being your own QA or DevOps. Edit: if this doesn't sound great to you, look into robotics; a lot of startups are constantly looking for good engineers willing to work in person. Often times they settle for remote, so stress in any interviews that you're w…
"Your remote team is my company's opportunity." Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, but at my company we have some people who work in an office and lots more that work remotely. The in office staff contribute more ideas, work, fixes, and functional software than the remote teams by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. Those are hard numbers right out of our project m…
I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is you’re asking everyone else in the office to come in and experience all the negative externalities (commute, health, family) just so you can have an easy way to get out and about after work. That doesn’t seem fair to me.
I'm struggling to find the bit where I demand all the remote-first or hybrid companies changes their ways and conform to my preferences. No, I'm looking for companies that fit my preferences. Which is making my job search much harder, but I know what I need.
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Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…
Right. During my somewhat passive job search, I've only been considering companies that have an office local to me (i.e. Central London). I've been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, and I simply don't like it. Sure, I don't miss having to commute or offices with bad noise pollution controls, but I miss everything else. Most of all, I miss being in town at the end of the day and being able to pop to th…
Good times.
My productivity went at least 10x when the pandemic happened. - No commute - No 1 hour lunch (walking, buying, eating, cleaning up) - Not in an open-desk office where I'm constantly interrupted - Meetings are much more focused and I can hop between meetings quickly - Easy to do chores if necessary during the day and then work extra hours at night to make up - Office politics much reduced, output is easier to measure…
Meanwhile the people who were interrupting you have now had their productivity hit. The question is, do the two tradeoff as a net positive or a net negative for the company and how does that tradeoff work in more collaborative roles?
Having a history on your slack you can just search and remember the solution given.
For myself it's also easy to remind someone of the similar problem and adapt from the slack history, like similar commands and steps to solve an issue.
If more than one person asks about the same problem you can just copy and paste to a wiki and pin on the channel.
It's definitely better if everyone is on the Toyota model mentality instead of the ancient Ford model.
Then with the spare time I can actually do a lot with my remote teammates that is more social. Online games are a thing. Sharing photos of your last hike trail is another, discovering similar tastes and food recipes is also awesome.
I get that remote is not for everyone, specially people wired for social touching, but I felt extremely handcuffed in a open office space, doing my actual work by getting into the office 1 to 2 hours before everyone else.
I found that I'm more willing to socialize now because of better planning, decent schedules, and doing small talks after completing the hardest parts of the sprint, and respecting everyone's schedules by proper use of async comms.
Remote is not "anti collaborative". It only requires a different mindset.
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Communications and collaboration is very important. However, "socializing" through Slack is simply just not the same as going out to lunch with a coworker, for example. Permanent remote work has a very detached feel to it, at least for me.
I don't get this. If you have a coworker that enjoy having lunch with you... what's stopping you both doing so? I mean, even if you both work from home, you could still schedule a lunch together in the city, right? If you both live in different cities, well, I guess before COVID you weren't having lunch together that frequently. 100% remote doesn't dictate how (or with who) you eat lunch.
Also I have a coworker in my team that is in the same city, but the opposite part, around 2 hour drive from me to his place. If we want to have lunch, we waste a lot of time (1 hour per direction for each of us); if we are in the office in the same day, there is zero cost.
I found small chat over lunch or a coffee break to be very effective in building relations with people you don't directly work with. This helped me many times in the past when I had to talk to someone and it was not a cold approach, so they made time to talk to me and help.
I've been working 100% remotely for about 6.5 years now. Overall I love it. However, there are very real drawbacks that have taken me awhile to fully realize. For me, the primary one is that it's _way_ too easy for everyone to get deeply frustrated with each other. Social interactions and chit-chat lead to a better understanding of people and a more accurate mental model of what people actually mean when they say som…
I've found that even just turning my camera on in Zoom meetings makes a difference. Joining the standup call a little early, having "face to face" chitchat, builds up a small buffer of rapport that significantly improves empathy and perceived intent
Especially if you need to have a conversation where there might be some existing friction/tension/frustration, doing it over video instead of text or just audio will hugely increase the good-faith nature of the conversation
And of course, the occasional in-person hangout helps too, if you happen to be in the same city as your coworkers. What's important is that you each form an impression of the other as a human being, and not just as a faceless mechanism in the org that may be helping you or getting in your way at a given moment