11–20 of 366 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All in the room works for reviewing ideas, not creating them.
Even for that I feel like asynchronous works better. You often get stuck on someone’s pet peeve and waste an hour when on something like a Google doc you can have 30 different threads for comments concurrently
It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Once the coding starts, this is just a set of distractions I don't need. I suspect many/most of the developers reading HN want peace and quiet far more than the chance of magical hallway conversations. And it's only an anecdote, but we debugged a problem today where people were in two provinces of Canada and the UK. Were perfectly able to share screens, r…
Hasn't every study on brainstorming found that it's not a good way to generate good ideas? With having people breathing the same air in a small space believed to be a contributing factor to that.
It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Once the coding starts, this is just a set of distractions I don't need. I suspect many/most of the developers reading HN want peace and quiet far more than the chance of magical hallway conversations. And it's only an anecdote, but we debugged a problem today where people were in two provinces of Canada and the UK. Were perfectly able to share screens, r…
The leaders talked a lot about pressures from other execs on wanting to go back in-office even though they knew most employees wanted more flexibility. I think most companies will go back to 3 days a week in office and 2 days remote. Remote companies will continue to hold an advantage on attracting talent.
We've recently improved our remote filter on Levels.fyi Jobs - give it a try and lmk your feedback as well: https://www.levels.fyi/jobs?workArrangements=remote
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even for that I feel like asynchronous works better. You often get stuck on someone’s pet peeve and waste an hour when on something like a Google doc you can have 30 different threads for comments concurrently
Good point. The 20th century is over and the networks and iron are amazing.
Her job situation sounded so tenuous, in that a lot of it hinged on how cool her manager was with her living situation not being in SF. Also having to ask a friend to swipe her badge because she couldn't afford living in SF.
"See, look! The people are using it. They love it."
(Just out of frame, guns are pointed at the workers.)
This is yet another sign that Google is in ruin …
It's hardly in ruin, has more cash on the balance sheet than, for example, all the help sent to Ukraine, military and humanitarian. It's just that making a shit ton of money ain't actually that fun because your job is basically to constantly patch holes in this gargantuan ship that never stops.
It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Once the coding starts, this is just a set of distractions I don't need. I suspect many/most of the developers reading HN want peace and quiet far more than the chance of magical hallway conversations. And it's only an anecdote, but we debugged a problem today where people were in two provinces of Canada and the UK. Were perfectly able to share screens, r…
>It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Hasn't every study on brainstorming found that it's not a good way to generate good ideas? With having people breathing the same air in a small space believed to be a contributing factor to that.
Per https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1194301106584616960:
> People in groups self-censor and anchor on each others ideas, reducing creativity.
Also can be anti-inclusive when "anchor on each other idea" is a euphemism for that guy repeating what a more shy person said, but louder, stealing credit.
With remote, usually comes a more doc-driven culture, where someone's original idea can be easier to identify and make sure they get credit.
* Remote work is much better if you know what you're building and "just" need to execute.
* In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other.
Obvious, right? But I think what I've realize is the dimension of "we know what we need to do" is actually pretty much orthogonal to the product, size of the company, tenure of the employees, etc. I've been in early stage startups with no PMF that nonetheless have strong product-centric leadership who can set down an unambiguous vision for what they believe needs to be done. And I've been in startups that have PMF yet have no vision, and everyone is standing around in their remote offices twiddling their thumbs on "what to build next".
For large companies like FAANG, I actually think they mostly fall in bucket 2. I worked at Meta remotely for a year. My instructions when I joined were something like "Yeah so just talk to a bunch of people and look for opportunities to contribute". WTF? No wonder remote is not working well for them. You had to go 5-6 layers up the reporting chain to find anyone with any sort of holistic sense of what needed to be done, and they were not exactly empowered to share that vision lest it conflict with someone elses.
TL;DR I think remote work is well set up for companies with leadership that resembles a benevolent dictatorship. I think if you are all-remote and your leadership is effectively "managerial" in nature, NGMI.