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Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

ben.balter.com

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Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#31

Post by ricardo81 »

It's weird seeing all this content the past 3+ years about remote working as I've worked remotely for 20+ years. I'm not an authority on the matter (why would I be), just weird to see so much 'authority content' on it lately.

Maybe there are more granular and data-driven conclusions, I'm just someone who sees the benefit of communicating information over vast distances aka the web and appreciate that it's something we can do nowadays.

A message, SMS, phone call, a group call, a skype call or whatever can clear things up right quick.

Plenty times I'll send someone an email because I don't want to engage with someone and the time frame of their reply can be minutes or days. That's fine.

WFH/remote is all about trust from an employer and motivation by an employee.

You're entirely free to communicate as much as you need to whether you're physically present or not. The work gets done or it does not.

I don't really understand the confusion about this.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#32

Post by ramesh31 »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #4

This sounds great for experienced engineers, but in my experience junior workers often require bite-sized guidance in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating). Accordingly, during the pandemic I think it was mostly the less experienced engineers suffering from low productivity and lack of confi…

>A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating).

Weeks, even. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that this is the majority of my value to an org now. Not so much in my IC abilities, but in the ability to save endless amounts of time for lesser experienced folks.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#33

Post by seattle_spring »

Aurornis wrote: post #28
nmridul wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my project (30+ members) we have team members located in multiple locations (6+ cities in 4 countries). And for the last 2+ years I am the only one working from my country. While our company is 500+ strong in this country, for this particular project I am the only one. So interactions with the project team is fully remote. I am sure even pre-covid many MNCs might have a similar structure with members spread across…

> Its difficult - yes. But not impossible to handle. The problem with “difficult but not impossible” is that it requires special personality types to handle it. Some people can do it, but now you have a secondary problem in that you need to find a way to filter those people in the hiring pipeline. You also have a risk of hiring people who can’t handle it and having to cut them and re-hire. This is why most “difficult…

Isn't the same thing true about working in an office? Certain personality types thrive while others suffer.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#34

Post by no_wizard »

nmridul wrote: post #26
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #4

This sounds great for experienced engineers, but in my experience junior workers often require bite-sized guidance in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating). Accordingly, during the pandemic I think it was mostly the less experienced engineers suffering from low productivity and lack of confi…

In my project (30+ members) we have team members located in multiple locations (6+ cities in 4 countries). And for the last 2+ years I am the only one working from my country. While our company is 500+ strong in this country, for this particular project I am the only one. So interactions with the project team is fully remote. I am sure even pre-covid many MNCs might have a similar structure with members spread across…

I disagree its difficult. When the culture supports mentorship, onboarding and first year experience as high priority items with solid guidelines / process around them, its pretty easy.

but wait, that means changing cultural and such, that's not easy is the response I often get to this, to which I say preemptively:

That I would agree with, because the US business cultural is surprisingly stiff to changing things that would have favorable impact to workers, but that is IMO a different and separate discussion to the fact that this is a readily solvable problem.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#35

Post by whateverman23 »

dpz wrote: post #19
sussexby wrote: post #6

Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human interaction to such an extent that it's massively affecting my mental health. I regularly find myself clock-watching until the next time I can talk to someone because everyone is always busy - there are no water coolers or coffee breaks to stitch in between. Eve…

find the social outside of work? Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising. In fairness I've been fully remote for 10 years but I see friends during the day for coffees, lunch, exercise. And then multiple sports clubs in the evenings

> Work has always been work for me and nothing more, not really looking for socialising.

But work is 40-50 hours of my week. That's a HUGE portion of my life. Almost half my waking hours are at work. (7x16=112 waking hours a week. 35-45% of it at work).

Not taking time to socialize during that period is draining as hell for me. I guess what I'm trying to say is you're way overestimating the percentage of people who can go to work and just... work. Most people need the socialization.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#36

Post by dakiol »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #4

This sounds great for experienced engineers, but in my experience junior workers often require bite-sized guidance in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating). Accordingly, during the pandemic I think it was mostly the less experienced engineers suffering from low productivity and lack of confi…

That's why one should hire juniors based on how well they communicate and less based on their skills to invert a binary tree or design a URL shortener service.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#37

Post by freyes »

Aurornis wrote: post #28
nmridul wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my project (30+ members) we have team members located in multiple locations (6+ cities in 4 countries). And for the last 2+ years I am the only one working from my country. While our company is 500+ strong in this country, for this particular project I am the only one. So interactions with the project team is fully remote. I am sure even pre-covid many MNCs might have a similar structure with members spread across…

> Its difficult - yes. But not impossible to handle. The problem with “difficult but not impossible” is that it requires special personality types to handle it. Some people can do it, but now you have a secondary problem in that you need to find a way to filter those people in the hiring pipeline. You also have a risk of hiring people who can’t handle it and having to cut them and re-hire. This is why most “difficult…

> it requires special personality types to handle it.

I agree, and I don't see a problem with it.

> [...], but aren’t useful for general policies.

offices are just optimizing for the loudest and more social people, this is a consequence of managers tending to be like that, I don't think that approach is useful for general policies neither.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#38

Post by swozey »

sussexby wrote: post #6

Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human interaction to such an extent that it's massively affecting my mental health. I regularly find myself clock-watching until the next time I can talk to someone because everyone is always busy - there are no water coolers or coffee breaks to stitch in between. Eve…

My team is incredibly quiet on slack and I find it pretty frustrating. We're under 10 people so I don't expect constant chat but it's not uncommon for our guild channel to have a day go by with no messages.

I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing.

I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team. And I'm clearly the outlier.

I just try to not take it personally and keep going. I feel like I post really cool things, especially new tools/repos/projects that benefit everyone to the void sometimes.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#39

Post by leidenfrost »

Another (unrelated) problem with Remote work is how harder is to lose weight when you stop moving throughout the day.

Before the pandemic, I usually got up to make coffee, to ask for help or to make consensus with my fellow coworkers (other devs or even UX people, a few stairs away). I usually walked from work from time to time to clear up my mind. Now I barely move. I live in a small apartment. The fridge is 3 meters away from me.

Back then, I could somehow manage my weight by applying some casual restrictions, like eating fewer carbs and eat mostly lean cuts of meat. Now I need to apply some zen monk level of self control if I want to not gain more weight. And losing it is terribly hard.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#40

Post by pydry »

fsociety wrote: post #15
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #4

This sounds great for experienced engineers, but in my experience junior workers often require bite-sized guidance in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating). Accordingly, during the pandemic I think it was mostly the less experienced engineers suffering from low productivity and lack of confi…

I think the experience of banging your head against the wall (for a bit) can be valuable. As long as the culture of the team encourages this and offers an escape hatch after a few hours (or whatever timeframe is appropriate for the problem).

I dont. Ive gone down many rabbit holes thanks to, for instance, subtly incorrect or outdated docs in working cultures that valued not being interrupted and it's a recipe for anxiety and a huge waste of time.
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