Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#61

Post by katbyte » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

leidenfrost wrote: post #39

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 meter…

Opposite for me, wfh means healthier lunches, more time and flexibility to be active . The short walk to transit (of not driving) doesn’t come close

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#62

Post by belval » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

whateverman23 wrote: post #44

x86x87 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh.. The poor juniors. Instead of properly adapting the onboarding and mentoring to the remote setting let's romanticize the good old ways that imho sucked. Let's cherrypick and pretend everything is fine. We went from offices to cubicles to open space and nobody stopped to think if it was a good idea. Wr transformed the office from a place where work actually is done to a placr where we "socialize". Work? Do that on…

> Instead of properly adapting the onboarding and mentoring But... how? Remote check-ins with juniors every 30-60 minutes? That's crazy. But that's basically the only way to replicate the in person experience. The best mentoring results for me as the mentee and for me as a mentor have been when we're sitting next to each other. The mentor can visually tell when the mentee is stuck, and mentee can tell when the mentor…

I like to do virtual desk with Slack, where I will have a channel where I'm always in a huddle and they can drop by when they have questions, just like they would in-office.

I have to say as a counter point though that I've had a lot more trouble with coworkers coming to my physical desk for questions that they could have Googled than with Junior getting stuck for extended period of time remotely. It's all a matter of culture and relationships.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#63

Post by throwawayfear » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

whateverman23 wrote: post #44

x86x87 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh.. The poor juniors. Instead of properly adapting the onboarding and mentoring to the remote setting let's romanticize the good old ways that imho sucked. Let's cherrypick and pretend everything is fine. We went from offices to cubicles to open space and nobody stopped to think if it was a good idea. Wr transformed the office from a place where work actually is done to a placr where we "socialize". Work? Do that on…

> Instead of properly adapting the onboarding and mentoring But... how? Remote check-ins with juniors every 30-60 minutes? That's crazy. But that's basically the only way to replicate the in person experience. The best mentoring results for me as the mentee and for me as a mentor have been when we're sitting next to each other. The mentor can visually tell when the mentee is stuck, and mentee can tell when the mentor…

The juniors will have to read documentation and spend long hours writing and reading code and understanding what has already been built. Just like all of us who did that and had to do it in order to move up. The idea of spending time "mentoring juniors" has always ended up being an euphemism. It's just a way for non-technical people, at the end of the day, to consume as much time as possible from other people so they can pretend to be doing work.

It's clear which juniors are motivated and will make the most of the mentorship and which ones are not. Some are just there for the check and you cannot compromise your senior and higher talent on people who don't want to learn and grow and just want the prestige and check of a high-tech job. It's the same situation with someone who is drowning not listening to orders and taking down their rescuer with them too.

If a junior needs someone to sit next to them because they toil for way longer than needed on clear simple requirements and goals, this may not be the field for them. I never needed anyone right next to me that couldn't have been a direct message or a brief remote call to clarify something specific, clear, and to the point. You're describing a reality where the people who don't do are just trying to take as much time for themselves as possible to hide the fact that they don't want to think.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#64

Post by DharmaPolice » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #8

mydriasis wrote: post #2

> Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently, because asynchronous communication involves less frequent, but richer communication, meaning there is less time talking about the work and more time doing it, allowing the system to optimize for throughput and flow. This whole thing seems to be what people struggle with about remote work. Communication is way, way more important, and being an effective commu…

There's a bit of a challenge today with chat, though. I work 4 timezones away from most of my team and we all prefer to swap e-mails, but chat seems to have stripped away some folks' ability to methodically go through topics, explain options and summarise next steps, leading to the usual "let's set up a call [to actually discuss everything in the e-mail thread]". Reading through old mailing-lists (and even older e-ma…

Email is the victim of its own success. Because it had/has such dominance in the business world everyone had to live in their inbox, marketers appreciated that and lots of people grew to hate that. There have always been bad practices surrounding emails but I think it reached a point a long time ago where email itself was considered bad. Thus "email free Fridays" and internal comms plans which say email should be a last resort. People felt empowered to refuse to read many emails, especially if they were over 3-4 paragraphs.

I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. The ease with which we can all "jump on a call" has contributed to this. Yes, of course we've all seen email chains which go back and forth without progress but that's not a reason to assume every message will end up there.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#65

Post by spike021 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

x86x87 wrote: post #18

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…

Oh.. The poor juniors. Instead of properly adapting the onboarding and mentoring to the remote setting let's romanticize the good old ways that imho sucked. Let's cherrypick and pretend everything is fine. We went from offices to cubicles to open space and nobody stopped to think if it was a good idea. Wr transformed the office from a place where work actually is done to a placr where we "socialize". Work? Do that on…

Nothing about what they said is socializing.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#66

Post by throwawayfear » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

ResearchCode wrote: post #17

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…

Those "rabbit holes" are where you learn. Saving hours is more important if you bill hourly, less if you are salaried.

Indeed. There may be a toxic or stupid management culture at that company if they're worried about someone going down a rabbit hole to learn. In my experience this is usually in teams that are run by people who don't have technical ability.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#67

Post by throwawayfear » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

leidenfrost wrote: post #39

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 meter…

This is just a description of your lack of discipline. Since the pandemic, I lost a significant amount of weight and increased my fitness across all other parameters as well. This is because remote work facilitated that. If you need to work in an office in order to get up to make a coffee or to ask for help or to "make consensus" then that's a you problem.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#68

Post by repeekad » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

katbyte wrote: post #61

leidenfrost wrote: post #39

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 meter…

Opposite for me, wfh means healthier lunches, more time and flexibility to be active . The short walk to transit (of not driving) doesn’t come close

It’s not for everyone, but people who don’t already have an entire life outside of work struggle to start one when the majority of your day is spent alone staring at a screen. The idea that socializing at work is a bad thing I think isolated a huge number of people who used to thrive on work relations and didn’t need a huge number of close friends outside of work to be happy.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#69

Post by tra3 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

Any tips for working with a remote micromanager? Constant “can you talk now?”, even though we have a daily 1:1 scheduled in an hour.

Written daily updates in slack followed by 45 minute stand up.

I already try to overcommunicate, but it does not stem the interruptions and it’s certainly not asynchronous.

Frequent “how’s it going” an hour after stand up, and before and after the 1:1.

How do I push back?

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#70

Post by FartyMcFarter » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

throwawayfear wrote: post #66

ResearchCode wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "rabbit holes" are where you learn. Saving hours is more important if you bill hourly, less if you are salaried.

Indeed. There may be a toxic or stupid management culture at that company if they're worried about someone going down a rabbit hole to learn. In my experience this is usually in teams that are run by people who don't have technical ability.

Going down rabbit holes and getting something out of it is fine, but that doesn't always happen.

Sometimes people are just frustrated and spinning their wheels, or doing work that turns out to be pointless because they failed to understand something which would have been clarified by a short conversation.