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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

#71

Post by throwawayfear »

Remote work requires more direct and straightforward communication. Ideally in writing only because then there's no bullshit happening off-the-record in calls where people are clearly just wasting time or trying to annoy other people with bullshit. You can notice this the most when someone who is not good at their job or not technical or not interested in the product is always resorting to calls and constant communication. That's micromanagement culture.

I do not think this means more communication. It means less time spent communicating and more time spent working on your area. What on earth are you all working on that requires constant communication?

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#73

Post by eddd-ddde »

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 bang my head into the wall all the time. You just have to know which walls have a pot of gold behind them.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#74

Post by Aaronstotle »

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…

I've actually gained weight since having to go into an office a few days a week, was much easier to exercise when working from home imo.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#75

Post by repeekad »

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…

I was one of those juniors, the rapid shift to remote work ruined me. I had just moved to a new city where I knew no one to start a life doing the work I loved, and all at once I got told leaving my house was dangerous and to stay home alone all day staring at a screen to keep people safe, for 2+ years…

It’s great you value work life balance, but junior engineers suffered a lot (to different degrees), and you being on edge that remote work might be taken away from you is nothing compared to what I went through and haven’t recovered from.

We’re allowed to love our work and the people we do it with, that’s my ideal, just a because you hate it doesn’t mean everyone should

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#76

Post by slily »

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…

I've worked in cubicles and open space plans as well as remotely as a junior. It seems self-evident to me but maybe those who haven't experienced the various environments do not realize that in person it is much easier to ask a random question to a senior. You can poke them and have a small discussion that would flood a chatroom and take much longer to develop remotely, without feeling like you may be inconveniencing them or the rest of the team since you cannot see if they are busy, or you can follow them to the coffee machine and discuss issues that are not urgent but could use their input instead of just notifying them over chat at a random time that may or may not be convenient.

Working remotely I found myself constantly wasting time trying to figure things out on my own because I don't know if people are even online/active (spread out across the globe, another issue common with remote), if they are online I don't know if they have something more important to deal with at the moment, it is more difficult to extract information from seniors who are poor communicators - as good as they may be as ICs, most of my seniors will assume I should know every undocumented internal mess and it makes asking for more details intimidating. And I don't want to look like an idiot in writing! (lol, but I do feel that way sometimes)

If you want juniors to learn anything in a reasonable amount of time you have to give a bit of a shit and invest more time solely towards that especially in remote environments, seems that people just expect juniors to take the lead and force their way in though which isn't my style at all and if there isn't a common agreement and people are all just doing their thing it can come off as presumptuous to be bugging people left and right for the first months. Yes part of the problem is company culture not properly adapting to the environment, but I also haven't seen any change in the way we deal with communication since the Corona and of course seniors don't care because they got their job security.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#77

Post by azza2110 »

I've found it's best to use a combination of written and spoken word, when trying to communicate more, but less frequently. i.e.

- Write a set of concise, clear, well-structured discussion notes ahead of a meeting

- Give all attendees time to pre-read the notes and flag the specific points requiring deeper discussion

- Once face-to-face, discuss ONLY those flagged topics. Don't waste the opportunity for high-bandwidth communication on the notes/topics that aren't contentious.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#78

Post by osigurdson »

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’m convinced the strength of the “rabbit hole detector” is what truly differentiates software engineers. While I do think experience has something to do with it, I have also observed very senior people with terrible RHDs.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#79

Post by throwawayfear »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #70
throwawayfear wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That can be measured by frequency of code commits. You can tell which juniors are making the most of a rabbit hole and becoming better versus which ones are mindlessly surfing because they don't want to think. The first group will have things to share or talk about if they go some time without committing code and their mentor or manager starts getting worried.

If someone hasn't pushed something in a week or two, that's a good time for their mentor to initiate a conversation and see where they're at and when they think they will push something.

Anything else is micromanagement by a company that has hired someone without giving them any amount of runway to actually work and learn the space they're in. You can also tell on company hardware and on company accounts if the junior's browsing history represents getting better or just resting on their haunches because they want someone else to do the thinking. Let's not pretend the micromanagement cultures where "fear of rabbit holes" exists are not already doing this.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#80

Post by wduquette »

This is how I've been working for years, since before COVID. (Except for videos; I don't do videos.) As another commenter noted, this might not work as well for junior engineers. If I were mentoring/guiding/working with a junior engineer I would plan on being available for one-on-one interactions.
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