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

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#121

Post by bastardoperator » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

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 conversations sounds like a slack message to me, or providing the guidance before they go down the rabbit.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#122

Post by willio58 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

This is very true. For interns and junior devs if the team is remote the seniors need to set aside time to help them out daily. I've started doing this as a senior dev on my team, basically setting time for office hours, and it's been great so far.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#123

Post by repeekad » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #85

repeekad wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I can sympathize, but you should not have let it ruin you. Take responsibility for your own life.

When you’re alone, someone telling you it’s your own fault and just take responsibility for it can feel really dark

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#124

Post by SSchick » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

Maybe tangential but:

Recently joined a new company that is remote first with a fair amount of juniors in it. It's rather difficult since they often lack guidance and start rabbit-holing in the wrong direction before eventually failing or producing a very non-ideal solution.

For us a pure asynchronous comms workflow simply doesn't work well yet, this may change w/ more seniority.

I found that having weekly (or even bi-weekly) 1:1's with my colleagues and pair/cowork dramatically lowers communication barriers and boosts productivity through the roof (albeit at the expense of 2 people working on the same project).

Major issues can surface when colleagues don't communicate at all other than just pull requests / issues / standups / design docs (whatever you call them). It can cause people to perceive others are 'faceless entities'. This can range from building completely misaligned solutions to even sparking interpersonal conflict.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#125

Post by extr » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

slily wrote: post #76

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…

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…

Well said. I am currently working my way through an unfamiliar codebase and even as a mid-career developer, I find it intimidating and inconvenient to continually ask for help over slack for "basic questions". People say the answer is to go deep and gain expertise, but in my experience you need to reach a certain escape velocity with the codebase before that kind of spelunking becomes valuable learning experiences and not just a confusing and messy waste of time. You need either:

* Documentation that is up to date and answers not just technical details but the "why" behind the architecture. Something that shows you where to focus and where the frontier is.

* Defined, limited scope (at first). Scoping yourself to the entire codebase is a good way to become an expert in nothing. You need a foothold where you can gain expertise and give yourself a jumping off point to adjacent areas.

The latter is easier to accomplish than convincing everyone to write pages of docs that don't exist.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#126

Post by willio58 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

SSchick wrote: post #124

Maybe tangential but: Recently joined a new company that is remote first with a fair amount of juniors in it. It's rather difficult since they often lack guidance and start rabbit-holing in the wrong direction before eventually failing or producing a very non-ideal solution. For us a pure asynchronous comms workflow simply doesn't work well yet, this may change w/ more seniority. I found that having weekly (or even b…

One thing my team does is we have a daily quick standup meeting where at the end we all have the option to stay on. The room is set up to always be accessible by anyone who wants to join and many of us sit in the room camera/mic on or off all day just in case someone wants to ask a quick question. If the conversation gets to be really long between two people in the room we will split off into a breakout room. I love this method, and it's all optional so the days where I want to focus on work I can just leave after standup. Most days I stay in to either help people out or ask questions myself.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#127

Post by coffeefirst » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

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…

Well, it was always true for EMs that you could have a junior dev quietly spinning their wheels and not asking for help. The difference is before you could sometimes see they were frustrated, and they could see other people asking for help and know that's just part of how you work. If they can't see it passively, you have to proactively show them.

You can and should still have those 10 second conversations. We've got Slack huddles, screen sharing, VSCode Live Share for more complex pairing... the tools are really good now.

That said, I tend to agree, a remote culture that doesn't respect the need for teaching and mentoring is going to be bad at it.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#128

Post by tomtheelder » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

tra3 wrote: post #69

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?

IMO you try these in order:

- Direct feedback to the manager about your needing space to work and their disruptive behavior.

- Same feedback to their manager.

- Look for new jobs.

There’s no way to solve this that avoids direct feedback and the possibility of confrontation.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#129

Post by goalonetwo » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

ricardo81 wrote: post #31

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 w…

>>> 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.

That type of blog post is typical from so-called thought leaders that want to assert themselves as experts on the latest trendy subject.

In real life, everything is a shade of grey but of course it makes for less of a clickbaity headline to acknowledge that.

Also, the author is a lawyer/mba and doesn't have a single experience in engineering.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#130

Post by eschneider » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

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…

Part of the job of a mentor/senior engineer is spending time helping get juniors up-to-speed on projects and getting them comfortable asking questions. And if they're not asking questions, checking in on them to see how they're doing. (Pro-tip: don't just ask them how they're doing, have them explain what they're doing and why. Problems show up a lot faster that way. :)

Building an environment where junior engineers learn how to find things out on their own and when they need to ask questions is a company culture thing and has very little to do with remote vs in-office.