Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

ben.balter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 326 posts

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#181

Post by nerdponx »

commandlinefan wrote: post #136
fsociety wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> the experience of banging your head against the wall (for a bit) can be valuable Yes. This "get it done as fast as humanly possible whether or not you actually understand what you're doing" is the most detrimental attitude toward beginning software developers I can think of. "Going down a rabbit hole" is a dismissive way of saying "actually figure out what the computer is doing" which is what actually makes you val…

What's worse, you're actually hurting their future career by allowing (or encouraging) them to develop bad intellectual, work, and communication habits. Borderline abusive IMO because the junior doesn't realize they've been misled until much later.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#182

Post by briandswartz »

willio58 wrote: post #126
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…

How long have you been doing this? Curious, bc many teams tried something like this but it fizzled after 3-4 months.

(full disclosure, we're building a platform that integrates with Zoom to visualize all these rooms, and who is in them, so people can hop into the rooms where people currently are, and know when someone isn't available before joining, etc. would love to interview you for user research if you're up for it)

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#183

Post by whateverman23 »

hahn-kev wrote: post #100
whateverman23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Sounds like WFH isn't for you then.

That's... my point. WFH isn't for a lot of people. And there are factions who say stuff like "Just get a hobby dude!" as if that fixes anything.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#184

Post by gonehome »

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…

Agreed, tools like gathertown can make a big difference in improving this problem for remote teams, but it requires buy in from the top and the right culture (everyone has to hang out in there during working hours).

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#185

Post by grozmovoi »

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…

Absolutely agree. I think remote engineering work is a skill that is hard to acquire when you're very junior.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#186

Post by gavmor »

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 had the rare privilege of pair-programming 40 hours a week for several years early in my career. This follows the extreme programming ethos of "everything in the limit," where pairing is "code review in the limit" and "mentorship in the limit," to say nothing of the oral tradition it imparts[0].

Even pair-programming with my fellow juniors was both more productive and more educational than a rubber duck[1].

I had the opportunity to sit down to dinner with some very junior devs at a family gathering, recently, and to hear of their isolation due to remote-work broke my heart. They simply have no idea what they're missing.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#187

Post by bravetraveler »

travisjungroth wrote: post #163
bravetraveler wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is learning. Asking for help is a key part. Without trying first, asking for help is asking for someone to do it for you. In office, remote, whichever - I've been ignored. It took a while to learn to ask questions. People will help, but "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", and all. There's movement [or an attempt] implied with this. The locality doesn't matter, effective communication can exist in either. I…

> As such, I'm skeptical of this 'Think of the Juniors' concern. It's manageable. The top comment is saying how to manage it. TFA isn’t saying no remote work, it’s saying less frequent communication. That doesn’t work in all cases. Struggling for hours without getting much done or understanding more isn’t effective for productivity or learning by definition . These cases can often be prevented with quick questions. “…

My skepticism isn't aimed at them

This can be prevented without (net) more involvement... with better use of those existing sessions, perhaps splitting them.

The definitions on that aren't clear - the comments around seem to expect the worst, absent employers abound.

I expect a fairly guided mission, with reports on findings. Questions both ways, Socratic or not.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#188

Post by mattnewton »

gavmor wrote: post #186
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 had the rare privilege of pair-programming 40 hours a week for several years early in my career. This follows the extreme programming ethos of "everything in the limit," where pairing is "code review in the limit" and "mentorship in the limit," to say nothing of the oral tradition it imparts[0]. Even pair-programming with my fellow juniors was both more productive and more educational than a rubber duck[1]. I had t…

As a counterpoint, I have a hard time coding with other people, it’s like part of my brain spends the whole interaction thinking about what they could be thinking and I usually can’t shut this off. It’s especially aggravated if the person isn’t very familiar to me. For leetcode style interviews that means I basically memorized hundreds of kinds of problems and pattern match to them because thinking deeply while supervised just doesn’t reliably happen for me.

I know mentorship is important and spend quite a bit of time on it everywhere I work, including with pairing. But the costs to many senior people’s productivity are very real and can’t be stated lightly. Remote work has been a godsend, previously I would do my best work behind a closed office door, in the back of a company bus, or after hours at home and it’s like having unlimited access to that zone.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#189

Post by paulcole »

alemanek wrote: post #95
senttoschool wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a difference between the population that worked remotely before and after Covid. The population before Covid were often highly experienced, disciplined, and proven workers. The population after Covid, was well, everyone who worked with a laptop. Not everyone is cut for working remotely. In addition, there’s a difference between 1 out 20 people working remotely full time and 20 out of 20.

I have worked remotely for 7 years and in a few different companies in that time. In my experience the companies that struggle with remote work are the ones the manage via attendance. One company drove me insane with random “Hows it going” messages throughout the day so I just left for another company and let them know why on the way out. Managers that have enough domain expertise to manage via outcomes however thriv…

> One company drove me insane with random “Hows it going” messages throughout the day so I just left for another company and let them know why on the way out.

But this is ideal right? Their culture is asking "how's it going" throughout the day and it's not a culture you wanted to be part of so you left.

Asking "how's it going?" throughout the day isn't objectively good or bad – it's just not for everyone.

Post reply on HN