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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

#191

Post by dang »

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…

Can you please make your substantive points without fulminating, snarking, or posting in the flamewar style? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#192

Post by tra3 »

tomtheelder wrote: post #128
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.

Confrontation seems like the nuclear option so I’d like to avoid that.

In the spirit of incremental improvement, what’s the smallest action that you’d recommend that I can take?

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#193

Post by paulcole »

hypeit wrote: post #150
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…

I have to admit as someone who enjoys WFH and would never work in an office again, that having co-workers like you is one of the main reasons. You should work on not relying so much on others. You may be benefiting from all that social "charging up", but you're taking that from the person on the other side of the conversation. I work to make money, not to fill someone's social void. You'll be happier if you explore t…

No offense to you, but this is why my next job will not be remote.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#194

Post by gumballindie »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #174

f--k the "office" and f--k the soulless two-faced corpo-goblins who thrive within it. never going back. in 20-30 years i'll be worm food. not going to waste anymore time rotting in an office. f---k no.

Amen brother.

People fail to understand that rotting in an office is not the type of memory you want when life flashes in front of your eyes on your death bed.

Imagine sitting there, and all you see is a bunch of scrum meetings and planning sessions followed by scuttlebutt with someone your dread gossiping about someone you don't even know, thinking they are your friends.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#195

Post by bluefishinit »

tra3 wrote: post #192
tomtheelder wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Confrontation seems like the nuclear option so I’d like to avoid that. In the spirit of incremental improvement, what’s the smallest action that you’d recommend that I can take?

Reach out and have a chat with a recruiter. Tell them about your situation (it's very unhealthy) and skill set and see what they have to say. You're currently employed, which is a great place to be while you look for new work. Have them bring you opportunities that are not just better than your current situation, but align with your ideal situation.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#196

Post by theideaofcoffee »

bloopernova wrote: post #114
slily wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If your team penalizes you for "asking questions and looking like an idiot" then the team culture is poor. Nobody knows everything. Everyone makes mistakes. The team should help those people but they need to ask. Today I was looking in the wrong devtools tab for a token value. Because we've worked hard making our team a safe place in which to ask questions, I felt comfortable asking what I was missing. Heck it's give…

This is such an important point I don’t think it can be overstated. Psychological safety is one of the key things to have a well-functioning culture and it’s one of those cultural things that I’ve tried desperately change in past positions. It’s hard, and in one place, almost impossible save for eliminating a few key people who hold onto that mindset and clean house a little bit.

There is no growth, no team cohesion in an environment where you’re berated for asking seemingly stupid or dumb questions. But I think people become numb and indoctrinated to it because “well, I had to endure this when I was learning” is such a demoralizing and abusive stance and nobody wants to change.

Things work so much better when everyone has a chance to pitch in, even if some ideas are dumb, just having the option is miles ahead of whatever bullshit people can justify from the “old way”.

Part of the process to change I’ve found is just leading by example. I’ll intentionally ask stupid questions that I know raise the ire of my similarly-leveled coworkers just to make the point to the more junior people that “hey, this staff-level guy is asking this, I might be able to too”. Junior people will gradually start to get the picture and ignore the rantings and ravings and toxicity of the debbie-downwers and the sticks-in-the-mud.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#197

Post by breischl »

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…

I think it can work great for some people. I did it for a few weeks at one point, and found it thoroughly unproductive. 90% of my time was spent waiting for somebody else to type something, or trying to verbally communicate something that would be better done in writing/code.

Even now I find it incredibly off-putting to have somebody looking over my shoulder when I'm trying to work, to the point that I basically just can't. People have asked to watch me do something, and my response is that you can either watch me, or I can do it, but not both. It's like Heisenberg Uncertainty for work output.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#198

Post by marcod »

tra3 wrote: post #192
tomtheelder wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Confrontation seems like the nuclear option so I’d like to avoid that. In the spirit of incremental improvement, what’s the smallest action that you’d recommend that I can take?

I don't think things will improve if you don't say it's an issue (to either your mgr or theirs).

If you say "hey, I'm the middle of working on X. Can't this wait until we have our 1:1?" do you think that wouldn't be well received?

Also, maybe give them some information on how expensive context switching is.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#199

Post by mydriasis »

unshavedyak wrote: post #155
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…

How do you communicate the "right things" tho? That's the part i find difficult. I feel like most consumers just want cliff-notes. Which are difficult to write for a wide variety of audiences.

This is tough, yes. I'm a programmer -- so for me, knowing what's _vital_ to a task is what I'm always searching for. Nailing down requirements is challenging...!

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#200

Post by cosmodisk »

prpl wrote: post #24
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…

I don’t think there is a good solution here. I realized that I must have a 90th-95th percentile memory when compared to my coworkers, but it frankly doesn’t matter if I write things in chat or a long form document, it’s often lost to much of my team. I have come to realize the best path forward is likely pair programming/working meetings (remotely) because writing things down and repeatedly referencing them doesn’t s…

I had this issue when I had a larger team to manage. I'm also one of those who remembers an email that was sent 3 years ago by some random guy listing all these useful things. However,it doesn't work for most people. The communication needs some guidance too 1) anything quick and simple- chat 2) something more complex - email 3) something complex and likely to stay relevant long in the future - knowledge base, documentation, etc 4) major announcement- medium matters less but they need to be stored somewhere for people to refer to later.

Communication requires enforcement too: I had people in my team that kept saying that they weren't told about x,y,and z. If those are repeated behaviours( they usually are), they need to be managed accordingly so people would start take it seriously.

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