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

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#201

Post by ResearchCode » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

itsmemattchung wrote: post #83

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.

Generally agree that rabbit holes (or as my wife calls mine: black holes) can be conducive to learning. But I suspect that there's diminishing returns. At some point, you may end up spinning your wheels and reaching out for help does not distract from learning the valuable lesson.

If you're doing a PhD, that point is a weekly chat with your supervisor. I don't see why a few hour "rabbit hole" would be a problem in software engineering. If we're even discussing hours unless billing hourly, that's a red flag for micromanagement.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#202

Post by sublinear » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #153

dinvlad wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work != socializing. Quality work requires deep concentration over long stretches of time, not tapping on a shoulder at random intervals. Both IRL and virtually.

I keep seeing people say this, but I always sympathize with others who lament the lack of socialization that comes with remote work. I have several engineering friends, and myself, who all have gone full remote and are starting to go a little insane from feeling lonely all the time. "Just socialize outside of work!" seems to be everyone's go-to response, totally missing how much time is taken up by the 8+ hours of th…

> "Just socialize outside of work!" seems to be everyone's go-to response, totally missing how much time is taken up by the 8+ hours of the workday, and how much ambient socialization has been lost with that time now spent remote.

You're working remote, not necessarily working from home. The world is your office now.

For particularly meeting heavy days I have experienced no shame going on a daytrip while on those calls. It's nobody's business how you do your job remotely anyway. Get some coding in while stopped somewhere. Yes this means I have to make up for lost time in the day with all the interruptions. No I can't just put away the laptop at 5pm because I still have stuff to do (usually done by 8pm), but it's worth it. If Sarah from accounting is allowed to flex time to pick up her kids from soccer practice, I'm allowed to shoot the shit with random people I meet while getting gas or trying a new restaurant. There's your new watercooler. Go to the beach or something. If your partner is driving you around, even better. Use the laptop like its namesake suggests.

Not exactly a "digital nomad" lifestyle, but it's such a mood boost to mix light travel with working hours. It's a win for everyone if productivity goes up from these little things.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#203

Post by ResearchCode » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

dakiol wrote: post #36

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…

That's why one should hire juniors based on how well they communicate and less based on their skills to invert a binary tree or design a URL shortener service.

There's an abundance of people that can talk but do less. Real tech talent are rare, not that you find them by algorithms quizzes.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#204

Post by nickstinemates » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #38

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…

My team is incredibly quiet on slack and I find it pretty frustrating. We're under 10 people so I don't expect constant chat but it's not uncommon for our guild channel to have a day go by with no messages. I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing. I'm not sure if I'm m…

> I'm not sure if I'm more passionate about tech, more extroverted, more obsessed with improving processes or just less busy than them. It's been like this at multiple companies I've been at so it's not unique to my current team.

It's none of these things. I am the same way but we are the minority.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#205

Post by maestroia » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

manvillej wrote: post #137

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 still think that is a culture problem. I have a team of engineers that frequently has a lot of junior engineers. I find it really REALLY important to reinforce the culture of "software development is a team sport" and provide concrete mechanisms to do so. Junior engineers need help as the same rate they did before. They still need to ask for help. Remote work lets it: - happen asynchronously & synchronously - creat…

It's always difficult for people to ask for help. The best thing senior engineers can do is set the example and ask for help when they get stuck on something--even if it's something they could figure out on their own with some time.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#206

Post by mr337 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:16 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…

I feel the same, been remote for 15 years and all this reinventing stuff and challenges seem a little weird to me. There was remote work companies before COVID that had been learning through the challenges and optimizing for it.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#207

Post by seadan83 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:18 PM UTC

manvillej wrote: post #137

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 still think that is a culture problem. I have a team of engineers that frequently has a lot of junior engineers. I find it really REALLY important to reinforce the culture of "software development is a team sport" and provide concrete mechanisms to do so. Junior engineers need help as the same rate they did before. They still need to ask for help. Remote work lets it: - happen asynchronously & synchronously - creat…

Your team started out as in person?

What kinds of things did you think about to transition to where you are? How did that transition happen?

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#208

Post by jzm2k » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

throwawayfear wrote: post #79

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Are you saying the mentor should actually go and check the browsing history of one their engineers to verify whether they've actually done "correct work" or what are you trying to say exactly? This sounds to me like micromanagement of the highest order.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#209

Post by bluefishinit » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #38

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…

My team is incredibly quiet on slack and I find it pretty frustrating. We're under 10 people so I don't expect constant chat but it's not uncommon for our guild channel to have a day go by with no messages. I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing. I'm not sure if I'm m…

> I try to keep it alive by posting interesting articles, updates and tools and things like that and that sometimes drums up some conversation but it's rare that my teammates do the same thing.

It's a lot of work to read articles when people post them or evaluate a tool. It's even more work to form an interesting opinion about it and discuss it.

I enjoy researching things on my own time, but I find it stressful to add to my workload at work, especially when it's not related to the other work I'm already doing.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#210

Post by rcarmo » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 7:27 PM UTC

DharmaPolice wrote: post #64

rcarmo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

We could jump on calls well over seven years ago (I actually worked in ISDN video calling in the 1990s, and spent a decade or so working in a multinational telco, with plenty of conference calling involved).

The loss of focus definitely accelerated with the rise of chat.