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

231–240 of 326 posts

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#231

Post by lapcat »

jewayne wrote: post #213
lapcat wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a good analogy. For one thing, toddlers don't tie their shoes: the average age for learning to tie your shoes is 6 years old. And it's not clear that kids will learn for themselves if you give them a few hours. We're not talking about letting junior engineers struggle for weeks or months, but they can bang their heads for a few hours or maybe even a few days and figure out a lot of things for themselves. Th…

I don't think you get it. Letting a junior engineer bang their heads for a few days on something you could show them in ten minutes is just a waste of time and money. In my experience there are PLENTY of real problems for them to solve, things I DON'T know the answer for.

You can't just consider one question and one answer in isolation. The questions and answers add up. It's a waste of the senior engineer's time to spend ten minutes each answering every question of junior engineers who are constantly asking questions, seemingly incapable of helping themselves. The senior engineer becomes a glorified babysitter, and the junior engineers then never learn to solve problems for themselves, which will waste everyone's time in the future.

Not every problem is going to take junior engineers days to solve for themselves. I was stating an upper bound of how much rope to give them, not an average.

Besides, what happens when the senior engineer leaves the company? Sometimes "institutional knowledge" walks out of the institution.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#232

Post by JohnMakin »

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…

This is why I went back to the office, but it took me a very long time to realize it.

Try to exercise a lot during the day, it helps.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#233

Post by pnutjam »

whateverman23 wrote: post #230
pnutjam wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate how it's better in person? Remote: I can see and hear the person. I can see their screen. I can copy past back and forth (as can they) through the screen sharing app. I can invite others into the training pretty much instantly. I can send links and commands typed properly in the chat. User can record session for later. In person: Usually have to face the person or the screen, can't see both. I have t…

Everything you can do remotely, you can do in person as well. I don't know why you think you can't screen share or send links and commands in a chat if you're in person. So at minimum, in person would be the same. So I can't possibly see how in person could be worse.

So you're just ranting, no data and looks like no experience. OK

In person is worse. I've done both. It's noisier, you're crammed into a cube taking notes, etc. If you're going to use remote tools, what's the benefit of in person?

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#234

Post by brailsafe »

mcguire wrote: post #212
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…

Few people mention the difficulties of the other paradigm, though. I've had lot of hallway conversations where, if I don't write down some notes, it's gone. Plus, if you don't have any control over it, having someone stop by your desk is a significant interruption. Ever been in a situation where you asked someone for something you need done, they said yes verbally, it didn't get done, and now everyone is looking at y…

Ya I'd probably consider switching careers before returning to the tyranny of my manager just being able to pop up behind me. Fuck that.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#235

Post by fuzztester »

rcarmo wrote: post #8
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…

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…

Smaller attention spans, information overload, and consequent lack of attention to detail, are some of the reasons, IMO.

And the first two of those are largely due to the uncontrolled effects of the Internet, i.e. the web and social media, on people, of course.

Edit: wording

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#236

Post by antisthenes »

Brystephor wrote: post #218

I graduated from school in Spring 2020 and started working in Aug 2020. In that timeframe, I had not been inside an employers office more than 3 times. Since Mar 2023, we've had a "mandatory" 4 days in office every week. Here's what I've experienced since going the office: * Occasionally I'll get a good conversation with a teammate or manager about something technical, but the frequency has not gone up. The technical…

> A lot of people in the office prefer to speak to each other in languages other than english. Everyone on my team (my manager + all my coworkers on my team) prefer speaking something other than english and do so unless I'm involved in the conversation.

If you're based in the US, this is just extremely rude.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#237

Post by fuzztester »

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…

>The ease with which we can all "jump on a call" has contributed to this.

I hate that term and concept "jump on a call". I often find that people don't prepare enough before the call, which defeats the purpose of the call.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#238

Post by okaram »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #220
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…

Even well done, this kind of communication doesn't substitute for more free-form 1:1s that in-person allows. The latter are key to building trust. I'm finding this to be one of the key drawbacks of remote work - some decisions require cross team trust and I've yet to see anything besides more frequent ad-hoc conversations that builds it. The problem is that the most trust building conversations tend to be "off-topic"…

Not sure if this would work for you, but I tend to have ad-hoc, 1on1 video calls with people.

If you are not doing deep work, it's no biggie.

I also would schedule 1on1 meetings to 'catch-up' (not too many of them, but ...)

Don't get me wrong, meeting some of these people in person is great, but I have several great relationships at work where we've never met in person

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#239

Post by antisthenes »

paulcole wrote: post #189
alemanek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Asking "how it's going?" without following up about a specific task is objectively bad.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#240

Post by brailsafe »

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…

Meh, I don't think this is an intrinsic quality of working in the same space. Sometimes it is, if you're very lucky, but my experience in offices was mostly wasteful interactions with people who weren't satisfied with me checking my messages periodically instead of instantly.
Post reply on HN