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A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

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Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#141
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one key thing is, games are designed to be winnable. Despite what we tell children, in the real world, often clever ideas and hard work come to nothing.

Games can be designed to be winnable, but many games are not. Working hard is not the same as working smart. That's kinda what I was hinting at. Many people are able to make much better decisions in games compared to real life.

What games are not designed to be eventually winnable?

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#142

I still find it hard to believe that fully-async working style is more productive in the long run. My experience with it was that the pace of synchronous collaboration and decision making is about 5X faster than async. A group of engineers or a product team standing around a whiteboard in physical space is going to win the day every time IMO. Perhaps if a company has reached series A and developed a lot of in-person…

The teams I've loved working on make the best use of what people are good at doing.

The people that need to "get together" to share untested ideas so they can make a decision, or share analysis to provide evidence of the validity of a plan will do so without the engineers that do the work. There has to be someone there that has an idea of engineering or architecture, but not the whole team.

In other words, even just a product manager and a CTO or architect can figure out what needs done while not knowing the details of how it will be done, but then they'll pass that information on to the implementation team. Individuals are paid to figure out how and to execute on that.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games can be designed to be winnable, but many games are not. Working hard is not the same as working smart. That's kinda what I was hinting at. Many people are able to make much better decisions in games compared to real life.

What games are not designed to be eventually winnable?

Tetris and many Sim games come to mind.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#144
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason? Did you just go to sleep one night and wake up to find yourself in Finland? :)

he probably doesn't want to delve into it because it's not relevant the his point or a private matter. btw, is your name a pun on "Home De_pot" ?

Yes and yes. Just needed a unique username!

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#145

I still find it hard to believe that fully-async working style is more productive in the long run. My experience with it was that the pace of synchronous collaboration and decision making is about 5X faster than async. A group of engineers or a product team standing around a whiteboard in physical space is going to win the day every time IMO. Perhaps if a company has reached series A and developed a lot of in-person…

I think the major assumption is that collaboration is synonymous with productivity. Candidly, in my experience, the results of collaboration, a lightweight version of "design by committee," have always come back to bite in the long-run. Primarily the issues are: diffusion of responsibility and accountability (i.e., since we all came up with it, then if it goes wrong it was bound to happen and someone else is responsi…

Collaboration is absolutely required when the product is undefined. You as an engineer would not be able to do your job correctly unless you could communicate with a designer, a UX-researcher, a product manager, etc (unless of course you are talented enough to fulfill all of those roles by yourself).

Quite typically, communication between all of the above parties is required quite often, as snags are discovered along the way and they constantly require re-working and tweaking the original concept.

Re: A Video Game That Pays: Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

#146
post #127

I still find it hard to believe that fully-async working style is more productive in the long run. My experience with it was that the pace of synchronous collaboration and decision making is about 5X faster than async. A group of engineers or a product team standing around a whiteboard in physical space is going to win the day every time IMO. Perhaps if a company has reached series A and developed a lot of in-person…

That's an old outdated way of viewing the world. Everyone sitting around a whiteboard trying to brainstorm an idea is wasteful. Someone comes up with an idea and then everyone takes some credit and you've spent $10,000 and wasted the day but feel productive but deep down you know you didn't need most people in the room.

I disagree. My best ideas come in the presence of others. Something about the collective energy evokes new perspectives I did not have alone.

I think its a waste to get 10 engineers in the room to decide how to build a single module. That would be stupid.

But it likely makes sense to get a designer, an architect, and a product manager in a room. It might also make sense to get an embedded systems engineer, a cloud engineer, and a web engineer in a room to architect something.

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