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If you're remote, ramble
51–60 of 479 posts
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#52Ramble in the panopticon?
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#53The cynic in me says this ends up as yet another list of channels that I need to scan for anything interesting, and interact with to keep up an appearance of engagement. I appreciate any effort to increase social cohesion in remote teams, but intermingling it with one of the main stressors of my work environment—keeping up with team communication—isn’t the right way IMHO.
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Re: If you're remote, ramble
#54In my experience, these kind of channels end up being filled with complaints about the company/processes/managers/c-levels… (ofc, managers are not invited to these private channels)
Like, if the ceo said something very stupid in the last All Hands, well, you use the ramble channel to talk about it. Sometimes this works (you feel like you’re not the only one that thinks X), but it could easily go south.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#55I've been working remote for over 25 years, and one of the better options to what this post is describing is to open, and leave open a voice channel / speaker phone on in all the locations that a remote team operates. Of course, this is not every day, but is used to create a "shared virtual space" that is very useful when the team is exploring something new as a group, and ambient conversation while doing so aids one another, plus social chatter and jokes are natural then too. Furthering a sense of community.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#56We used to have something very similar with our office coffee machine – spontaneous 1‑2 minute chats while grabbing a coffee. Sometimes it was just, “Sorry, can’t talk, swamped right now,” and the other person would rush off – but even that told you something.
These micro‑interactions gave valuable context: which teams were under pressure, where things might be stuck, and sometimes where a quick helping hand was needed.
When we went remote, we tried to recreate this with a single global “coffee chat” channel. It worked for a while, but quickly became noisy.
I really like your idea of having one ramblings channel per person instead. It feels like a cleaner way to keep that background awareness and human connection alive without overwhelming everyone. We’re going to try this next.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#57The cynic in me says this ends up as yet another list of channels that I need to scan for anything interesting, and interact with to keep up an appearance of engagement. I appreciate any effort to increase social cohesion in remote teams, but intermingling it with one of the main stressors of my work environment—keeping up with team communication—isn’t the right way IMHO.
> The cynic in me says this ends up as yet another list of channels that I need to scan for anything interesting, and interact with to keep up an appearance of engagement. The post says it’s channels you mute and you are not expected to interact with.
In teams and mattermost, they show up as bold and almost unavoidable to the eye. Any other software that truly mutes?
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#58A post encouraging more performative behavior at work, as if there wasn't enough already. By the way, my scrum update is yesterday I was mostly in meetings.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#59I've been working remote for over 25 years, and one of the better options to what this post is describing is to open, and leave open a voice channel / speaker phone on in all the locations that a remote team operates. Of course, this is not every day, but is used to create a "shared virtual space" that is very useful when the team is exploring something new as a group, and ambient conversation while doing so aids one…
At the start of the pandemic I saw tools that reminded me of old social flash games I would play as a kid (habbo hotel, club penguin, Gaia online) where you had a kind of avatar you could move around a 2D cubicle farm, and the program would adjust the volume of other people as they moved closer/further from you. Thered always be voice enabled (unless you muted obviousl) but i think the idea was to lower the social cost of initializing voice communication
Neat idea, but personally I think the benefit of working remotely is asynchronous communication - I think we should encourage more forum-like communication rather than something like a ventrillo channel, though bringing back vent would be cool
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#60I feel that part of what I’m paid for is to structure those ramblings into clear communications to be shared at the right time in the right meeting or channel.