Or just show up at the office once in a while.
If you're remote, ramble
61–70 of 479 posts
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#62I did read the post, but allow me to also recommend rambling when you’re remote. As in, take time in your day to wander and roam. (I would go for a ~1hr hike in the mornings as my “commute”) It gives you a sense of distinction from being home or “at work”. The routine cardio, and musings you have while walking make it well worth it.
This is also known as "driving your kids to school."
When my schedule allows, I walk my dog with my daughter and pause at her bus stop and meet her friends. Years ago it was a 45 minute walk, round trip, to daycare.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#63In 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.
Good point. You do need to create an environment where people feel safe to talk about anything, But it shouldn’t just become an endless complaint loop about the company.
I’ve seen this dynamic too: once people start venting, the channel can spiral. I sometimes wonder how to steer that energy into something constructive. Maybe it helps to let people express uncertainty or frustration before decisions are final, and to respond with context before things snowball.
It’s tricky, because most coworkers only overlap on the job itself, they might not share much else in common. so their “bonding” can easily turn into shared complaining.
Curious if anyone has found ways to keep that from going south without shutting people down completely.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#64I created a "watercooler" channel at my company to keep chitchat out of the main channel. It's a lot easier than juggling multiple channels.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Slack will turn them a muted colour, and they'll only get an unread indication if you're explicitly pinged by default, but I think you can turn even that off too.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
In teams and mattermost, they show up as bold and almost unavoidable to the eye. Any other software that truly mutes?
Slack will turn them a muted colour, and they'll only get an unread indication if you're explicitly pinged by default, but I think you can turn even that off too.
Hmm ok we don’t use Slack and it would have to be on prem due to company policy
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#67Love this idea for 2-10 person orgs, but it really doesn't scale.
I suppose you could do something similar with local sub-org/2-pizza team, but bit of a different vibe, and then if there is a #topic channel would your thought on topic go in #topic or #ramble-name?
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Muted channels in Slack do not indicate in any way when there's a new message.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#69> We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent of water cooler talk. This is the difference. Most teams have scheduled daily (!) meetings, so such rambling channels often times feel more like another chore and therefore fail because they haven't emerged of a natural need from the team.
We schedule a 2x a week 15-30 minute no-project-talk socialization meeting for our fully distributed team. It helps a LOT. We also have dedicated rambling channels in slack, active much of the day.
We tried that but it ended up being just a few people talking and most people just listening and/or continuing their work.
As a team lead within a small, fully remote company I’m struggling to find the right dynamics as I can see people really like to socialize (I have 3 1on1’s with each of them every week, and a lot of times we just talk about personal hobbies, what they did last weekend, etc), but it seems like in groups people end up being too shy to socialize.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#70This doesn't work top well with teammates who don't like to write to communicate, which is a surprising amount of people around me. (I'm the only one who writes tech docs)