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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#151

Post by ipdashc »

layer8 wrote: post #77

> Common topics include: > - ideas related to current projects > - musings about blog posts, articles, user feedback > - “what if” suggestions > - photos from recent trips or hobbies > - rubber ducking a problem Work-related and private topics should be separated, IMO. Some might be interested in the former but not the latter, and also might be interested in them at different times (of the day/week). There’s also the…

> Work-related and private topics should be separated, IMO.

Why does it feel like people take this (reasonable) idea too far so often these days (and always on the Internet - I've never seen anyone in real life act like that).

Like, yes, don't treat your job like a family or spend your whole day talking about your personal drama. Be careful or avoid dating coworkers. Etc. But this stuff is, as the author said, the equivalent of water cooler talk.

If I had a salaried job that tracked the fact that I spent 15 minutes (when not on a time crunch, of course) talking about some random interesting blog post or a coworker's trip, I would... probably look into leaving that job. I have never had a job that met that description. (On the contrary, many jobs I had, especially back as an intern/student, let us get away with way too much time spent fooling around or talking, in retrospect.)

Even the stereotypical overworked fast food employee is allowed to chat with their coworkers when there's downtime, it's perfectly normal. I can't imagine pursuing the "work/life balance" ideal to the point one avoids regular old casual conversation with their coworkers.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#152

Post by throwaway290 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #135
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak so its extremely your-turn-my-turn in a way that an organic, in-person group socialization isn't. It isn't as jarring in a 1:1 because you can watch that person's face and without much effort predict when they're going to speak and so not interrupt them. When it goes beyond that, the flow of the conversation gets stil…

> group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak I do wonder if there are any technical solutions to be found to this. Now that high-speed fibre is pretty widespread, what if we transmitted every participants audio feed to every other participant, and merged them on the client, instead of the server?

Metaverse and VR Chat? They mix on the client because also you get to hear where each speaker is in the space next to you. Without it in zoom it's just one garble if more than one person talks

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#153

Post by 9dev »

starttoaster wrote: post #120
9dev wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you still know they are there, and that your colleagues should perceive you as at least casually interested in what the others are up to. Even if muted, these channels inevitably become another liability.

I think everyone knows and silently understands that the people responding/emoji-ing in those channels all day every day are doing so at the cost of work output, and that there are a lot of people working that aren't typing away about the last audiobook they listened to. I think you've created a stressful situation out of something that isn't inherently stressing.

Generating business value is not your only responsibility, though. Most companies expect you to be a team player, to stay in touch, to communicate across departments, and so on.

So depending on your work environment, communicating and responding quickly may be implicitly expected and not conforming may lead to stagnation in your career.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#154

Post by ghaff »

parpfish wrote: post #97
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak so its extremely your-turn-my-turn in a way that an organic, in-person group socialization isn't. It isn't as jarring in a 1:1 because you can watch that person's face and without much effort predict when they're going to speak and so not interrupt them. When it goes beyond that, the flow of the conversation gets stil…

Even worse is the situation our hybrid half-remote/half-inperson company runs into during meetings: The in-person group will go into the conference room and naturally start multiple rambling side conversations. But the remote people just have to sit there and watch. Usually they can’t really hear each of these conversations and you can’t casually join a room-based side conversation from the remote because any audio t…

And the probably correct alternative is that if some people are just on video, everyone should be on individual video.

The the in-person group tends to be resentful that they've commuted into the office just to spend a good chunk of their day at their desks on Zoom calls.

It's always a tradeoff. Even pre-COVID and hybrid work at large companies, you were dealing with groups at different locations, often in vastly different timezones. But certainly current hybrid work makes the dynamics even trickier.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#155

Post by Aurornis »

codingdave wrote: post #143

I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post. Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me. In my experience, "rambling" channels build up organically... as you have a thought, you share it with someone relevant, not just drop it into a channel and see who reads it. Over time, small group chats evolve naturally, and as…

> I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post

This seems to happen a lot: Someone writes some highly exaggerated career advice that has good intent at the core but turns into overly weird suggestions by the end. They might be trying to be memorable or to make an impact by exaggerating the advice.

Then some people, often juniors, take it literally and start practicing it. They think they’re doing some secret that will make them the best employee. Their coworkers and managers are more confused than impressed and think it’s just a personality quirk.

As a manager I found it helpful to skim Reddit and other sites for semi-viral advice blogs like this. With enough juniors in a company there’s a chance one of them will suddenly start doing the thing written in a shared post like this. Knowing why they’re doing it is a good way to help defuse the behavior (assuming they don’t really benefit but rather do it because they perceive it will look good)

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#156

Post by scarface_74 »

I hate this idea. If I have an idea I think we should implement when I was a mod level developer [1] and had to get buy in for it, I would think it through and ask for a coworkers opinion, take their suggestions, and then keep reaching out to who I thought would be my toughest critics until I got their buy in.

Once I was convinced that I had enough buy in, I would then officially propose it in a team setting. It’s called “pre-wiring a meeting”.

Now it’s more of getting peer reviews and sanity checks than anything else before I go down a road. We also have Slack channel where we ask for peer reviews now of architectural decisions (working in cloud consulting).

[1] My title has been “Senior Developer” for decades at various companies. But in reality, based on “scope”, “impact”, etc not “I codez real good” I was really what would be considered a mid level developer until a decade ago.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#157

Post by ghaff »

9dev wrote: post #72
hk__2 wrote: post #48

Earlier 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.

But you still know they are there, and that your colleagues should perceive you as at least casually interested in what the others are up to. Even if muted, these channels inevitably become another liability.

Yeah. It's either channels that you actively engage with or you effectively block. For active communication purposes the "you might see it" in-between option isn't really very effective. It happens anyway to some degree. But isn't ideal.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#158

Post by Aurornis »

majke wrote: post #132

Let me share a personal story. Back in 2014 when I was working at Cloudflare on DDoS mitigation I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". I quickly realised that these conversations had value outside the two of us - pretty much everyone else…

I understand the point you were making, but from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid. Having a place to have people ask questions is great and encouraged, but doing anything that starts gravitating the knowledge toward a person instead of a topic creates problems for discoverability, searchability, and risks creating the impression (for new employees) that certain specific people are at the center of projects they just happen to know a lot about.

So while the Q&A format is good to have available, I’d discourage creating separate channels around a person. I would encourage everyone to just go to the appropriate topic channel and discuss it there.

I do the same thing when someone starts asking specific technical questions in #random or #general: Redirect to the project specific channel. That’s the place where all of the relevant people will be relevant and watching and it’s the first place they’ll search in the future.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#159

Post by ronbenton »

codingdave wrote: post #143

I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post. Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me. In my experience, "rambling" channels build up organically... as you have a thought, you share it with someone relevant, not just drop it into a channel and see who reads it. Over time, small group chats evolve naturally, and as…

“I see you’ve only had 15 rambles this week”

“Isn’t 15 the minimum?”

“Well, yeah, if you just want to do the bare minimum. But look at Todd over there - he has 37 rambles”

“Well if you wanted people to have 37 rambles why wouldn’t you make that the minimum”

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#160

Post by closewith »

kmarc wrote: post #149
jzb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, why? The other day I had a killer headache. Just couldn’t shake it. I did everything I needed to that was time sensitive, then went AFK. I don’t see any reason to be suspicious of others if they do similarly—we all have days when we’re just not at our best for some reason.

To defend @bagacrap, they said they tend to be a bit suspicious. And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'm all in for more times off for parents, more PTOs, sabbaticala, etc. But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious.

> And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?)

I'd say you're missing the hint that it is none of your business.

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