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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#181

Post by Aurornis »

liveoneggs wrote: post #98

I strongly agree with the title but the prescribed details are not to my taste. Pick a channel grouping that makes sense (by-team/by-project/by-manager) and Just Start Typing. Busy channels are alive and will create their own culture organically. Freely mix in work talk with pictures of cool stuff you found while walking the dog. "threads" makes this extremely manageable.

> "threads" makes this extremely manageable.

Strongly agree. This is what threads in the project channel are for.

Creating excessive channels for everything gets out of hand quickly. It’s a habit you see from people who worked at small companies before threads were available on discussion platforms.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#182

Post by ducktective »

ronbenton wrote: post #159
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”

> Hey Veo, guess what? New plot for another Black Mirror episode just dropped

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#184

Post by chaz6 »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #141

Huh, just realised my team did this organically without realising it. People were often hesitant to ask questions they perceived as 'dumb' in the group chat, and definitely unwilling to post anything seen as complaining/moaning about problems. We created a second chat without any managers in it, with a description clarifying it was a dumping ground for questions and comments that didn't fit in other chats. It sees a…

I always ask the "dumb" questions, even when I already know the answer, because there are always people too intimidated to speak up, and it sometimes facilitates a deeper discussion.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#185

Post by scarface_74 »

layer8 wrote: post #99
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> work-related topics can count as work time whereas the private ones doesn’t All of these people are salaried, why does it matter?

What do you mean? Your employment contract says you need to work n hours per week. Private activities obviously don’t count as work.

I have never once had a contract that said I’m expected to work n hours a week.

In fact it is just the opposite, salaried employees are paid the same no matter how many hours worked.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#186

Post by calvinmorrison »

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #165
ronbenton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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”

Recently $DAYJOB has been moving more and more towards Office Space. But none of the young'ins are aware of it. So I just showed them the scene with the Bobs. Their faces were priceless. I doubt any of them came to office with same mindset again.

Mine certainly is. If my employees don't fill out their timesheets and tps reports how will I do payroll

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#187

Post by theideaofcoffee »

softwaredoug wrote: post #173

There is a kind of leader that's threatened when they don't control communication. In these cases, random thought bombs on slack feel like chaos. Like people are going in random directions not rowing together. I don't think this is true of course -- people are just sharing inspiration and ideas. But in some places / cultures just rambling on slack can be dangerous and put a target on your back. You can be labeled as…

This is true because it has happened to me. I was at a place where there was a very ingrained hierarchy in the culture where people were afraid to ask questions in public (slack), to discuss problems and solutions, because the "leaders" were so thin-skinned, doing anything outside of being ticket-solving machines was seen as wholly objectionable.

I got tired of the abject fear that some of those idiots were stoking so I took it upon myself to set the example for the more junior people and started rambling and asking questions and doing the things that the "leaders" obviously didn't like. You can imagine how that went as I got a bit more bold week after week... I've never been more relieved, and proud, to be canned.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#188

Post by swiftcoder »

throwaway290 wrote: post #152
swiftcoder wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I feel like we could probably just distribute everyone in a virtual circle - as if they are sitting around a big conference table - and skip the VR headset part of this

(don't get me wrong, I like a VR headset, but it's not something I've managed to work into my coding and docs writing setup just yet).

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#189

Post by JustExAWS »

larrydag wrote: post #92
nasalgoat wrote: post #85

I worked at a large fully remote company and it had dedicated topic channels you could join. I thought that was an excellent solution since people could discuss their interests with other employees without it seeming like a corporately mandated chat break. I now work for a much smaller company and I miss the chat channels.

I agree. Group channels on relevant topics is very helpful. Especially on technical details relevant to getting work done. Yet here goes my rant. Nothing can replace a good in-person interaction. Perhaps I'm the old guy in the room. When teams are trying to build something there is nothing like water-cooler talk and banter about the work that helps relate shared challenges. Granted this is going to very specific to o…

I’m also an old guy at 51. I have been in cloud consulting for the last five+ years and I’m perfectly capable of leading large projects remotely.

I can do it in person. But I find diagramming with collaborative tools, shared Google docs, etc to be much better than in person drawing on a whiteboard. There are remote collaborative tools for everything.

With the tools available now, you can record all of the meetings and don’t have to take notes, have transcripts automatically generated and summarized with AI. I can then take all of the transcripts and other artifacts, throw them in Google’s NotebookLM and ask questions and get answers about the project (with citations).

I do the same for transcripts of meetings I am not in - mostly pre-sales.

Yes these are all approved tools.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#190

Post by Aurornis »

hk__2 wrote: post #48
9dev wrote: post #6

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. 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.

That will last until the first person shares a link to their rambling channel or the first time a pair of team members discuss something at standup that only appeared in someone’s ramblings channel.

Every time a company has said “you should mute and ignore this channel” but also encourages relevant project discussion in that channel, it becomes something people realize they need to unmute and monitor.

The only people who have the luxury of completely ignoring channels are managers and leads, because they can dictate how people need to bring information to them.

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