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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#231

Post by kmarc »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #214
kmarc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do they perform adequately at their job in general? If so, who cares?

I cannot say all of them were performing bad

But yeah, some of them... Definitely.

Someone said in another thread, it's none of my business. Indeed. Especially as an external. I also would never report any of my suspicion. Sometimes,however, I'm blocked by this (waiting on others, etc.) so not entirely unaffected, tho

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#232

Post by BoxFour »

serf wrote: post #213
ZeroCool2u wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have an organic channel like this that's just called "Study Hall". People constantly ask technical questions and they know it's a judgement free zone. Probably one of the most productive chat channels in our org.

>and they know it's a judgement free zone. that's the thing that's so inorganic about this whole thing : it's not a judgement free zone, it's a zone that tricks people into presuming that. If some underling somewhere says something that exposes their ignorance or naivety to either a policy problem or a technical problem you'd better realize that it's going to trigger a 'review mechanism' somewhere down the road withi…

This strikes me as a somewhat unfair characterization of many of these communities. In my experience, a much more common issue is that the people who do have answers end up ignoring the group and it becomes pointless. It rarely becomes a source of career hindrance or long-lasting judgement, it just ends up being useless because there's not a lot of incentive for the expert side of the equation.

People who are likely to judge people for dumb questions are rarely involved in those groups in the first place, for exactly all the obvious reasons.

The more realistic outcome isn’t that your boss ends up a drunk puking slob (and for what it’s worth most of these groups don’t include leadership anyway, so not sure why anyone's boss would be involved) but that an intern floats a terrible idea ("I'm thinking of taking these 10 shots of 151"), nobody responds, they take silence as approval, and they end up causing a mess and then being judged for the mess they caused.

A quick gut check from them with a healthy group might get a few eye rolls and a "here's why that's a bad idea", but not any lasting judgement unless they completely ignored the advice.

The only case I can think of where that might happen is if they already did something which has policy or legal implications ("hey i accidentally dumped the whole user base including PII to my phone"), in which case - good? There should be a review mechanism, including consequences if they ignored a bunch of roadblocks.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#233

Post by twic »

bee_rider wrote: post #166
Aurornis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Maybe Agile was one of these things, but then a bunch of people started doing it literally.

Other way round, i think. The original form had a lot of weird practices which actually worked. The form most common today is just lip service.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#234

Post by kepano »

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…

> Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me.

I agree that if it becomes a top-down expectation or a performance metric it would be terrible. The practice at Obsidian was emergent and bottom-up. Maybe that's because of the small team size and flat structure. Also why the article states "They should be muted by default, with no expectation that anyone else will read them."

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#235

Post by throwaway290 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #188
throwaway290 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

sure... I'm just saying mixing on client already exists.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#236

Post by andrewrn »

I really cannot imagine working remote full-time, it sounds so depressing. We already don't go to church or bars or movies or clubs anymore. Work is one of the few remaining places to interact with other humans.

I'd be interested in trying this if I was remote, but I still just prefer in-person work.

I worked an in-person job recently at an oil company where we had no regular meetings (I was doing absolute grunt drafting work), and it was the most depressing experience of my life. This would be better than in-person w/o water cooler chats.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#237

Post by gopalv »

mjevans wrote: post #192
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”

Ref: Office Space (Movie) Flare at the restaurant (I believe it's a spoof on TGI Fridays / Chillis etc) If you have not seen Office Space ... It has a couple raunchy things and it's general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000 USA so go in with about that level of culture expectations. Having said that, it's a GREAT movie which is practically a comedic documentary of US office politics and tropes. Though…

> The movie showcases culture and human nature more than any particular era.

Most of my middle management experiences has been between Office Space and Better off Ted.

One with "Don't care" as an answer and the other says "Care more" as its.

Those are the two extremes of the genre.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#238

Post by kqr »

chaz6 wrote: post #184
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.

It also gives you cover to ask questions that reveal politically inconvenient truths: you can pretend you had no idea that answer would pop out of it.

(Of course, in an organisation that contains many politically inconvenient truths, you can easily end up doing that too much and people will catch on to it and dislike what you're doing. Another drawback is you have to be willing to look stupid and trust that the stupid first impression goes away with time.)

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#239

Post by waynesonfire »

mjevans wrote: post #192
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”

Ref: Office Space (Movie) Flare at the restaurant (I believe it's a spoof on TGI Fridays / Chillis etc) If you have not seen Office Space ... It has a couple raunchy things and it's general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000 USA so go in with about that level of culture expectations. Having said that, it's a GREAT movie which is practically a comedic documentary of US office politics and tropes. Though…

> general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000 USA

there is white people rapping and Michael Bolton is ashamed of his name. Tread carefully folks!

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#240

Post by seadan83 »

Aurornis wrote: post #158
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…

I've found the best way to kill a conversation is to point out the appropriate place the conversation should have started.
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