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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#251

Post by imchillyb »

gopalv wrote: post #237
mjevans wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of my favorite dialogs is from the pilot:

Ted Crisp: We do everything: industrial products, biomedical, cryogenics, defense technology.

Veronica Palmer: We want to weaponize a pumpkin.

Ted Crisp: Then so do I. Because?

Veronica Palmer: There's a country with whom we do business that grows a great deal of pumpkins and would welcome additional uses for them. As well as cheaper ways to kill their enemies.

Ted Crisp: Well, finally, the pumpkin gets to do something besides Halloween.

I believe this showcases, succinctly, corporate “ethics” in our society.

Absolutely anything to make a buck and strengthen trade.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#252

Post by throw10920 »

I put my work ramblings in daily journal notes in Markdown files in a git repository. Unfortunately, I don't spend the time to then ensure that they're accessible to my co-workers - and given the amount of value that I would get if they did that, I should do it myself.

Also, I'm very glad that I don't work in a place with Slack/chat culture. I really like the idea of making your ramblings available, but the thought of forcing everything into chat is repulsive. Just use a wiki page or files in a Git repo (as long as they're sufficiently easy to access) and that's good enough.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#253

Post by saltcured »

SoftTalker wrote: post #216
mjevans wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s so much like real work I can’t watch it. Same with The Office series.

Pay more attention to your surroundings, and eventually you can feel the same way about Schizopolis

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#254

Post by ryandrake »

Etheryte wrote: post #242
andrewrn wrote: post #236

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 draf…

I mean, no one is stopping you from going to church or bars or movies or clubs. All of those things are still there if that's what you fancy.

Yea, different strokes for different folks. Since going remote, I now have the choice about if, where, and when to interact with other people, and who those people should be. If I want to go two weeks without seeing another person (IRL, not counting video conference), I can do it. If I want to go out and socialize, I have 4 formerly-commuting hours back every day that I can use to do so.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#255

Post by mystifyingpoi »

stingraycharles wrote: post #69
count wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> just a few people talking and most people just listening and/or continuing their work.

Same experience on full time remote gig. Didn't help that my colleagues were mostly speaking about topics that I had zero interest in. So I just muted myself and practiced some guitar. You pay me for this time, you organized this meeting, so be it.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#256

Post by ryandrake »

ogou wrote: post #208
mjevans wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a distinction between random (probably not for work, 'water cooler chat') and 'obviously divisive' topics like politics. Particularly in the US, those are the sort of things you avoid.

Those distinctions evaporated in 2020 and never returned.

Must depend on the company/office. My team (200+ people) has a "offtopic/socialize" chat channel set up for this kind of rando chit chat, and it has never, not once in many years, even had a hint of divisiveness or politics. Yes, you do need to be working with grownups who can behave and leave that shit at home.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#259

Post by saltcured »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #229
Aurornis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the remote equivalent of banning informal conversations in the hall and saying "save it for the daily team meeting". It feels good as a manager to formalize things, but the best collaboration and ideas happen organically at less formal times and places - and those times are worth at least as much, if not more to the company than anything formal. You might as well say "no thinking about work in the shower."

Ouch, my wife has encountered almost exactly that in a recent brush with a biotech company that seems to have been infected by FAANG expats. She was advised that any kind of sidebar conversation is a faux pas.

I struggled to guess at the real motive. Is it some project manager's blatant control freakery? An org-level, cynical management attempt to commoditize their knowledge workers? Or some kind of emergent failure where culture morphs through openness -> radical transparency -> enforced conformism a la 1984?

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#260

Post by oulipo »

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 don't think he mentioned anywhere "expected"? it's more a kind of log, of stuff you'd like to share in a fuzzy way, but don't know where
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