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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#341

Post by kiitos »

jama211 wrote: post #314
kiitos wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in this post suggests any kind of expectation, mandate, or obligation to post anything in any kind of channel. The problem that this post is trying to address, is that these kinds of informal rambling channels -- which have enormous value -- almost never happen organically.

They say something about posting 3 times a week. Even if it’s not a formal obligation, it’ll certainly feel like one if they notice you never post whilst other people do.

it's pretty interesting to see this discrepancy in response to this idea

some folks -- i guess like you? -- read this and think, "oh, great. a mandate that fixes a problem i don't have, and now might be something i'm forced to participate in against my will"

and other folks -- definitely me, and i believe the OP as well -- read this and think, "oh, great! an idea that might help me with a problem that i have, and might be something i can point-to as one possible solution to that problem"

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#342

Post by 9dev »

paradox460 wrote: post #323
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.

I love using the unreads thing in slack while I'm brushing my teeth or waiting for my tea maker to finish. Tinder for work spam. Everything is processed as quickly as possible, into either "to-do" or "done/ignore"

If you’re working while brushing your teeth, you may want to question your working habits…

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#343

Post by stego-tech »

Seconding OP with my own experiences:

The best companies I’ve worked for freely encouraged workers to leverage chat or forums for non-work stuff. Rooms for AV enthusiasts, for sharing music, for discussing photography, corporate gripes, new ideas, personal projects, meeting colleagues on holiday, you name it.

You can absolutely have the spontaneity of physical collaboration through solely online and remote means. The internet itself is proof positive of this, companies just need to encourage that behavior more (and only minimally police it to avoid HR incidents or lawsuits).

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#344

Post by topato »

edm0nd wrote: post #288
topato wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was the first R rated movie I saw as a child (and probably the first movie I pirated, on pre-P2P networks). The grand wisdom of the Geto Boys (sic) has stuck with me ever since. "The type of chicks that'd double up on a dude like me do [care about money]" I've gotten way off topic

The first movie I can remember pirating was the original Fast and Furious movie using Napster (or KaZaA).

I've fotgotten: Did Napster eventually open up to sharing videos and software after MP3s? I can't remember if I'm just conflating it with memories of Kazaa (I was only 10 or 11 years old at the time, my memory is fuzzy lol). I know I got addicted to pirating and filesharing after being introduced to Hotline at an even younger age.

I couldn't buy rated M games or R rated movies, but I could certainly download them... which led me to my first graphics card and RAM upgrade, installing a TV tuner card, and eventually to PC building. Doing all this while in grade school was the best tech education I could get, especially back in the 90s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#345

Post by LouisSayers »

latchkey wrote: post #197
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…

> from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid I'd rather avoid the manager's perspective.

yeah, total buzzkill.

I get the need to call a peg a peg, but it's also good to allow a little fun as well or you end up with these dementors sucking the life out of a company.

For a slack group, I think it's relatively harmless if the focus is around casual shoot the shit convos.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#346

Post by hk__2 »

firesteelrain wrote: post #57
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.

In teams and mattermost, they show up as bold and almost unavoidable to the eye. Any other software that truly mutes?

Mattermost truly mutes.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#347

Post by jamesog »

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 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".

Hi, that's me! There were definitely a lot of fun conversations.

I liked that a culture of internal blogs became a thing too. It was good to see people brain dumping their experiments and findings. I think people learnt a lot from following all the internal blogs.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#350

Post by ljosifov »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #46

This type of writing down ideas and half-thoughts is useful even if you work alone. Thoughts are very fleeting, the instant you put them to paper (or bits) they materialize and it becomes much easier to evolve them. When doing deep work in some problem domain, often I find the brain starts to drop these highly ephemeral fragments of ideas (that are sometimes downright ingenious). Caveat is they often only come once,…

I stuff those in my logBook nowadays - a single ascii text file. Started as you say with notes on random scraps of paper. To relieve my mind of carrying that burden, when I have something more pressing to do. But yeah these half-thoughts, intuits etc have showed useful over time? Some made it into TODO, and latter even into the DONE entries. Even if mostly their final destination is DONTDO. :-)
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