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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#411

Post by 71bw »

kqr wrote: post #227
tetromino_ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious Suspicious in that it's only twice a month? When my kid first started preschool, we got exposed to all sorts of wonderful novel viruses, and I had respiratory infections of various sorts for probably 50% of the days for the entire autumn and winter. Most of them not rising to the level of high fever and not being able to work, but definitely noticeably…

For anyone curious: an average of 1.2 instances per month the first year and a half. During the worst season, it can be twice in a month, sure. https://entropicthoughts.com/how-often-does-a-child-get-sick (Child spent 16 % of the year sick. Across two parents, that is nearly a month of absence in a year.)

I might not exactly be the benchmark for this but for the entirety of preschool and then the first 4 years of primary school I went in for a week and took 2 weeks of what I would now call sick leave. Left me with a heart disease and a real scare for what I should do if I ever have kids to avoid this happening to them.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#412

Post by owl57 »

deathanatos wrote: post #294
eldenring wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, also doscoverability is not an issue with Slack. You can find most things with a search, people typically don't go scrolling through a channel to find something.

What a Poe's Law of a comment. Slack's search is … okay … but there are any number of times when I have issues finding a thread I was looking at prior. For all the AI hype that is the current time, search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant" when "sorting by relevance" or b.) … find the thread when I use a synonym of an exact word in the thread. Or the other da…

> search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant"

I find "Exclude automations" toggle to be good enough. But we might have very different workspaces, as I usually don't see the point of "sorting by relevance" at all: for my purposes, relevance is almost always better approximated by date than whatever Slack's ML team comes up with.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#413

Post by pammf »

fallous wrote: post #395
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…

A common mistake that some managers make is pushing the burdens of managing onto those you're managing. Any of us who have been managers can look back and see things that we tried to push down to those we've managed because it made it easier for us while later realizing that wasn't the best solution. If there's a catch-all channel that employees are using to share knowledge that's not a bug, it's a feature. If, as a…

> If, as a manager, you want a more structured means of conveying institutional knowledge generated within such channels then it's on you to put that together

Isn’t the GP describing exactly that?

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#414

Post by throwaway2037 »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #351
jamesog wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Always funny to see these sort of missed connections on HN. > internal blogs In my personal experience the problem is the total lack of writing culture at non-premiere companies. Put differently: unless you’re working on a great team at a great organization roughly 90% of people cannot be expected to write/read well as a component of technical collaboration. Any thoughts on that? I may just be too cynical

From my personal experience, internal Wikis are 90+% written by about 5% of the workforce. The vast majority of internal Wiki users are "read-only". That is fine. Really: Read that twice. It is OK that the vast majority of docs are written by the few who are highly motivated to do it. When I write for an internal Wiki, I am trying to reduce the number of future questions that people will ask me. If they do come with a question, my first answer is always: Did you search our Wiki? It only takes once or twice for them to change.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#415

Post by novia »

makeitdouble wrote: post #37

> Each ramblings channel should be named after the team member, and only that person can post top-level messages. Others can reply in threads, but not start new ones. I'm trying hard to understand why it has to be a personal channel. Water coolers aren't personal, that's the whole point. In particular you're still adjusting what you write to be OK for anyone in your team read, so the distinction with the other "casua…

The reason it's analogous to water-cooler talk for each person to have their own channel is because when you go to get some water, and see other coworkers milling about, you're going to know which coworker you're interested in talking to, who often has interesting insights, who might have something interesting going on in their personal life that you'd like to hear more about. So, in the absence of a common meeting space, you can go check out the channels of people you're interested in, and scroll through to see if they've got anything interesting going on in their life.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#416

Post by throwaway2037 »

dbetteridge wrote: post #404
wonderwonder wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"WE ARE THE BORG. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. YOUR UNIQUENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR COLLECTIVE. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

It does feel a bit like that fighting institutional pressure to "optimise efficiency" and "reduce individual dependence". Your uniqueness is not tolerated, assimilate to the collective, follow the processes given to you, don't think individually. Except when solving these problems, they require creativity, be creative. BUT ONLY HERE

I like this post. It has the right balance between uncomfortable reality and some humour!

All middle managers (in my experience) talk a big game about reducing/preventing key person dependencies, but on 100% of my teams, there were always multiple key person dependencies. The real issue: If you are not the key person for anything, you are the easiest to layoff (fire).

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#417

Post by PeterStuer »

In my experience, every business social/communication channel will be gamed for (stealth or blatant) personal promotion.

At first not everyone will catch on to this. Those will be the first to be called into HR or get remarks on their anual review.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#418

Post by throwaway2037 »

kmarc wrote: post #96
rablackburn wrote: post #8

I did read the post, but allow me to also recommend rambling when you’re remote. As in, take time in your day to wander and roam. (I would go for a ~1hr hike in the mornings as my “commute”) It gives you a sense of distinction from being home or “at work”. The routine cardio, and musings you have while walking make it well worth it.

Indeed, I, as a fully remote, probably overworked person, sometimes wonder if I'm a loser just because I never * pick up Becky from school * feel under the weather today so I'll be offline and "take it easy" (never hear about me anymore today) * sorry "traffic jam" (10:00am) * sorry "train canceled" * will leave a bit early (2pm) for [insert random reason] appointment While all these can be completely valid reasons,…

I am mostly onsite, but I am careful to watch for exactly this kind of behaviour from mostly remote staff. If I see it, they are moved to the bottom of my "inner card deck" of people to help, as they basically are never helpful as teammates.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#419

Post by throwaway2037 »

bagacrap wrote: post #101
kmarc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I, as a fully remote, probably overworked person, sometimes wonder if I'm a loser just because I never * pick up Becky from school * feel under the weather today so I'll be offline and "take it easy" (never hear about me anymore today) * sorry "traffic jam" (10:00am) * sorry "train canceled" * will leave a bit early (2pm) for [insert random reason] appointment While all these can be completely valid reasons,…

I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under the weather" events. However I do think we need to make extra room for parents (I am not one, yet). I'm going to need a doctor who's younger than me when I'm 80+ Folks could always just disappear instead of announcing these things, but is that better? And as a senior on my team, I over announce certain stuff to let the other team members know that WLB is ok.

    > I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under the weather" events.
I will give you an easy answer: The person might have mental health issues (depression or anxiety) that they do not want to share. I use them from time to time to sleep a bit late just for the hell of it.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#420

Post by dbetteridge »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #416
dbetteridge wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel a bit like that fighting institutional pressure to "optimise efficiency" and "reduce individual dependence". Your uniqueness is not tolerated, assimilate to the collective, follow the processes given to you, don't think individually. Except when solving these problems, they require creativity, be creative. BUT ONLY HERE

I like this post. It has the right balance between uncomfortable reality and some humour! All middle managers (in my experience) talk a big game about reducing/preventing key person dependencies, but on 100% of my teams, there were always multiple key person dependencies. The real issue: If you are not the key person for anything, you are the easiest to layoff (fire).

Thanks, the humour helps keep the melancholy at bay.

Agreed, you never want to be the one holding no secrets when the music stops.

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