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Remote

robertgreiner.com

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Re: Remote

#51

Post by scott_s »

001sky wrote: post #49
scott_s wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(what they're really saying is "fuck you, thats what you get for isolating yourself") I think that's not a charitable interpretation. Two alternative explanations, which are not mutually exclusive: 1. Most people don't like confrontation or rejection; they find it awkward and uncomfortable, even if it's done politely. After interrupting you a few times, they find that they are generally rebuffed, so they stop interru…

Theres a term for that! I think its called passive agression . Passive agression and active accomodation (ie, being nice) shouldn't be confused though. The purpose of course, for the adversary, is to disguise the former as the latter to gain a tactical advantage. While the laguage used by the parent was (somewhat) blunt, I don't think the pheonomenan he is describing is an empirical anomaly. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

No, that is not what I am trying to describe. Passive aggressive behavior is still acting with malice. I am talking about people who want to do the right thing by someone, but can't figure out what that is.

Re: Remote

#52

Post by anupshinde »

I've been working remotely since approx 3 years as an individual contributor (programmer). Here's my take from an individual's perspective-

There have been rare times, when I have "felt" the need to work from office to be able to collaborate better. Faster and better collaboration: I think that is the only advantage work-from-office has to offer.

BUT, the office distractions in the name of collaboration, far outweigh the advantages of being in office.

Low-latency high bandwidth networks at remote work place tend to remove the pains in online collaboration. It feels just like being there.

"In person meetups" - I am not too sure if short meetups really help team cohesion. I believe it takes at least 2 work-weeks in office to improve team cohesion that way. I've also found online meets towards common goals (like new product idea brainstorming) - pretty effective in improving team cohesion (or sometimes leads to groupism).

Personally, I find switching work space for a week or couple of days, from my regular (remote) work space - makes me feel better.

Re: Remote

#53

Post by anupshinde »

joshyeager wrote: post #39
trustfundbaby wrote: post #35

The biggest challenge for me is that I'm starting to realize that people don't really get asynchronous communication as much as I thought they would. Putting on your headphones at the office and trying to get work done is seen as antisocial and hostile (especially daring to direct people to try to get you on im or email), and you find yourself shut out of critical decision points meetings because people will say "we…

Here is an alternate way to interpret the scenario in your second paragraph: Putting on your headphones at the office and trying to get work done is seen as a signal that you need to concentrate. You find yourself shut out of critical decision points meetings because people needed to make a decision but assumed you were deep in thought and couldn't take an interruption. Balancing these two needs is hard.

If "critical decision points" are seriously that critical, they would occur lesser and you don't need to balance that. Since its critical, you must attend it.

But if "critical decision points" are coming in very frequently - you are probably not delegating work or you have a team that doesn't raise issues in daily meetings, or that simply "can't decide" or "doesn't have the freedom to decide independently" or "do not want to take responsibility to decide for some reason".

Re: Remote

#54

Post by voltagex_ »

scott_s wrote: post #38

Funny, I just got off the phone with someone I work remotely with. We communicate asynchronously regularly. And that's great. But sometimes there's no substitute for a 10 minute phone call to discuss a technical topic. The amount of time it takes for two parties to draft and write responses to technical points can be quite high, and the back-and-forth required to correct misunderstandings can take several round-trips…

The difficulty of this is higher if you're working across timezones. You need to plan a bit further ahead if you need a technical conversation with someone who's in say, Australia (like me).

That said, I don't mind occasionally* getting up at 6am for this.

*This means occasionally, not frequently.

Re: Remote

#57

Post by joshyeager »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #45
joshyeager wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an alternate way to interpret the scenario in your second paragraph: Putting on your headphones at the office and trying to get work done is seen as a signal that you need to concentrate. You find yourself shut out of critical decision points meetings because people needed to make a decision but assumed you were deep in thought and couldn't take an interruption. Balancing these two needs is hard.

You find yourself shut out of critical decision points meetings because people needed to make a decision but assumed you were deep in thought and couldn't take an interruption Still sounds like a dick move to me, if the office were on fire and you were taking a nap in the breakroom would people leave you to sleep while they got out to save themselves? probably not. Thats, an extreme example but if you follow it, you…

The problem is that the difference between a routine decision and a critical one is not always obvious at the time, especially if the person who would know that this particular decision is critical is unavailable.

One solution is to build a team culture that communicates asynchronously by default, like what 37 Signals describes. This has efficiency costs, but it does seem to work.

Another solution is to co-locate everyone, communicate frequently face-to-face, and build cultural norms that reduce the cost to individual productivity. My team is working on this approach, but we are considering the benefits of remote work and asynchronous communication.

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