The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace • Hacker News Board

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#121

Post by atomwaffel » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #86

tyfon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I work remotely in Norway with a similar commute, but I do travel into the office for some face to face meetings. Most is done via slack or something similar though and my productivity is vastly higher. I also don't need to waste 2 hours every day of my personal time that I can instead spend with my wife and children. They also save on office space.. I don't see how this is not a win win for everyone eithe…

That's South/Central Europe for you. Not everywhere is as evolved as Norway.

Eh, I work in Norway and while I can work remotely on request, my inquiry about doing so regularly one day a week was met with “what if shit hits the fan and we need you here urgently” from my manager (my house is a ten minute walk from the office) and “if we allow one person to work remotely, everyone will want to” from HR.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#122

Post by anbotero » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

monkeydust wrote: post #90

Personally I think flexibility is the future. Allow employees to decide or work inhouse or remotely. I work in a very large financial services technology company. I value to closeness to colleges and the quick, sharp interactions that can happen with that - but - there are times when I am wokring on something larger I would be more effective at home or a remote location where sales etc can physically come to my desk…

I think this is key, but it costs a lot from companies (and also people), culturally, economically, and sometimes constrained by law.

Should you keep all seats even when 20% of your workforce prefers to work remote? What do you do with those seats when they are empty? It's possible, and it's great when it's there, just not as simple as choosing one option or the other.

I happen to prefer to work alone, but I recognize those times when meetings or pair programming are truly valuable and needed, and I jump to it at once when needed. It's about recognizing the pros and cons of each approach, and minimize the impact of the cons as much as you can.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#123

Post by growlist » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

otaviokz wrote: post #111

growlist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that amuses me - you can provide the very simplest tools (such as an issue tracker report) and some managers will still utterly refuse to use them, to the point of open hostility, because it somehow undermines their position to open a link and read an online report as opposed to asking a subordinate to read it to them instead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unfortunately there's always people living in the 1800s...

True. The enterprise sometimes keeps going in spite of its leaders...

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#124

Post by BeetleB » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

This is amusing. Not long ago I was in a thread about how to do remote work well and the top complaint amongst remote workers was "not responding quickly to IM" (between remote workers). And the general sentiment was the expectation to respond quickly is greater in remote work. That alone made me not want to take remote jobs. At my current work place, my IM status says that whoever IM's me should not expect a response and that if their query is urgent, they should simply walk over to my cube and talk (I don't mind). If not urgent, they should email.

The other thing that came out of that thread was "If you're remote and don't respond quickly enough, people assume you're slacking off - while in the office people visibly slack off all the time and it's considered OK".

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#125

Post by xtat » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

How do I upvote this harder!

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#126

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #2

I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…

[deleted]

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#127

Post by k__ » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #124

This is amusing. Not long ago I was in a thread about how to do remote work well and the top complaint amongst remote workers was "not responding quickly to IM" ( between remote workers). And the general sentiment was the expectation to respond quickly is greater in remote work. That alone made me not want to take remote jobs. At my current work place, my IM status says that whoever IM's me should not expect a respon…

I worked with both types of people.

Funny thing is, when I am a freelancer, who gets paid much more money per hour than an employee, people valued my time and would send me mails or text messages and wait hours or days for an answer,.

When I was an remote employee, people paid me less and called me three times before 10am.

Somehow, many employers have the perception to own every minute their employees are awake.

I would never go back to such a work culture.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#128

Post by siffland » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

thrownaway954 wrote: post #58

nabdab wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a valid concern. If you don’t have transparency into ongoing work, then you aren’t ready for remote workers. If the only method for your manager to know what people are working on is to tap people on shoulders, then doing that isn’t a “bad behavior” for the manager, it’s necessary behavior. Of cause a better solution is to have trust and plans. (Agile, scrum, waterfall, napkin sketches or whatever it doesn’t mat…

My manager _constantly_ will shout out, "does anyone know what X is working on?" It pisses me off to high hell that a manager has to ask his workers what another worker is working on. I honestly think that EVERYONE should be using a ticket tracking system and just put assignments in a person's queue. I don't see why this is such a big deal or looked down upon. It's so easy to see what everyone is working on, run repo…

A huge problem with ticketing systems is then management uses it to track all productivity.

We had a ticketing system and one guy in our group had between 60% and 80% more tickets than the rest of us. So it would seem we were all slackers, however he took the tickets that took like 2 minutes to do (password resets, account unlocks, etc...), meanwhile i would get stuck troubleshooting a production performance issue that would consume hours. Management didn't care what the ticket was, they liked to see pretty numbers of tickets completed.

I might be the only one who had this experience, and i am not saying ticketing systems are bad, they are extremely useful, as long as everyone knows how they work.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#129

Post by danShumway » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

greggman2 wrote: post #68

Since remote work seems to be the topic this article on async communication spawned I wanted to throw this out there for reactions. First off let me acknowledge that some people prefer remote work and also say up front I do not. I recent YouAreNotSoSmart podcast interviewed Laurie Santos from Yale and if I understood her research basically claims we often both individually and as a society choose things we think will…

I'm sympathetic to this line of thought. I don't think remote work is for everyone.

However, I see fewer people on net because I work in-office. Basically just my coworkers, no one else. The vast majority of public interactions I have going into work are fleeting and poor (driving next to someone, ignoring someone on the train with headphones). At work, I talk to the same people every single day. Then because of my commute time, I get home late enough that I can't go out or do anything after work. On weekends, I usually have chores to do that I can't do during the week because of how busy I am.

In comparison, back when I was working from home, I would go running and pass people on trails. I would go to meetups at my local church after I got out of work, or take trips into the city to attend conferences on weekends. If you're spending 2 hours or above commuting to work every day (which is not that unusual), you're going to be pushed towards human interactions that are very brief and inconsequential, because you literally will not have time to do anything more significant.

Quality vs quantity matters a lot here. I think people occasionally hype up inter-office relationships too much. I like the people I work with, but I would much rather spend my limited "interaction time" on family members or friends that I've known for years, instead of on coworkers and commuters on the train. I make casual conversation with my coworkers, I don't talk to them about intimate struggles or goals in my life.

Not everyone wants to work remotely because they're antisocial -- sometimes it's literally the opposite motivation.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#130

Post by auiya » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

> It leads to lower quality discussions and suboptimal solutions. When you have to respond immediately, people don’t have time to think through key issues thoroughly and provide thoughtful responses. Your first response to any given situation is often not your best response.

I feel like this is the main benefit.