The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace • Hacker News Board

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#171

Post by diminoten » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

twoquestions wrote: post #162

diminoten wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because someone is your boss doesn't mean you have to be submissive to them.

In what universe is that true? The very essence of being a boss is having the means to force you subordinates to submit to you, and at most companies I've worked with that's an explicit primary benefit to the rank!

Jesus Christ; firstly no, it's not a benefit whatsoever to be able to force someone to do something. Secondly, a boss who has to force people to do things rather than provide convincing reasons to do them is a terrible boss, and should be fired by his/her boss immediately.

The "very essence" of being a boss is knocking out obstacles for the people under you. That is what a boss actually does, not tell people what to do. Sure, a boss translates vague prioritization from above to meaningful and actionable items for his/her team to work through, but the only "power" a boss has is the ability to absorb shit so the people under him/her don't have to.

The boss also has a boss, who has a boss, and so on and so on, up to the CEO, who has a boss (the board and/or shareholders). No one gets to "force subordinates to submit" to anyone, at least not for very long.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#172

Post by greggman2 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

MadWombat wrote: post #140

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…

"but interacting with the teller adds to your quota of needed interaction for happiness" Is there some evidence that mundane interactions with total strangers actually make everyone happier? I know some people who thrive on social interactions, but for many of us it is a chore rather than an opportunity. A rather taxing chore at that.

The podcast brought both the teller and the starbucks examples up but didn't go in to research details. I agree with you it sounds sketchy and I don't know how they'd prove it one way or other really. I'm only inferring from the podcast that Laurie Santos has research to back up her claims that even these little ways of removing human interaction from our lives affect our (most people's?) happiness negatively.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#173

Post by tyfon » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

atomwaffel wrote: post #121

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should tell HR that would be great, one seat at the office costs a lot. They have a huge savings potential :)

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#174

Post by potta_coffee » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:28 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…

Socializing is important, but commuting, sitting in an open office with bright lights, loud co-workers etc doesn't balance against my social needs very well. I work on a small team, me and my co-workers see each other usually twice a week, once in the office and once at the coffee shop. Along with my other social activities, I get plenty of interaction and I still don't have a daily commute. The social aspect of work only becomes super important when work is your whole life and you've got nothing else going on.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#175

Post by bonestamp2 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

fizx wrote: post #144

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…

As someone who has gone to the dark side, there's an interesting tradeoff here. There's basically three scenarios: (1) all employees are trusted and unmeasured, but you have to tap people on the shoulder every once in a while to confirm that they're on track. Naturally, this is easier if everyone is on-site. (2) everyone is accountable for producing of tickets, and you can check that everyone is at least doing some w…

From my experience, as long as the company is divided into small project teams, a project manager can take 10 minutes every day to have a group meeting for everyone to share what they worked on yesterday and what they're working on today. Call it a scrum meeting or a stand-up or whatever, but it doesn't have to follow any specific model as this will probably vary depending on your type of work.

We have 8 people on our current project team and we can typically finish this meeting in under 5 minutes each morning. We have some people on each coast, and half the people are remote so we do it at 10:30 am Eastern.

It keeps everyone accountable to the company and each other, and because everyone knows what everyone else is working on, it makes it easier to avoid overlap and divide up tasks in the most logical way possible.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#176

Post by tima101 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:48 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…

I believe a change must come from bottom up and not from top down. Management won't change since they have little incentive to do so. Employees who are not happy with synchronous office work with a lot of interruptions should quit and start small successful companies that are asynchronous and remote.

To help this movement, we built open source SaaS boilerplate. We also built Async, an asynchronous team communication tool designed specifically for small teams of software engineers.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#177

Post by BeetleB » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #146

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…

Is it possible your approach to instant messaging is wrong?

Article is espousing the benefits of asynchronous communication. If the expectation is that I respond within a minute or so, then it is synchronous.

Can you suggest a better way to use IM that doesn't require me to respond quickly?

I'm fine with IM for sending over quick URL's, etc while doing a live debug or something. But if you just have a "quick question", email me if not urgent or come to my cube if it is. If you are located far away, call me. Both email and phone are more efficient for simple questions. IM is in the unhappy place where it's worse than both.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#178

Post by bryanmgreen » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

I think an asynchronous workplace (remote or not) is mostly a good one as people tend to be more effective without interruption.

Anyways, I think a big barrier to this dream are the tools that can promote and sustain asynchronicity.

It's really hard to keep communication open and job responsibilities/deliverables clear without being mircomanage-y. Lots of leaders will have to give up control - which is going to be really hard, to say the least. Software tools will need to be security-blankets for managers as much as performance trackers for employees. Give them a little pat on the head that "it's all ok". That's going to be hard to accomplish.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#179

Post by dmix » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:04 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…

> the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something.

Yeah, the answer to the OP articles question about why the remote studies work out that way isn't a big mystery.

The first thing you learn working from home is self-motivation and training yourself to get "in the zone". Then try doing the same at an office, where interruptions are far more often.

But that said not all offices are like this. A lot of companies work to 'protect' their creatives/engineers from disruption from the extroverts/talkers. Either by isolating them in separate closed office rooms or having rules like headphones on = don't bother them.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#180

Post by potta_coffee » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

WestCoast wrote: post #167

greenshackle2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is roughly consistent with my experience. When I was using the "pomodoro" technique, I first started with the goal of 14 pomodoros per day (14 x 25min of focused work). My (fairly successful) friend who had done pomodoro told me that was not a reasonable goal. 10-12 seems a more reasonable goal for most people. When doing focused reading in grad school I could do maybe 8-9 hours on a good day. Working on a perso…

I can't tell you how unburdening it is to read your response. Thank you for your honesty.

I can tell you, I'm in the same boat. I can't really do more than 4 -5 hours of actual coding on a typical day. I've done days with 7 - 12 hours of coding but those are outliers. Also by Thursday, I'm pretty burned out. I rarely get a lot done on Friday.