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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#171

Post by kaashif »

closewith wrote: post #160
kmarc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To defend @bagacrap, they said they tend to be a bit suspicious. And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'm all in for more times off for parents, more PTOs, sabbaticala, etc. But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious.

> And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'd say you're missing the hint that it is none of your business.

If someone was ill, then they're back, asking them if they're feeling better is totally normal conversation.

The suspicion etc may not be, but the question is obviously fine.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#172

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

swiftcoder wrote: post #135
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak so its extremely your-turn-my-turn in a way that an organic, in-person group socialization isn't. It isn't as jarring in a 1:1 because you can watch that person's face and without much effort predict when they're going to speak and so not interrupt them. When it goes beyond that, the flow of the conversation gets stil…

> group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak I do wonder if there are any technical solutions to be found to this. Now that high-speed fibre is pretty widespread, what if we transmitted every participants audio feed to every other participant, and merged them on the client, instead of the server?

There are a handful of Spatial Audio videoconferencing solutions that work pretty well to allow multiple simultaneous conversations.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#173

Post by softwaredoug »

There is a kind of leader that's threatened when they don't control communication. In these cases, random thought bombs on slack feel like chaos. Like people are going in random directions not rowing together. I don't think this is true of course -- people are just sharing inspiration and ideas. But in some places / cultures just rambling on slack can be dangerous and put a target on your back. You can be labeled as "distracting" by these leaders that feel threatened / worried about the perception the team is not executing on their marching orders.

Somehow this is more embarrassing to this leader than random hallway conversations you'd have in a regular office environment. So these leaders have an especially hard time in a remote environment. But they do soon learn that even Slack DMs can be searched and they love this tool to root out "troublemakers".

Of course, if you can, leave such a place. But not everyone has this luxury.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#174

Post by closewith »

kaashif wrote: post #171
closewith wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'd say you're missing the hint that it is none of your business.

If someone was ill, then they're back, asking them if they're feeling better is totally normal conversation. The suspicion etc may not be, but the question is obviously fine.

Given you're suspicious about these people and the way you talk about them, they are most likely well aware that you're on a fishing trip feigning interest.

People like you are always more transparent than you realise.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#175

Post by tetromino_ »

kmarc wrote: post #149
jzb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, why? The other day I had a killer headache. Just couldn’t shake it. I did everything I needed to that was time sensitive, then went AFK. I don’t see any reason to be suspicious of others if they do similarly—we all have days when we’re just not at our best for some reason.

To defend @bagacrap, they said they tend to be a bit suspicious. And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'm all in for more times off for parents, more PTOs, sabbaticala, etc. But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious.

> 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 cutting my productivity.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#176

Post by anal_reactor »

sublinear wrote: post #93
comrade1234 wrote: post #74

I have a somewhat mentally ill (as in he takes medication for it) coworker that would just ruin this. The entire channel would be just be walls of his text. It's hard enough just to understand his wall of text emails that have a big report embedded somewhere in it.

Thank you for having the guts to leave this comment and not pretend like people are always perfect and optimistic. I think that's precisely why the ramblings should be a separate channel apart from all the emails and more serious communication, but I have some thoughts why this still might not work. I used to be guilty of leaving walls of text in our "random" channel, and we weren't even remote back then. My reasons…

I used to work for a small company, and I'd sometimes write short essays about things in general. It was rarely even related to programming, but people seemed to love that. Then I switched to corporate and I quickly understood to shut up because whenever I say something, someone might get upset over it for whatever reason and then it's going to be a problem.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#177

Post by Xeoncross »

Aurornis wrote: post #158
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 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…

This is the difference between a good idea and the implementation.

People just act differently in "official" topic channels.

It's like when you buy that super secure door lock and the lowest bid handyman bends it while installing because it's such a pain to align correctly and now it's just as vulnerable as any other lock.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#178

Post by ogou »

After watching so many work chats disintegrate from politics, social commentary, or pedantic arguments I have totally avoided all unstructured channels. Since 2020 I saw two people get fired after discussions got out of hand. There were many more team meetings, code of conduct edicts, and all hands declarations about communication issues. It wasn't until the bans on politics in Slack arrived until things got better. Even now there are people I will screenshot any DMs that have even a hint of conflict. I doubt I will ever participate in any work chats in a social way again.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#179

Post by scarface_74 »

MrGilbert wrote: post #17
siva7 wrote: post #10

> We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent of water cooler talk. This is the difference. Most teams have scheduled daily (!) meetings, so such rambling channels often times feel more like another chore and therefore fail because they haven't emerged of a natural need from the team.

Although it really depends on the team's maturity to acknowledge that they are missing social interaction in the first place. I'd also argue that "scheduled meetings" doesn’t translate to "water cooler talk" automatically. So even if you'd have regular scheduled meetings, you might still crave for some socializing.

I’m not anti social by any means. Part of my job has been flying out to talk to customers, the business dinners, helping sells to close deals (I’m more of the post sales architect), etc.

There is a bar downstairs where I live in a tourist area where I’m friends with the bartender. I’ll go down there, maybe get a drink or sip on diet soda and just talk to whoever comes down and with the bartender.

We had a regional in person get together a day before I went on vacation and the get together was supposed to be an overnight trip. I flew in the morning and flew out back home late that night just so I could attend the social events the day before the meeting.

All that and I hate remote “social” events and don’t attend. I loved our team’s quarterly get togethers where we would fly out out to one of our company’s headquarters once a quarter someone in the US. All of us are older (35+) and have lives outside of work. We come to work to make money, not to socialize.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#180

Post by scarface_74 »

parpfish wrote: post #97
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak so its extremely your-turn-my-turn in a way that an organic, in-person group socialization isn't. It isn't as jarring in a 1:1 because you can watch that person's face and without much effort predict when they're going to speak and so not interrupt them. When it goes beyond that, the flow of the conversation gets stil…

Even worse is the situation our hybrid half-remote/half-inperson company runs into during meetings: The in-person group will go into the conference room and naturally start multiple rambling side conversations. But the remote people just have to sit there and watch. Usually they can’t really hear each of these conversations and you can’t casually join a room-based side conversation from the remote because any audio t…

There are two rules about any job I take these days.

1. I will not work at in office job.

2. I won’t work for a company that is not “remote only”.

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