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Why I Only Work Remotely

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Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#181

Post by sangnoir »

babyrainbow wrote: post #169
sangnoir wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling open source projects flourish in spite of their distributed contributors. Text chat is a poor replacement to in-person conversation as it is occasionally async and a lot of meaning is lost. Video conference is better, but is less spontaneous and makes it harder to pull someone else into the conversation. Above all, text and video eliminate serendipity - I won't overhear the the conversation my collea…

>I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago. That is ridiculous. If you solved something like that, post it on some channel everyone is subscribed to, instead of trying to "overhear" problems people are having, not to mention you are willing to be distracted perpetually, listening for problems your colleagues might have...ridiculous.

Serendipity is not a planned activity by definition. Additionally, people's minds are wired in different ways: what's ridiculous to you is perfectly fine for me.

What is ridiculous to me is wasting my time trawling through a #general channel (419 unread), filled with irrelevant, ephemeral muck just for the 0.5% chance that someone posted a solution to my specific issue.

As ill-luck will have it, I got injured since my previous post- I will be working remotely for a while in the new year and I am not looking forward to it. Seriously.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#182

Post by babyrainbow »

sangnoir wrote: post #181
babyrainbow wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago. That is ridiculous. If you solved something like that, post it on some channel everyone is subscribed to, instead of trying to "overhear" problems people are having, not to mention you are willing to be distracted perpetually, listening for problems your colleagues might have...ridiculous.

Serendipity is not a planned activity by definition. Additionally, people's minds are wired in different ways: what's ridiculous to you is perfectly fine for me. What is ridiculous to me is wasting my time trawling through a #general channel (419 unread), filled with irrelevant, ephemeral muck just for the 0.5% chance that someone posted a solution to my specific issue. As ill-luck will have it, I got injured since m…

Sorry about that pal. Hope you get well soon...

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#183

Post by ClayFerguson »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
ClayFerguson wrote: post #59

I agree with every word of this article and after 25yrs experience as a developer I have all similar experiences. Being a computer programmer is about the same as being a 'writer' (book author), and no one expects an author to sit with other authors in a special building to be able to write. With modern technology, and the wastefulness of time and energy spent commuting, there is just no longer any reason for a progr…

Most books don't require 10-100 authors, each focusing on the paragraph that they are experts in, needing to hold the pages together with APIs that are agreed upon by all co-authors. The collaborative aspect of a software project is much greater than that of a book. Yes, there are books that have a multiple of co-authors, but these co-authors tend to not operate lone-wolf.

Unless you are in a paired-programming situation most coding is done by one person sitting alone. I would never accept a job doing paired-programming. I want to be alone at my keyboard working, uninterrupted, with total silence 90% of my day. My point was that authors do the same thing, by sitting alone typing 90% of the time. However I do agree 10% of the time you need to be communicating with other developers and sharing ideas, when for example a novelist wouldn't be doing that. However there is nothing about communication that requires face-to-face meetings. Actually as technology gets better and better this will become MORE true not less true in the future. However the one thing missing is a good virtual shared whiteboard, but I guess that's just because I don't have one of those stylus boards, because I think with those you can do virtual whiteboards.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#184

Post by swozey »

Raphmedia wrote: post #173
swozey wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's something that isn't standard or I know is so peculiar to me (mechanical keyboard, expensive mouse, headphones) that the company can't redistribute it when I leave, I just buy it myself and bring it in. That slippery slope is also slippery on the other end, ok, company A bought you "xyz gamer laptop" when everyone uses MBPs or what not. 99% chance it's going to go sit in the closet for a few years after you l…

There's a difference between setting up your entire programmer team with Razer products and upgrading your programmer's team computers from old 2001 computer to average 2016 computers. When it comes to the chair it's inexcusable for the company to provide equipment that will hurt the health of their employees.

You're arguing over a shitty employer vs. a good employer but my point was about wanting customized hardware/peripherals that nobody else in the company will ever use. That's not really the point that I was making.

Yes, there are shitty employers that don't care about you being comfortable or provided with the proper hardware for your job, we've all been there. I couldn't tell you the last time I started a new job and wasn't given a current generation laptop and nice monitors (not Apple quality but totally fine).

That's just poor management. I'm costing you the same money to get less work done if my laptop is slow. It doesn't benefit the business at all.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#185

Post by geoka9 »

gtaylor wrote: post #180
__derek__ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like it all comes down to the remote-first vs. remote-friendly divide.[1] [1] My favorite post on the subject is Holman's: https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/

Not ever saying a word in the office is just not realistic. You don't leave people out intentionally, but conversations happen organically sometimes. Maybe you're in the kitchen grabbing a poptart and start talking shop with someone who walks in. There are tradeoffs inherent in every working situation. This is one that really bothered me. It doesn't bother everyone, though.

> Maybe you're in the kitchen grabbing a poptart and start talking shop with someone who walks in.

I find that most talks like that are just shooting the breeze. _Some_ of them are useful and in my experience it's usually then they happen rarely. So I think it is beneficial for the team to get together once in a while, but working like that should not be mandatory and you should just let people go back to their preferred routines ASAP.

UPDATE: And yes, make sure the culture is "remote-friendly" ("remote-first") even if most of your workers spend most of their working time in the office, otherwise it's not going to work (and I'd argue that this is a good approach even if you don't have any remote workers, but that's for another post).

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#186

Post by geoka9 »

wott wrote: post #154
discordianfish wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If pivoting your engineering goals requires hallway conversations, there's something wrong. I agree but isn't there always something wrong? I'm in that spot, I worked mostly remote for the past 4 years and at every company it would have helped a lot to have a casual hallway conversation from time to time. It shouldn't be necessary but in reality it often is. It seem to me like you need well thought out, light weigh…

> I'm in that spot, I worked mostly remote for the past 4 years and at every company it would have helped a lot to have a casual hallway conversation from time to time. I have never seen hallway conversations helping. Face to face, desk to desk conversations do indeed help, sometimes . In my case, according to my estimations, the time lost by not having those conversations (about 30-60 minutes per week) is very small…

> to the time lost in: office distraction, office small talk, commuting(!), all the untold stuff you have to do to get ready for the office, nervous energy lost in all these

Totally. Not to mention people getting sick during the flu season just because they can't work remotely due to the company policy.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#187

Post by geoka9 »

sangnoir wrote: post #130
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does text chat or video conference not fix that issue? Look at all these open source projects that manage to flourish across languages, time zones, etc.

I have a feeling open source projects flourish in spite of their distributed contributors. Text chat is a poor replacement to in-person conversation as it is occasionally async and a lot of meaning is lost. Video conference is better, but is less spontaneous and makes it harder to pull someone else into the conversation. Above all, text and video eliminate serendipity - I won't overhear the the conversation my collea…

> I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago.

Listen, I agree that this happens. But in my experience it happens so rarely that it does not outweigh all the negatives of having to drag a bunch of people to the office against their will day in, day out.

As for slack and such being a poor replacement to face to face, I'd say that it's because not all people are cut out for remote work. For me personally, I don't like it when somebody chats me up about things that are better suited for a slack (or even email) conversation. Things like getting the spec details buttoned down (which is actually the bulk of shop conversations, unless you're at a very early stage in your project) - you'd want to have a paper trail/reference to go back to once you start implementing. And remembering details from hallway conversations is hard, so you have to distract people from their work again or get blocked.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#188

Post by intern4tional »

geoka9 wrote: post #187
sangnoir wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling open source projects flourish in spite of their distributed contributors. Text chat is a poor replacement to in-person conversation as it is occasionally async and a lot of meaning is lost. Video conference is better, but is less spontaneous and makes it harder to pull someone else into the conversation. Above all, text and video eliminate serendipity - I won't overhear the the conversation my collea…

> I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago. Listen, I agree that this happens. But in my experience it happens so rarely that it does not outweigh all the negatives of having to drag a bunch of people to the office against their will day in, day out. As for slack and such being a poor replacement to face to face, I'd say that it's because not all people are…

My experience has been the opposite of yours.

I worked on a remote team for several years and recently migrated to an in the office job in a similar line of employment and was surprised how often such things occur. In your case it may either be that your work does not lend itself to such activities or you are potentially unaware that they are occurring.

Slack is poor replacement for face to face. It is good for communication for many types of projects and teams, but it cannot convey a person's facial expressions or emotions that otherwise might be present in their voice. My current organization, while onsite, has teams spread across the globe that we interact with. Attempting to solve complex engineering problems via email and chat is doable, but takes longer than throwing a couple of the engineers in a room with a whiteboard (and so the company pays for travel when that is needed).

In my experience, remote work is very situational. Certain jobs, tasks, and teams will lend themselves to remote work, but those items are not the majority of work yet.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#189

Post by geoka9 »

intern4tional wrote: post #188
geoka9 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago. Listen, I agree that this happens. But in my experience it happens so rarely that it does not outweigh all the negatives of having to drag a bunch of people to the office against their will day in, day out. As for slack and such being a poor replacement to face to face, I'd say that it's because not all people are…

My experience has been the opposite of yours. I worked on a remote team for several years and recently migrated to an in the office job in a similar line of employment and was surprised how often such things occur. In your case it may either be that your work does not lend itself to such activities or you are potentially unaware that they are occurring. Slack is poor replacement for face to face. It is good for commu…

> but it cannot convey a person's facial expressions or emotions that otherwise might be present in their voice.

We're now talking software development, right? I accept that those things can be very important in other endeavours, but to me the person's well thought out and articulated opinions are much more useful than all those things. I agree, it takes time to put your thoughts in writing and often you end up tweaking your original ideas because you realized a better way of doing something while writing them down, but that saves a lot of time for both parties, provides a solid piece of documentation you can refer back to afterwards, and usually results in a better implementation which covers more edge cases, has fewer bugs and is more maintainable in the end.

> and so the company pays for travel when that is needed

In my experience it's almost always been a waste of time and money. It did provide other benefits, such as getting the remote people to hang out together, but that's neither here nor there. But then again, I never really valued whiteboard conversations much over discussing in writing (slack/email).

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#190

Post by alpos »

sangnoir wrote: post #181
babyrainbow wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago. That is ridiculous. If you solved something like that, post it on some channel everyone is subscribed to, instead of trying to "overhear" problems people are having, not to mention you are willing to be distracted perpetually, listening for problems your colleagues might have...ridiculous.

Serendipity is not a planned activity by definition. Additionally, people's minds are wired in different ways: what's ridiculous to you is perfectly fine for me. What is ridiculous to me is wasting my time trawling through a #general channel (419 unread), filled with irrelevant, ephemeral muck just for the 0.5% chance that someone posted a solution to my specific issue. As ill-luck will have it, I got injured since m…

The complaint about scanning through #general for a 0.5% chance that someone solved your problem is the same as the other fellows complaint about listening to all of the #general office chatter on the chance that some of it could be relevant to you.

I think the answer to both of those situations is a searchable Q&A board. (internal StackOverflow)

StackOverflow has already addressed the problem for most topics that can be discussed publically. What remains to be addressed is the internal/sensitive topics that people are unwilling to discuss in the open.

There are some projects attempting to replicate SO functionality but so far we have not seen one gain adoption like Slack has in the chat space.

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