The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers • Hacker News Board

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#181

Post by quelltext » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:08 AM UTC

DrJokepu wrote: post #113

doktorhladnjak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. I’ve personally experienced this with starting a new job in January 2020 and subsequently working on 3 teams. Team 1: 3 engineers of various tenure already on the team. Built good relationship with 2 before pandemic put us in WFH about 6 weeks in. I still talk to both of these engineers on a regular basis, even though we no longer work together. Team 2: Changed about 8 months in due to a reorg. Working with…

As someone who manages people for a living, the problems on Team 2 were entirely your manager’s fault.

What are specific actions to address these problems the manager could have done?

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#182

Post by quelltext » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:23 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #97

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key thing is here: > > over the first six months of 2020 This also implies that most of the employees already knew each other and worked together before being forced into remote work. One of the biggest problems with switching to remote work is that people carry over the in-person relationships they were already comfortable with. It's the new hires who suffer most, in my experience. When everyone else has month…

What I’ve found is that I will work with people I didn’t previously know if there’s some forcing function but the people I randomly reach out to for working on things re mostly people I knew previously. Reaching g out to strangers for help/collaboration with something mostly isn’t very effective in my experience.

Yeah, I'd argue that this hasn't changed during/due to the pandemic.

Gravitating towards people you know happened already even in an in-person setting.

The difference is lack of opportunities outside of core work to engage with others and getting to know them, i.e. there are fewer and less diverse forcing functions. In the past it was getting lunch together a few times, now maybe the only forcing function is your manager assigning you to work or as a mentor, etc. Which is not as effective IMO to build healthy same-level relationships.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#183

Post by p2t2p » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:32 AM UTC

phillipcarter wrote: post #14

The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…

cmd+k -> @jdoe -> enter, /zoom -> enter, click “join”

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#184

Post by rcarmo » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

I moved to an EMEA position inside Microsoft (on the consulting side) in early 2020 and simply cannot relate to this paper.

My entire org was distributed (manager and skip were European and in two different locations from mine), all my work was remote, team coordination happened entirely over Teams and we generated tons of content.

Yes, the first few months _dealing with other teams_ (especially country-based ones) were messy, but most of my team had been working remotely (and internationally) for years, so we did not experience the kind of disconnect mentioned in the paper. We took the time to do team 1:1s, had informal chats going for days, etc.

I am now moving to a Worldwide position, still working from Europe. My new manager is in the Americas and my skip in the UK. It is a quite normal arrangement in our line of work.

So, in a nutshell, I don’t think this paper reflects what it’s like to work remotely at Microsoft at all. It _might_ be a good sample of the US portion, but it is extremely limited: “the period of time over which we measured the causal effects of remote work are quite short (three months)”

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#185

Post by octodog » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:48 AM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #184

I moved to an EMEA position inside Microsoft (on the consulting side) in early 2020 and simply cannot relate to this paper. My entire org was distributed (manager and skip were European and in two different locations from mine), all my work was remote, team coordination happened entirely over Teams and we generated tons of content. Yes, the first few months _dealing with other teams_ (especially country-based ones) w…

What does 'skip' mean in this context?

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#186

Post by aj_nikhil » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #50

aj_nikhil wrote: post #23

Normal work from office as past will resume in next few months. WFH is not sustainable or enjoyable experience for most people.

I don't know on what basis you make these sweeping generalizations. If nothing else, commutes made people miserable in terms of time, money, stress, and difficulty scheduling outside life. Time will tell whether you are right or not.

WFH is poor for intra-team communication and rapport building. Companies won't want to take this risk. It only works for experienced individual contributors like freelancers, who aren't many. Good things are created only by collaboration. The collaboration suffers in WFH. Let's come back to this in next 6 months. Don't delete your comment.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#187

Post by tomduncalf » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 9:17 AM UTC

octodog wrote: post #185

rcarmo wrote: post #184

I moved to an EMEA position inside Microsoft (on the consulting side) in early 2020 and simply cannot relate to this paper. My entire org was distributed (manager and skip were European and in two different locations from mine), all my work was remote, team coordination happened entirely over Teams and we generated tons of content. Yes, the first few months _dealing with other teams_ (especially country-based ones) w…

What does 'skip' mean in this context?

I could be wrong but I think it means your manager’s manager

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#188

Post by sgt101 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

danjac wrote: post #180

sgt101 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Moving jobs entails significant risk. Yes - but so does not moving jobs. I have several friends who played the big company game, got to a senior level and then got ditched. Their problem? Well - they got shafted and emptied out at peak expense time; mortgage, kids, divorces etc, they got emptied when they were still 15 years short of thier retirement target, and their CV's are mono-corporate. This made finding work…

Agreed, it's difficult to make the call when to make your move, and staying too long can be harmful. Generally I'd say it's better to move around more earlier in your career when you're figuring out what kind of company environment is more to your liking and what skills to specialize in. But it's easy to get complacent and stick around too long in one place. In any case, you have to weigh the pros and cons, but jumpi…

Yes, true. Jumping ship for money is a motivation to mull for sure. Sometimes you can't say no, it's just too significant in terms of finance. Sometimes it's worth considering that the extra $ will change other pressures (perhaps rent on something close to work that will give back 2 hrs a day travel time, perhaps more / better childcare, perhaps pay off short term debt and change the dynamics of your finances). But, yeah, moving for money can screw things up.

My advice (fwiw) is move for growth. Can you identify something that will change your CV for the good about the new gig. If so then the extra money is essentially paying for your next job - you will be able to find something even better (hopefully p>0.??) after, if this one doesn't work out.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#189

Post by pracer » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

heisenbugtastic wrote: post #163

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key thing is here: > > over the first six months of 2020 This also implies that most of the employees already knew each other and worked together before being forced into remote work. One of the biggest problems with switching to remote work is that people carry over the in-person relationships they were already comfortable with. It's the new hires who suffer most, in my experience. When everyone else has month…

I have felt the worst for my Jr Engineers... usually you come out of college and you get sat with a few seniors, and we show you the ropes. We help you through it all, and defend, or attack your positions as we see fit for your learning in enterprise software. Suddenly you don't have someone sitting next to you that you can say does this look right... worse if you ask over IM client, you have no idea that they are he…

It doesn't need to be so. I started in my actual company 3 years ago, NY based startup and I was based in Europe. The first months we had every day meetings with one of the senior engineers in USA going through the changes we implemented that day, how it worked with the rest of the codebase and systems, how and why this worked and that didn't, etc... It worked perfectly, considering we still work in the company and we are know the seniors. The system we started working on, that was freshly released then, is now smooth and stable. We did it full remote and also with a 6 h difference in time zone, and it worked.

The thing is the time investment may look big because you have to specify a meeting time and reserve a slot of an hour for it. But it is not different from having it spread across the day as the juniors find a problem, interrupt the senior, get the explanation, etc. I worked in both environments: in the office and full remote. And regarding work and knowledge sharing I don't see a big difference. The real difference is changing the way of working and interacting, but once that is done it works equally fine. The rest is a matter of preference related to interacting with people on a daily basis. But for me, that is outside working hours when I go to the gym, join activities like quizzes, sports, etc., with people I don't work with.

Also I want to add that I connect in videocalls with colleagues, when we have not much work for a few hours just to chat about work and out of work things. And we never met in person.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#190

Post by pracer » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 10:42 AM UTC

fooqux wrote: post #165

heavyset_go wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. Some of the world's most used and innovative software was crafted by smart people all over the world whose small talk was mediated almost entirely over email, BBS, IRC etc. This continues to be the case, it's just the mediums have changed slightly, while they're still mostly text-based…

> Some of the world's most used and innovative software was crafted by smart people all over the world whose small talk was mediated almost entirely over email, BBS, IRC etc. At what speed though? You're obviously correct that such small talk can and does happen over asynchronous communication protocols. But I would imagine it's far slower than doodling on a napkin with a colleague during break. Businesses are going…

> But I would imagine it's far slower than doodling on a napkin with a colleague during break.

I think you overestimate how much relevant these napkin innovation situations are. Talking with some coworker and drawing something over a napkin doesn't mean the idea will be revolutionary at all. Or even useful. It is most of the times, a romantic image that make people feel like the smart innovator they would like to be.