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Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#201

Post by Moru »

splittingTimes wrote: post #188
_lbaq wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working remote for decades and my observation is that whats standing inbetween great communication in remote teams are often trival, easily fixable things like poor software and hardware. When it comes to hardware, people use whatever headset and camera they have, connected to wifi served by the a cheap SOHO router. More or less the stuff you use to call your parents over skype once a week.

Just curious: In your opinion, what are proper tools / setup in hard- and software terms that makes remote collaboration as efficient as on-site interaction?

That depends on what you work with. My productivity as programmer got higher but my ability to help with hardware issues went down a lot. Helping over phone or chat to replace a PSU is tricky.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#202

Post by yread »

jdietrich wrote: post #182
levesque wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself, it's not going to be as efficient. Audio and delay are big issues, as not everybody can talk at the same time. But the point is that it is doable, and some companies have good success with that. They are usually small-medium companies though, my guess is we won't be seeing any 100% remote unicorns popping up.

It continues to amaze me that most businesses use worse conferencing tools than the average e-sports clan. High-quality, low-latency conferencing and screen sharing is essentially a solved problem if you don't use completely crappy tools.

Which tools should you use?

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#203

Post by speedplane »

jdietrich wrote: post #182
levesque wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself, it's not going to be as efficient. Audio and delay are big issues, as not everybody can talk at the same time. But the point is that it is doable, and some companies have good success with that. They are usually small-medium companies though, my guess is we won't be seeing any 100% remote unicorns popping up.

It continues to amaze me that most businesses use worse conferencing tools than the average e-sports clan. High-quality, low-latency conferencing and screen sharing is essentially a solved problem if you don't use completely crappy tools.

Most businesses have far more requirements than a e-sports clan, namely security, standardization, and dealing with large numbers of people. An e-sports clan can change their service in a day with one email. A large organization can't move that nimbly.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#204

Post by pishpash »

mhdhn wrote: post #198
_lbaq wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working remote for decades and my observation is that whats standing inbetween great communication in remote teams are often trival, easily fixable things like poor software and hardware. When it comes to hardware, people use whatever headset and camera they have, connected to wifi served by the a cheap SOHO router. More or less the stuff you use to call your parents over skype once a week.

Have you noticed how incredibly resistant people are to doing a thing about it? Just getting anyone to put on a headset is like pulling teeth.

Maybe if companies paid for it it wouldn't be a problem, you know, like equipment at an office.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#205

Post by lyime »

chubot wrote: post #138

Some pretty cool things: - He's a CEO who dogfoods his own software! Not only that, he seems to be one of its most prolific users. That's amazing. Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever. - He's a remote CEO, and supports remote working! It sounds like the com…

Hey thats like a pipe dream. Build a tool for yourself that you really like. Then build a company around it to make that tool better, so it gets better for you and everyone else who loves using it.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#206

Post by pishpash »

sidcool wrote: post #186
cma wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room. Definitely true, but you'd also have to watch the livestream of everyone prepping for and commuting to work for a fair comparison.

I tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's f…

That's all very nice but it's all not work related. Water cooler conversation may be great for incubating the very very beginning ideation of some 20% project, but come on, how often does a 20% project really happen. When it comes to real work (well defined work), where what you need is a mix of concentration time and focused interactions to address questions, remote call could be much more efficient than face-to-face meetings that end up engulfing a dozen people just because "it's possible, everyone's here."

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#207

Post by pishpash »

klipt wrote: post #147
lettergram wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly buy and resell so I actually don’t spend much at all on items. I lose from the depreciation, but not too bad actually.

I'd have thought the shipping (on eBay) and time would cost more than the depreciation.

If I had a 50's secretary to do all my fleabaying, I too would do this, sheesh.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#208

Post by eitland »

_lbaq wrote: post #179
kevinventullo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, the conference call linked lower in the thread has increased my skepticism for remote work. Another commenter pointed out how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room.

I've been working remote for decades and my observation is that whats standing inbetween great communication in remote teams are often trival, easily fixable things like poor software and hardware. When it comes to hardware, people use whatever headset and camera they have, connected to wifi served by the a cheap SOHO router. More or less the stuff you use to call your parents over skype once a week.

> ... whats standing inbetween great communication in remote teams are often trival, easily fixable things like poor software and hardware.

Ironically for a big chunk of the time I've been working as an engineer, people have been falling back to consumer software instead of using broken entreprise videoconferencing.

> When it comes to hardware, people use whatever headset and camera they have, connected to wifi served by the a cheap SOHO router.

I mostly haven't noticed any huge problems here, but maybe I've just been lucky.

Now that I think of it my home WiFi has been getting worse over the years, and getting new top rated gear didn't help.

(I have seen some thread here lately about advanced troubleshooting of wireless networks and I consider getting the spectrum analyzed somehow.)

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#209

Post by sytelus »

A lot of people don’t know absolutely massive amount of functionality that is stuffed in to Mathematica. It does everything from symbolic math to astronomy to economics to deep learning to biology to ... If Wolfram had figured out how to make his software free while still having sustained business, he would undoubtedly be the hero of the tech/nerd/geek world, perhaps shoulder to shoulder with Jobs or Linus or Gates - at least for the tech crowd.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#210

Post by cma »

hellofunk wrote: post #166

I personally wonder what has the modern world come to, that an individual cannot take a leisurely walk without distraction, and thus feels like they must be working on a computer while getting in some basic movement for their body.

He may take regular walks also and find it weird that you can't work without sitting in a chair.
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