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No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#271
post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

Counter: when this says 'no', it really means, 'modulate'.

Working remotely gives us the ability to have infinite water-coolers any hour of the day. Great power, great responsibility.

People take this personally completely forgetting there is a much larger world than theirs.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team and organizational productivity. Teams are not a simple sum of independent productivity of individuals. (If they are, it implies they don't need to be a team, since nobody is dependent on anyone else)

You say that like it's not possible to have a balance—have enough meetings and communication to properly coordinate the team, while still leaving each individual enough uninterrupted time to get plenty of flow-state work done. The posters above advocating for flow state aren't saying anywhere that they don't want to have any communication with the team. They're saying they need the flow state to get their own work do…

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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spent even a nanosecond considering these other people, you might stumble upon the hypothesis that these people are trying to port the way they interact with others in meatspace to an IM channel, rather than assume some form of mental illness.

And if those people stopped for a nanosecond and considered other people, they might come to realization that an IM is not the same as meatspace, and maybe there needs to be some adjustment to an async model. Also, giving context is good, regardless of medium.

If you really think that people are going to break the widespread cultural norm of greeting others at the beginning of a social interaction because of some grumpy engineers, youre gonna have a bad time

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not incompatible with adding some context in the "quick call invite". Even when I was working from the office, sometimes I would have to say no to someone who was reaching out to me or bumping into me in front of the water fountain because I was in the middle of something. In that case I would just ask to send me a message with some context and I would go back to him/her when I had more time to dedicate on th…

Maybe not incompatible but certainly diminished, the idea is you randomly stumble upon someone’s work or ideas who you wouldn’t have otherwise talked to if it needed to be scheduled, personally I think lunch in person is where this shines the most Productivity doesn’t go down with fully remote work, but I think the kind of creativity that organically comes from ideas being constantly shared and discussed does To be c…

Innovation is about attention, not ideas. If you want to encourage that, you need to give folks a forum to share their ideas that they feel safe and supported. If your team is good at that in person at lunch, then having an “ideas” meeting with the folks who would be at lunch would work for that. If your team is bad at that, there’s likely some folks who don’t embrace the new ideas at your ideas forum and until you get them fixed, the folks with ideas aren’t going to bring them up for fear of looking dumb or whatever.

I’ve worked remotely and had a great time innovating, and I’ve been in person and had a terrible time innovating. It has always come back to giving folks a comfortable forum to share ideas and not rejecting them.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#275
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems more about scheduling a meeting when a simple email or message might do. Which is kind of the opposite of scheduling meetings with agendas etc. If it’s really a “quick question” just write it down and in the off chance that it develops into something else you can have that meeting. Of course it’s also a cultural/etc. thing. Some people are just horrible at expressing themselves in text or communicating…

Why go for a quick 5 min call when an email thread that will need you to context switch 10 times will do? That being said there is a lot of meeting which should be replaced by a email and vice-versa. Also, When there is something you don’t understand properly, coming up with the right question or meeting agenda can be very hard. Finding a common ground is better served by face 2 face communication rather than an emai…

And replacing all slack threads with meetings is similarly non-productive. Making everything a slack thread and refusing to ever go to meetings is bad. But refusing to write anything down and forcing everyone to exclusively go to meetings is bad. So find the most effective through line. Most often that’s: 1. Slack message with enough context that someone can answer 2. Discuss on slack until it’s clear the topic is going to need 3+ people to decide on or is in need of higher bandwidth, such as a screen share or just is urgent enough that talking while moving would be faster 3. Hop on that quick call 4. When you realize you’re missing folks you need or whatever and it’s not urgent enough to drag them into the call, set up a full meeting

Nothing in the article contradicts the above flow, and the above flow is what works best in my experience

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#276
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with that, and I have been on both sides of the coin, with a little team doing a lot of projects very quickly and also a corporation job where things move very slowly. Also having done so many side projects. The unfortunate usual thing is though that the jobs that pay a lot usually involve a lot of people. Because when a small group of very productive programmers start out, their business is not pr…

> Because when a small group of very productive programmers start out, their business is not proven yet, but when it actually is proven and will start to make a lot of money What if we stop at making a lot of money in a proven business, and don't hire more unless absolutely necessary? Keep the team small and lean, retain the talented people who brought you here via profit sharing, and just...relax? I am surprised tha…

It is an unstable model; if it’s only necessary to hire when someone leaves, there’s no slack - what if someone gets long term sick? What if someone feels burnt out holding the thing up but nobody else wants to hire more - by the time that person leaves it’s necessary to hire more but also late to start the hiring process to find the perfect one replacement and who has spare time and redundant knowledge to train them?

When it will start to make a lot of money, it will do that by having lots of customers, therefore more support requests, more payment troubles, more feature requests, more scaling concerns, reliability and maintenance.

When it starts making money, competitors will notice and may start copying it; relaxing will let them catch up and pass you and take your customers.

There is always entropy, things fade, decay, things need continual “growth” just to stay in a steady state - getting that growth perfectly tuned so it doesn’t grow bigger and need more employees, and doesn’t shrink and wreck the company, it precisely counters the decay, is much harder than growing bigger.

Lifestyle business is not unheard of, some people hit on a great idea and execution and it’s a money printer for them, but it seems that more people who try it either can’t get enough money, or struggle to do everything without hiring anyone until they burn out, or have to hire someone and then have to get more income to pay them and are in growth mode, not steady state.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#277
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off: Are water coolers even a thing still? At least in NL we just bring our own bottles and use the tap to refill it :p Second, I've not once in my life had a productive "water cooler" conversation. Not a single time, it's pretty much always just socialization about literally anything other than work. Same with lunch, people don't want to talk about work during their free time, and they don't. I've certainly ne…

> Second, I've not once in my life had a productive "water cooler" conversation. I just realized it's worse than that. If the old adage on innovation "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" is true, then water cooler simply cannot help much. Then, what you need for innovation (and not just a warm fuzzy feeling of a possibly good idea) is actual time to work on it, not a water cooler.

On the other hand, with "99% perspiration" the water cooler is essential to prevent dehydration.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#278
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a developer, arguably "flow state" is arguably the most important thing. Provided, that is, that requirements are clear and people are in sync what should be worked on. What do you think is the most important, if not flow state?

Team and organizational productivity. Teams are not a simple sum of independent productivity of individuals. (If they are, it implies they don't need to be a team, since nobody is dependent on anyone else)

While that is true, good team members don't interrupt each other and make sure they maximize both their individual and team interactions.

"Hey, you got 5 min" all the time is a symptom of bad communication and bad team flow. It means lots of things are not clear, often, things that can be put in a knowledge base, or batched into a longer conversation.

The price we pay as an organization when team members switch context is high, and if your culture is a culture of constant context switch, then it's not a good culture. Let's not normalize interruptions as "the price to pay" for being in a team. We can be in a team with better dynamics than that.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice I often breathe deeply after a telecon. As if I was holding my breath during it. Even if the telecon was quite laid back. It doesn't happen in water cooler talks. Have there been studies about what causes this, or even how to alleviate?

stand during the meeting instead of sitting

i don't think that helps.

i believe one problem is that in online meetings and phone calls pauses are more awkward and uncomfortable. that means people avoid pauses to think before they speak, which makes online meetings more rushed. which would explain the feeling of GP after a meeting.

the question is how to make online meetings more relaxed.

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