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Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

ben.balter.com

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Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#281

Post by urthor »

gavmor wrote: post #186
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #4

This sounds great for experienced engineers, but in my experience junior workers often require bite-sized guidance in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating). Accordingly, during the pandemic I think it was mostly the less experienced engineers suffering from low productivity and lack of confi…

I had the rare privilege of pair-programming 40 hours a week for several years early in my career. This follows the extreme programming ethos of "everything in the limit," where pairing is "code review in the limit" and "mentorship in the limit," to say nothing of the oral tradition it imparts[0]. Even pair-programming with my fellow juniors was both more productive and more educational than a rubber duck[1]. I had t…

I'd chew my arm off to have that 40h a week pair programming experience to be honest.

Sounds like my dream job.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#282

Post by paulcole »

liveoneggs wrote: post #280
paulcole wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn’t. Again, nothing against you if you dislike being asked how things are going by a coworker — but if that is the culture of the company you work at, there’s nothing wrong with it. It might be wrong for you , so you either get a different job or learn to deal with it.

"How's it going" from your co-worker is obviously different from HR or your CEO or someone X levels above you. As a long-time WFH person I always assume I am big-time socially inept (and I definitely am) but apparently office-dwellers (you) are even worse! To me it is clear that Bill-From-This-Mornings-Standup saying "Hey, what's up" is different from Emily-Director-Of-HR saying "Hey, how's it going today?" is differ…

Part of my point is that if the company’s culture is such that everyone asks everyone “How’s it going?” then there is no difference in who asks it.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#283

Post by bluefirebrand »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #270
spandrew wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not discounting this, but i Free-form 1:1's always have an aura of being more "improvisational" and in the moment. Good 1:1's are supposed to be semi-structured (ie not 'free form'). A shared journal, a retro exercise, etc. I have not had the experience that these build trust. Good team work, and delivering high quality work towards a common goal do that. You popping by for a 3 minute conversation in ear shot of 5 ot…

I think I've been unclear on the problem. Trust inside a single team is not something I've found to be a major problem, but between teams. Let's be more concrete: I need to build trust between between 6 EMs spread over three different directors and 2 vps + some very senior engineers. I need to do this so that we can solve one of the larger problems the business is facing. Most of these people have no good reason to t…

> Pre-covid the solution to this problem was (mostly) chatting over lunch.

Except that Pre-Covid, those [6 EMs spread over three different directors and 2 vps + some very senior engineers] were already probably not at the same office.

They were spread across three states, two countries, and one was a consultant from India.

This was my experience with any company bigger than about 40 people, anyways.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#284

Post by bluefirebrand »

ravishi wrote: post #178
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #4

This sounds great for experienced engineers, but in my experience junior workers often require bite-sized guidance in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. A 10 second conversation could easily save hours of head-banging-into-wall type work for a junior SWE (not even exaggerating). Accordingly, during the pandemic I think it was mostly the less experienced engineers suffering from low productivity and lack of confi…

I had the opposite experience with junior devs on my team. The ones that knew how to communicate and ask for help thrived. It was easy to negotiate some head banging on the wall time while also pairing from time to time to discuss where they're going. I've seem them flourish in less than a year's time and be able to perform just like experienced devs.

All of the junior devs Ive ever mentored, I would be as detailed as possible with my onboarding, demo the product from end to end, walk them through the codebase, and provide step by step instructions to start up their own dev environment. This usually took a couple of days, depending on the project and the dev.

Then I give them a ticket and say "if you get stuck, let me know"

For the first little while, I am super responsive with them and answer everything immediately and eagerly.

After a while, I start to wait about 5-10 minutes before I respond to questions. Usually they figure out the answers before I even get back to them in these cases, and then I get to praise them for it.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#286

Post by biztos »

Brystephor wrote: post #218

I graduated from school in Spring 2020 and started working in Aug 2020. In that timeframe, I had not been inside an employers office more than 3 times. Since Mar 2023, we've had a "mandatory" 4 days in office every week. Here's what I've experienced since going the office: * Occasionally I'll get a good conversation with a teammate or manager about something technical, but the frequency has not gone up. The technical…

I’ve experienced the non-English thing in a few different contexts and while I love the diversity of languages and speak a few myself, I think not mandating an official language to be used in the office is a mistake.

Your case is the obvious one: if most people speak Finnish but you only require English of your hires, sooner or later you will have people unfairly excluded from the social part of the office. Even if you’re in Helsinki, you need to either require that work conversations be in English, or make obtaining Finnish fluency an official part of the job. The latter being the much harder route.

However, in real life this requires a more enlightened C-suite than you probably have (cf. butts-in-seats order), so you might consider carving out an hour a day to quietly learn whatever language is being spoken by the rest of the team. It’s probably easier than Finnish and it could help your career!

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#287

Post by ravishi »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #284
ravishi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite experience with junior devs on my team. The ones that knew how to communicate and ask for help thrived. It was easy to negotiate some head banging on the wall time while also pairing from time to time to discuss where they're going. I've seem them flourish in less than a year's time and be able to perform just like experienced devs.

All of the junior devs Ive ever mentored, I would be as detailed as possible with my onboarding, demo the product from end to end, walk them through the codebase, and provide step by step instructions to start up their own dev environment. This usually took a couple of days, depending on the project and the dev. Then I give them a ticket and say "if you get stuck, let me know" For the first little while, I am super r…

That's a great technique I would say!

I stumbled on it by chance when I failed to make it to a client meeting with one junior dev I was leading. He was counting on my presence to support him, we had already discussed it before. But I got caught up last minute and he decided to go alone. And I know it was hard for him, but everything went fine. And from then on he was a lot more confident in his day to day.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#288

Post by wonderwonder »

prpl wrote: post #24
mydriasis wrote: post #2

> Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently, because asynchronous communication involves less frequent, but richer communication, meaning there is less time talking about the work and more time doing it, allowing the system to optimize for throughput and flow. This whole thing seems to be what people struggle with about remote work. Communication is way, way more important, and being an effective commu…

I don’t think there is a good solution here. I realized that I must have a 90th-95th percentile memory when compared to my coworkers, but it frankly doesn’t matter if I write things in chat or a long form document, it’s often lost to much of my team. I have come to realize the best path forward is likely pair programming/working meetings (remotely) because writing things down and repeatedly referencing them doesn’t s…

I have a decent memory but my attention span has been decimated. I find myself tuning out on calls and looking at anything else. Then I come back to reality and realize I have missed something important. Recently I have started closing my eyes while on zoom (camera off). It has really helped me focus and pay attention. this breaks down of course when someone is sharing their screen. I find that a solution to this is to turn my camera on as it forces me to pay attention or people will see me with my head turned to the side. Incidentally it also forces me to shower and shave most days, something that has really fallen off since going remote and covid. I almost never leave the house so my presentation suffered. Only time I cleaned up is if I was going to the gym. So I was somehow in the best shape of my life while also looking like a homeless person when forced on camera.

Both have helped, still not perfect but its better.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#289

Post by biztos »

paulcole wrote: post #224
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not referring to socializing with you, per se. I see this mistake made all the time in these discussions. Many just prefer to be around other people, myself included. They're not necessarily the caricature of the "overly social office mate that needs to find friends outside of work" that you are implying. I really think you're overassuming your knowledge of the person you're responding to.

It’s not a mistake. People who are pro-WFH are so dogmatic about it (and so protective of their “right” to WFH) that they intentionally reduce anyone who prefers working in an office to somebody with no social life.

That’s quite the generalization, and isn’t at all the typical pro-WFH attitude I see on HN.

I’m pro-WFH and have WFH-d since 2009 but I’d love to go to the office more, if the office were nice and in the right place.

Re: Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently

#290

Post by Brystephor »

biztos wrote: post #286
Brystephor wrote: post #218

I graduated from school in Spring 2020 and started working in Aug 2020. In that timeframe, I had not been inside an employers office more than 3 times. Since Mar 2023, we've had a "mandatory" 4 days in office every week. Here's what I've experienced since going the office: * Occasionally I'll get a good conversation with a teammate or manager about something technical, but the frequency has not gone up. The technical…

I’ve experienced the non-English thing in a few different contexts and while I love the diversity of languages and speak a few myself, I think not mandating an official language to be used in the office is a mistake. Your case is the obvious one: if most people speak Finnish but you only require English of your hires, sooner or later you will have people unfairly excluded from the social part of the office. Even if y…

They speak Mandarin. I don't know much about other languages, but I've heard that's notoriously difficult to learn.

It's also not just my team. I see other tables at lunch and other teams having conversations in what I assume is the same language. I have a hard time differentiating based on sound.

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