If you're remote, ramble • Hacker News Board

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#291

Post by jerlam » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #135

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak so its extremely your-turn-my-turn in a way that an organic, in-person group socialization isn't. It isn't as jarring in a 1:1 because you can watch that person's face and without much effort predict when they're going to speak and so not interrupt them. When it goes beyond that, the flow of the conversation gets stil…

> group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound only allows one person at a time to speak I do wonder if there are any technical solutions to be found to this. Now that high-speed fibre is pretty widespread, what if we transmitted every participants audio feed to every other participant, and merged them on the client, instead of the server?

Discord is designed like this, because there is no special "presenter" or "organizer" and all participants are equal. Everyone can present simultaneously and you can mute individual speakers for yourself and not everyone else.

The single speaker is a design decision, not a technical issue. Only one "presenter" is allowed is allowed in business, or in school.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#292

Post by BoxFour » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

nucleardog wrote: post #278

BoxFour wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strikes me as a somewhat unfair characterization of many of these communities. In my experience, a much more common issue is that the people who do have answers end up ignoring the group and it becomes pointless. It rarely becomes a source of career hindrance or long-lasting judgement, it just ends up being useless because there's not a lot of incentive for the expert side of the equation. People who are likely…

> It rarely becomes a source of career hindrance or long-lasting judgement, it just ends up being useless because there's not a lot of incentive for the expert side of the equation. Yeah, the incentive structure for something like this is totally misaligned for this to work effectively in many cases outside of a very small, tight-knit team. (In which case... why the formality in the first place?) For the "juniors": W…

I’m on board with the overall point, though I’d actually flip the logic in this section:

> Once a senior answers, the junior then takes responsibility for making sure that question doesn't need to be answered there again.

That might make sense for simple questions. But for anything more complex, especially when the issue stems from something you have control over, having senior folks take ownership might make more sense. If they can tie the fix to visible impact, there’s a strong incentive for them to actually solve the root problem. Otherwise, there’s always the risk that experienced team members simply ignore the question 100% of the time (which also solves the problem of "i've already answered this question").

One way seniors might approach these types of groups is by treating them as a source of ideas. Repeated questions like “how do I use X?” might indicate that X needs a redesign or better onboarding. An experienced corporate climber could treat those questions as justification for "X 2.0 which is way easier to onboard to" and get backing to work on it.

Anyone who’s spent time at a large tech company has likely seen this dynamic play out, because it’s a common pathway to promotion. Definitely taken to problematic extremes, no doubt, but a slightly-healthier version of that playbook still beats the alternative of relying on the arcane knowledge of a select few as gatekeepers of information.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#293

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

For one of my small-biz clients, I could use what the author outlines - restrictions and all (if I'm an outlier, is fine).

Besides fixing my customer's stuff, I learn and improve their systems. There's a small corral of offsite indy IT talent; I'm the onsite, everything else guy.

I could use a simple space to quickly post v1 thoughts in an unpolished format. They'd be available for our other IT to review and comment on.

Since I want this, all the client will pay for is for me to implement it. Nothing else. Also, the owner likes data to stay in house. Together it rules out subscription and cloud products. I'll see what my FOSS options are.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#294

Post by deathanatos » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

eldenring wrote: post #196

Xeoncross wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the difference between a good idea and the implementation. People just act differently in "official" topic channels. It's like when you buy that super secure door lock and the lowest bid handyman bends it while installing because it's such a pain to align correctly and now it's just as vulnerable as any other lock.

yep, also doscoverability is not an issue with Slack. You can find most things with a search, people typically don't go scrolling through a channel to find something.

What a Poe's Law of a comment.

Slack's search is … okay … but there are any number of times when I have issues finding a thread I was looking at prior.

For all the AI hype that is the current time, search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant" when "sorting by relevance" or b.) … find the thread when I use a synonym of an exact word in the thread.

Or the other day I was struggling to find an external channel. I figured it should be easy. But again, I chose a synonym of the name, so miss there, but I though still — by management edict, all of our external channels start with #external-, I'll just pull up all external channels and linear search by eyeball … but management had named this one #ext-…

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#295

Post by anonymars » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:06 PM UTC

imchillyb wrote: post #251

gopalv wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The movie showcases culture and human nature more than any particular era. Most of my middle management experiences has been between Office Space and Better off Ted. One with "Don't care" as an answer and the other says "Care more" as its. Those are the two extremes of the genre.

One of my favorite dialogs is from the pilot: Ted Crisp: We do everything: industrial products, biomedical, cryogenics, defense technology. Veronica Palmer: We want to weaponize a pumpkin. Ted Crisp: Then so do I. Because? Veronica Palmer: There's a country with whom we do business that grows a great deal of pumpkins and would welcome additional uses for them. As well as cheaper ways to kill their enemies. Ted Crisp:…

Veronica Palmer: Pie.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#296

Post by cootsnuck » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

rablackburn wrote: post #8

I did read the post, but allow me to also recommend rambling when you’re remote. As in, take time in your day to wander and roam. (I would go for a ~1hr hike in the mornings as my “commute”) It gives you a sense of distinction from being home or “at work”. The routine cardio, and musings you have while walking make it well worth it.

I can also vouch for this. Going to the park near my house to walk for 30 mins is great just for the sake of getting out the house and moving my body when I'm feeling anxious. It does wonders for me. Important part to is that I walk for as little or as long as I want, no guilt or shame, no expectations.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#297

Post by atomicnumber3 » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

andrewrn wrote: post #236

I really cannot imagine working remote full-time, it sounds so depressing. We already don't go to church or bars or movies or clubs anymore. Work is one of the few remaining places to interact with other humans. I'd be interested in trying this if I was remote, but I still just prefer in-person work. I worked an in-person job recently at an oil company where we had no regular meetings (I was doing absolute grunt draf…

People are different. I have been fully remote for 5 years after 5 in-office, so I've seen both.

In office was fine while I didn't have kids. Now I have kids and my life would be in shambles if I had to commute. I also live in BFE and would make probably 70% less if I worked locally.

I grew up on the internet in the early 2000s. So I'm well used to getting lots of my social interaction from text chats, and I prefer it. I can text chat all day. I can in person chat for about 45 mins before I want to be alone with my thoughts.

Plus, I get off work and get to socialize with my family, who I like roughly 100x more than my favorite coworker.

It's just different people, different communication styles, different lives.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#298

Post by apwell23 » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #192

ronbenton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I see you’ve only had 15 rambles this week” “Isn’t 15 the minimum?” “Well, yeah, if you just want to do the bare minimum. But look at Todd over there - he has 37 rambles” “Well if you wanted people to have 37 rambles why wouldn’t you make that the minimum”

Ref: Office Space (Movie) Flare at the restaurant (I believe it's a spoof on TGI Fridays / Chillis etc) If you have not seen Office Space ... It has a couple raunchy things and it's general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000 USA so go in with about that level of culture expectations. Having said that, it's a GREAT movie which is practically a comedic documentary of US office politics and tropes. Though…

Its crazy how that movie has stood the test of time

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#299

Post by dTal » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #101

kmarc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I, as a fully remote, probably overworked person, sometimes wonder if I'm a loser just because I never * pick up Becky from school * feel under the weather today so I'll be offline and "take it easy" (never hear about me anymore today) * sorry "traffic jam" (10:00am) * sorry "train canceled" * will leave a bit early (2pm) for [insert random reason] appointment While all these can be completely valid reasons,…

I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under the weather" events. However I do think we need to make extra room for parents (I am not one, yet). I'm going to need a doctor who's younger than me when I'm 80+ Folks could always just disappear instead of announcing these things, but is that better? And as a senior on my team, I over announce certain stuff to let the other team members know that WLB is ok.

>I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under the weather" events.

If you don't normalize one-day "under the weather" events, you are trading them for multi-day "off sick" events.

Personal anecdata: I recall once at a job with a particularly easygoing boss I simply didn't feel up to my morning commute, for no easily definable reason. I rang in sick anyway and went back to sleep. I then proceeded to more or less sleep through the entire following 24 hours, until it was time to go to work again. Lo and behold I magically had the energy this time, and bounced into work. I then realized that I had been suffering from fatigue from the early stages of an infection which I had successfully fended off through rest - had I dragged myself into work, I most assuredly would not have been there the following day, and probably not the day after that either.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#300

Post by majke » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #158

majke wrote: post #132

Let me share a personal story. Back in 2014 when I was working at Cloudflare on DDoS mitigation I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". I quickly realised that these conversations had value outside the two of us - pretty much everyone else…

I understand the point you were making, but from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid. Having a place to have people ask questions is great and encouraged, but doing anything that starts gravitating the knowledge toward a person instead of a topic creates problems for discoverability, searchability, and risks creating the impression (for new employees) that certain specific people are…

This is a great comment. Thanks.

In my case - indeed the name is a historical baggage, I'm not arguing for or against it.

Indeed we had regularly situations that we had to pull in experts from other rooms, to discuss specific topics (like TCP), so we should have forwarded the conversation at the start.

But I don't think this should be categorical. There is value in non-experts responding faster (the channel had good reach) by your non-expert colleagues than waiting longer for the experts on the other continent to wake up.

Maybe there should be an option to... move conversation threads across channels?

I think there is place for both - unstructured conversations, and structured ones. What I don't like about managerial approach, is that many managers want to shape, constrain, control communication. This is not how I work. I value personal connections, I value personal expertise and curiosity. I dislike non-human touch.

"You should ask in the channel XYZ" is a dry and discouraging answer.

"Hey, Mat worked on it a while ago, let's summon him here, but he's in east coast so he's not at work yet, give him 2h" is a way better one.

I know that concentrating knowledge / ownership at a person is not always good, but perhaps a better way to manage this is to... hire someone else who is competent or make other people more vocal.

And yes, I don't like managers trying to shape communication patterns.