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The importance of offtopic

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Re: The importance of offtopic

#41

Post by andai »

beingfit wrote: post #36

> I asked one of my teammembers – what’s up with that? “Oh, you know, there’s a release coming up soon, nobody wants to give an impression that they’re dilly-dallying around instead of working.” This is what I’d worry about too. Apart from this, I don’t know how the chats will be used, who else might have some kind of access to those (IT, HR), etc. The pervasive monitoring of all network traffic makes it all seem lik…

Might depend on the size of the company. At some point it morphs from tribe to nanny state. So off topic dies.

Re: The importance of offtopic

#42

Post by jama211 »

mnahkies wrote: post #40

We were talking about standup last week, and someone commented that we sometimes get a bit off track / into the weeds. My response was that I'd much prefer we did this (talk about the surprises we're facing, or some interesting thing we stumbled across) than have it degrade to a pointless "yesterday I did x, today I will do y" where there's very little substance being communicated that isn't already evident from the…

Now just tell me why my company only demands the latter, despite the fact that I update my tickets the same way

Re: The importance of offtopic

#43

Post by pacifika »

jama211 wrote: post #42
mnahkies wrote: post #40

We were talking about standup last week, and someone commented that we sometimes get a bit off track / into the weeds. My response was that I'd much prefer we did this (talk about the surprises we're facing, or some interesting thing we stumbled across) than have it degrade to a pointless "yesterday I did x, today I will do y" where there's very little substance being communicated that isn't already evident from the…

Now just tell me why my company only demands the latter, despite the fact that I update my tickets the same way

Ask internally

Re: The importance of offtopic

#44

Post by [deleted] »

mnahkies wrote: post #40

We were talking about standup last week, and someone commented that we sometimes get a bit off track / into the weeds. My response was that I'd much prefer we did this (talk about the surprises we're facing, or some interesting thing we stumbled across) than have it degrade to a pointless "yesterday I did x, today I will do y" where there's very little substance being communicated that isn't already evident from the…

[deleted]

Re: The importance of offtopic

#45

Post by bowsamic »

47282847 wrote: post #20
bowsamic wrote: post #5

I don’t see why my colleagues should be my friends. Then again I live in Germany and it seems to be very much not the culture to mix those two things here

I am German and this statement catches me by surprise. All of my friends from a lot of different fields would agree that workplace friends are a very important pillar of our lives. I think there are many strategies to get your own needs met. Keeping friends and work separate doesn’t automatically make it unhealthy; it’s more about individual choice. My peers would not want to work in places without friendship.

I haven't encountered a workplace where that would be tolerated

Re: The importance of offtopic

#46

Post by davidw »

makeitdouble wrote: post #28

> it shows an understanding that people need to unwind and interact, and work ultimately benefits. Funny how it’s such an alien concept the moment work moves online. Offline people were in the same building under direct watch from the employer. We badged to enter and leave the building, employers surely felt fully in control. Online that physical boundary disappearing, the pendulum swings the other way for companies…

> That's one of the reason I prefer fully online shops, they'll usually have made peace with it and structured themselves in saner ways.

There's also a 'tipping point'. If you have 9 out of 10 people in the office, they're just going to be human and chat about stuff in the office and meet in person and the 1 person not there is best viewed as someone to farm piece work out to rather than part of the team. Which is fine in some cases but different than:

If 9 / 10 people are remote, then everyone is using the online tools and has to buy into them and they're all an integral part of the team.

Re: The importance of offtopic

#47

Post by watwut »

mathgeek wrote: post #32
watwut wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your immune system underperforms when the body temperature goes down. It is not contact with people, the weather affects your immune system too. > During cold season we stay indoors more which increases our likelihood of being exposed to other people that are sick. For most people this is not really true nowdays. We work in the same offices and use the same kind of transport when going to the office. We shop in the s…

> It is not contact with people, the weather affects your immune system too. Did you mean not _just_ contact with people? Many folks who isolated during covid saw a reduction in illnesses regardless of season.

Yeah, I meant just.

Re: The importance of offtopic

#48

Post by rendaw »

atoav wrote: post #13

> You can create as many Slack channels as you want, but all that is worthless if you don’t build the culture where it’s okay to use them. Well the problem with corporate offtopic spaces is obvious: It is (potential) surveillance. One of the essential properties of the coffee kitchen at the office is that only you and the person who was there know what you said. People at work will occasionally like to talk about thi…

Yeah, in a break room, you can see who's there and who you're talking to. It's not just surveillance, when you post in "#random" with the whole company there you need to post things that that resonate with everyone.

It doesn't involve groups, but I think DMs/1-1 chats are probably a better analogue for water cooler chats and I'd be even more surprised to see a company without those.

Re: The importance of offtopic

#49

Post by skybrian »

makeitdouble wrote: post #28

> it shows an understanding that people need to unwind and interact, and work ultimately benefits. Funny how it’s such an alien concept the moment work moves online. Offline people were in the same building under direct watch from the employer. We badged to enter and leave the building, employers surely felt fully in control. Online that physical boundary disappearing, the pendulum swings the other way for companies…

At Google, sometimes my manager and most of the team were at another office so we did a lot of video calls anyway.

Re: The importance of offtopic

#50

Post by ghaff »

davidw wrote: post #46
makeitdouble wrote: post #28

> it shows an understanding that people need to unwind and interact, and work ultimately benefits. Funny how it’s such an alien concept the moment work moves online. Offline people were in the same building under direct watch from the employer. We badged to enter and leave the building, employers surely felt fully in control. Online that physical boundary disappearing, the pendulum swings the other way for companies…

> That's one of the reason I prefer fully online shops, they'll usually have made peace with it and structured themselves in saner ways. There's also a 'tipping point'. If you have 9 out of 10 people in the office, they're just going to be human and chat about stuff in the office and meet in person and the 1 person not there is best viewed as someone to farm piece work out to rather than part of the team. Which is fi…

Yeah, I'm not sure 100% remote all the time is ideal but if you're the 1 in 10 person who is remote, that's probably not a good space to be in.
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