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The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

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Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#51

Post by thrower123 »

mscasts wrote: post #3

I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation. At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk. So I can attest to this.

This is probably the ideal split. The one period when I was working from home four days a week and going to the office once was without a doubt the most productive of my life.

Get all the staff meetings and brainstorming and shit-shooting done in one day, then actually work the rest of the time. As it is, I have at least a half dozen different ways that you can get in touch with me if you really need to, over text, voice, video, screensharing, etc.

The other thing about working remote is that you need to actually commit to it, and get prooerly setup. It's difficult to do that if it's an irregular or one-day-a-week thing; the work-from-home day just becomes an unofficial vacation day.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#52

Post by tomasGiden »

It is easy to make a case for either synchronous or asynchronous communication just as easily as making cases for on collocation or remote work or office landscapes or individual rooms. But what is most often missing us the context. And it is quite naive to believe one way is always better than the other.

I can recommend the work on Dynamic work design by Nelson P. Repenning to make a case for both in what context either is best but even more importantly, when and how to move back and forth between different work modes. Here is a good introduction: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/a-new-approach-to-design...

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#53

Post by jillesvangurp »

An important point about asynchronous vs. synchronous is that it's not just about the communication but about the work processeses. What enables people to work more effectively is removing synchronization bottlenecks in processes. Any kind of synchronization point causes people to do silly things like wait for that to happen, delay activities until after they've happened, or try to organize meetings around these points. The more synchronization points you have, the slower things get. Usually we call this bureaucracy.

Any kind of meeting is a synchronization bottleneck. People synchronize their workday around these. Workdays and office hours are synchronization points as well. They create bottlenecks in our traffic system even where literally everybody is trying to get to work at the same time just so they can be at a standup meeting.

Treat it as a technical problem and get rid of unnecessary blocking activities and things run smoother. It's true for software, it's true for logistics, and it is true for work processes. The same principles apply and you can use similar design patterns (queues, events, etc.). A side effect of non blocking processes is that people can work more effectively without waiting for people to talk to them or meetings to happen. It enables remote work but is just as effective when used on site.

Git was invented to support asynchronous development where independent groups of developers work on their own branches and exchange patches or pull requests when they want to synchronize. Works great for OSS but it is now also common in non remote software teams. Create a ticket, assign it, create a branch for it, do some work, create a pr, pr gets reviewed, ci builds trigger and if you figured out deployment automation, ultimately the change goes to production as well. It's all orchestrated via events that trigger somebody or something to pick up the work for the next thing. It's great. It replaced a work process where people were bottle-necked on central version repositories that required a lot of ceremony around branching and merging because it was so tedious; which in turn made commits a big deal and necessitated commit freezes and lots of communication overhead, meetings, and delays. Git got rid of most of that.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#54

Post by 100100010001 »

nabdab wrote: post #50
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #2

I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…

It’s a valid concern. If you don’t have transparency into ongoing work, then you aren’t ready for remote workers. If the only method for your manager to know what people are working on is to tap people on shoulders, then doing that isn’t a “bad behavior” for the manager, it’s necessary behavior. Of cause a better solution is to have trust and plans. (Agile, scrum, waterfall, napkin sketches or whatever it doesn’t mat…

I disagree with the “tapping on the shoulder isn’t a bad behavior”. It is counterproductive as illustrated by the linked cartoon.

https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt...

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#55

Post by yodsanklai »

I work remotely.

I've noticed that one thing that make me work harder than in an office, is that I feel that I need to earn the trust that my employer gives me. In an office, sometimes I feel that just being there is enough to justify my salary, even if I'm just chatting with colleagues or browsing the web. I discipline myself better when I work remotely.

Another thing that makes a difference for me: I suffer from back pain when sitting in a chair for too long. At my place, I can lie down if needed.

On the downside, I suffer from being far from where decisions are taken, and I sometimes miss important information.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#56

Post by Tade0 »

graeme wrote: post #48
Tade0 wrote: post #8

Except for the occasional visit to the office to give a few high fives and have some chit-chat I work remotely. Until recently we used Toggl to track work time and the guidance was to have "6h of focused work daily". I'm managing 5h 15min-ish, but only when working remotely. When I'm in the office that number organically drops to around 3h 40min. Only person really doing those hours(and above) is one guy who's not in…

How did you find the 6h target system. I've wondered if I should do something similar. I am, however, bad at time tracking by disposition, and haven't made a full system yet.

I didn't participate in any of the decisions, but I assume that given a 8h workday less than one hour was reserved for lunch and the rest for stuff like going to the bathroom and socializing with your co-workers.

It actually was dropped not that long ago, because clients complained that we "weren't working full time".

Little do they know that those 6h were honest, focused work and the requested 8h won't be, because there are limits to what can be achieved on any given day.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#57

Post by nkrisc »

BigJ1211 wrote: post #11
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #2

I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…

> As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get the impression they're not working." This really hits the nail on the head, in my experience this is accurate for employers that are anti-remote , they want to be able to see people "work". I've argued that that means they are essentially paying people to be there 8 hours a day, not that they're working 8 hours a day. You s…

Likely they don't have any higher level way to gauge or measure productivity, which is why they fall back to something they can see: how many people are there and for how long. If they could measure how much work is actually getting done, they'd probably forget to even gaze upon the serfs toiling.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#58

Post by thrownaway954 »

nabdab wrote: post #50
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #2

I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…

It’s a valid concern. If you don’t have transparency into ongoing work, then you aren’t ready for remote workers. If the only method for your manager to know what people are working on is to tap people on shoulders, then doing that isn’t a “bad behavior” for the manager, it’s necessary behavior. Of cause a better solution is to have trust and plans. (Agile, scrum, waterfall, napkin sketches or whatever it doesn’t mat…

My manager _constantly_ will shout out, "does anyone know what X is working on?" It pisses me off to high hell that a manager has to ask his workers what another worker is working on.

I honestly think that EVERYONE should be using a ticket tracking system and just put assignments in a person's queue. I don't see why this is such a big deal or looked down upon. It's so easy to see what everyone is working on, run reports to see how long things took, have a place to keep track of notes which builds a knowledge base, the benefits are limmitless.

Not to mention the fact that if all you have to do is look at the reports to know what is going on, you don't physically need the person there which will allows them to work from anywhere.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#59

Post by keymon-o »

dagw wrote: post #9
mscasts wrote: post #3

I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation. At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk. So I can attest to this.

I could work from home 80% of the time if I wanted, but actually prefer working at an office because I find it less distracting. The office is a 'clean' space where I'm only surrounded by work related thing. I have my work computer on my work desk with my work setup, and nothing else. There is pretty much nothing else to do here other than work. Home is cluttered and I'm surrounded by all kinds of 'distraction' not r…

Remote work boosting is becoming a company shaming trend for not allowing workers to escape company rules, routines and procedures. Sure, remote work should be promoted, but in a way to give companies useful resources on how to analyze the neccessity and implement in their workflow.

Instead of writing arguments how remote work is just awesome, it would be more useful to have statistics on how many people are actually capable and accountable to work from home, and what do people really want out of their workspaces or by asking for remote work.

Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

#60

Post by shinryuu »

_Microft wrote: post #26
hrbf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll probably be interested to read about Bullshit Jobs. The authors’ name escapes me currently.

Is it this one, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs You're shadow-banned btw (which I normally wouldn't tell) but your comments look OK, so maybe this has happened by accident? You could try to challenge that (maybe via the email support?).

I can see the parent comment, so I think he isn't shadowbanned..?
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