Written communication is remote work super power

No, actually the opposite is true. The whole idea of any policy is to give artificial "power" to one side to straighten out the situations where the balance of power is unclear.

An exec (the remote-only version of Tim Cook if you like) can use their leverage to change the existing email flows between all managers and all engineers. Because it's more scalable than micromanaging one engineer.

In other words, some people are good at organizing through setting policies (the better sort of politics) and it's a good place to discuss such ideas.

Parent's formulation doesn't look convincing though :)

I think emotional intelligence coupled with integrity are the real super power wombo-combo, no matter the role.

It helps if you have the technical skills to go with it but to be honest, having those skills should be a matter of training, not expecting people to be learning on their own time.

This should be fixed on the company level - every employee should receive regular training, not be expected to magically keep up their workload and learn new technologies in their spare time.

Another issue that makes projects go side-ways is people relying on a paycheque for their livelihood. If you want people with integrity to practice it in the workplace, don't place them in impossible situations where they have to choose between their integrity and their family's financial well being.

This should be fixed on the government level.

This is all to say that this endless stream of blog posts about what an already over-worked, under-paid worker ought to improve upon, are not helpful - highly educated people used to be Aristocrats who fine dined and wrote poetry. Today we are expecting people to pay for their own training, spend the best years of their lives studying to pass tests, be hazed trying to get a job, for the privilege of getting worked to the bone for the benefit of a corporate entity. I thought only dystopian novels could think of a system so counter-productive and insane, until I read Brave New World and thought hm, this might be an upgrade over the life I'm currently living.

Anyhow :)

> it’s a lot easier to have people in a room and hash it out

IME it isn't because they aren't an environment conducive to informed debate. It's easy to get everyone in the room to agree, but as soon as you get out and check specifics, think the problem through properly, research what's already in pace, etc, you realize the whole meeting was a waste or worse, you've just committed to something sub-optimal/impossible.

An async "meeting" allow you to look for information so it's based in reality not best guesses, it gives you time to read necessary background info and do more research. These ultimately make for better decisions. They also don't waste the time of people that don't care.

I agree with this so much that I even wrote about it recently!

https://fastmail.blog/2020/05/22/email-for-remote-productivi...

Snir David writes well. One point that I think is missed in the "chats and video calls" is that you don't have situational awareness of whether the other person is busy like you do in person.

It's the same as the problem with taking phone calls when driving a car as compared to talking to people who are in the car with you. The people in the car with you can see when you're in a tricky traffic situation. The caller, not so much.

Whatever people’s preferences in terms of reading or listening, I am inclined to think teams get better results when a high quality meeting summary goes out ahead of time.

I don’t claim this is an absolute truth, but I also don’t think many organizations have given it proper try.