4 ms·

that's an uninteresting opinion. I've been communicating solely with people for years, from home, using chat and sometimes video, but usually just text. I don'

by ldehaan 10y ago

that's an uninteresting opinion. I've been communicating solely with people for years, from home, using chat and sometimes video, but usually just text. I don't forget what someone just told me. I have a trail of requests and ideas from clients and coworkers. if necessary I will jump on a phone call for faster data transfer. the office is great for talking to coworkers, which is almost always about non work stuff, vs when I'm at home working and all my conversations are about work. I rarely get interrupted when I'm in the zone unless it's an actual emergency. I could go on.

Jtsummers 10y ago
Similarly, in my office too many people try to communicate tasks and plans to me verbally. I've had to tell them to send me emails (or put in a JIRA entry or whatever). I cannot incorporate something into my task list that's undocumented, and text (email or JIRA preferred, chat is sufficient for small things but can't be a priority item) is a fantastic way to ensure that it makes it into the queue.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Indeed. Hell, I apply it to life in general (and I wish people would do less talking and more e-mailing). I often get friends and family make random requests in the middle of me doing something, and at some point I started telling everyone - if you want something important, write me a goddamn e-mail. Otherwise there's a good chance I forget. ... aand since people think it's weird and antisocial to communicate via e-mail, I end up abusing org-capture. I.e. I have a quick hotkey (C-c c t) to input and save a task directly to the self-organizing system I use, so if people absolutely refuse to send e-mail, they get an "uh, ok, thanks; I've noted it down and will deal with this later" from me, and I don't spend even 5 seconds thinking about it until the time is right.
Retra 10y ago
You could go on, but you're never going to explain how your communication has actually worsened because you are unaware of it. Hell, I could give you a good dozen examples of interesting things that can't be communicated properly over long distance, but I'm never going to prove that here, am I? You're never going to understand how confident or uncertain I am. You're never going to grasp an idea that isn't already weighed down by the bias of my word choices and take it with it's natural abstract flexibility and apply it on your own terms. So I won't take you at your word.
- ldehaan 10y ago
  well that's true, I'm a little fishbowled because I work in devops, so my conversations are constrained to technical matters which don't require (if your team is any good) trust in anything but the code you review and accept. I restrict conversations about jobs, raises and things that require convincing to face to face encounters, but those are intermittent and not a daily or even weekly occurrence. since the majority of my conversations are: hey, X needs to be done on Y, or build a mesos cluster on Z, or we're having intermittent connection issues on demo. It makes sense to have everything written down for reference, jira helps too, but getting the business side to create tickets is harder than it looks. overall maybe it's more of a role based issue.
  - matwood 10y ago
    I agree with everything you just said. Some items should only be in person, but the majority actually work better in some written form. Having an instant log is great for basically any work conversation. JIRA ticket comments and Slack come to mind. I also find conversations more of a lazy way to communicate. Most just talk and never really think. Forcing someone to validate their idea(s) to the point where they are writing them down helps everyone involved. Finally, written down helps avoid the circular conversations and keeps others who were not present up to speed. Being able to go off and think and come back to exactly where the written conversation left off is a big win. Contrast this with the often endless meetings where the same things are discussed for a majority of the start of the meeting and at the end 1 extra decision is made.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    One thing is that talking about "restrategizing our value proposition to better synergize our resource allocation" doesn't look so impressive or meaningful when it's written down. You can get away with a lot more of bullshit when you're talking face-to-face. It's one of the reason why I prefer text. To drop a data point - as a developer, there's very little in my job that would be done better by personal meeting that isn't handled better via asynchronous communication. Be it IM or e-mail, or whatever. E-mail preferably, because IMs seem to give people the impression they don't have to think before writing. As for things that do require personal meetings - I'd say some initial architectural discussions, when you really want to be together in front of a large whiteboard. That however could be moved to software too, if someone someday writes a non-utterly-shitty collaboration program.
JoBrad 10y ago
I've worked at a few companies where inter-office communication and remote-worker communication was excellent. But that's not the norm. People tend to make decisions, especially when they're rushed, with those closest to them.

by ldehaan 10y ago

Jtsummers 10y ago

Similarly, in my office too many people try to communicate tasks and plans to me verbally. I've had to tell them to send me emails (or put in a JIRA entry or whatever). I cannot incorporate something into my task list that's undocumented, and text (email or JIRA preferred, chat is sufficient for small things but can't be a priority item) is a fantastic way to ensure that it makes it into the queue.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Indeed. Hell, I apply it to life in general (and I wish people would do less talking and more e-mailing). I often get friends and family make random requests in the middle of me doing something, and at some point I started telling everyone - if you want something important, write me a goddamn e-mail. Otherwise there's a good chance I forget. ... aand since people think it's weird and antisocial to communicate via e-mail, I end up abusing org-capture. I.e. I have a quick hotkey (C-c c t) to input and save a task directly to the self-organizing system I use, so if people absolutely refuse to send e-mail, they get an "uh, ok, thanks; I've noted it down and will deal with this later" from me, and I don't spend even 5 seconds thinking about it until the time is right.

Retra 10y ago

You could go on, but you're never going to explain how your communication has actually worsened because you are unaware of it. Hell, I could give you a good dozen examples of interesting things that can't be communicated properly over long distance, but I'm never going to prove that here, am I? You're never going to understand how confident or uncertain I am. You're never going to grasp an idea that isn't already weighed down by the bias of my word choices and take it with it's natural abstract flexibility and apply it on your own terms. So I won't take you at your word.

ldehaan 10y ago
well that's true, I'm a little fishbowled because I work in devops, so my conversations are constrained to technical matters which don't require (if your team is any good) trust in anything but the code you review and accept. I restrict conversations about jobs, raises and things that require convincing to face to face encounters, but those are intermittent and not a daily or even weekly occurrence. since the majority of my conversations are: hey, X needs to be done on Y, or build a mesos cluster on Z, or we're having intermittent connection issues on demo. It makes sense to have everything written down for reference, jira helps too, but getting the business side to create tickets is harder than it looks. overall maybe it's more of a role based issue.
- matwood 10y ago
  I agree with everything you just said. Some items should only be in person, but the majority actually work better in some written form. Having an instant log is great for basically any work conversation. JIRA ticket comments and Slack come to mind. I also find conversations more of a lazy way to communicate. Most just talk and never really think. Forcing someone to validate their idea(s) to the point where they are writing them down helps everyone involved. Finally, written down helps avoid the circular conversations and keeps others who were not present up to speed. Being able to go off and think and come back to exactly where the written conversation left off is a big win. Contrast this with the often endless meetings where the same things are discussed for a majority of the start of the meeting and at the end 1 extra decision is made.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  One thing is that talking about "restrategizing our value proposition to better synergize our resource allocation" doesn't look so impressive or meaningful when it's written down. You can get away with a lot more of bullshit when you're talking face-to-face. It's one of the reason why I prefer text. To drop a data point - as a developer, there's very little in my job that would be done better by personal meeting that isn't handled better via asynchronous communication. Be it IM or e-mail, or whatever. E-mail preferably, because IMs seem to give people the impression they don't have to think before writing. As for things that do require personal meetings - I'd say some initial architectural discussions, when you really want to be together in front of a large whiteboard. That however could be moved to software too, if someone someday writes a non-utterly-shitty collaboration program.

JoBrad 10y ago

I've worked at a few companies where inter-office communication and remote-worker communication was excellent. But that's not the norm. People tend to make decisions, especially when they're rushed, with those closest to them.