6 ms·

I can't stress how good the above comment is at dealing with this. As a long time manager, people that behave this way are a total joy to manage. Also, if you

by e40 9y ago

I can't stress how good the above comment is at dealing with this. As a long time manager, people that behave this way are a total joy to manage. Also, if you have a smartphone and your company uses slack, there is no reason to be unreachable, unless you are in a deadzone of cell reception or driving. But, if you practice the above, it shouldn't be an issue. For example, a post to #OOO: hey, running an errand for the next hour, offline.

kd5bjo 9y ago
> if you have a smartphone... there is no reason to be unreachable It is totally fine to be unreachable nights and weekends[1] without providing notice to your employer; being able to detach from work completely from time to time is key to minimizing burnout risk, and what you do on your own time is none of their business. [1] With the exception of formalized support rotations, of course
- balfirevic 9y ago
  I certainly hope parent poster meant being reachable during working hours.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mulmen 9y ago
    Never assume management's expectations.
- e40 9y ago
  I meant regular working hours.
CydeWeys 9y ago
Being unreachable during core business hours is definitely a huge problem from the perspective of the non-remote employee (me) who's in the office for the typical eight hours a day trying to get something done and being blocked by a coworker who's unreachable because they're remote. If you a remote worker, the onus is on you to never let the fact that you're not in the office become a burden on your coworkers. If you end up being harder to work with because you're less reachable then your coworkers will begin to resent you for it, and that doesn't lead down a good path. If you're not online and available during the expected business hours for your position then you're not really doing 100% of your job, because you're not able to assist your team members as is expected of your role. Note that this applies to members of standard software engineering teams, and not necessarily to contractual work that involves delivering products on certain timetables but not necessarily close collaboration with a team.
- sbov 9y ago
  Lots of places offer flexible business hours, even for people coming in the office. Not everyone always takes lunch at the same time either. Even people in the office are not 100% available all the time. Your attitude towards remote workers seems unnecessarily hostile.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    You're misinterpreting my post. At my current job we are flexible -- people come in and leave at different times, eat lunch at different times, etc. I'm not expecting everyone to be at their desks from 10-6 all day every day. That's why I said "core business hours". There's a difference between someone who is unavailable because they're off eating lunch and someone who is incommunicado for many hours at a time and impedes progress. I've seen remote workers drastically slow down progress by simply being unavailable while all of the non-remote workers are present and blocked on them for something. In theory an onsite worker could do this too, but in practice they don't simply disappear for hours at a time at the office.
    - sbov 9y ago
      Our team is usually fully remote. I've actually worked my full career in mostly remote positions (15 years now). I've very rarely experienced people randomly disappearing for hours at a time, and usually a simple text will clear things up. However, if you work in a flexible office and your team has core business hours, official or not, your manager should probably convey this. This just falls under "managing expectations", and is not necessarily a failure of the employee. Sometimes emergencies will necessitate missing even core business hours. This is more a matter of having more responsibilities (family, kids, etc) than being remote though. But if an employee has these sorts of responsibilities, I'm guessing they are more likely to take up remote work. There are positives and negatives to hiring remote workers, and I think there are several ways to compensate for the negatives. Obviously since I work remotely I think the positives outweigh those negatives. But I also think placing so much emphasis on one of the negatives, that I rarely experience in practice, is extremely narrow sighted. But maybe your remote workers are bad at working remotely, maybe your company is bad at managing remote workers, or maybe there's confounding variables like the one I mentioned above.
BeetleB 9y ago
>Also, if you have a smartphone and your company uses slack, there is no reason to be unreachable. This is a silly attitude if you meant it very generally. Workplaces should set expectations - remote or otherwise. And people should be judged by them - remote or otherwise. As an example, for my last job (non-remote), I told them during the interview that: 1. I will not be on any IM software. 2. I will check email only 3 times during the work day. "Is that a problem?" They said "No". Just set clear expectations. If you have a remote worker who is often unavailable, but you did not have this conversation when he/she was hired, you are part of the problem. (I had to loosen 1 above once we hired remote workers - it was unfair to them).

by e40 9y ago

kd5bjo 9y ago

> if you have a smartphone... there is no reason to be unreachable It is totally fine to be unreachable nights and weekends[1] without providing notice to your employer; being able to detach from work completely from time to time is key to minimizing burnout risk, and what you do on your own time is none of their business. [1] With the exception of formalized support rotations, of course

balfirevic 9y ago
I certainly hope parent poster meant being reachable during working hours.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mulmen 9y ago
  Never assume management's expectations.
e40 9y ago
I meant regular working hours.

CydeWeys 9y ago

Being unreachable during core business hours is definitely a huge problem from the perspective of the non-remote employee (me) who's in the office for the typical eight hours a day trying to get something done and being blocked by a coworker who's unreachable because they're remote. If you a remote worker, the onus is on you to never let the fact that you're not in the office become a burden on your coworkers. If you end up being harder to work with because you're less reachable then your coworkers will begin to resent you for it, and that doesn't lead down a good path. If you're not online and available during the expected business hours for your position then you're not really doing 100% of your job, because you're not able to assist your team members as is expected of your role. Note that this applies to members of standard software engineering teams, and not necessarily to contractual work that involves delivering products on certain timetables but not necessarily close collaboration with a team.

sbov 9y ago
Lots of places offer flexible business hours, even for people coming in the office. Not everyone always takes lunch at the same time either. Even people in the office are not 100% available all the time. Your attitude towards remote workers seems unnecessarily hostile.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  You're misinterpreting my post. At my current job we are flexible -- people come in and leave at different times, eat lunch at different times, etc. I'm not expecting everyone to be at their desks from 10-6 all day every day. That's why I said "core business hours". There's a difference between someone who is unavailable because they're off eating lunch and someone who is incommunicado for many hours at a time and impedes progress. I've seen remote workers drastically slow down progress by simply being unavailable while all of the non-remote workers are present and blocked on them for something. In theory an onsite worker could do this too, but in practice they don't simply disappear for hours at a time at the office.
  - sbov 9y ago
    Our team is usually fully remote. I've actually worked my full career in mostly remote positions (15 years now). I've very rarely experienced people randomly disappearing for hours at a time, and usually a simple text will clear things up. However, if you work in a flexible office and your team has core business hours, official or not, your manager should probably convey this. This just falls under "managing expectations", and is not necessarily a failure of the employee. Sometimes emergencies will necessitate missing even core business hours. This is more a matter of having more responsibilities (family, kids, etc) than being remote though. But if an employee has these sorts of responsibilities, I'm guessing they are more likely to take up remote work. There are positives and negatives to hiring remote workers, and I think there are several ways to compensate for the negatives. Obviously since I work remotely I think the positives outweigh those negatives. But I also think placing so much emphasis on one of the negatives, that I rarely experience in practice, is extremely narrow sighted. But maybe your remote workers are bad at working remotely, maybe your company is bad at managing remote workers, or maybe there's confounding variables like the one I mentioned above.

BeetleB 9y ago

>Also, if you have a smartphone and your company uses slack, there is no reason to be unreachable. This is a silly attitude if you meant it very generally. Workplaces should set expectations - remote or otherwise. And people should be judged by them - remote or otherwise. As an example, for my last job (non-remote), I told them during the interview that: 1. I will not be on any IM software. 2. I will check email only 3 times during the work day. "Is that a problem?" They said "No". Just set clear expectations. If you have a remote worker who is often unavailable, but you did not have this conversation when he/she was hired, you are part of the problem. (I had to loosen 1 above once we hired remote workers - it was unfair to them).