3 ms·

I am a recent remote developer and I found these insights to be very valuable, especially the "going out of your way to be human" one. I was in senior/lead pos

I am a recent remote developer and I found these insights to be very valuable, especially the "going out of your way to be human" one. I was in senior/lead position and part of my responsibilities were to mentor younger (professionally speaking) engineers and make sure the team is executing effectively. While these are not explicit responsibilities in my new gig, I wonder how would one go about doing them as a remote senior/tech lead. One thing that I miss is that having a finger on the team's pulse. I don't know if the teammates are motivated. Emotions are often filtered out of communication through email or slack or whatever. And you get a limited amount of video call time per day with the whole team. Wondering if anyone else went through the same problem and figured out a way.

bhalp1 9y ago
I find it useful to go out of our way to schedule free time in the form of video chats. Where we just talk about stuff and catch up until something that needs to be covered comes up naturally. That is an ordinary thing that happens face-to-face. Less-so remote, so you have to go out of your way.
- rubayeet 9y ago
  > I find it useful to go out of our way to schedule free time in the form of video chats. Feels a bit unnatural to me. It's one thing to chat while you and your teammate are on your coffee breaks, vs you have to schedule that with someone. I would not appreciate if a colleague wants to setup a hangout call to just, hang out.
  - softawre 9y ago
    You can setup a video room to hangout in for 20 minutes every other day or whatever, and people can show up if they want or not show up.
lukethomas 9y ago
I built this (fridayfeedback.com) to help leaders understand what's going on w/ their teams. Most customers are remote teams/organizations. I've also managed remote teams before so can understand where you're coming from.

bhalp1 9y ago

I find it useful to go out of our way to schedule free time in the form of video chats. Where we just talk about stuff and catch up until something that needs to be covered comes up naturally. That is an ordinary thing that happens face-to-face. Less-so remote, so you have to go out of your way.

rubayeet 9y ago
> I find it useful to go out of our way to schedule free time in the form of video chats. Feels a bit unnatural to me. It's one thing to chat while you and your teammate are on your coffee breaks, vs you have to schedule that with someone. I would not appreciate if a colleague wants to setup a hangout call to just, hang out.
- softawre 9y ago
  You can setup a video room to hangout in for 20 minutes every other day or whatever, and people can show up if they want or not show up.

lukethomas 9y ago

I built this (fridayfeedback.com) to help leaders understand what's going on w/ their teams. Most customers are remote teams/organizations. I've also managed remote teams before so can understand where you're coming from.