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Well, I do great work as long as it's going in the right direction for the team. I pull very well at the oars when I have a quiet place, but I tend to start r

Well, I do great work as long as it's going in the right direction for the team. I pull very well at the oars when I have a quiet place, but I tend to start rowing in the wrong direction on a daily basis if I don't get to see how everyone else is rowing. A lot of it is your seniority. Less senior folks can be more remote.

valuearb 9y ago
I don't understand how being remote or in your own office affects how aligned your work is with the team. Today we have Slack, email, texting, phones, face-time, Skype, conference rooms, etc, etc, etc. Back in the old days everyone stayed on the page just by leaving their office once or twice a day to meet and review priorities, and occasionally go into another engineers office to get/give help on a problem. If you don't understand your teams priorities and what everyone is working on, that has nothing to do with your office layout. It's either an indication of poor project management/leadership, or your own laziness.
- justonepost 9y ago
  People don't have to log onto slack or email or respond. When you sit near someone it's pretty weird to ignore them. The other thing is that people are necessarily cliquish. Folks in the office will necessarily gang up to keep remote workers on the outside. Man is a political beast..
  - valuearb 9y ago
    The great thing about Slack/email is that you CAN ignore people. If I'm working on a particular difficult problem that requires an hour of uninterrupted thought, getting interrupted a couple times during that hour can easily turn it into 2 hours with lower quality results. Being able to turn on DND in Slack and then responding after that hour is over is a godsend for high quality work and productivity. The awful part of open offices is that people think they can just wave a hand in front of your face to get your attention because it's suddenly important to THEM. If your team "gangs up" on you, that's a management problem that can occur even in an open office. I'm happy to help virtually anyone, as long as they respect my need to be productive and have time to focus. But if you are one of the rare developers who is more work for me than you seem to output, I'll happily ignore you even if you sit right in front of me. If you try to break my concentration, I'll just tell you to solve your own problems. That's a problem our manager will have to deal with whether one of us is remote or not. I'm simply not going to babysit devs who refuse to do the basics of problem solving without having their hands held.
    - justonepost 9y ago
      I think there should be a forced period where people need to help each other. 11-2 everyday is my proposal. Leaving it up to each developer to decide who they're going to help and who they aren't just creates cliques and gangs.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        I agree, a "shared" period where everyone helps is useful, and developers should help all their team members. The other day I cleared my bugs and offered to help our QA lead do his testing, he was hugely bottlenecked and the most important person on the project at the moment.

valuearb 9y ago

I don't understand how being remote or in your own office affects how aligned your work is with the team. Today we have Slack, email, texting, phones, face-time, Skype, conference rooms, etc, etc, etc. Back in the old days everyone stayed on the page just by leaving their office once or twice a day to meet and review priorities, and occasionally go into another engineers office to get/give help on a problem. If you don't understand your teams priorities and what everyone is working on, that has nothing to do with your office layout. It's either an indication of poor project management/leadership, or your own laziness.

justonepost 9y ago
People don't have to log onto slack or email or respond. When you sit near someone it's pretty weird to ignore them. The other thing is that people are necessarily cliquish. Folks in the office will necessarily gang up to keep remote workers on the outside. Man is a political beast..
- valuearb 9y ago
  The great thing about Slack/email is that you CAN ignore people. If I'm working on a particular difficult problem that requires an hour of uninterrupted thought, getting interrupted a couple times during that hour can easily turn it into 2 hours with lower quality results. Being able to turn on DND in Slack and then responding after that hour is over is a godsend for high quality work and productivity. The awful part of open offices is that people think they can just wave a hand in front of your face to get your attention because it's suddenly important to THEM. If your team "gangs up" on you, that's a management problem that can occur even in an open office. I'm happy to help virtually anyone, as long as they respect my need to be productive and have time to focus. But if you are one of the rare developers who is more work for me than you seem to output, I'll happily ignore you even if you sit right in front of me. If you try to break my concentration, I'll just tell you to solve your own problems. That's a problem our manager will have to deal with whether one of us is remote or not. I'm simply not going to babysit devs who refuse to do the basics of problem solving without having their hands held.
  - justonepost 9y ago
    I think there should be a forced period where people need to help each other. 11-2 everyday is my proposal. Leaving it up to each developer to decide who they're going to help and who they aren't just creates cliques and gangs.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      I agree, a "shared" period where everyone helps is useful, and developers should help all their team members. The other day I cleared my bugs and offered to help our QA lead do his testing, he was hugely bottlenecked and the most important person on the project at the moment.