10 ms·

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication,

by nvarsj 8y ago

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approach required by text, relying instead on spoken rhetoric. I think even if you're colocated, there are huge benefits to following the remote work practices and improving your written communication. Documenting your work in an issue manager and using chat primarily for communication means no one will miss out, even if someone is sick, a new starter, or on a different team. All these things can make a dev organisation much more effective and break down silos.

minipci1321 8y ago
> it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. effective reader too. One should be able to quickly make sense out of several hunbdreds of email messages, otherwise it will end up in "synchronous mode" -- dozen of messaging windows opened at every moment.
- amorphous 8y ago
  so true. I have a business partner that I can talk to very effective in person. I had to relocate, and now we have to deal mostly via email. I have been working remotely for ten years now and saw no problem with the change. But it has become disastrous. I figured out that he is just not an "email type". Only picking up the phone works with him, but this does not fit into my workflow. I'm undoing our business partnership currently.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Why doesn't picking up a phone fit into your workflow?
    - amorphous 8y ago
      _Always_ picking up the phone doesn't fit into my workflow. Some things are better discussed via email or chat. I think it is very difficult to work remotely if you only have direct verbal communication available.
      - satsuma 8y ago
        sort of tangental, but i wonder how a drop in/drop out system like teamspeak/vent/discord/etc. would work in a professional setting. you have direct calls still, but if you just want to be available to coordinate through voice you could. similar to leaving your door open and letting people stop by.
        pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Keeping an open channel on Teamspeak could be compared to having a person sitting at the next desk.
    - jasode 8y ago
      For many, a ringing phone is much more disruptive than an email notification. Picking up a phone for voice calls is synchronous. Responding to an email is asynchronous. (The asynchronous advantage is probably why SMS texting & WhatsApp/FB messaging has overtaken voice calls.) I had a friend that didn't use email and always called my phone. Whenever I shut off the ringer, he'd eventually send me an email. But the content of that email was always, "Hey I got no answer on your phone. Give me a call." Argh!!! Why can't you just put your question directly into the email?!? My behavior of not answering his phone calls failed to "train" him to switch to the email mode of communication. It drove me crazy. I finally realized that some people in this world have brains that work better with voice calls. Unfortunately, that's incompatible with the way I like to work.
      - mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
        Phrasing a question in a way that ensure it will be understood by the reader is non-trivial. For tricky problems that might require several steps of back and forth, the ability to ask clarifying questions and access tone of voice that you get on a voice call is valuable. I'm not saying that this guy was thinking this through that extensively, but IMO there are times when a voice call is more effective. Did you attempt to explain to him why you didn't answer the phone as opposed to trying to "train" him? i.e. engage in open communication and have a conversation about what works and what doesn't for each of you about various modes of communication. His request for you to "give him a call" moves thing for you back into the realm of the asynchronous. I wonder whether maybe you have some other issue with voice calls?
AYBABTME 8y ago
People say that, yet in my experience it's not actually true. We just need to communicate enough to coordinate. I'm not a great communicator, I don't think most people at my work are great communicators, yet we work just fine as a remote company. I feel people exaggerate this belief. Regular chatter in public chat channels seems sufficient. What really seems to matter is work ethics.
- passiveincomelg 8y ago
  Maybe the bar is lower than you think. As your comment demonstrates, you are able to form complete sentences that are either correct in terms of spelling and grammar, or so close that I can't tell the difference. I don't know where exactly the bar is, but a sentence is certainly below it if I can't figure out whether someone told me they did X or they are asking me to do X.
- jvannistelrooy 8y ago
  I think it also makes a difference if you work with people across different timezones or not. Regular chatter might be good enough to communicate between people in roughly the same timezone. However, If I send an unclear chat (or email) to a colleague who's starting her day when mine has already ended, she can't act on my message and we'll have to waste another day clearing up that miscommunication.
- collyw 8y ago
  I don't work remotely as such, but usually with distributed teams. Personally I find skype chats or similar the best way. Writing emails is quite a long winded way to get to where you want and takes me a while. Chats are more two way so you can judge where the other person is with understanding the problem, and has the benefit of being written down for future reference.
  - beat 8y ago
    Yeah, I find Skype or Slack or some other form of IM to be absolutely invaluable in making remote work effective. But it's also semi-synchronous and interruptive, relative to email.
ScarZy 8y ago
This is the main reason I want to try and learn Emacs, OrgMode, and Babel. The stuff that Howard Abrahams discusses on the below video is something I think would be highly successful in a remote environment. Documenting your workflow as you go, including commands and output, then emailing it to your team that day or uploading it to a document store/gitbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg
- pvaldes 8y ago
  You can grasp org.mode pretty quickly, is all tab-tab-tab and a lot of asterisks here and there. Emacs needs more effort but it is an achievable goal. Very customisable so you could even ask somebody to create your own comands and circumnavigate the hairy parts for a lot of time until building enough confidence. Finding a good tutor or having somebody interested in the program in your company would help a lot, obviously.
newscracker 8y ago
I agree that writing well is important, but I would characterize this as beyond writing alone. Assuming that "remote work" isn't confined only to teams in time zones where working hours don't overlap, it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference. "Talking" directly is more important, and many a times yields quicker results than exchanging long emails or documents, whether it's with text (chat) or voice or even video calls. But it does come at the cost of trying to setup a mutually convenient time and being available (synchronous vs. asynchronous).
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference "Ok, we're all here. Wait, where's Mike?" "I think he was making coffee. Let's wait for him." "Hey, is Zhang saying something?" "Zhang, say something." "..." "I think your microphone is broken." "Can you disconnect and reconnect?" "Hey, he's typing something. I... will... reboot. Ok, let's wait for him to reboot." "Hey, Mike's back. Someone tell him we're waiting on Zhang to reboot." "I don't think he can hear us." "Guys, I'm gonna go grab a coffee while Mike and Zhang figure it out."
  - jon-wood 8y ago
    If you're working in a largely co-located company, where video conferences are an uncommon occurrence then this probably fits. In the context of this conversation around remote only companies though, everyone is going to be set up to be able to properly participate in a video call - that means making sure everyone has a decent internet connection, microphone, and camera at home. When people aren't at home tools like Zoom have the ability for them to dial in to conferences on a regular phone which deals with the remaining problems.
    - drdaeman 8y ago
      > In the context of this conversation around remote only companies though I've worked mostly remote for many years and please trust me - it's almost exactly the same, with every weekly meeting starting with "is everyone here", "do you hear me?" etc etc. This is especially when working from home - typical residential connections are having less nicer SLA and may get flaky from time to time. And someone may leave their phone near mic cable. Or someone's machine may need rebooting. Or conferencing service may be experiencing problems. Glad if it's not like this for some, but I believe it's not exactly uncommon.
soneca 8y ago
I wholeheartedly agree! I am writing a newsletter to help developers improve their written communication (shameless plug: https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/ https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/) Do you have an opinion on what aspects of written communication are the most important for remote work? Just gathering ideas to write about! :)
- nvarsj 8y ago
  I think the thing a lot of people struggle with are applying soft skills in their written words. Many devs in my experience come across as very analytical, almost emotionless in their written communication. It's precise, but not great for developing social bonds. It's something I'm very guilty of myself, especially in code reviews. I think we could all benefit by considering the human element in our writing. It's such a different skill set though compared to in-person communication, where much of this happens non-verbally. I think it's a lot easier for people who grew up with it. I spent a lot of time on MUDs and BBSs when I was younger, where this kind of communication was prevalent.
yosito 8y ago
No amount of writing in my life prepared me for the amount of writing I do as a remote developer. I probably write 20+ "pages" a day if you count all of the documentation, emails, chat messages and GitHub discussions I write. Luckily for me, I love writing.
collyw 8y ago
> If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. I had a pretty poor team leader a few years ago with a bums in seat type job. He would never write anything down and teh result was quite frustrating. The spec used to change frequenty and he would come and verbally tell me it. then he would change it again, then again. A week or two later when I actually got around to implementing teh said feature I would ask him what he wanted done, "I thought we talked about that." "Yes we did but you changed your mind 4 times and I can't remember what the conclusion was." I used to regularly ask him to put things in writing, but he was usually to lazy to deliver on that. So I don't think these problems are unique to remote teams.
- specialist 8y ago
  One species of gatekeeper (control freak) won't write things down. Another insists that if it's not documented, it didn't happen. These challenges have confounded me all my working life. My few truly positive working experiences happened when there was mutual trust, regard, esteem. First time it happened, I was gobsmacked. I'd read about trust, but had never seen it IRL. It was a never ending warm fuzzy bath of shared awesomeness. I still have few ideas how to find, nurture, create trust (especially in a chaotic env). But I now know it when I see it. And when I'm not feeling it, I mostly just go thru the 9-5 motions, keeping my expectations and investments lower.
- nkjoep 8y ago
  TBH, I think was somehow your fault. Before writing even a single line of code I make sure that "I" understood what is needed. Then, if nothing is written down anywhere, I'd just sum up what I am going to implement (email, wiki, internal docs, readme whatever) and send it to anyone involved. Check mate for for control-freak-undecided-colleagues. :)
pricees 8y ago
This has been my experience, 100%. All of the jobs I have ever interviewed for casually listed "great oral and written communication" as a skill in the job reqs. I have felt that I had a problem in this area. I have worked as a remote contractor off and on for most of my life and have never run into an issue. For the past year and a half I have been on a remote team. It wasn't until my team lead, who did all of the oral and written communication, left, this past month, that I was placed in the position to pick where he left off. It became immediately evident how poor my skills are in this area. I know that I am a poor communicator, but I didn't realize just how insufficient I was. Not only grammar and spelling, but conveying complex subject matter in a succinct way for folks lacking detailed domain knowledge. This is a problem! Regardless, there is hope. How do you get better at writing? Write more. At least that is what I am told. I am now chomping at the bit for long-form writing opportunities to get experiencing it putting thoughts and plans on paper, as well as, using a new SaaS app to commit/tracking writing 5 minutes a day. Any and all tips are welcome.
- kharak 8y ago
  I'm mildly confused. Your post here seems fine and quit readable. How do you arrive at the conclusion, that you're lacking in written communication skills? (sorry for question instead of tips)
  - NoNotTheDuo 8y ago
    May be evidence that the additional training/work s/he's put in is paying off. I agree that the post does not show a lack of written communication skills.
    - mredwarddit 8y ago
      It's like the people who say, English isn't my first language and then proceed to type a well written essay - stop showing off!
  - dagurp 8y ago
    Maybe it took a long time to write that post. That's what I struggle with anyway.
linsomniac 8y ago
This does ring true. Years ago when I was running a remote-primary shop we hired this one guy that just struggled. I spent the next year trying to get him on track and one of the big issues was his writing was terrible; both internally and with our customers. Right before we finally gave up, I went back and looked at all his interview communications. As part of the interview we would exchange several e-mails to see how their communication was, because we lived and died by e-mail with clients. All those communications were totally on point. So I asked him: Why were your e-mails before we hired you so good? "Oh, my wife wrote those for me." So I'm sitting there thinking "We should have hired your wife."
- dennisgorelik 8y ago
  Why didn't you hire his wife when you learned that she wrote these emails?
  - linsomniac 8y ago
    Weeeeell... She didn't apply... :-)
0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
Well Linus is a great writer, so I agree with your conclusion.
crunchlibrarian 8y ago
I like this idea of a "company's written language", I have known many people who are great communicators who nonetheless didn't write using the correct corporate cultural terms and were viewed as "poor communicators". Basically this boils down to how strictly you cling to new buzzwords.
smpetrey 8y ago
100% agree. I think this would even apply to non-remote jobs too. I used to work remotely as a freelancer and I miss it so much. I now work in-house at an agency and everyone here fails so miserably at writing. Almost all discussion is verbal, nothing is documented and so much double-work happens it's not even funny. To make matters worse, the agency doesn't use any project management software. So all projects have seemingly imminent deadlines. It's miserable. If our team was more apt to learn, adapt and document more, we'd probably be a lot happier.
intrasight 8y ago
>If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. not just remote - any and all work will be miserable. I work remote and in person with lots of people who will not write things down. When I call them on it, they say "I'm not your secretary" - but they are happy to have everyone be their secretary.
markkanof 8y ago
I agree completely, and to build on that idea, it is extremely valuable to be able to take an idea from your head and write it down in a way that fully explains the idea, but is as concise as possible. I see this go wrong a lot in Slack. Some people will not take the time to completely form a thought and will instead just type everything that is in there head as quickly as they can. Then others react because they have misunderstood the original point. If you have a few people trying to communicate with this method it quickly becomes chaos. The process of untangling some of those types of conversations can take far longer than the original conversation did.
mcovey 8y ago
Even though I'm much better at expressing myself with writing than through speaking, I get some anxiety about bothering people or keeping their attention that makes it difficult to "work through" a problem remotely. When I know exactly what I'm doing and just need to communicate it, everything's great. When there's an issue that two or more people need to look at and discuss at the same time, it gets much more difficult. I'd be the perfect remote worker for a company without tight deadlines where there are never any "fires" that need to be put out. But there aren't very many of those.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 8y ago
We had the same problem even in person to be fair: one of the guy didn't speak english properly, we had a lot of troubles understanding him. And he also talked a lot, which made things worse (listen to a lot of things you don't understand). In the end, communication must be great, no matter what.

by nvarsj 8y ago

minipci1321 8y ago

> it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. effective reader too. One should be able to quickly make sense out of several hunbdreds of email messages, otherwise it will end up in "synchronous mode" -- dozen of messaging windows opened at every moment.

amorphous 8y ago
so true. I have a business partner that I can talk to very effective in person. I had to relocate, and now we have to deal mostly via email. I have been working remotely for ten years now and saw no problem with the change. But it has become disastrous. I figured out that he is just not an "email type". Only picking up the phone works with him, but this does not fit into my workflow. I'm undoing our business partnership currently.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Why doesn't picking up a phone fit into your workflow?
  - amorphous 8y ago
    _Always_ picking up the phone doesn't fit into my workflow. Some things are better discussed via email or chat. I think it is very difficult to work remotely if you only have direct verbal communication available.
    - satsuma 8y ago
      sort of tangental, but i wonder how a drop in/drop out system like teamspeak/vent/discord/etc. would work in a professional setting. you have direct calls still, but if you just want to be available to coordinate through voice you could. similar to leaving your door open and letting people stop by.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Keeping an open channel on Teamspeak could be compared to having a person sitting at the next desk.
  - jasode 8y ago
    For many, a ringing phone is much more disruptive than an email notification. Picking up a phone for voice calls is synchronous. Responding to an email is asynchronous. (The asynchronous advantage is probably why SMS texting & WhatsApp/FB messaging has overtaken voice calls.) I had a friend that didn't use email and always called my phone. Whenever I shut off the ringer, he'd eventually send me an email. But the content of that email was always, "Hey I got no answer on your phone. Give me a call." Argh!!! Why can't you just put your question directly into the email?!? My behavior of not answering his phone calls failed to "train" him to switch to the email mode of communication. It drove me crazy. I finally realized that some people in this world have brains that work better with voice calls. Unfortunately, that's incompatible with the way I like to work.
    - mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
      Phrasing a question in a way that ensure it will be understood by the reader is non-trivial. For tricky problems that might require several steps of back and forth, the ability to ask clarifying questions and access tone of voice that you get on a voice call is valuable. I'm not saying that this guy was thinking this through that extensively, but IMO there are times when a voice call is more effective. Did you attempt to explain to him why you didn't answer the phone as opposed to trying to "train" him? i.e. engage in open communication and have a conversation about what works and what doesn't for each of you about various modes of communication. His request for you to "give him a call" moves thing for you back into the realm of the asynchronous. I wonder whether maybe you have some other issue with voice calls?

AYBABTME 8y ago

People say that, yet in my experience it's not actually true. We just need to communicate enough to coordinate. I'm not a great communicator, I don't think most people at my work are great communicators, yet we work just fine as a remote company. I feel people exaggerate this belief. Regular chatter in public chat channels seems sufficient. What really seems to matter is work ethics.

passiveincomelg 8y ago
Maybe the bar is lower than you think. As your comment demonstrates, you are able to form complete sentences that are either correct in terms of spelling and grammar, or so close that I can't tell the difference. I don't know where exactly the bar is, but a sentence is certainly below it if I can't figure out whether someone told me they did X or they are asking me to do X.
jvannistelrooy 8y ago
I think it also makes a difference if you work with people across different timezones or not. Regular chatter might be good enough to communicate between people in roughly the same timezone. However, If I send an unclear chat (or email) to a colleague who's starting her day when mine has already ended, she can't act on my message and we'll have to waste another day clearing up that miscommunication.
collyw 8y ago
I don't work remotely as such, but usually with distributed teams. Personally I find skype chats or similar the best way. Writing emails is quite a long winded way to get to where you want and takes me a while. Chats are more two way so you can judge where the other person is with understanding the problem, and has the benefit of being written down for future reference.
- beat 8y ago
  Yeah, I find Skype or Slack or some other form of IM to be absolutely invaluable in making remote work effective. But it's also semi-synchronous and interruptive, relative to email.

ScarZy 8y ago

This is the main reason I want to try and learn Emacs, OrgMode, and Babel. The stuff that Howard Abrahams discusses on the below video is something I think would be highly successful in a remote environment. Documenting your workflow as you go, including commands and output, then emailing it to your team that day or uploading it to a document store/gitbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg

pvaldes 8y ago
You can grasp org.mode pretty quickly, is all tab-tab-tab and a lot of asterisks here and there. Emacs needs more effort but it is an achievable goal. Very customisable so you could even ask somebody to create your own comands and circumnavigate the hairy parts for a lot of time until building enough confidence. Finding a good tutor or having somebody interested in the program in your company would help a lot, obviously.

newscracker 8y ago

I agree that writing well is important, but I would characterize this as beyond writing alone. Assuming that "remote work" isn't confined only to teams in time zones where working hours don't overlap, it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference. "Talking" directly is more important, and many a times yields quicker results than exchanging long emails or documents, whether it's with text (chat) or voice or even video calls. But it does come at the cost of trying to setup a mutually convenient time and being available (synchronous vs. asynchronous).

pavel_lishin 8y ago
> it's quite easy to start a chat or an audio call/conference "Ok, we're all here. Wait, where's Mike?" "I think he was making coffee. Let's wait for him." "Hey, is Zhang saying something?" "Zhang, say something." "..." "I think your microphone is broken." "Can you disconnect and reconnect?" "Hey, he's typing something. I... will... reboot. Ok, let's wait for him to reboot." "Hey, Mike's back. Someone tell him we're waiting on Zhang to reboot." "I don't think he can hear us." "Guys, I'm gonna go grab a coffee while Mike and Zhang figure it out."
- jon-wood 8y ago
  If you're working in a largely co-located company, where video conferences are an uncommon occurrence then this probably fits. In the context of this conversation around remote only companies though, everyone is going to be set up to be able to properly participate in a video call - that means making sure everyone has a decent internet connection, microphone, and camera at home. When people aren't at home tools like Zoom have the ability for them to dial in to conferences on a regular phone which deals with the remaining problems.
  - drdaeman 8y ago
    > In the context of this conversation around remote only companies though I've worked mostly remote for many years and please trust me - it's almost exactly the same, with every weekly meeting starting with "is everyone here", "do you hear me?" etc etc. This is especially when working from home - typical residential connections are having less nicer SLA and may get flaky from time to time. And someone may leave their phone near mic cable. Or someone's machine may need rebooting. Or conferencing service may be experiencing problems. Glad if it's not like this for some, but I believe it's not exactly uncommon.

soneca 8y ago

I wholeheartedly agree! I am writing a newsletter to help developers improve their written communication (shameless plug: https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/ https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/) Do you have an opinion on what aspects of written communication are the most important for remote work? Just gathering ideas to write about! :)

nvarsj 8y ago
I think the thing a lot of people struggle with are applying soft skills in their written words. Many devs in my experience come across as very analytical, almost emotionless in their written communication. It's precise, but not great for developing social bonds. It's something I'm very guilty of myself, especially in code reviews. I think we could all benefit by considering the human element in our writing. It's such a different skill set though compared to in-person communication, where much of this happens non-verbally. I think it's a lot easier for people who grew up with it. I spent a lot of time on MUDs and BBSs when I was younger, where this kind of communication was prevalent.

yosito 8y ago

No amount of writing in my life prepared me for the amount of writing I do as a remote developer. I probably write 20+ "pages" a day if you count all of the documentation, emails, chat messages and GitHub discussions I write. Luckily for me, I love writing.

collyw 8y ago

> If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. I had a pretty poor team leader a few years ago with a bums in seat type job. He would never write anything down and teh result was quite frustrating. The spec used to change frequenty and he would come and verbally tell me it. then he would change it again, then again. A week or two later when I actually got around to implementing teh said feature I would ask him what he wanted done, "I thought we talked about that." "Yes we did but you changed your mind 4 times and I can't remember what the conclusion was." I used to regularly ask him to put things in writing, but he was usually to lazy to deliver on that. So I don't think these problems are unique to remote teams.

specialist 8y ago
One species of gatekeeper (control freak) won't write things down. Another insists that if it's not documented, it didn't happen. These challenges have confounded me all my working life. My few truly positive working experiences happened when there was mutual trust, regard, esteem. First time it happened, I was gobsmacked. I'd read about trust, but had never seen it IRL. It was a never ending warm fuzzy bath of shared awesomeness. I still have few ideas how to find, nurture, create trust (especially in a chaotic env). But I now know it when I see it. And when I'm not feeling it, I mostly just go thru the 9-5 motions, keeping my expectations and investments lower.
nkjoep 8y ago
TBH, I think was somehow your fault. Before writing even a single line of code I make sure that "I" understood what is needed. Then, if nothing is written down anywhere, I'd just sum up what I am going to implement (email, wiki, internal docs, readme whatever) and send it to anyone involved. Check mate for for control-freak-undecided-colleagues. :)

pricees 8y ago

This has been my experience, 100%. All of the jobs I have ever interviewed for casually listed "great oral and written communication" as a skill in the job reqs. I have felt that I had a problem in this area. I have worked as a remote contractor off and on for most of my life and have never run into an issue. For the past year and a half I have been on a remote team. It wasn't until my team lead, who did all of the oral and written communication, left, this past month, that I was placed in the position to pick where he left off. It became immediately evident how poor my skills are in this area. I know that I am a poor communicator, but I didn't realize just how insufficient I was. Not only grammar and spelling, but conveying complex subject matter in a succinct way for folks lacking detailed domain knowledge. This is a problem! Regardless, there is hope. How do you get better at writing? Write more. At least that is what I am told. I am now chomping at the bit for long-form writing opportunities to get experiencing it putting thoughts and plans on paper, as well as, using a new SaaS app to commit/tracking writing 5 minutes a day. Any and all tips are welcome.

kharak 8y ago
I'm mildly confused. Your post here seems fine and quit readable. How do you arrive at the conclusion, that you're lacking in written communication skills? (sorry for question instead of tips)
- NoNotTheDuo 8y ago
  May be evidence that the additional training/work s/he's put in is paying off. I agree that the post does not show a lack of written communication skills.
  - mredwarddit 8y ago
    It's like the people who say, English isn't my first language and then proceed to type a well written essay - stop showing off!
- dagurp 8y ago
  Maybe it took a long time to write that post. That's what I struggle with anyway.

linsomniac 8y ago

This does ring true. Years ago when I was running a remote-primary shop we hired this one guy that just struggled. I spent the next year trying to get him on track and one of the big issues was his writing was terrible; both internally and with our customers. Right before we finally gave up, I went back and looked at all his interview communications. As part of the interview we would exchange several e-mails to see how their communication was, because we lived and died by e-mail with clients. All those communications were totally on point. So I asked him: Why were your e-mails before we hired you so good? "Oh, my wife wrote those for me." So I'm sitting there thinking "We should have hired your wife."

dennisgorelik 8y ago
Why didn't you hire his wife when you learned that she wrote these emails?
- linsomniac 8y ago
  Weeeeell... She didn't apply... :-)

0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago

Well Linus is a great writer, so I agree with your conclusion.

crunchlibrarian 8y ago

I like this idea of a "company's written language", I have known many people who are great communicators who nonetheless didn't write using the correct corporate cultural terms and were viewed as "poor communicators". Basically this boils down to how strictly you cling to new buzzwords.

smpetrey 8y ago

100% agree. I think this would even apply to non-remote jobs too. I used to work remotely as a freelancer and I miss it so much. I now work in-house at an agency and everyone here fails so miserably at writing. Almost all discussion is verbal, nothing is documented and so much double-work happens it's not even funny. To make matters worse, the agency doesn't use any project management software. So all projects have seemingly imminent deadlines. It's miserable. If our team was more apt to learn, adapt and document more, we'd probably be a lot happier.

intrasight 8y ago

>If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. not just remote - any and all work will be miserable. I work remote and in person with lots of people who will not write things down. When I call them on it, they say "I'm not your secretary" - but they are happy to have everyone be their secretary.

markkanof 8y ago

I agree completely, and to build on that idea, it is extremely valuable to be able to take an idea from your head and write it down in a way that fully explains the idea, but is as concise as possible. I see this go wrong a lot in Slack. Some people will not take the time to completely form a thought and will instead just type everything that is in there head as quickly as they can. Then others react because they have misunderstood the original point. If you have a few people trying to communicate with this method it quickly becomes chaos. The process of untangling some of those types of conversations can take far longer than the original conversation did.

mcovey 8y ago

Even though I'm much better at expressing myself with writing than through speaking, I get some anxiety about bothering people or keeping their attention that makes it difficult to "work through" a problem remotely. When I know exactly what I'm doing and just need to communicate it, everything's great. When there's an issue that two or more people need to look at and discuss at the same time, it gets much more difficult. I'd be the perfect remote worker for a company without tight deadlines where there are never any "fires" that need to be put out. But there aren't very many of those.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 8y ago

We had the same problem even in person to be fair: one of the guy didn't speak english properly, we had a lot of troubles understanding him. And he also talked a lot, which made things worse (listen to a lot of things you don't understand). In the end, communication must be great, no matter what.