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Having clocked several years with remote-only companies and several years with traditional onsite jobs, I would say that, ironically, remote companies have bett

Having clocked several years with remote-only companies and several years with traditional onsite jobs, I would say that, ironically, remote companies have better communication. On any given 8-hour workday, I would probably clock several hours' worth of communication in various shapes and forms at remote companies. For onsite, many of my days might be spent sitting next to a bunch of people in an open plan office not ever exchanging a word.

konschubert 7y ago
Various hours spent per day on communication sounds rather inefficient though.
- stakhanov 7y ago
  Not at all: In my experience communication is 50% of the job as a software engineer. It's 100% of the job as a software engineering manager of sorts. And remote communication is way more efficient. Things like text chat, comments in ticket systems or project management systems like asana etc are "soft interrupts" that I find surprisingly frictionless. I can stay in concentration until I've reached a natural interrupt of sorts, then answer chat messages or read up on tickets, ask clarifying questions or loop in more people (sending out a soft interrupt, but not waiting for replies), get back into concentration, and restart the loop at the next interrupt. The alternative: It is now 9:35am. You know you have to leave at 9:55 to get to your 10:00 meeting in the meeting room that's 5 minutes away. But 20 minutes is not enough to get into concentration, so you spend that time procrastinating. At 10:00 you're there. At 10:10, the asshole who is always late shows up. The meeting takes 50 minutes, because the only reason to EVER end a meeting is getting kicked out of the meeting room. In this case it was booked for the 10:00-11:00 slot. You spend 5 more minutes walking back to your desk. Within the 50mins of meeting time, you were talking for 5 minutes. 10 minutes of the other speakers' time contained information you actually needed. You arrive at your desk at 11:05. That's 90 minutes flushed down the tube that could have been 15 minutes' worth of text chat, and the timing basically prevents deep work for maybe that first half of that workday.

konschubert 7y ago

Various hours spent per day on communication sounds rather inefficient though.

stakhanov 7y ago
Not at all: In my experience communication is 50% of the job as a software engineer. It's 100% of the job as a software engineering manager of sorts. And remote communication is way more efficient. Things like text chat, comments in ticket systems or project management systems like asana etc are "soft interrupts" that I find surprisingly frictionless. I can stay in concentration until I've reached a natural interrupt of sorts, then answer chat messages or read up on tickets, ask clarifying questions or loop in more people (sending out a soft interrupt, but not waiting for replies), get back into concentration, and restart the loop at the next interrupt. The alternative: It is now 9:35am. You know you have to leave at 9:55 to get to your 10:00 meeting in the meeting room that's 5 minutes away. But 20 minutes is not enough to get into concentration, so you spend that time procrastinating. At 10:00 you're there. At 10:10, the asshole who is always late shows up. The meeting takes 50 minutes, because the only reason to EVER end a meeting is getting kicked out of the meeting room. In this case it was booked for the 10:00-11:00 slot. You spend 5 more minutes walking back to your desk. Within the 50mins of meeting time, you were talking for 5 minutes. 10 minutes of the other speakers' time contained information you actually needed. You arrive at your desk at 11:05. That's 90 minutes flushed down the tube that could have been 15 minutes' worth of text chat, and the timing basically prevents deep work for maybe that first half of that workday.