6 ms·

TBH, OP sounds like a manager. Which is fine, but their experience is usually constantly worrying people under them will work more slowly when given more freedo

by skizm 7y ago

TBH, OP sounds like a manager. Which is fine, but their experience is usually constantly worrying people under them will work more slowly when given more freedom. So, since their job is contingent on the people under them doing a good job, its easier to claim accountability when they can physically seem them in their seats every day. People who talk about "impromptu collaboration" generally aren't individual contributors.

otabdeveloper3 7y ago
> Which is fine, but their experience is usually constantly worrying people under them will work more slowly when given more freedom. Protip, they will. In fact, they won't just work slowly, they will actively work towards sabotaging your project. (I.e., spending two years "refactoring" towards a hip new technology, fucking the project up up to and including complete non-functionality and then jumping ship with a payraise to a competitor because they now have "experience".)
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > In fact, they won't just work slowly, they will actively work towards sabotaging your project. If your estimation and metrics tracking doesn't catch this remote, it won't catch this in an office. It is true that it's easier to hide incompetence and laziness, but perfection is the enemy of good on those scales.
- tomc1985 7y ago
  So you had a bad experience. Plenty of us work on remote teams that deliver working, relatively bug-free products and code on the regular
- bphogan 7y ago
  in office or not, managers and teams should be monitoring contributions Your version control system and ticketing system should be able to identify things like this. If not, then nobody's minding the store, and that's why things aren't working. Not cos people are working remotely.
- kyralis 7y ago
  Protip: If things get this far, it's the manager's fault. I've been remote before and also managed remote ICs, and you learn who needs the frequent checkins and status updates and who can be left more to their own devices. I had someone waste 2 weeks going down a useless rathole, and I learned quickly that I needed to be more involved with their prioritization and planning, and that was on me. It didn't happen again.
  - geekbird 7y ago
    This. Failure of remote working is usually a problem with managers who don't/won't/can't manage remote employees effectively. If they can't manage based on results, only on "butts-in-seats" whipcracking, then they should get a time machine and travel back to a time before the internet, like in a sweatshop.
abrolhos 7y ago
I believe that is a great point. I have a feeling that we don't have more work-from-home-first jobs because (middle-)managers wouldn't know how to deal with that. They are not quite there for such change. And I'm talking about the "simplest" things. Like properly defining a task. Tracking it. Signaling when it's complete. Managing risks, changes. Communication. And so on. To have as most as people at an arms reach is just too convenient to workaround any shortcomings on the managerial side. If in the general case, i.e., working at offices, all together, we're nowhere near[1] excelling on those "simple" management stuff, things would collapse in a work-from-home situation pretty easy. I also don't see, in general, (middle-)managers changing their stance in favor of working from home either. Don't see them getting ready for such change. Prepping to work with virtual teams in any future and such. Perhaps, those who believe are ready for such change could (myself included), somehow[2], show theirs capability. Slowly pushing the changes bottom-up by improving his/her own communication skills, reporting, risk and change management, displaying availability, to such an extent that the concerns of those (middle-)managers are barely noticeable or reasonable? If we could show that we can organize ourselves and coordinate our efforts towards a goal, effectively, while working remotely, those concerns about remote work could start to fade. I believe the point I'm trying to make is that we could show better that remote work works! We could be better sellers of this paradigm. Show how we can actually help those worried (middle-)managers. Like safely climbing a ladder, one step at a time :-) Would be this a good opportunity to create a work-from-home manifesto, in the same way we have an Agile manifesto? I don't know. But that would be something interesting to collaborate on for sure. I might put some thoughts on paper about this subject for starters. PS: I was an IT project manager for many years, working both on-site and remotely. Now I'm a software developer working on-premises for a big company in my country not friend to the idea of remote working at all; so I could contribute my experiences and views on this subject from both ends, I believe. PS2: non-native English writer here. So if you find something that needs clarification or correction, please let me know, I'd be grateful to accommodate those kind of feedback. Would be more grateful if you share your thoughts too, though :-) [1] yeah, I'm aware that there are famous cases of success, but I believe those doesn't account for the majority of offices. [2] not sure how right now.
awinder 7y ago
This seems rather uncharitable lol. Managers, or good managers anyways, are constantly connecting conversational channels -- conversations between product, between developers, facilitating conversations between product & developers, etc. Take the communications challenges that pretty much everyone buys into with remote, and then put someone at the intersection of that pain point amongst multiple people, and they're going to have a unique perspective.

by skizm 7y ago

otabdeveloper3 7y ago

> Which is fine, but their experience is usually constantly worrying people under them will work more slowly when given more freedom. Protip, they will. In fact, they won't just work slowly, they will actively work towards sabotaging your project. (I.e., spending two years "refactoring" towards a hip new technology, fucking the project up up to and including complete non-functionality and then jumping ship with a payraise to a competitor because they now have "experience".)

Supermancho 7y ago
> In fact, they won't just work slowly, they will actively work towards sabotaging your project. If your estimation and metrics tracking doesn't catch this remote, it won't catch this in an office. It is true that it's easier to hide incompetence and laziness, but perfection is the enemy of good on those scales.
tomc1985 7y ago
So you had a bad experience. Plenty of us work on remote teams that deliver working, relatively bug-free products and code on the regular
bphogan 7y ago
in office or not, managers and teams should be monitoring contributions Your version control system and ticketing system should be able to identify things like this. If not, then nobody's minding the store, and that's why things aren't working. Not cos people are working remotely.
kyralis 7y ago
Protip: If things get this far, it's the manager's fault. I've been remote before and also managed remote ICs, and you learn who needs the frequent checkins and status updates and who can be left more to their own devices. I had someone waste 2 weeks going down a useless rathole, and I learned quickly that I needed to be more involved with their prioritization and planning, and that was on me. It didn't happen again.
- geekbird 7y ago
  This. Failure of remote working is usually a problem with managers who don't/won't/can't manage remote employees effectively. If they can't manage based on results, only on "butts-in-seats" whipcracking, then they should get a time machine and travel back to a time before the internet, like in a sweatshop.

abrolhos 7y ago

I believe that is a great point. I have a feeling that we don't have more work-from-home-first jobs because (middle-)managers wouldn't know how to deal with that. They are not quite there for such change. And I'm talking about the "simplest" things. Like properly defining a task. Tracking it. Signaling when it's complete. Managing risks, changes. Communication. And so on. To have as most as people at an arms reach is just too convenient to workaround any shortcomings on the managerial side. If in the general case, i.e., working at offices, all together, we're nowhere near[1] excelling on those "simple" management stuff, things would collapse in a work-from-home situation pretty easy. I also don't see, in general, (middle-)managers changing their stance in favor of working from home either. Don't see them getting ready for such change. Prepping to work with virtual teams in any future and such. Perhaps, those who believe are ready for such change could (myself included), somehow[2], show theirs capability. Slowly pushing the changes bottom-up by improving his/her own communication skills, reporting, risk and change management, displaying availability, to such an extent that the concerns of those (middle-)managers are barely noticeable or reasonable? If we could show that we can organize ourselves and coordinate our efforts towards a goal, effectively, while working remotely, those concerns about remote work could start to fade. I believe the point I'm trying to make is that we could show better that remote work works! We could be better sellers of this paradigm. Show how we can actually help those worried (middle-)managers. Like safely climbing a ladder, one step at a time :-) Would be this a good opportunity to create a work-from-home manifesto, in the same way we have an Agile manifesto? I don't know. But that would be something interesting to collaborate on for sure. I might put some thoughts on paper about this subject for starters. PS: I was an IT project manager for many years, working both on-site and remotely. Now I'm a software developer working on-premises for a big company in my country not friend to the idea of remote working at all; so I could contribute my experiences and views on this subject from both ends, I believe. PS2: non-native English writer here. So if you find something that needs clarification or correction, please let me know, I'd be grateful to accommodate those kind of feedback. Would be more grateful if you share your thoughts too, though :-) [1] yeah, I'm aware that there are famous cases of success, but I believe those doesn't account for the majority of offices. [2] not sure how right now.

awinder 7y ago

This seems rather uncharitable lol. Managers, or good managers anyways, are constantly connecting conversational channels -- conversations between product, between developers, facilitating conversations between product & developers, etc. Take the communications challenges that pretty much everyone buys into with remote, and then put someone at the intersection of that pain point amongst multiple people, and they're going to have a unique perspective.