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1. What do you get out of a face to face discussion that you don't get from a zoom call? I would argue that remote teams have a strong advantage there: remot
by dudul 7y ago
1. What do you get out of a face to face discussion that you don't get from a zoom call? I would argue that remote teams have a strong advantage there: remote teams rely more on written, async communication. This forces product and business experts to really think about what they want engineers to do. Having to write things done is the best way to avoid the usual handwaving "just add a checkbox there and we're good". Yes, it may seem to be taking a bit longer with some back and forth, but in the end you get a more solid and clear path forward.
2. Maybe, I've never observed that either as an IC or a manager, so yeah, if there is such a toxic culture it's a problem.
3. Don't you have weekly 1:1 to dive into that? I would argue that relying too much on observations instead of directly asking people is a problem.
- cdavid 7y ago1. I am the first to recognize it is hard to quantify, it is just my experience. I should note that I have always worked in fairly diverse environments, at least culturally (e.g. in my current team, I have people from France, the US, Australia, Spain, China, India and Japan, only 2 speak their native language), which likely affects my experience. 3. Of course, you cannot only rely on observation, and 1:1 are crucial. But especially with junior people, just asking questions is not enough. You really have to look how people work to understand your team's dynamic. In my experience, 1:1 utility decreases the more junior reports are, and observations utility increases the more junior reports are.
- bcrosby95 7y agoMy favorite thing about remote work is the written communication. It creates a form of documentation in itself. I've worked remotely for 15 years. I can go back to any conversation on any feature we've ever had. It's extremely powerful.
- Phillips126 7y agoI miss this greatly from when I was remote. If I am walking back from a meeting and get detoured into helping some people with a specific problem it's hard to remember everything from the meeting. Having that "hard proof" of everything said and easy to refer to is powerful.
- wffurr 7y agoThat's an anti-feature from a legal discovery perspective. Unless everyone is extremely conscientious about every word, you have 15 years' worth of chat logs and emails with offhand comments, jokes, etc. All of which can be taken out of context by a skilled legal team. Sometimes ephemeral communication is a feature.
- vageli 7y ago> That's an anti-feature from a legal discovery perspective. Unless everyone is extremely conscientious about every word, you have 15 years' worth of chat logs and emails with offhand comments, jokes, etc. All of which can be taken out of context by a skilled legal team. I am ignorant of the operation of the law but why would taking quotes out of context present legal risk? Wouldn't the misquoted be able to supplement the record with the missing context?
- DougWebb 7y agoI'm pretty certain that my 20 years' worth of /work/ chat logs and emails do not contain any offhand comments, jokes, etc. Perhaps you're not working with professional people.
- confidantlake 7y agoI don't think it is unprofessional to make jokes in chat channels. It helps to build closer connections with colleagues which helps with non joke communication. I am honestly quite surprised you have not seen any jokes in 20 years in chat channels.
- DougWebb 7y agoJokes, sure, but not any that could be taken to be offensive or problematic.
- matwood 7y ago> My favorite thing about remote work is the written communication. It creates a form of documentation in itself. Agreed. Even when we do video calls, someone summarizes and posts what we talked about. I noticed Meet is now doing live captioning. It would be nice to email everyone the meeting at the end of the call.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoIn any meeting with more than 2 people, you should have someone take notes and email the group with the notes afterwards. It's extremely helpful in the frequent case when you don't remember what exactly you agreed to.
- marcinzm 7y ago>1. What do you get out of a face to face discussion that you don't get from a zoom call? Body language, better tone, gestures, etc. Communication goes beyond just words especially when you're building trust or resolving conflict. Not every communication in a business is technical or product based. In a larger organization it's those soft conversations, that smooth over inter-team and intra-team dynamics, which are in many ways most important long term.