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The biggest issue with WFH is how poor peoples’ written communication skills are. Take a spoken conservation: - Person A says something - Person B thinks wha

The biggest issue with WFH is how poor peoples’ written communication skills are. Take a spoken conservation: - Person A says something - Person B thinks what they said is derailing the conversation - Person B uses body language and makes subtle modifications to their response (“Uuh.. sure. Anyway...”) to express their opinion of Person A’s behavior - Person A notices this and will begin to reflect - Person B takes the opportunity to actually say “I think you’re derailing the conversation, we need to stay focused on X...” - Person A learns from this experience Now take a written conversation: - Person A makes 18 points in an email (I find people say a lot in emails — especially if you include the assumptions of the author that are a part of each sentence.) - Person B reads the email a day later. - Person B thinks of 26 points of feedback they’d like to make, but they’re much harder to express. The bandwidth of written communication is higher, so the “derailing” feedback becomes invalid. Instead the feedback is “You’re saying too much, we can’t keep track of all this” but that comes across like “I can’t handle this many things” — which if you think about it is fine, but it’s definitely weirder than the in-person form. Also feedback like “you should use a comma here” seems pedantic, but it can be really fucking important to avoid miscommunication. - Person B gets into a fluster and decides not to give any feedback, because it’s too hard. - Person A doesn’t learn from this experience. I’ve found people that are very self-critical become quite good at written communication. I read my own emails three or four times before sending them, to be sure they’re easy to understand. Yet when I read others’ emails, the mistakes present indicate they didn’t read their own email even once. This is indicative of a lack of desire to self-reflect. Feedback culture is important. I feel a remote-only company could be far more effective than a traditional company if they figure out interpersonal processes that lead to results — feedback on written communication being a part of that.

AlanSE 7y ago
Remote vs. in-office does benefit certain personality types over others. I believe versions of this parable you have happen a lot (in both versions), but the ultimate consequences are not exactly obvious. If you play it out the remote scenario over time, then what are the perceptions? Paper trails are dominated by virtual-loudmouth Person A. If anything, A might come out looking like the star of the team. Maybe Person B becomes disengaged and self-select out. Remote teams will start to look like a cult of Person A. Generationally, forum culture is big. As a millennial, I was in lots of confrontational online discussions as a youth, and enough other people were watching for there to be an audience. The art of flaming involves more emotional intelligence than people give it credit for, it can be similar to traditional debate. Those skills get redirected into the professional world. This is often good for the individual, but bad for the whole. It's pretty to take a healthy online community and convert it into something that only full-time rule junkies can survive in. If you're ever managing an online community, the most important feedback is what people won't share because of their filter. There are ways to get this information in-person that you lose going full remote.
humanrebar 7y ago
You bring up good points against solely using email for communication, especially when subjects are multi-faceted. But I don't think anyone is proposing work-from-home means work-from-email. Protip if this happens: "You make a lot of good points, and there are some things we should definitely unpack here. Can we dig into this a little over [discourse|slack|phone|video]? We can reply back here later with [action items|a summary of our conversation|specific work items|some actual work] to make sure everyone else on the thread is still included." Besides: > Person B uses body language and makes subtle modifications to their response... This approach is very hit or miss in real life, at least in my experience. Not everyone is wired to respect nonverbal cues as much as we would wish. Instead, I often request a sidebar when in person conversations become derailed. All that being said, I agree that written communication is challenging for many people, if not most. That is not to say it can't get better if written communication became more important or popular.
intopieces 7y ago
>I read my own emails three or four times before sending them, to be sure they’re easy to understand. Yet when I read others’ emails, the mistakes present indicate they didn’t read their own email even once. This is indicative of a lack of desire to self-reflect. I am glad I'm not the only person who does this, though in my case I think it turns out being a little bit of a hindrance. I have a post it note sticking to the bezel of my work monitor that says "STFE" -- (short for, 'send the fucking email') -- because I otherwise I end up with a draft box full of an entire day's emails. I do, however, take 2 minutes to reduce the number of things I say in an email by answering these two questions in the first two sentences: "What does this person need to know and what decision do I need them to make based on this information?" The rest is basically CYA record keeping.
kjgkjhfkjf 7y ago
What you say used to be true, but it isn't generally true any more. Conducting meetings over VC (e.g. Zoom, Hangouts) is the norm at many companies nowadays. Some companies' corporate campuses are so large that folks nominally in the same location use dial into meetings to avoid a long time-consuming walk to and from the meeting room.

AlanSE 7y ago

Remote vs. in-office does benefit certain personality types over others. I believe versions of this parable you have happen a lot (in both versions), but the ultimate consequences are not exactly obvious. If you play it out the remote scenario over time, then what are the perceptions? Paper trails are dominated by virtual-loudmouth Person A. If anything, A might come out looking like the star of the team. Maybe Person B becomes disengaged and self-select out. Remote teams will start to look like a cult of Person A. Generationally, forum culture is big. As a millennial, I was in lots of confrontational online discussions as a youth, and enough other people were watching for there to be an audience. The art of flaming involves more emotional intelligence than people give it credit for, it can be similar to traditional debate. Those skills get redirected into the professional world. This is often good for the individual, but bad for the whole. It's pretty to take a healthy online community and convert it into something that only full-time rule junkies can survive in. If you're ever managing an online community, the most important feedback is what people won't share because of their filter. There are ways to get this information in-person that you lose going full remote.

humanrebar 7y ago

You bring up good points against solely using email for communication, especially when subjects are multi-faceted. But I don't think anyone is proposing work-from-home means work-from-email. Protip if this happens: "You make a lot of good points, and there are some things we should definitely unpack here. Can we dig into this a little over [discourse|slack|phone|video]? We can reply back here later with [action items|a summary of our conversation|specific work items|some actual work] to make sure everyone else on the thread is still included." Besides: > Person B uses body language and makes subtle modifications to their response... This approach is very hit or miss in real life, at least in my experience. Not everyone is wired to respect nonverbal cues as much as we would wish. Instead, I often request a sidebar when in person conversations become derailed. All that being said, I agree that written communication is challenging for many people, if not most. That is not to say it can't get better if written communication became more important or popular.

intopieces 7y ago

>I read my own emails three or four times before sending them, to be sure they’re easy to understand. Yet when I read others’ emails, the mistakes present indicate they didn’t read their own email even once. This is indicative of a lack of desire to self-reflect. I am glad I'm not the only person who does this, though in my case I think it turns out being a little bit of a hindrance. I have a post it note sticking to the bezel of my work monitor that says "STFE" -- (short for, 'send the fucking email') -- because I otherwise I end up with a draft box full of an entire day's emails. I do, however, take 2 minutes to reduce the number of things I say in an email by answering these two questions in the first two sentences: "What does this person need to know and what decision do I need them to make based on this information?" The rest is basically CYA record keeping.

kjgkjhfkjf 7y ago

What you say used to be true, but it isn't generally true any more. Conducting meetings over VC (e.g. Zoom, Hangouts) is the norm at many companies nowadays. Some companies' corporate campuses are so large that folks nominally in the same location use dial into meetings to avoid a long time-consuming walk to and from the meeting room.