6 ms·

Collaboration tools are already pretty solid. What else do you really need other than a remote desktop + video conferencing? I think the biggest use case will

Collaboration tools are already pretty solid. What else do you really need other than a remote desktop + video conferencing? I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler.

jeffbee 6y ago
Why do I need either of those things? If I'm going to work from home permanently then whatever computers I need can come with me. Face-to-face meetings are a justification for middle management to exist; remote work due to pandemic is going to lay bare the stupidity of managers and their ranks will be greatly reduced. I predict that the written word is going to make a big comeback.
- jariel 6y ago
  "Face-to-face meetings are a justification for middle management to exist; " Communicating is 1/2 of business; it's really odd that so many people have difficulty with this. I think because as Engineers, we measure value in 'code' then we tend to diminish all the other aspects of the business or process. Meetings can obviously be a waste but they are also critically important.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Meaningful communication happens between your ICs. The weekly hour-long team meeting where the manager polls the room and nobody has anything to say is just a waste of everyone's time. Reducing what you have to say to an email has the effect of distilling and refining it, and in many cases leads to the realization that it was wrong to begin with, or doesn't warrant saying.
    - icebraining 6y ago
      ICs?
      - TuringNYC 6y ago
        IC = Individual Contributor (worker who does not have a team under them)
      - guynamedloren 6y ago
        Individual Contributors. In this case, the engineers.
    - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
      Sounds like you need a new manager.
      - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
        Judging by the sheer level of resentment the poster holds for management, as a whole, it sounds more like it could easily be a case of their manager needing to replace a report.
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  I actually think the ranks of middle managers will increase as more people work from home. Especially on the engineering side. The whole point of managers is to facilitate communication between people and teams. WFH certainly doesn't help communication problems. HR should pretty much drop to 0 though.
  - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
    What are the functions of HR that you imagine them doing such that they’ll all be made obsolete by WFH?
    - dumbfoundded 6y ago
      Pretty much anything related to the work environment. This can include maintaining a safe work environment, accommodations for specific employee needs, handling employee disputes.
      - Joof 6y ago
        I don't see how this isn't still necessary.
        ranci 6y ago
        You don't see why maintaining a work environment wouldn't be necessary if the entire company were allowed to work from home?
        umbos 6y ago
        The work environment remains, it just shifts location.
        dumbfoundded 6y ago
        Do you see how these problems greatly diminish if people cannot interact physically?
      - 6y ago
- the_gipsy 6y ago
  Reminds of that Office Space clip, "What is it exactly, that you DO here?".
- deeblering4 6y ago
  Yes, in my experience the key to a highly functional remote environment is async collaboration. By this I mean written roundtables/stand-ups (with a focus on putting the detail in the tickets and just bringing up blockers), written RFCs and review periods for larger initiatives, comprehensive action logs (admin logs, etc), detailed documentation, detailed commit messages, etc etc. Deadlines are fine, but people need to be able to be aware of the timeline up front and have autonomy to work within their own schedule to meet it. This becomes especially important when multiple time zones come into play. Essentially it's a matter of replacing as many meetings as possible with recored (written and/or multimedia) versions that convey the same content, focusing on maximizing transparency and collaboration.
- ryanwaggoner 6y ago
  The hostility that many programmers have towards managers is short-sighted. If you’ve ever worked somewhere where the manager has way too many direct reports, you know it’s usually a shitshow. Can you name some companies of more than a few people that don’t have managers? If you think they’re all a waste and a drag, what’s your explanation for why manager-less competitors don’t rise up and eat their lunch? Better yet, why don’t you start your own company staffed with only ICs and take over the world?
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    I hate to tell you but one of the reasons why google ate the world was their hands-off management and peer-to-peer project management and feedback schemes, which are efficient and effective. I know experiences at large organizations can vary, but for years at that company I had managers who existed, yes, but never showed their faces and were there chiefly to make sure that everybody had desks and chairs and computers. This style scales extremely well. I also had managers who were just other ICs to whom I reported, because there had to be a path from Larry to everyone in the org chart, but who were otherwise peers. Not every large organization is choked with weekly/daily meetings and org charts full of useless functionaries.
    - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
      I hate to tell you, but the only reason Google “ate the world” during the times you describe (which I’m skeptical of, but that’s a separate discussion) was that they figured out they could sell ads against their search results. Almost everything else seemed exactly like what you’re describing: a bunch of ICs with no managers building cool stuff that didn’t affect the bottom line, had bad usability, didn’t have a clear use case, overlapped the work of other teams, or all of the above. The Google of today is different: multiple billion dollar business units, all well-staffed with managers.
Ididntdothis 6y ago
I think there is still a lack of things like white boarding tools. I haven’t seen anything that could replace a big whiteboard. Also webcam images generally look horrible. I am sure something could be done about that. Better microphones and speakers in laptops would help. Better suppression of background noises like kids would help. I think there are a lot of little things that could improve tools a lot.
- callalex 6y ago
  It seems silly, but I think one of the biggest reasons to have an all-MacBook shop is the microphones built into the laptops. Their far-field noise cancelling just beats the pants off of any alternative I’ve tried.
  - rubber_duck 6y ago
    Still doesn't come close to a dedicated microphone
  - sneak 6y ago
    You can also just issue $200 AirPods to each user that doesn't already have them (which will pair to anything that speaks Bluetooth), which may be a simpler/cheaper solution to this problem. A $20 USB gaming headset with a mouth mic arm might work, too.
- IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
  I love this online free self-hostable open source collaborative whiteboard: https://wbo.ophir.dev/ https://wbo.ophir.dev/ Unlike many others, this one is nice and lean and hence works smoothly even on old hardware.
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  If you plan on working from home full time then invest in a decent camera/microphone. I already had focusrite audio interface for guitar, an XLR mic gives amazing sound, decent interface and will probably get a usb camera (is there an action cam like GoPro that can double as a webcam ?)
alexbanks 6y ago
Video conferencing is pretty bad IME. I think that all too many companies view Slack as an acceptable option for communication most of the time, and I think that's an extremely inhibiting factor for most remote work. I think some innovation around the tools we use for remote work would be great, fwiw.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  For example Teams and Outlook have terrible search. Documents basically go into a black hole to never be seen again. We need the same search quality we have for web searches.
  - emiliobumachar 6y ago
    Good suggestions for improvement, but I don't think they fit this context. Face-to-face communications are extremely unsearchable.
    - alexbanks 6y ago
      Interesting
      - emiliobumachar 6y ago
        [edit: lost context after parent edited] What I can think of is a smartphone app that's always listening and transcribing, best-effort, all it listens. This can capture in person speech and make it searchable. Also, are any of the current videoconferencing options offering machine transcribing out of the box? I know users could always hand-feed recorded video to a separate tool, but ease-of-use matters. Emulating face-to-face-ness remotely is precisely the hard problem. As pg once said, the real world is incredibly high-bandwidth.
  - CodeCube 6y ago
    that's why you shouldn't use _either_ of those as repositories of information ... they're great for the ephemeral discussions, but once consensus is reached, you should have other ways of tracking that, whether it's: github/devops/jira issues and tickets, or some kanban board somewhere, or design documents, or a wiki. The discussion itself shouldn't be the artifact that records the decision.
johannes1234321 6y ago
There's lots of communication which is hard to do remote. The water cooler is o e thing. But even in a meeting when presenting something the feedback is limited. When sitting in a room it's simpler to see whether people are following and one should go faster or iterate on a point. Also one can simpler intercept with a question or comment. The text based back channel is limited for that. (I WFH exclusively for 10+ years and still regularly miss the office for anything which isn't deep down coding, but requires communication)
- VectorLock 6y ago
  Presentations always seemed to me like one of those things that can be done without a meeting at all.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    If it's unidirectional, true. If it's supposed to be a discussion it's different.
Shivetya 6y ago
Training people, both workers and management, how to work in such environments. Plus for many companies expanding the bandwidth and security for their entry points for the corporate network. This can include locking down connected equipment to block high data volume sites and activities; you cannot believe the number of people who try to stream across their vpn connection. Not everyone wants to be remote, where I work they asked for volunteers for the first wave and had to turn people down for some groups. For these the separation of work and home is line they don't like to cross.
syshum 6y ago
>>I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler. I dont think that is hard to replicate. Group chat / slack / teams is a common feature and can easily be used to fill this void.
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  It's hard to force WFH people to create non-job related relationships. Like if your jobs don't overlap, you'll probably never talk in a WFH setting. In an office setting, forming relationships is both personal and functional. Maybe some of this communication isn't efficient but it probably has value.
- TylerE 6y ago
  That's recreating a water cooler with an HR drone sitting there spying.
  - syshum 6y ago
    There are ways to do it with out "HR Drone" spying and further if you are saying things that would get you in hot water with HR then it is unlikely that a verbal conversation is better, in fact in many of these instances having a record of the conversation can be helpful....
    - HighPlainsDrftr 6y ago
      Yeah, it is harder to be friends with your coworkers when you are remote. You do end up developing relationships though. My mom, for 30 years, spent so many years on the phone with other people, when they finally met up, it always ended up in friendship. I work from home exclusively. I am in the same boat. Earlier in my career, it was easy to make friends at work. I miss that. Lets go golf! Lets go drink! Lets go do this... etc. I do think that ended up creating 'cliques' inside the groups though. Its probably better in the long run to try to establish a more professional relationship with coworkers. Just my opinion - and i'm likely wrong.

jeffbee 6y ago

Why do I need either of those things? If I'm going to work from home permanently then whatever computers I need can come with me. Face-to-face meetings are a justification for middle management to exist; remote work due to pandemic is going to lay bare the stupidity of managers and their ranks will be greatly reduced. I predict that the written word is going to make a big comeback.

jariel 6y ago
"Face-to-face meetings are a justification for middle management to exist; " Communicating is 1/2 of business; it's really odd that so many people have difficulty with this. I think because as Engineers, we measure value in 'code' then we tend to diminish all the other aspects of the business or process. Meetings can obviously be a waste but they are also critically important.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Meaningful communication happens between your ICs. The weekly hour-long team meeting where the manager polls the room and nobody has anything to say is just a waste of everyone's time. Reducing what you have to say to an email has the effect of distilling and refining it, and in many cases leads to the realization that it was wrong to begin with, or doesn't warrant saying.
  - icebraining 6y ago
    ICs?
    - TuringNYC 6y ago
      IC = Individual Contributor (worker who does not have a team under them)
    - guynamedloren 6y ago
      Individual Contributors. In this case, the engineers.
  - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
    Sounds like you need a new manager.
    - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
      Judging by the sheer level of resentment the poster holds for management, as a whole, it sounds more like it could easily be a case of their manager needing to replace a report.
dumbfoundded 6y ago
I actually think the ranks of middle managers will increase as more people work from home. Especially on the engineering side. The whole point of managers is to facilitate communication between people and teams. WFH certainly doesn't help communication problems. HR should pretty much drop to 0 though.
- ryanwaggoner 6y ago
  What are the functions of HR that you imagine them doing such that they’ll all be made obsolete by WFH?
  - dumbfoundded 6y ago
    Pretty much anything related to the work environment. This can include maintaining a safe work environment, accommodations for specific employee needs, handling employee disputes.
    - Joof 6y ago
      I don't see how this isn't still necessary.
      - ranci 6y ago
        You don't see why maintaining a work environment wouldn't be necessary if the entire company were allowed to work from home?
        umbos 6y ago
        The work environment remains, it just shifts location.
      - dumbfoundded 6y ago
        Do you see how these problems greatly diminish if people cannot interact physically?
    - 6y ago
the_gipsy 6y ago
Reminds of that Office Space clip, "What is it exactly, that you DO here?".
deeblering4 6y ago
Yes, in my experience the key to a highly functional remote environment is async collaboration. By this I mean written roundtables/stand-ups (with a focus on putting the detail in the tickets and just bringing up blockers), written RFCs and review periods for larger initiatives, comprehensive action logs (admin logs, etc), detailed documentation, detailed commit messages, etc etc. Deadlines are fine, but people need to be able to be aware of the timeline up front and have autonomy to work within their own schedule to meet it. This becomes especially important when multiple time zones come into play. Essentially it's a matter of replacing as many meetings as possible with recored (written and/or multimedia) versions that convey the same content, focusing on maximizing transparency and collaboration.
ryanwaggoner 6y ago
The hostility that many programmers have towards managers is short-sighted. If you’ve ever worked somewhere where the manager has way too many direct reports, you know it’s usually a shitshow. Can you name some companies of more than a few people that don’t have managers? If you think they’re all a waste and a drag, what’s your explanation for why manager-less competitors don’t rise up and eat their lunch? Better yet, why don’t you start your own company staffed with only ICs and take over the world?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  I hate to tell you but one of the reasons why google ate the world was their hands-off management and peer-to-peer project management and feedback schemes, which are efficient and effective. I know experiences at large organizations can vary, but for years at that company I had managers who existed, yes, but never showed their faces and were there chiefly to make sure that everybody had desks and chairs and computers. This style scales extremely well. I also had managers who were just other ICs to whom I reported, because there had to be a path from Larry to everyone in the org chart, but who were otherwise peers. Not every large organization is choked with weekly/daily meetings and org charts full of useless functionaries.
  - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
    I hate to tell you, but the only reason Google “ate the world” during the times you describe (which I’m skeptical of, but that’s a separate discussion) was that they figured out they could sell ads against their search results. Almost everything else seemed exactly like what you’re describing: a bunch of ICs with no managers building cool stuff that didn’t affect the bottom line, had bad usability, didn’t have a clear use case, overlapped the work of other teams, or all of the above. The Google of today is different: multiple billion dollar business units, all well-staffed with managers.

Ididntdothis 6y ago

I think there is still a lack of things like white boarding tools. I haven’t seen anything that could replace a big whiteboard. Also webcam images generally look horrible. I am sure something could be done about that. Better microphones and speakers in laptops would help. Better suppression of background noises like kids would help. I think there are a lot of little things that could improve tools a lot.

callalex 6y ago
It seems silly, but I think one of the biggest reasons to have an all-MacBook shop is the microphones built into the laptops. Their far-field noise cancelling just beats the pants off of any alternative I’ve tried.
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  Still doesn't come close to a dedicated microphone
- sneak 6y ago
  You can also just issue $200 AirPods to each user that doesn't already have them (which will pair to anything that speaks Bluetooth), which may be a simpler/cheaper solution to this problem. A $20 USB gaming headset with a mouth mic arm might work, too.
IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
I love this online free self-hostable open source collaborative whiteboard: https://wbo.ophir.dev/ https://wbo.ophir.dev/ Unlike many others, this one is nice and lean and hence works smoothly even on old hardware.
rubber_duck 6y ago
If you plan on working from home full time then invest in a decent camera/microphone. I already had focusrite audio interface for guitar, an XLR mic gives amazing sound, decent interface and will probably get a usb camera (is there an action cam like GoPro that can double as a webcam ?)

alexbanks 6y ago

Video conferencing is pretty bad IME. I think that all too many companies view Slack as an acceptable option for communication most of the time, and I think that's an extremely inhibiting factor for most remote work. I think some innovation around the tools we use for remote work would be great, fwiw.

Ididntdothis 6y ago
For example Teams and Outlook have terrible search. Documents basically go into a black hole to never be seen again. We need the same search quality we have for web searches.
- emiliobumachar 6y ago
  Good suggestions for improvement, but I don't think they fit this context. Face-to-face communications are extremely unsearchable.
  - alexbanks 6y ago
    Interesting
    - emiliobumachar 6y ago
      [edit: lost context after parent edited] What I can think of is a smartphone app that's always listening and transcribing, best-effort, all it listens. This can capture in person speech and make it searchable. Also, are any of the current videoconferencing options offering machine transcribing out of the box? I know users could always hand-feed recorded video to a separate tool, but ease-of-use matters. Emulating face-to-face-ness remotely is precisely the hard problem. As pg once said, the real world is incredibly high-bandwidth.
- CodeCube 6y ago
  that's why you shouldn't use _either_ of those as repositories of information ... they're great for the ephemeral discussions, but once consensus is reached, you should have other ways of tracking that, whether it's: github/devops/jira issues and tickets, or some kanban board somewhere, or design documents, or a wiki. The discussion itself shouldn't be the artifact that records the decision.

johannes1234321 6y ago

There's lots of communication which is hard to do remote. The water cooler is o e thing. But even in a meeting when presenting something the feedback is limited. When sitting in a room it's simpler to see whether people are following and one should go faster or iterate on a point. Also one can simpler intercept with a question or comment. The text based back channel is limited for that. (I WFH exclusively for 10+ years and still regularly miss the office for anything which isn't deep down coding, but requires communication)

VectorLock 6y ago
Presentations always seemed to me like one of those things that can be done without a meeting at all.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  If it's unidirectional, true. If it's supposed to be a discussion it's different.

Shivetya 6y ago

Training people, both workers and management, how to work in such environments. Plus for many companies expanding the bandwidth and security for their entry points for the corporate network. This can include locking down connected equipment to block high data volume sites and activities; you cannot believe the number of people who try to stream across their vpn connection. Not everyone wants to be remote, where I work they asked for volunteers for the first wave and had to turn people down for some groups. For these the separation of work and home is line they don't like to cross.

syshum 6y ago

>>I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler. I dont think that is hard to replicate. Group chat / slack / teams is a common feature and can easily be used to fill this void.

dumbfoundded 6y ago
It's hard to force WFH people to create non-job related relationships. Like if your jobs don't overlap, you'll probably never talk in a WFH setting. In an office setting, forming relationships is both personal and functional. Maybe some of this communication isn't efficient but it probably has value.
TylerE 6y ago
That's recreating a water cooler with an HR drone sitting there spying.
- syshum 6y ago
  There are ways to do it with out "HR Drone" spying and further if you are saying things that would get you in hot water with HR then it is unlikely that a verbal conversation is better, in fact in many of these instances having a record of the conversation can be helpful....
  - HighPlainsDrftr 6y ago
    Yeah, it is harder to be friends with your coworkers when you are remote. You do end up developing relationships though. My mom, for 30 years, spent so many years on the phone with other people, when they finally met up, it always ended up in friendship. I work from home exclusively. I am in the same boat. Earlier in my career, it was easy to make friends at work. I miss that. Lets go golf! Lets go drink! Lets go do this... etc. I do think that ended up creating 'cliques' inside the groups though. Its probably better in the long run to try to establish a more professional relationship with coworkers. Just my opinion - and i'm likely wrong.