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Author of the post here. Most of this is speculation obviously so I expect lots of opposing opinions - happy to discuss or answer any questions about my perspec

by vimota 6y ago

Author of the post here. Most of this is speculation obviously so I expect lots of opposing opinions - happy to discuss or answer any questions about my perspective!

mikro2nd 6y ago
Hi Victor, Enjoyed your post, and as someone who has worked remote-only for >5 years, can only agree with "not enough [focus] on what work will actually look like and how culture needs to adapt". One area you didn't touch on, which I find most interesting in these present (challenging) times is, "How do we improve the tools?" Right now, experienced remote-workers know to do things like explicitly tell co-workers stuff like "brb, afk 5 min." -- all that much-needed overcommunication that is necessary to replace face- and body-language cues. Is it just a question of aculturation as remote-work undergoes its own Endless September, or could we build better, richer, more intuitive tools? (And not just for devs/knowledge workers! Think of all the GPs triaging their patients with Zoom right now. There have to better tools for them!)
- ghaff 6y ago
  >explicitly tell co-workers stuff like "brb, afk 5 min." I guess it depends. I don't do development but none of the people I work with have any expectation that if they send me a chat message/SMS/email that I'll respond to them this very second.
  - mikro2nd 6y ago
    Yep, it's very context-dependent. I was just pulling an example from a hat. Point being that, in general, you learn to communicate a lot more and a lot more explicitly than people are generally used to doing.
- vimota 6y ago
  Good point - I think tools/technology can definitely help a lot like you pointed out. In some ways, the tools can act as an extension of the culture, promoting the processes and values you want your team to have. To me, this implies picking the right tools, and establishing the right expectations about how to use them, is something every team has to do with company culture in mind as opposed to being a purely technical decision. As these tools for communication, creation and management become the substrate of the team (the new "office" in some ways), it'll be interesting to see how the tool designers change. Shouldn't product managers for tools like Slack work with organizational researchers, sociologists, and psychologists to determine the impact of features on organizational behaviour (if they don't already).

by vimota 6y ago

Author of the post here. Most of this is speculation obviously so I expect lots of opposing opinions - happy to discuss or answer any questions about my perspective!

mikro2nd 6y ago

Hi Victor, Enjoyed your post, and as someone who has worked remote-only for >5 years, can only agree with "not enough [focus] on what work will actually look like and how culture needs to adapt". One area you didn't touch on, which I find most interesting in these present (challenging) times is, "How do we improve the tools?" Right now, experienced remote-workers know to do things like explicitly tell co-workers stuff like "brb, afk 5 min." -- all that much-needed overcommunication that is necessary to replace face- and body-language cues. Is it just a question of aculturation as remote-work undergoes its own Endless September, or could we build better, richer, more intuitive tools? (And not just for devs/knowledge workers! Think of all the GPs triaging their patients with Zoom right now. There have to better tools for them!)

ghaff 6y ago
>explicitly tell co-workers stuff like "brb, afk 5 min." I guess it depends. I don't do development but none of the people I work with have any expectation that if they send me a chat message/SMS/email that I'll respond to them this very second.
- mikro2nd 6y ago
  Yep, it's very context-dependent. I was just pulling an example from a hat. Point being that, in general, you learn to communicate a lot more and a lot more explicitly than people are generally used to doing.
vimota 6y ago
Good point - I think tools/technology can definitely help a lot like you pointed out. In some ways, the tools can act as an extension of the culture, promoting the processes and values you want your team to have. To me, this implies picking the right tools, and establishing the right expectations about how to use them, is something every team has to do with company culture in mind as opposed to being a purely technical decision. As these tools for communication, creation and management become the substrate of the team (the new "office" in some ways), it'll be interesting to see how the tool designers change. Shouldn't product managers for tools like Slack work with organizational researchers, sociologists, and psychologists to determine the impact of features on organizational behaviour (if they don't already).