15 ms·

Humans don't have emotional object permanence. My ex-girlfriend described herself this way to me once and I thought it was funny, but it's in fact true of peop

by ahh 6y ago

Humans don't have emotional object permanence. My ex-girlfriend described herself this way to me once and I thought it was funny, but it's in fact true of people in general: if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's unfortunate but it's true: you are going to naturally think more about and have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. No, VC doesn't count. I think this is pretty much a human universal; the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum. (Even I notice myself doing this, and I'm definitely somewhere on that line.) Given that, I want to be in the room with my coworkers. I want them to unconsciously think of me as part of their tribe, and I want to feel the same way about them; that means we need to be able to perform regular in-person social petting. This is doubly true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no way around it. (Also, while this is less universal, there are plenty of extroverts, even on HN. I'm one. It's ironic, in that I also suffer from pretty nasty social anxiety; large rooms of strangers scare me and choke me up. But lock me in a room by myself for a month and I go crazy. I am happier, by far, when I can be in the same room as people I like.)

foolinaround 6y ago
Consider the relationships we feel to folks we play games with in virtual forums over the years. Years pass without you never seeing them, yet a lot of time spent in virtual proximity makes kindred spirits.
thrownaway954 6y ago
this is true about anyone. given enough time and distance, your own mother will become "just another person you know". if you aren't physically interacting with people, you are soon forgotten.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I used to believe in out of sight out of mind until I had my first break up. Out of sight out of mind is a function that takes a parameter that is not a Boolean. If the person was important enough to you they won’t leave your mind easily. If anything, the adage exposes the strength of your relationships. In the business case, it will expose the value of physical coordination vs virtual coordination. It’s not going to be clear cut. But you are probably right in a business context, where the number that’s going to get passed into the out of sight out of mind function will definitely be low enough to return true for just about all of us. It’s not exactly the world anyone wants to live in, but what are you gonna do.
  - thrownaway954 6y ago
    which is why i said "given enough time and distance".
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  I live across the country from my dad and miss him quite a bit even though we havent seen each other in a long time. We chat weekly or so.
somacore 6y ago
Funny how you describe yourself as an extrovert and I've always said I'm an introvert - but we identify the same. Dislikes, anxiety around large groups of (mostly unknown) people, preference for people we know like work colleagues and family. To your main point, I think it depends on the previous relationship. Most of these folks had months or years to form bonds with coworkers such that I don't think it'll be so easy to reduce them to the concept of a human just from a few months or a year apart.
- ahh 6y ago
  Consider the hypothesis you have an anxiety disorder, not introversion. I said I was an introvert for years until repeated evidence (and everyone I know pointing out to me) convinced me that I am just happier, healthier, and have more energy if I'm around other people. That doesn't imply that I (or you!) am _good_ at being around other people, especially strangers. It's hard!
  - cheschire 6y ago
    I've taken several personality tests that identify me as an extrovert / leader, and it's true, I tend to lead well as defined by my subordinates over years. But it's exhausting. Groups larger than a few can only be handled in deep conversation for an hour or two tops. Also I get crippling anxiety before entering certain social situations, especially phone calls to support lines or in foreign countries where the cultural taboos are potentially around every corner. Leave me with one person though, especially one I know well, and I can talk for hours and hours at full speed.
    - plutonorm 6y ago
      I have this too. I'm 40 now and over the years I have come to understand it not as anxiety per se. But more as sensitivity. I am extremely sensitive to body language, emotional content, background noises... Details... When I'm in a large group of people there's so much information coming in that it quickly becomes exhausting. If I've slept well and am generally looking after myself I can do large groups for hours at a time. But if I'm tired, it quickly leads to exhaustion which then leads to confusion and anxiety. I also get classified as extrovert in psych tests. And I do love people, it's just they are generally too intense for my poor overly tuned nervous system. I often think I'd do well with a mood stabilizer/anti epileptic.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> This is doubly true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no way around it. So many opportunities in my life have come from casual interactions with my bosses, i.e. they spot something in an email and because I am sitting nearby, they propose it to me or they are coming out of a meeting and mention some corporate goal. Working remotely, I do not even speak to my boss every week now. I am a microservice outputting work.
- woeirua 6y ago
  Not speaking with your subordinates at least once a week is a pretty solid indication of a shitty manager...
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    More just a consequence of an project that is generally going well (or at least was) and a lot of prior autonomy. Plenty of weeks there has been nothing to say. We had a sprint planning (he isn’t on the development team for that), we completed the sprint, we did it again. Nothing to report. In the office, it is a nice amount of autonomy to not have to provide yet another status update all the time. The project team already has enough Scrum reporting requirements so it works well to keep the admin burden down. You just have to wonder if you are forgotten when working remotely.
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - jeffasinger 6y ago
      A good manager should be doing a lot more than just asking you for status updates in your 1:1s. At a minimum they should be: 1) Providing updates on things going on with the rest of the organization that may affect you. Technically this doesn't have be in a 1:1, but is often a good venue. 2) Learning more about any problems facing the team, and discussing potential solutions. 3) Giving feedback on both what the employee has been doing well and any areas they could improve. 4) Helping to set goals that will advance the employees career goals. While you might be able to get everything done well with lots of autonomy, you're probably still leaving value on the table by not meeting more regularly.
Buttons840 6y ago
I'm not sure I agree. I have many fond memories of friends I have played video games with, even though I have never met them in person. I don't even know what they look like, but there are some I still empathize with even 10 years later, and wonder how they're doing with the few personal problems they had which I was aware of. That said, I can imagine negative relationships developing in many (or most) work cultures, since it's very easy for every interaction to be adversarial. Since I enjoy video games, I've before wished to play team building video games with co-workers. Perhaps doing so would be worth while?
- ahh 6y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I have internet friends. It's just hard to treat them as first-class people compared to those I know in person. It was way easier as a teenager--I didn't have in-real-life friends! Sigh. If you were going to maintain primary internet relationships, close-knit as can be, I can imagine worse ways to do that regular team gaming. I don't think that all in-person relationships are better. There are people I see in person ~regularly I loathe. (Obviously, most such people I try not to see anymore, but you can't always control your friends' friends, or your coworkers, or who goes to your gym, or...) But they're all more real.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I have the opposite experience; Most of my close friends are online friends whom I met twenty years ago playing online games. It was decades until I saw them for the first time IRL, yet I consider them my closest friends. The only difference between my online best friends and my IRL best friends is that I mostly chat all day with the former, but chat in one long session with the latter (when we go out for drinks).
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  The more significant question is how these online friends compare in your priority to in person life friends. I’ve had some great online friendships as well but they always fade when in person life friends start using more of my time. The key question for work is less whether you boss will value you and more whether if you can effectively compete with Joe Office who goes in every day for space in his mind.
war1025 6y ago
> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. Absolutely. This is a great way to think of it. A perhaps more techie way of thinking of it is our relationships are in a mostly-LRU cache. The people we have interacted with most recently are the ones that matter most to us. If you aren't regularly resetting your place within that cache, you get bumped. What that often means is there are people that you see a couple times and you think you are going to end up being significant in each other's lives, but then in a month or so they fall out of the cache and are effectively dead to you. A thing I've noticed is we have a few friends that like to get right up to the point where I'm about to write them out of my life, and then they always find time for us and pop back in. Mildly infuriating, but I guess I'm glad to have them around either way. Out of sight, out of mind is one of the key aspects of human relationships.
- higeorge13 6y ago
  The LRU cache analogy might be one of the best comments i have ever read.
snarf21 6y ago
I'd say it slightly differently. The thing I've observed is that the physical closeness creates a bias. You are more likely to give someone you "know" the benefit of the doubt. Someone who is remote is more likely to be seen as clueless or "them not us" even if you'd agree with someone local on the same idea. We as humans long to belong. It is hard to separate them from the rest of the experience. I think the other fact is the hallway and elevator are great opportunities to "get to know" someone when in reality it is just knowing more about someone not necessarily really knowing them as a person. But those are the things that create the familiarity and benefit of the doubt later.
troughway 6y ago
>It's unfortunate but it's true: you are going to naturally think more about and have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. The people who are overjoyed at the prospect of WFH, thinking they are in the right, are a loud minority. Most people, being well-adjusted social creatures, would feel very alienated if they are not in close physical proximity with the people they work with and depend on for their livelihood. There has been a massive uptick of WFH articles and how it will be the new norm in the future. I think Dang called it a "cliche". The tabloids are writing cheques basic human needs cannot cash. This might be flippant to say but I wouldn't be surprised if people who espouse remote work/WFH have a very real lack of leadership skills, because you're cutting your own ability to influence those around and underneath you when you cannot look them in the eyes properly. This won't sit well with HNers, and I get it, since one of the catch phrases around here is that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Sometimes, its not others who have a hard time understanding - its us. The remote work group is very niche. People cannot wait to get the hell out of their houses, get back to what they want to do, and work with their colleagues. >the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum. Too right mate.
- learc83 6y ago
  Perhaps we need to rethink work life balance if we need work to fulfill our social needs. During the lockdown, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of my house, but it was because I wanted go hiking, out to eat, to a ballgame, or just to visit friends and family.
  - troughway 6y ago
    I agree, but eating, sleeping, working, these kinds of things don't happen every other sunday. It's every single day. Any "work life balance" you bring to this, assuming you're in the 40+ hour/week rat race, will have to revolve around those three things, and not the other way around. The mistake people make is thinking they can make their work life revolve around their life life. As George Carlin quipped "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." So you're there, working remotely by yourself, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It takes a special kind of left-field to equate this to being in an environment where you're surrounded by people of "your tribe", as the OP put it.
learc83 6y ago
I don't think that's true at all. I've worked remotely for years and my coworkers and I get along great. We are just as close as work friends I've physically worked with. My fiancee is an MD, so she has tons of very close friends all over the country from college, med school, residency, and fellowship that she only interacts with remotely. She's just as close with many of them as she is with friends who live in town. Neither of us are autistic or on the spectrum.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  How can this be? The bandwidth and sheer volume of face-to-face time co-located people share just dwarfs the potential of remote. Are you saying that you still do fine remotely or that remote works better than colocated? I'd also bet your MD does most of her doctoring that depends on deep trust and emotional connection in-person; remote just fails at this in comparison
  - monadic2 6y ago
    > The bandwidth and sheer volume of face-to-face time co-located people share just dwarfs the potential of remote. How do you figure? Anyway you’re pumping out HTML, not making works of art. Most days don’t require an emotional connection to get anything done, and it just takes a little more effort on both to talk on video and get that connection. Anyway, it’s much easier and healthier to view coworkers like future friends than current friends, especially your manager. You better double my pay to waste my time in person.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > Anyway you’re pumping out HTML, not making works of art. I'm pretty sure most artists do their work remotely, not in the office of whoever's buying the artwork.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    I personally appreciate the people I work with remotely now more than when I was in the office as I don't need to engage in needless chit chat and so every meeting is much more productive.
patpatpat 6y ago
We predominantly pair and mob in our team, if anything I feel closer during WFH as we actually mob more as we no longer have to find suitable mobbing or pairing spaces.
jupiter90000 6y ago
I think this depends, for me at least. I've had jobs where my coworkers and I aren't that close at all even working together in an office setting. We had little attachment to each other during and after the shared job experience was over. Then, I have had jobs where we worked in office and for extended periods remote and I feel closer and actually have more of a relationship with them, sometimes for many years down the road when we don't even live near each other anymore. I still see them when I visit town and we talk on the phone. I work remote with some folks in another project and I honestly feel closer to some of them than some on-site groups I have worked with. I guess everyone is a little different in this. I have some non-work relationships that operate more like you describe and also ones that don't. It is a little offensive to hear assignment of people who don't operate the same way as described as being far on the autism spectrum.
tsumnia 6y ago
Agreed, I think it is also one of the principles that leads to more success in education. MOOCs notoriously have high drop off rates despite offering all the components we ascribe to positive learning experiences. I think the human component gives students a community of peers that are equally struggling in the course, even if they are explicitly not invested in a peer's progress.
DevKoala 6y ago
This is very true. The proof is in the pudding. If someone messages you or calls you, you might dismiss them easily, but if someone stands next to you and asks you “do you have a moment?” Will you dismiss them as easily? PS: Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself to treat all of these requests the same. Even if someone walked from the other side of the building to ask me something. The priority assessment before I consider shifting my focus should be the same.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself to treat all of these requests the same. Why?
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby, that contributes to the idea that remote coworkers are less effective, because you're making them less effective.
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby So the right answer is to answer calls etc from remote colleagues promptly - not to ignore local coworkers who walk over. It’s not to make local communication less effective to prop up remote work.
      - DevKoala 6y ago
        You don’t ignore people who come to talk to you. You tell them politely that you are focused on a task, and to wait until you are free. Over time people learn to send you a message first to coordinate when you are free to talk. At the company I work for, the norm at the office is to always ask first “is this a good time to discuss X?”. Not even the CTO gets a free pass to interrupt engineers. Actually he was one of the people who coached me to prioritize my focus first and to learn to say “No”.
gowld 6y ago
"out of sight, out of mind" is the classic formulation.
Hoasi 6y ago
> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. > if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. You nailed it. I usually work remotely, but always try meeting people physically at the start of a project. There is something uniquely uplifting about being in the same location to create something. That's when ideas congregate. When people meet in the same place, you can feel the energy. Physical meetings create synergies impossible to replicate when you only meet online.
- monkeydust 6y ago
  I may get shot down but I was experimenting with VR meetings, avatars created using facial images. We did a team meeting using this tech for fun but it felt much more like being in same room than a video conference call. Not same as in person but a step closer.
  - plutonorm 6y ago
    If people didn't have a weird aversion to VR and headsets were way more comfortable this would totally be the solution. Once we get comfortable AR glasses with decent resolution, software for remote teams is going to be a huge business.
- Zanneth 6y ago
  There is also a shared commitment to a project that you get working in close physical proximity. Your colleagues are more likely to be motivated to help you or achieve something difficult when everyone is working on a project together.
nogabebop23 6y ago
Everyone countering your argument is basically saying "no, this isn't true; my remote relationships are great". No one is really arguing what your saying about co-located, in-person working better for emotional connection and tribal culture building.
- learc83 6y ago
  That's because people are countering this argument, >if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's unfortunate but it's true and the assertion that if you are different you must be autistic. The much less inflammatory argument that all else being equal, you are more likely to bond with someone with whom you share physical proximity is probably not worth arguing against.
vlunkr 6y ago
> have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. I honestly don't know if this is true. There are coworkers that I really like to work with, but I'm also happy to not have to spend 8 hours a day in the same room engaging in small talk, smelling their reheated leftovers, etc.
deleted 6y ago
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WalterBright 6y ago
Just the daily ritual of going out to lunch with your coworkers is immensely valuable for your work and career.
- havelhovel 6y ago
  How? My performance reviews never cover my lunchtime activities. I don't need my peers to recommend me based on the strength of my small talk.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Bonding over a meal is an ancient human activity.
    - deleted 6y ago
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dorkwood 6y ago
This can be a good thing, too. If you're prone to anxiety, you might find that people you once had a tense relationship with are now much easier to get along with. Since their presence is not persistent, their ability to cause you anxiety is greatly diminished.
- ikeyany 6y ago
  But they lose their power over you.
novok 6y ago
Introversion doesn't mean you'll be mentally fine as a human being in solitary confinement for 1 month and a pile of TV shows & books.
FpUser 6y ago
I have friends and we see each other. As for work related socializing: I work from home for last 20 year running my own business making my own products and doing the same for other companies. Sometimes I go to business meetings (not since COVID) but not at any point do I feel that I am missing something. It is totally opposite. I am happy like a clam. I have some people working for me but all remote as well.
jefflombardjr 6y ago
> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. Given that, I don't want to be in the room with my coworkers. There's more to life than work.
e40 6y ago
I think that's true in the pre-Zoom world. About a year ago I started using Zoom for my remote team. It dramatically improved the effect you described, for all of us. I run a small company and for the non-technical folks we have lunches twice a week via Zoom. It has worked wonders. Other than the medical and economic catastrophe that is this pandemic, it has been absolutely wonderful for my company. Hopefully we'll exist as a company in a year from now.
- gerdesj 6y ago
  I wish you all the best mate. I too run a small company. The details don't really matter, we probably have a lot in common and a lot disparate. Take care. Some random bloke off of the UK worries about you and your firm, for a while 8)
  - e40 6y ago
    Thanks. I've become closer to my dentist since the pandemic. We've talked about business issues, even though software and dentistry are very different, there are definitely common issues. The things we share are definitely many and another good thing is getting people to talk that wouldn't normally do that. So, take care yourself, and thanks for the kind words.
empath75 6y ago
Going out drinking with managers is probably the second most important thing for your career after being good at your job, and might be number 1, in certain companies
- deleted 6y ago
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Havoc 6y ago
>if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. Great insight. Depressing AF but good anyway
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I can relate to this pretty well. I spend a lot of time on IM group chats and people naturally come and go. I often don't even notice when someone leaves and when they come back a year later I remember the profile pic and remember that we were talking in the same group for years but I don't remember a single thing about them or anything we said. I usually only remember someone if they were particularly stand out or we spent extensive time in private messages.
mech422 6y ago
I keep hearing doom and gloom about remote work from people that have been doing it less then 3 years... After 20 years remote (try getting remote work in 2000ish!), I have had any of the awful downsides people keep _predicting_. If you're interested in remote work, give it time, get used to the differences between on-site and remote, and plan accordingly... For instance, if you got opportunities because you sat next to the boss or were the first person he saw coming out of a meeting - 'ping' him with a status update email on something when he gets out of 'the big meeting' - this way, you're the first 'virtual' person they 'see'
- bobbiechen 6y ago
  That's an interesting strategy, I imagine it takes a lot more dedicated effort than noticing the person sitting next to you returning to a meeting. How do you know when these meetings are happening, a shared calendar?
  - mech422 6y ago
    It was just an idea, each situation will be different...For instance, I normally know about meetings cuz the boss has me do the prep work for them :-P
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
So this interesting. Is it also true for low performers? As in, do you think your reputation resets after certain amount of time being remote?
foobiekr 6y ago
I am not an extrovert and I found this post to put into words the way I've been thinking about the impact of remote work.
vhiremath4 6y ago
I hope people view this video, but I'm a founder + the CTO at Loom. I use video all the time to solve exactly this problem: maintaining an emotional connection with my peers in a remote context asynchronously. It's not 100% - you still need synchronous time, but it helps a lot. I don't care if you use Loom, but, if you're on a team that is any % remote, do this for yourself + your fellow remote teammates. It goes a long way. https://www.loom.com/share/81433d34e7584353921aae8e12b40844 https://www.loom.com/share/81433d34e7584353921aae8e12b40844
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WWLink 6y ago
"I think this is pretty much a human universal; the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum." So, you're a psychiatrist? How fascinating! I don't know any programmers who hold a psychiatry degree.
anonytrary 6y ago
This 100%. Most startups that are getting on the remote-only bandwagon are gonna be in for a big surprise when they start seeing their culture dry up into a crusty spot of resin. Half of the value of working at a modern company is being in the same room as the talented people you work with. I love everyone I work with, and going into the office and seeing them gives me a huge amount of motivation to do good work. Purely remote work can't possibly be the future for creative fields. Humans are inherently social, and I say this as someone who has crippling social anxiety. All of my salary expectations took this into account. If proximity to talent is being taken away from me, why not just look for a new company? I didn't come to the bay area to not be around smart and talented people. I imagine if grade-school became fully-remote, that generation would just be much more lonely and have fewer friends than ever. People are meant to be together, work together, and do things together.
LockAndLol 6y ago
> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. I think you should correct that to "the humans I hang around with / have met". There is a large online community that you may not be a part of and they are quite emotional about each other. Just go on twitch and have a look at how bent up or bent over people get about each other. Your comment is made from a place of personal experience that isn't equal to that of others, and you generalize it to seem as if it were equal.
- oblio 6y ago
  Those people are a minority.
duiker101 6y ago
this is a complete lie. if this were true, I wouldn't have formed long lasting friendships with people I played videogames online. Long distance relationships would suck a lot more and everyone in the office would be happy. we just need to accept that different people like different things for whatever reason. I have never been close to any co-workers. I am friendly, I meet outside work et all, but they are co-workers first. I love remote work. But I realise that in reality, full time remote would work only for like maybe 20% of the population.
neilwilson 6y ago
That's one of the reason why for remote to work properly everybody has to be remote. Then it has a chance of working.
focus2020 6y ago
More importantly remote work tremendously helps overcome bias against age. Everything else trumps in comparison of not having a job due to age bias.

by ahh 6y ago

foolinaround 6y ago

Consider the relationships we feel to folks we play games with in virtual forums over the years. Years pass without you never seeing them, yet a lot of time spent in virtual proximity makes kindred spirits.

thrownaway954 6y ago

this is true about anyone. given enough time and distance, your own mother will become "just another person you know". if you aren't physically interacting with people, you are soon forgotten.

runawaybottle 6y ago
I used to believe in out of sight out of mind until I had my first break up. Out of sight out of mind is a function that takes a parameter that is not a Boolean. If the person was important enough to you they won’t leave your mind easily. If anything, the adage exposes the strength of your relationships. In the business case, it will expose the value of physical coordination vs virtual coordination. It’s not going to be clear cut. But you are probably right in a business context, where the number that’s going to get passed into the out of sight out of mind function will definitely be low enough to return true for just about all of us. It’s not exactly the world anyone wants to live in, but what are you gonna do.
- thrownaway954 6y ago
  which is why i said "given enough time and distance".
nickthemagicman 6y ago
I live across the country from my dad and miss him quite a bit even though we havent seen each other in a long time. We chat weekly or so.

somacore 6y ago

Funny how you describe yourself as an extrovert and I've always said I'm an introvert - but we identify the same. Dislikes, anxiety around large groups of (mostly unknown) people, preference for people we know like work colleagues and family. To your main point, I think it depends on the previous relationship. Most of these folks had months or years to form bonds with coworkers such that I don't think it'll be so easy to reduce them to the concept of a human just from a few months or a year apart.

ahh 6y ago
Consider the hypothesis you have an anxiety disorder, not introversion. I said I was an introvert for years until repeated evidence (and everyone I know pointing out to me) convinced me that I am just happier, healthier, and have more energy if I'm around other people. That doesn't imply that I (or you!) am _good_ at being around other people, especially strangers. It's hard!
- cheschire 6y ago
  I've taken several personality tests that identify me as an extrovert / leader, and it's true, I tend to lead well as defined by my subordinates over years. But it's exhausting. Groups larger than a few can only be handled in deep conversation for an hour or two tops. Also I get crippling anxiety before entering certain social situations, especially phone calls to support lines or in foreign countries where the cultural taboos are potentially around every corner. Leave me with one person though, especially one I know well, and I can talk for hours and hours at full speed.
  - plutonorm 6y ago
    I have this too. I'm 40 now and over the years I have come to understand it not as anxiety per se. But more as sensitivity. I am extremely sensitive to body language, emotional content, background noises... Details... When I'm in a large group of people there's so much information coming in that it quickly becomes exhausting. If I've slept well and am generally looking after myself I can do large groups for hours at a time. But if I'm tired, it quickly leads to exhaustion which then leads to confusion and anxiety. I also get classified as extrovert in psych tests. And I do love people, it's just they are generally too intense for my poor overly tuned nervous system. I often think I'd do well with a mood stabilizer/anti epileptic.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> This is doubly true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no way around it. So many opportunities in my life have come from casual interactions with my bosses, i.e. they spot something in an email and because I am sitting nearby, they propose it to me or they are coming out of a meeting and mention some corporate goal. Working remotely, I do not even speak to my boss every week now. I am a microservice outputting work.

woeirua 6y ago
Not speaking with your subordinates at least once a week is a pretty solid indication of a shitty manager...
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  More just a consequence of an project that is generally going well (or at least was) and a lot of prior autonomy. Plenty of weeks there has been nothing to say. We had a sprint planning (he isn’t on the development team for that), we completed the sprint, we did it again. Nothing to report. In the office, it is a nice amount of autonomy to not have to provide yet another status update all the time. The project team already has enough Scrum reporting requirements so it works well to keep the admin burden down. You just have to wonder if you are forgotten when working remotely.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - jeffasinger 6y ago
    A good manager should be doing a lot more than just asking you for status updates in your 1:1s. At a minimum they should be: 1) Providing updates on things going on with the rest of the organization that may affect you. Technically this doesn't have be in a 1:1, but is often a good venue. 2) Learning more about any problems facing the team, and discussing potential solutions. 3) Giving feedback on both what the employee has been doing well and any areas they could improve. 4) Helping to set goals that will advance the employees career goals. While you might be able to get everything done well with lots of autonomy, you're probably still leaving value on the table by not meeting more regularly.

Buttons840 6y ago

I'm not sure I agree. I have many fond memories of friends I have played video games with, even though I have never met them in person. I don't even know what they look like, but there are some I still empathize with even 10 years later, and wonder how they're doing with the few personal problems they had which I was aware of. That said, I can imagine negative relationships developing in many (or most) work cultures, since it's very easy for every interaction to be adversarial. Since I enjoy video games, I've before wished to play team building video games with co-workers. Perhaps doing so would be worth while?

ahh 6y ago
Don't get me wrong, I have internet friends. It's just hard to treat them as first-class people compared to those I know in person. It was way easier as a teenager--I didn't have in-real-life friends! Sigh. If you were going to maintain primary internet relationships, close-knit as can be, I can imagine worse ways to do that regular team gaming. I don't think that all in-person relationships are better. There are people I see in person ~regularly I loathe. (Obviously, most such people I try not to see anymore, but you can't always control your friends' friends, or your coworkers, or who goes to your gym, or...) But they're all more real.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I have the opposite experience; Most of my close friends are online friends whom I met twenty years ago playing online games. It was decades until I saw them for the first time IRL, yet I consider them my closest friends. The only difference between my online best friends and my IRL best friends is that I mostly chat all day with the former, but chat in one long session with the latter (when we go out for drinks).
MattGaiser 6y ago
The more significant question is how these online friends compare in your priority to in person life friends. I’ve had some great online friendships as well but they always fade when in person life friends start using more of my time. The key question for work is less whether you boss will value you and more whether if you can effectively compete with Joe Office who goes in every day for space in his mind.

war1025 6y ago

> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. Absolutely. This is a great way to think of it. A perhaps more techie way of thinking of it is our relationships are in a mostly-LRU cache. The people we have interacted with most recently are the ones that matter most to us. If you aren't regularly resetting your place within that cache, you get bumped. What that often means is there are people that you see a couple times and you think you are going to end up being significant in each other's lives, but then in a month or so they fall out of the cache and are effectively dead to you. A thing I've noticed is we have a few friends that like to get right up to the point where I'm about to write them out of my life, and then they always find time for us and pop back in. Mildly infuriating, but I guess I'm glad to have them around either way. Out of sight, out of mind is one of the key aspects of human relationships.

higeorge13 6y ago
The LRU cache analogy might be one of the best comments i have ever read.

snarf21 6y ago

I'd say it slightly differently. The thing I've observed is that the physical closeness creates a bias. You are more likely to give someone you "know" the benefit of the doubt. Someone who is remote is more likely to be seen as clueless or "them not us" even if you'd agree with someone local on the same idea. We as humans long to belong. It is hard to separate them from the rest of the experience. I think the other fact is the hallway and elevator are great opportunities to "get to know" someone when in reality it is just knowing more about someone not necessarily really knowing them as a person. But those are the things that create the familiarity and benefit of the doubt later.

troughway 6y ago

>It's unfortunate but it's true: you are going to naturally think more about and have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. The people who are overjoyed at the prospect of WFH, thinking they are in the right, are a loud minority. Most people, being well-adjusted social creatures, would feel very alienated if they are not in close physical proximity with the people they work with and depend on for their livelihood. There has been a massive uptick of WFH articles and how it will be the new norm in the future. I think Dang called it a "cliche". The tabloids are writing cheques basic human needs cannot cash. This might be flippant to say but I wouldn't be surprised if people who espouse remote work/WFH have a very real lack of leadership skills, because you're cutting your own ability to influence those around and underneath you when you cannot look them in the eyes properly. This won't sit well with HNers, and I get it, since one of the catch phrases around here is that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Sometimes, its not others who have a hard time understanding - its us. The remote work group is very niche. People cannot wait to get the hell out of their houses, get back to what they want to do, and work with their colleagues. >the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum. Too right mate.

learc83 6y ago
Perhaps we need to rethink work life balance if we need work to fulfill our social needs. During the lockdown, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of my house, but it was because I wanted go hiking, out to eat, to a ballgame, or just to visit friends and family.
- troughway 6y ago
  I agree, but eating, sleeping, working, these kinds of things don't happen every other sunday. It's every single day. Any "work life balance" you bring to this, assuming you're in the 40+ hour/week rat race, will have to revolve around those three things, and not the other way around. The mistake people make is thinking they can make their work life revolve around their life life. As George Carlin quipped "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." So you're there, working remotely by yourself, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It takes a special kind of left-field to equate this to being in an environment where you're surrounded by people of "your tribe", as the OP put it.

learc83 6y ago

I don't think that's true at all. I've worked remotely for years and my coworkers and I get along great. We are just as close as work friends I've physically worked with. My fiancee is an MD, so she has tons of very close friends all over the country from college, med school, residency, and fellowship that she only interacts with remotely. She's just as close with many of them as she is with friends who live in town. Neither of us are autistic or on the spectrum.

nogabebop23 6y ago
How can this be? The bandwidth and sheer volume of face-to-face time co-located people share just dwarfs the potential of remote. Are you saying that you still do fine remotely or that remote works better than colocated? I'd also bet your MD does most of her doctoring that depends on deep trust and emotional connection in-person; remote just fails at this in comparison
- monadic2 6y ago
  > The bandwidth and sheer volume of face-to-face time co-located people share just dwarfs the potential of remote. How do you figure? Anyway you’re pumping out HTML, not making works of art. Most days don’t require an emotional connection to get anything done, and it just takes a little more effort on both to talk on video and get that connection. Anyway, it’s much easier and healthier to view coworkers like future friends than current friends, especially your manager. You better double my pay to waste my time in person.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Anyway you’re pumping out HTML, not making works of art. I'm pretty sure most artists do their work remotely, not in the office of whoever's buying the artwork.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  I personally appreciate the people I work with remotely now more than when I was in the office as I don't need to engage in needless chit chat and so every meeting is much more productive.

patpatpat 6y ago

We predominantly pair and mob in our team, if anything I feel closer during WFH as we actually mob more as we no longer have to find suitable mobbing or pairing spaces.

jupiter90000 6y ago

I think this depends, for me at least. I've had jobs where my coworkers and I aren't that close at all even working together in an office setting. We had little attachment to each other during and after the shared job experience was over. Then, I have had jobs where we worked in office and for extended periods remote and I feel closer and actually have more of a relationship with them, sometimes for many years down the road when we don't even live near each other anymore. I still see them when I visit town and we talk on the phone. I work remote with some folks in another project and I honestly feel closer to some of them than some on-site groups I have worked with. I guess everyone is a little different in this. I have some non-work relationships that operate more like you describe and also ones that don't. It is a little offensive to hear assignment of people who don't operate the same way as described as being far on the autism spectrum.

tsumnia 6y ago

Agreed, I think it is also one of the principles that leads to more success in education. MOOCs notoriously have high drop off rates despite offering all the components we ascribe to positive learning experiences. I think the human component gives students a community of peers that are equally struggling in the course, even if they are explicitly not invested in a peer's progress.

DevKoala 6y ago

This is very true. The proof is in the pudding. If someone messages you or calls you, you might dismiss them easily, but if someone stands next to you and asks you “do you have a moment?” Will you dismiss them as easily? PS: Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself to treat all of these requests the same. Even if someone walked from the other side of the building to ask me something. The priority assessment before I consider shifting my focus should be the same.

iateanapple 6y ago
> Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself to treat all of these requests the same. Why?
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby, that contributes to the idea that remote coworkers are less effective, because you're making them less effective.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby So the right answer is to answer calls etc from remote colleagues promptly - not to ignore local coworkers who walk over. It’s not to make local communication less effective to prop up remote work.
    - DevKoala 6y ago
      You don’t ignore people who come to talk to you. You tell them politely that you are focused on a task, and to wait until you are free. Over time people learn to send you a message first to coordinate when you are free to talk. At the company I work for, the norm at the office is to always ask first “is this a good time to discuss X?”. Not even the CTO gets a free pass to interrupt engineers. Actually he was one of the people who coached me to prioritize my focus first and to learn to say “No”.

gowld 6y ago

"out of sight, out of mind" is the classic formulation.

Hoasi 6y ago

> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. > if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. You nailed it. I usually work remotely, but always try meeting people physically at the start of a project. There is something uniquely uplifting about being in the same location to create something. That's when ideas congregate. When people meet in the same place, you can feel the energy. Physical meetings create synergies impossible to replicate when you only meet online.

monkeydust 6y ago
I may get shot down but I was experimenting with VR meetings, avatars created using facial images. We did a team meeting using this tech for fun but it felt much more like being in same room than a video conference call. Not same as in person but a step closer.
- plutonorm 6y ago
  If people didn't have a weird aversion to VR and headsets were way more comfortable this would totally be the solution. Once we get comfortable AR glasses with decent resolution, software for remote teams is going to be a huge business.
Zanneth 6y ago
There is also a shared commitment to a project that you get working in close physical proximity. Your colleagues are more likely to be motivated to help you or achieve something difficult when everyone is working on a project together.

nogabebop23 6y ago

Everyone countering your argument is basically saying "no, this isn't true; my remote relationships are great". No one is really arguing what your saying about co-located, in-person working better for emotional connection and tribal culture building.

learc83 6y ago
That's because people are countering this argument, >if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's unfortunate but it's true and the assertion that if you are different you must be autistic. The much less inflammatory argument that all else being equal, you are more likely to bond with someone with whom you share physical proximity is probably not worth arguing against.

vlunkr 6y ago

> have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. I honestly don't know if this is true. There are coworkers that I really like to work with, but I'm also happy to not have to spend 8 hours a day in the same room engaging in small talk, smelling their reheated leftovers, etc.

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WalterBright 6y ago

Just the daily ritual of going out to lunch with your coworkers is immensely valuable for your work and career.

havelhovel 6y ago
How? My performance reviews never cover my lunchtime activities. I don't need my peers to recommend me based on the strength of my small talk.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Bonding over a meal is an ancient human activity.
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dorkwood 6y ago

This can be a good thing, too. If you're prone to anxiety, you might find that people you once had a tense relationship with are now much easier to get along with. Since their presence is not persistent, their ability to cause you anxiety is greatly diminished.

ikeyany 6y ago
But they lose their power over you.

novok 6y ago

Introversion doesn't mean you'll be mentally fine as a human being in solitary confinement for 1 month and a pile of TV shows & books.

FpUser 6y ago

I have friends and we see each other. As for work related socializing: I work from home for last 20 year running my own business making my own products and doing the same for other companies. Sometimes I go to business meetings (not since COVID) but not at any point do I feel that I am missing something. It is totally opposite. I am happy like a clam. I have some people working for me but all remote as well.

jefflombardjr 6y ago

> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. Given that, I don't want to be in the room with my coworkers. There's more to life than work.

e40 6y ago

I think that's true in the pre-Zoom world. About a year ago I started using Zoom for my remote team. It dramatically improved the effect you described, for all of us. I run a small company and for the non-technical folks we have lunches twice a week via Zoom. It has worked wonders. Other than the medical and economic catastrophe that is this pandemic, it has been absolutely wonderful for my company. Hopefully we'll exist as a company in a year from now.

gerdesj 6y ago
I wish you all the best mate. I too run a small company. The details don't really matter, we probably have a lot in common and a lot disparate. Take care. Some random bloke off of the UK worries about you and your firm, for a while 8)
- e40 6y ago
  Thanks. I've become closer to my dentist since the pandemic. We've talked about business issues, even though software and dentistry are very different, there are definitely common issues. The things we share are definitely many and another good thing is getting people to talk that wouldn't normally do that. So, take care yourself, and thanks for the kind words.

empath75 6y ago

Going out drinking with managers is probably the second most important thing for your career after being good at your job, and might be number 1, in certain companies

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Havoc 6y ago

>if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. Great insight. Depressing AF but good anyway

Polylactic_acid 6y ago
I can relate to this pretty well. I spend a lot of time on IM group chats and people naturally come and go. I often don't even notice when someone leaves and when they come back a year later I remember the profile pic and remember that we were talking in the same group for years but I don't remember a single thing about them or anything we said. I usually only remember someone if they were particularly stand out or we spent extensive time in private messages.

mech422 6y ago

I keep hearing doom and gloom about remote work from people that have been doing it less then 3 years... After 20 years remote (try getting remote work in 2000ish!), I have had any of the awful downsides people keep _predicting_. If you're interested in remote work, give it time, get used to the differences between on-site and remote, and plan accordingly... For instance, if you got opportunities because you sat next to the boss or were the first person he saw coming out of a meeting - 'ping' him with a status update email on something when he gets out of 'the big meeting' - this way, you're the first 'virtual' person they 'see'

bobbiechen 6y ago
That's an interesting strategy, I imagine it takes a lot more dedicated effort than noticing the person sitting next to you returning to a meeting. How do you know when these meetings are happening, a shared calendar?
- mech422 6y ago
  It was just an idea, each situation will be different...For instance, I normally know about meetings cuz the boss has me do the prep work for them :-P

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

So this interesting. Is it also true for low performers? As in, do you think your reputation resets after certain amount of time being remote?

foobiekr 6y ago

I am not an extrovert and I found this post to put into words the way I've been thinking about the impact of remote work.

vhiremath4 6y ago

I hope people view this video, but I'm a founder + the CTO at Loom. I use video all the time to solve exactly this problem: maintaining an emotional connection with my peers in a remote context asynchronously. It's not 100% - you still need synchronous time, but it helps a lot. I don't care if you use Loom, but, if you're on a team that is any % remote, do this for yourself + your fellow remote teammates. It goes a long way. https://www.loom.com/share/81433d34e7584353921aae8e12b40844 https://www.loom.com/share/81433d34e7584353921aae8e12b40844

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WWLink 6y ago

"I think this is pretty much a human universal; the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum." So, you're a psychiatrist? How fascinating! I don't know any programmers who hold a psychiatry degree.

anonytrary 6y ago

This 100%. Most startups that are getting on the remote-only bandwagon are gonna be in for a big surprise when they start seeing their culture dry up into a crusty spot of resin. Half of the value of working at a modern company is being in the same room as the talented people you work with. I love everyone I work with, and going into the office and seeing them gives me a huge amount of motivation to do good work. Purely remote work can't possibly be the future for creative fields. Humans are inherently social, and I say this as someone who has crippling social anxiety. All of my salary expectations took this into account. If proximity to talent is being taken away from me, why not just look for a new company? I didn't come to the bay area to not be around smart and talented people. I imagine if grade-school became fully-remote, that generation would just be much more lonely and have fewer friends than ever. People are meant to be together, work together, and do things together.

LockAndLol 6y ago

> Humans don't have emotional object permanence. I think you should correct that to "the humans I hang around with / have met". There is a large online community that you may not be a part of and they are quite emotional about each other. Just go on twitch and have a look at how bent up or bent over people get about each other. Your comment is made from a place of personal experience that isn't equal to that of others, and you generalize it to seem as if it were equal.

oblio 6y ago
Those people are a minority.

duiker101 6y ago

this is a complete lie. if this were true, I wouldn't have formed long lasting friendships with people I played videogames online. Long distance relationships would suck a lot more and everyone in the office would be happy. we just need to accept that different people like different things for whatever reason. I have never been close to any co-workers. I am friendly, I meet outside work et all, but they are co-workers first. I love remote work. But I realise that in reality, full time remote would work only for like maybe 20% of the population.

neilwilson 6y ago

That's one of the reason why for remote to work properly everybody has to be remote. Then it has a chance of working.

focus2020 6y ago

More importantly remote work tremendously helps overcome bias against age. Everything else trumps in comparison of not having a job due to age bias.