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> Remote enables you to be forgotten This became clear to me every time I was hired or transferred into a new job where I had to sit at a desk removed from eve

> Remote enables you to be forgotten This became clear to me every time I was hired or transferred into a new job where I had to sit at a desk removed from everyone else on the team. Think issues with not having an empty desk nearby when I walked in the door on Day One or something along those lines, but several times over. Making yourself routinely, regularly, and frequently visible goes only so far when you're not cubicle neighbors with your direct coworkers or managers. "Out of sight, out of mind" isn't just for working from home, it can be as easy as working from down the hall or in the next room over. I've done the satellite office thing too, and it's in the bag for this as well. All this said, I am finally in a position where I -- for the first time ever for me -- can and am encouraged to work from home as much as possible. My boss and those I work with are all very active and proactive on making sure we become, are, and remain glued together as we all play ventriloquist on the job. I'm about to start my fourth week at this place so I'm trying not to have rose-colored eyeglasses during the honeymoon, but so far so good.

tomaskafka 6y ago
Yes. For this very reason I think that only the extremes (everyone is collocated or everyone is remote) work. Mixing of local and remote people doesn't (maybe except for external contractors, who know they are expendable (and adjust their daily rates to compensate)).
- err4nt 6y ago
  Agreed, it's not a 'remote work' thing, it's a 1-person-at-the-organization-is-invisible-at-the-office kind of thing. I will only work on 100% distributed teams where the entire organization is communicating as though they're all remote, even on days when a couple of them may be meeting at the office or working from the same place by choice.
codethief 6y ago
>> Remote enables you to be forgotten This reminds me of one of the most incredible stories I've ever read on the internet: https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/American-Dream https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/American-Dream It's pretty long but well worth the read!
Pokepokalypse 6y ago
Then managers have failed you. This is one thing where my managers have really stepped up their game during the pandemic; as we've all shifted remote. When we were IN the office, we had many different dev teams that really should NOT have been different. There was just such a resistance to "pointless meetings" that we were kind of stuck in these little stovepiped fiefdoms, with little interaction, communication, or coordination. We were terrible at planning. With the change to full-remote, the managers have recognized that we can't have people who get "forgotten", or teams that are kept out of the loop for the top-level stuff. I've been very pleased to see these managers grow and change with the new demands, and we're gradually taking on more cross-team integration. It has demanded everybody attend a few extra meetings. Which we all hate, and know it breaks your velocity and productivity. But it's absolutely essential, towards getting all the cats herded. For what it's worth - as a late-career professional, I've seen this "forgotten" syndrome happen, even with companies where they're merged from two formerly separate companies. Same with satellite offices. The people at the corporate headquarters ALWAYS get the best projects, the best resources, the most managerial attention. The workers at the remote offices get bupkus - and this translates into an eventual hiring-freeze, attrition, and shutdown of the remote office, along with mass-layoffs. It fucking sucks, and to be honest, I think it's really counterproductive for the goals of the larger company, and the industry, in general. I've seen this happen at 3 different companies. I think that with covid; managers are terrified of losing talent, and not being able to replace them. At least in a business like mine where demand is still very robust. So they are taking these efforts to do; basically what a manager's job SHOULD be: to make sure everyone is fully and appropriately engaged and tasked. (at these previous companies, I'd say that this toxic "forgotten" culture was really a facet of management, particularly UPPER management, being utterly delinquent and docile in the basic tasks of their jobs - to disastrous results). At the end of the day, this former tendency for managers to neglect non-superstars, or lesser-known, (but still mission-critical) teams - was absolutely unnecessary, and stupid, in a world where we actually have the technology to make "location" obsolete. We've been working on doing that for the past 30 years. But still; we all feel compelled to relocate to Silicon Valley; because if you're not working there, you're working somewhere else that's going to be bought by Silicon Valley, and eventually forgotten, neglected, and shut down. It's terrible for your career to work anywhere else. And as a result, Silicon Valley is FULL. There's noplace to live, no room on the roads to commute, and shitty little 2 bedroom houses in tract neighborhoods are priced far out of the range of the best paid professionals to buy in, as a consequence of THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY'S utter failure to use it's own technology to enable remote work. And now: we don't have to fucking live in Silicon Valley anymore to do this job. We can be anywhere, connected to the network, and do THIS job, just as effectively. All we needed was a horrible viral plague.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
I've been remote for ~5 years, and I definitely think the remote==forgotten is true... but it's also plenty true for the in person crowd. In the past year my team has lost ~4 people, and I don't think they've been discussed once, save for one or two long running projects that had some of their input, aka "we need to get access to $old_employee's OneDrive to get $document". Even in person, a year later no one will remember that you were there; plan accordingly.

tomaskafka 6y ago

Yes. For this very reason I think that only the extremes (everyone is collocated or everyone is remote) work. Mixing of local and remote people doesn't (maybe except for external contractors, who know they are expendable (and adjust their daily rates to compensate)).

err4nt 6y ago
Agreed, it's not a 'remote work' thing, it's a 1-person-at-the-organization-is-invisible-at-the-office kind of thing. I will only work on 100% distributed teams where the entire organization is communicating as though they're all remote, even on days when a couple of them may be meeting at the office or working from the same place by choice.

codethief 6y ago

>> Remote enables you to be forgotten This reminds me of one of the most incredible stories I've ever read on the internet: https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/American-Dream https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/American-Dream It's pretty long but well worth the read!

Pokepokalypse 6y ago

Then managers have failed you. This is one thing where my managers have really stepped up their game during the pandemic; as we've all shifted remote. When we were IN the office, we had many different dev teams that really should NOT have been different. There was just such a resistance to "pointless meetings" that we were kind of stuck in these little stovepiped fiefdoms, with little interaction, communication, or coordination. We were terrible at planning. With the change to full-remote, the managers have recognized that we can't have people who get "forgotten", or teams that are kept out of the loop for the top-level stuff. I've been very pleased to see these managers grow and change with the new demands, and we're gradually taking on more cross-team integration. It has demanded everybody attend a few extra meetings. Which we all hate, and know it breaks your velocity and productivity. But it's absolutely essential, towards getting all the cats herded. For what it's worth - as a late-career professional, I've seen this "forgotten" syndrome happen, even with companies where they're merged from two formerly separate companies. Same with satellite offices. The people at the corporate headquarters ALWAYS get the best projects, the best resources, the most managerial attention. The workers at the remote offices get bupkus - and this translates into an eventual hiring-freeze, attrition, and shutdown of the remote office, along with mass-layoffs. It fucking sucks, and to be honest, I think it's really counterproductive for the goals of the larger company, and the industry, in general. I've seen this happen at 3 different companies. I think that with covid; managers are terrified of losing talent, and not being able to replace them. At least in a business like mine where demand is still very robust. So they are taking these efforts to do; basically what a manager's job SHOULD be: to make sure everyone is fully and appropriately engaged and tasked. (at these previous companies, I'd say that this toxic "forgotten" culture was really a facet of management, particularly UPPER management, being utterly delinquent and docile in the basic tasks of their jobs - to disastrous results). At the end of the day, this former tendency for managers to neglect non-superstars, or lesser-known, (but still mission-critical) teams - was absolutely unnecessary, and stupid, in a world where we actually have the technology to make "location" obsolete. We've been working on doing that for the past 30 years. But still; we all feel compelled to relocate to Silicon Valley; because if you're not working there, you're working somewhere else that's going to be bought by Silicon Valley, and eventually forgotten, neglected, and shut down. It's terrible for your career to work anywhere else. And as a result, Silicon Valley is FULL. There's noplace to live, no room on the roads to commute, and shitty little 2 bedroom houses in tract neighborhoods are priced far out of the range of the best paid professionals to buy in, as a consequence of THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY'S utter failure to use it's own technology to enable remote work. And now: we don't have to fucking live in Silicon Valley anymore to do this job. We can be anywhere, connected to the network, and do THIS job, just as effectively. All we needed was a horrible viral plague.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

I've been remote for ~5 years, and I definitely think the remote==forgotten is true... but it's also plenty true for the in person crowd. In the past year my team has lost ~4 people, and I don't think they've been discussed once, save for one or two long running projects that had some of their input, aka "we need to get access to $old_employee's OneDrive to get $document". Even in person, a year later no one will remember that you were there; plan accordingly.