5 ms·

When I was building back end software, I could and did work from anywhere. I enjoyed working in the same space with my team, but not all day and not every day.

by faster 6y ago

When I was building back end software, I could and did work from anywhere. I enjoyed working in the same space with my team, but not all day and not every day. And it wasn't necessary except maybe once or twice per quarter. Now I work on firmware, and I have about $6000 of test equipment that is required to do my job, as well as multiple fragile circuit boards, some that I'm afraid to touch because some of the rework wires might break. I am working at home, but I guarantee that I'm not as productive as I would be in an office with access to the EEs and MEs and the people who built the firmware for the previous version of the product. Yes, I can schedule a call or ask questions on Slack, but so much is passed to new team members by osmosis or exposure or context, whatever you want to call that side effect of colocation. > The best thing you can do in any period of change is to bet on neither black or white. I agree, in some cases. There are still some cases where the best bet IS almost entirely black, or almost entirely white.

m0zg 6y ago
You could do what we did in some distributed teams at Google: just have a permanent "call" going with everyone normally muted. When someone would like to receive attention, they unmute and speak. It's not as good as walking up to someone's desk, but it's not as bad as having to schedule a call in advance.
- m-ee 6y ago
  With hardware there's really no substitute for having a stocked lab and good technician in the building. A broken blue wire or fried chip could mean me losing an hour to a day of productivity depending on whether I have parts on hand and how difficult the rework is. In the office it could be fixed before I had time to grab coffee.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    As an EE I know what you're talking about. But office won't be an option until November 4th. /s
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  This sounds miserable. What did you do for periods of deep work?
  - m0zg 6y ago
    People used it very sparingly. It's not at all different from working in an open plan office. If anything it's better, as you can drop off from the call if you don't want to be disturbed. No such luxury in the office. And of course this only works with Google's usual "family sized" teams of 5-7 people.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    My team has a similar tool. So, everyone is in the room, muted and no-volume. So, if someone needs my attention they can send a bell but when my audio is off its only a visual bell, so it won't interrupt the deep work. And one can always exit the channel if needed - which is shown in status, so folks know your DND or not available. But, one can monitor the channel so it behaves like a water cooler too. And up-scales to video and screen share super fast. (Faster than other tools) It's really quite flexible. We've been using this pattern for about 60 months. We all (6 humans) seem to like it OK.
    - maest 6y ago
      Is this an in-house tool?
      - edoceo 6y ago
        Yep. Built with Apache, PHP, Sqlite and PeerJS
      - hackmiester 6y ago
        Seems that they said it is; however, you could do all this with Zoom, for instance. To be in the room muted and with no volume, disconnect the audio connection. To ask for someone's attention, send them a direct chat message (not to Everyone). And of course you could always leave the Zoom meeting and rejoin later.
  - 6y ago
- VectorLock 6y ago
  That sounds worse in all possible ways than just having a messenger service like Slack but I suppose different teams work in different ways.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    I prefer slack's @$name method better. If you don't need an answer right away just drop it in the group chat. if you need attention do an @ so they hear the bell. Of course they could have just emailed... but that is so passe now. :)
danbolt 6y ago
I've noticed the a similar thing working with game console devkits. I can get most of my work done remotely, but due to the streaming/latency required it feels slower. I feel like for certain performance-sensitive tasks I'd need a special day in front of the hardware to test things.
- dijit 6y ago
  For sure this is true, my girlfriend is QC at a major game company and watching her work from home is _painful_. Though Citrix is better than Parsec, and both are far better than Remote Desktop (in a huge way). I have been pushing for Stadia as a primary testing platform, but the backend is quite painful to use (please don't hurt me google, I know I signed an anti-disparagement agreement, but your backend is really inflexible). But I think this is the 'old way of working', we're so fearful of losing devkits (and the software on them) that we keep them in the office, but that's not realistically much safer really. As a sidenote though: it's quite fun to see the game working on a tiny little MacBook.
  - bob1029 6y ago
    Sounds like something blizzard would do.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    The devkits are often contractually obligated to be in a secure facility.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      Is that necessary anymore though? Consoles have been x86 and effectively almost identical to commodity PCs for 7+ years (and the original (pre-release) Xbox One devkit was a PC: just a souped-up HP Z-series workstation, if I remember correctly).

by faster 6y ago

m0zg 6y ago

You could do what we did in some distributed teams at Google: just have a permanent "call" going with everyone normally muted. When someone would like to receive attention, they unmute and speak. It's not as good as walking up to someone's desk, but it's not as bad as having to schedule a call in advance.

m-ee 6y ago
With hardware there's really no substitute for having a stocked lab and good technician in the building. A broken blue wire or fried chip could mean me losing an hour to a day of productivity depending on whether I have parts on hand and how difficult the rework is. In the office it could be fixed before I had time to grab coffee.
- m0zg 6y ago
  As an EE I know what you're talking about. But office won't be an option until November 4th. /s
dkdk8283 6y ago
This sounds miserable. What did you do for periods of deep work?
- m0zg 6y ago
  People used it very sparingly. It's not at all different from working in an open plan office. If anything it's better, as you can drop off from the call if you don't want to be disturbed. No such luxury in the office. And of course this only works with Google's usual "family sized" teams of 5-7 people.
- edoceo 6y ago
  My team has a similar tool. So, everyone is in the room, muted and no-volume. So, if someone needs my attention they can send a bell but when my audio is off its only a visual bell, so it won't interrupt the deep work. And one can always exit the channel if needed - which is shown in status, so folks know your DND or not available. But, one can monitor the channel so it behaves like a water cooler too. And up-scales to video and screen share super fast. (Faster than other tools) It's really quite flexible. We've been using this pattern for about 60 months. We all (6 humans) seem to like it OK.
  - maest 6y ago
    Is this an in-house tool?
    - edoceo 6y ago
      Yep. Built with Apache, PHP, Sqlite and PeerJS
    - hackmiester 6y ago
      Seems that they said it is; however, you could do all this with Zoom, for instance. To be in the room muted and with no volume, disconnect the audio connection. To ask for someone's attention, send them a direct chat message (not to Everyone). And of course you could always leave the Zoom meeting and rejoin later.
- 6y ago
VectorLock 6y ago
That sounds worse in all possible ways than just having a messenger service like Slack but I suppose different teams work in different ways.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I prefer slack's @$name method better. If you don't need an answer right away just drop it in the group chat. if you need attention do an @ so they hear the bell. Of course they could have just emailed... but that is so passe now. :)

danbolt 6y ago

I've noticed the a similar thing working with game console devkits. I can get most of my work done remotely, but due to the streaming/latency required it feels slower. I feel like for certain performance-sensitive tasks I'd need a special day in front of the hardware to test things.

dijit 6y ago
For sure this is true, my girlfriend is QC at a major game company and watching her work from home is _painful_. Though Citrix is better than Parsec, and both are far better than Remote Desktop (in a huge way). I have been pushing for Stadia as a primary testing platform, but the backend is quite painful to use (please don't hurt me google, I know I signed an anti-disparagement agreement, but your backend is really inflexible). But I think this is the 'old way of working', we're so fearful of losing devkits (and the software on them) that we keep them in the office, but that's not realistically much safer really. As a sidenote though: it's quite fun to see the game working on a tiny little MacBook.
- bob1029 6y ago
  Sounds like something blizzard would do.
- jayd16 6y ago
  The devkits are often contractually obligated to be in a secure facility.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Is that necessary anymore though? Consoles have been x86 and effectively almost identical to commodity PCs for 7+ years (and the original (pre-release) Xbox One devkit was a PC: just a souped-up HP Z-series workstation, if I remember correctly).