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>access to the physical levers of having their ideas heard (location, same office space) Well, yeah. If you can't bothered to be in the same place as the peopl

>access to the physical levers of having their ideas heard (location, same office space) Well, yeah. If you can't bothered to be in the same place as the people you want to communicate to, you're signaling that having their time and attention isn't important to you. As Aaron Burr in "Hamilton" so put it, you have to be in the room where it happens.

luffapi 5y ago
If someone’s attention in the hallway is required for business success, it means the process and culture of the company are both broken. Ad hoc conversation are not how you run a scalable business.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  So what is the alternative? Reams of halfway updated internal wiki pages and heavyweight google docs? I mean the agile manifesto is all about human interaction. People over process. Face to face conversation over piles of stale documents. Are we done with agile? Is it time to embrace the waterfall? http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
  - luffapi 5y ago
    We are absolutely done with Agile. It’s always been a failure. Alternatives to hallway conversations in increasing depth: * slack message * email * README.md * RFC * Business plan Plus there’s always zoom or the phone if you really want to shoot the shit.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      You can’t shoot the shit over zoom. Ever tried? It is super awkward. Slack is good for easy questions where you already know how to convert your thoughts into words. If you don’t because your thoughts are currently encoded visually… slack (or any online medium) doesn’t work. In the real world I would almost always abandon the slack conversation and go visit the person / people. Email is crap for communication, at least for my working style. The rest are okay when you’ve got a lot of clarity already but not so hot when you are very early in the ideation phases. All of your substitutes are significantly lower bandwidth, much more latent mediums. You can’t replace face time with online. You just can’t.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        I’d take zoom over a hallway conversation any day. I’m at home and comfortable with Zoom. I’ve had to dress up and commute to have that hallway conversation. In an office you’ll also be pressured for your reserved room or you’re literally in a hallway next to the bathrooms while you’re talking. Not good environments for communication.
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        All the arguments I hear for remote work revolve around the comfort of the individual developer. That’s great but companies are more than just individual developers. They are teams working together to build things that individuals couldn’t build alone. I’ve long held that the secret to FAANG company success wasn’t their technical prowess or even their products. Is that they have superior software development processes. Their secret sauce is their process. Companies with shitty offices, crappy untrusting management, and heavyweight processes get beat by those with processes similar to FB or Google. You’ll note that all the companies in FAANG invest a shit ton into their office experiences… well except Amazon. Give it a year and life will look much as it did back in 2019.
        luffapi 5y ago
        Companies need individual developers because without them no one would write the code. We’ve seen a million articles about the developer shortage. It’s not about what the company wants, it’s about what the developer wants. For instance, I would never work in an office again and because there is a developer shortage, that requirement hasn’t impacted my market rate, which is on par for the valley. Having worked at one of the FAANGs I would definitely not say they have a superior development process. Waaaaay too much middle management baggage and drag. They are successful due to first mover advantages, network effects, regulatory capture and in some cases a literal monopoly.
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        > They are successful due to first mover advantages Zero of the FAANG companies had a first mover advantage. * Facebook replaced MySpace within the course of like a year. Today TikTok and other things threaten them. * Apple... well... it was for a long time a huge underdog. * Amazon... born in the dot com era. At the time lots of people thought the company was gonna implode any day. It took like a decade before they even remotely generated something other than a loss. * Netflix... was DVD's, competed against brick & mortor and companies like Kozmo. Today it competes with media companies offering their own streaming service. * Google... plenty of search engines came before google. Not sure how any of these companies became successful because of regulatory capture, network effects or even literal monopolies. None of these companies could be successful in the long haul if their products sucked. Building non-sucky products involves a hell of a lot more than just developers sitting at home writing code 24/7. Success involves building successful processes that encourage innovation.
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  given that most, if not all, large companies have dysfunctional culture, your conclusion does not hold water.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Well that's one of the consequences of not having a water cooler ;-)
MattGaiser 5y ago
> If you can't bothered to be in the same place as the people you want to communicate to, you're signaling that having their time and attention isn't important to you. As an introvert, I flip that around. If I have to engage in social games to improve things, I am instead just not going to bother and will confine my ideas to my conversations with co-workers laughing at inefficiencies and failures.
- potatoman22 5y ago
  Telling people about your idea is not a social game.
  - andrewflnr 5y ago
    Getting people to listen to your idea if they're not seeking it out is 100% a social game. Getting in the room is a social game. If you value the opinions of your introverts, ask them.
    - the_snooze 5y ago
      >If you value the opinions of your introverts, ask them. This may be an uncharitable reading of what you said, but you're implying that introverts are special fragile people who can't be bothered to share their brilliant ideas. If someone comes up with an idea, and they think it's a good idea, it's their responsibility to advocate for it. They're already that idea's #1 fan. They're uniquely motivated to get it out in the world. How can they get others to take them seriously when they can't even take the initiative to share it themselves? Sure, maybe some people are true solitary geniuses. But that's a waste of genius if they can't effectively communicate their thoughts with other humans.
      - justin_oaks 5y ago
        There's a whole range of soliciting information that goes from "Beat the information out of them" to "Ask a person individually" to "Ask people as group" to "Allow information to be given" to "Discourage people from telling you things" to "Yell at people who talk to you without you asking them first". Depending on your approach, you'll get differing amounts of information from different people. A more charitable reading of the post you replied to might be: You shouldn't be content getting information only from those who like to talk and volunteer information.
whateveracct 5y ago
> If you can't bothered to be in the same place as the people you want to communicate to, you're signaling that having their time and attention isn't important to you. Untrue. My DMs are open.
- astrange 5y ago
  Ironically this place doesn't have DMs.

luffapi 5y ago

If someone’s attention in the hallway is required for business success, it means the process and culture of the company are both broken. Ad hoc conversation are not how you run a scalable business.

spookthesunset 5y ago
So what is the alternative? Reams of halfway updated internal wiki pages and heavyweight google docs? I mean the agile manifesto is all about human interaction. People over process. Face to face conversation over piles of stale documents. Are we done with agile? Is it time to embrace the waterfall? http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- luffapi 5y ago
  We are absolutely done with Agile. It’s always been a failure. Alternatives to hallway conversations in increasing depth: * slack message * email * README.md * RFC * Business plan Plus there’s always zoom or the phone if you really want to shoot the shit.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    You can’t shoot the shit over zoom. Ever tried? It is super awkward. Slack is good for easy questions where you already know how to convert your thoughts into words. If you don’t because your thoughts are currently encoded visually… slack (or any online medium) doesn’t work. In the real world I would almost always abandon the slack conversation and go visit the person / people. Email is crap for communication, at least for my working style. The rest are okay when you’ve got a lot of clarity already but not so hot when you are very early in the ideation phases. All of your substitutes are significantly lower bandwidth, much more latent mediums. You can’t replace face time with online. You just can’t.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      I’d take zoom over a hallway conversation any day. I’m at home and comfortable with Zoom. I’ve had to dress up and commute to have that hallway conversation. In an office you’ll also be pressured for your reserved room or you’re literally in a hallway next to the bathrooms while you’re talking. Not good environments for communication.
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        All the arguments I hear for remote work revolve around the comfort of the individual developer. That’s great but companies are more than just individual developers. They are teams working together to build things that individuals couldn’t build alone. I’ve long held that the secret to FAANG company success wasn’t their technical prowess or even their products. Is that they have superior software development processes. Their secret sauce is their process. Companies with shitty offices, crappy untrusting management, and heavyweight processes get beat by those with processes similar to FB or Google. You’ll note that all the companies in FAANG invest a shit ton into their office experiences… well except Amazon. Give it a year and life will look much as it did back in 2019.
        luffapi 5y ago
        Companies need individual developers because without them no one would write the code. We’ve seen a million articles about the developer shortage. It’s not about what the company wants, it’s about what the developer wants. For instance, I would never work in an office again and because there is a developer shortage, that requirement hasn’t impacted my market rate, which is on par for the valley. Having worked at one of the FAANGs I would definitely not say they have a superior development process. Waaaaay too much middle management baggage and drag. They are successful due to first mover advantages, network effects, regulatory capture and in some cases a literal monopoly.
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        > They are successful due to first mover advantages Zero of the FAANG companies had a first mover advantage. * Facebook replaced MySpace within the course of like a year. Today TikTok and other things threaten them. * Apple... well... it was for a long time a huge underdog. * Amazon... born in the dot com era. At the time lots of people thought the company was gonna implode any day. It took like a decade before they even remotely generated something other than a loss. * Netflix... was DVD's, competed against brick & mortor and companies like Kozmo. Today it competes with media companies offering their own streaming service. * Google... plenty of search engines came before google. Not sure how any of these companies became successful because of regulatory capture, network effects or even literal monopolies. None of these companies could be successful in the long haul if their products sucked. Building non-sucky products involves a hell of a lot more than just developers sitting at home writing code 24/7. Success involves building successful processes that encourage innovation.
throwaway98797 5y ago
given that most, if not all, large companies have dysfunctional culture, your conclusion does not hold water.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Well that's one of the consequences of not having a water cooler ;-)

MattGaiser 5y ago

> If you can't bothered to be in the same place as the people you want to communicate to, you're signaling that having their time and attention isn't important to you. As an introvert, I flip that around. If I have to engage in social games to improve things, I am instead just not going to bother and will confine my ideas to my conversations with co-workers laughing at inefficiencies and failures.

potatoman22 5y ago
Telling people about your idea is not a social game.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  Getting people to listen to your idea if they're not seeking it out is 100% a social game. Getting in the room is a social game. If you value the opinions of your introverts, ask them.
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    >If you value the opinions of your introverts, ask them. This may be an uncharitable reading of what you said, but you're implying that introverts are special fragile people who can't be bothered to share their brilliant ideas. If someone comes up with an idea, and they think it's a good idea, it's their responsibility to advocate for it. They're already that idea's #1 fan. They're uniquely motivated to get it out in the world. How can they get others to take them seriously when they can't even take the initiative to share it themselves? Sure, maybe some people are true solitary geniuses. But that's a waste of genius if they can't effectively communicate their thoughts with other humans.
    - justin_oaks 5y ago
      There's a whole range of soliciting information that goes from "Beat the information out of them" to "Ask a person individually" to "Ask people as group" to "Allow information to be given" to "Discourage people from telling you things" to "Yell at people who talk to you without you asking them first". Depending on your approach, you'll get differing amounts of information from different people. A more charitable reading of the post you replied to might be: You shouldn't be content getting information only from those who like to talk and volunteer information.

whateveracct 5y ago

> If you can't bothered to be in the same place as the people you want to communicate to, you're signaling that having their time and attention isn't important to you. Untrue. My DMs are open.

astrange 5y ago
Ironically this place doesn't have DMs.