4 ms·
For a number of years I had a team in five offices in four timezones, so asynchronous working became the norm. We used Skype however. The only "rule" that neede
by ethank 15y ago
For a number of years I had a team in five offices in four timezones, so asynchronous working became the norm. We used Skype however. The only "rule" that needed to be enforced was "Away means Away, Available means Available"
A lot of realtime problems got stymied by people thinking others were ignoring them.
- mseebach 15y agoThe "away" rule seems counter productive. The value of async is that I can ask you a question when convenient for me, and you can answer when convenient for you. If I have to wait for your status to become available, I'm wasting my attention.
- famousactress 15y agoI wonder if by 'available' he means 'will answer immediately'. My group uses Skype like campfire also.. and Away means 'I won't see this until I get back'.. Available means "I'll be notified immediately, and am likely to respond relatively soon". I still leave messages for people who are away all the time.. I just know that it's unlikely we'll end up in a real-time conversation at the moment, and as such.. I can just fire-and-forget until they return and reply
- eric-hu 15y agoThis seemed implicit in the article to me, but the way they use chat seems to be the way IRC chat is used for devs (though I haven't used IRC that much). If my understanding's accurate, then I'd agree with you: ignore someone's status, ask a question, don't expect an immediate answer.
- ethank 15y agoBasically it means we should trust the "away" message, but still can drop a line if you want. Away could also mean "mentally busy" or "on the phone" If I could trust the away messages, as a team lead I always had a status board as to where my team was (since we were in five offices)