4 ms·

Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. I thin

Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc). When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else. When managers say collaboration is better when everyone is in the office, they don't mean those "water cooler moments" we apparently have. They mean those times they can talk to you as they stand by your desk so you can't ignore them.

pmlnr 5y ago
> That is easier face to face Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face?
- fcatalan 5y ago
  That's another reason for them. Can't make verbal promises to you and then forget about them via email.
- ubercow13 5y ago
  In many cases, in my experience, it’s because it’s way more efficient face to face. You can always follow up with written confirmation.
- iso1210 5y ago
  In my experience if you are going into a large (more than say 5 people) meeting to get a consensus for a decision you've made, you start with one-to-one conversations with every meeting participant, get them on side, then the large meeting is just a rubber stamp.
- sneak 5y ago
  Most people are slow at typing and don't have great reading comprehension. This means it is less "work" for them to speak and listen than it is to type and read.
  - greedo 5y ago
    And many people lack listening skills and don't retain all the details of a watercolor conversation.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face? Written communication often takes orders of magnitude more effort, since it lacks the immediate feedback loop.
cgio 5y ago
Lower down the tree people want to get promotions and that transition won’t happen abruptly but gradually. I agree with the overall sentiment, though. My experience is 80% of time in office on zoom or hybrid zoom/in person meetings, which does make it purely only worth it for the 20% impromptu discussions. The result is even worse exhaustion not only from commute but also from completely drowning the schedule to manage and do both. We need to rethink work and this will take some time. I would love 1 week retreats on an island every qtr for the impromptu collaboration needs and satellite offices in neighbourhoods where people can meet for specific tasks. I think I am not imaginative enough and who knows how things will change as online literate generations take the helm.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  Satellite offices seems a good idea, if it's cheaper for the company. In the case of my job, they could have maybe 20? for the price they're paying now. But I wouldn't go anyway. Maybe once a month or every six weeks or so. Just because there will be people who prefers an office and to keep up with their faces, but I have no business there.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  I would be making 1/4 of my current salary if I didn't work in a place were impromptu discussions could happen. If my job was WFH (its not and can't be), I would still probably be doing the same stupid entry level shit with mediocre raises. Thanks to impromptu/casual conversation though, I got pulled out from under my manager and moved to a much higher position in another department (this was over a year or so, not just a one off conversation) I could interact with higherups without being viewed as "going over my bosses head", and to me that's insanely valuable.
Dave3of5 5y ago
What's even weirder is that is the low level employees that are being told to go back. The execs probably never worked fully in office even before the pandemic. This should tell you exactly why they are asking you back and it's not "collaborating". That's an excuse. It's because they don't trust you and think you're goofing off at home.
Tade0 5y ago
> When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else. The other day my manager said that he misses coming to the office because back then if he wanted something he could just come over and ask. Meanwhile I've specifically chosen to work remotely so as to not be bothered by anyone when I need to focus.
- subpixel 5y ago
  In my pre-COVID job I had a manager who would come over and tap me on the shoulder, sometimes not to engage me in conversation but just as a sort of primate greeting. That was about as low on the morale barometer I have ever been, and I hope I never have to anywhere near an environment like that again.
underdeserver 5y ago
I strongly disagree. I find that talking to other people is required at every single level. Junior engineers need mentoring, need to talk to other people to understand what's asked of them. Mid-level engineers/ICs need to talk to other people to understand the architecture design, collaborate with other mid-level engineers, and push back or report back issues that arise during the work. Seniors and up need it for design reviews and achieving consensus. Critically, to advance in your career, you need to start participating in conversations with the next stages. All of this is easier face to face.
- afiori 5y ago
  if you use something better than Teams then group calls and screen sharing are quite simple and effective.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  >All of this is easier face to face. Yet somehow the world of open source keeps putting out high quality software with teams distributed across the planet in different time zones with different native tongues.
- acoard 5y ago
  I fully agree that conversations are necessary to advancing a career, technical or otherwise. But I believe these technical conversations translate online pretty well, and have pre-pandemic too (eg successful FOSS that's all coordinated remotely, like Linux). That's not the case for the more management-centric decisions. If you're discussing other people (both in an HR sense and in a process design sense) body language and other non-verbal cues are much more important. I've found these technical discussions, pair-programming, mentoring, architectural consensus building, are all much easier to do "remotely" than typical management-style discussions. Our project's technical team size fits into the "two pizza" rule, although just barely probably, so it's not like we're super tiny. Pair-programming is great online. Better than in-person in my experience. Simply share your screen, and I can put it up on my second monitor. We've successfully mentored numerous junior-ish devs during COVID, with heavy use of remote pair-programming. Architecture type discussions main drawback is missing a whiteboard, but there are a plethora of online tools of varying quality. In practice we often use draw.io and show a bit more finished copies than pure whiteboarding, but we've used other more simpler solutions for whiteboarding here too. Design discussions/architectural consensus take place fine online, we just haven't had any issues. Just like pair-programming or architecture, we might screenshare but mostly we talk. And we find we don't lose anything from this. Sure, you don't get body-language, but that isn't needed for discussing bearer tokens. In summary, while I agree that technical discussion is necessary at all stages, I believe that technical discussions is far less negatively impacted by remote when compared to non-technical discussions (i.e. managerial).
tablespoon 5y ago
>> Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. > I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. That's also undermined by other decisions, like offshoring and distributed teams. > The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc). That's not true. Maybe only "higher up management roles" are exclusively like that, but there are plenty of other roles that include a significant amount of that, or a significant amount that occurs at irregular/unplanned intervals. Also remote work is a lot more socially isolating, and I feel it makes work relationships a lot more one-dimensional an tenuous. That might be fine if you're a loner, but that's certainly not true of everyone.

pmlnr 5y ago

> That is easier face to face Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face?

fcatalan 5y ago
That's another reason for them. Can't make verbal promises to you and then forget about them via email.
ubercow13 5y ago
In many cases, in my experience, it’s because it’s way more efficient face to face. You can always follow up with written confirmation.
iso1210 5y ago
In my experience if you are going into a large (more than say 5 people) meeting to get a consensus for a decision you've made, you start with one-to-one conversations with every meeting participant, get them on side, then the large meeting is just a rubber stamp.
sneak 5y ago
Most people are slow at typing and don't have great reading comprehension. This means it is less "work" for them to speak and listen than it is to type and read.
- greedo 5y ago
  And many people lack listening skills and don't retain all the details of a watercolor conversation.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face? Written communication often takes orders of magnitude more effort, since it lacks the immediate feedback loop.

cgio 5y ago

Lower down the tree people want to get promotions and that transition won’t happen abruptly but gradually. I agree with the overall sentiment, though. My experience is 80% of time in office on zoom or hybrid zoom/in person meetings, which does make it purely only worth it for the 20% impromptu discussions. The result is even worse exhaustion not only from commute but also from completely drowning the schedule to manage and do both. We need to rethink work and this will take some time. I would love 1 week retreats on an island every qtr for the impromptu collaboration needs and satellite offices in neighbourhoods where people can meet for specific tasks. I think I am not imaginative enough and who knows how things will change as online literate generations take the helm.

spaniard89277 5y ago
Satellite offices seems a good idea, if it's cheaper for the company. In the case of my job, they could have maybe 20? for the price they're paying now. But I wouldn't go anyway. Maybe once a month or every six weeks or so. Just because there will be people who prefers an office and to keep up with their faces, but I have no business there.
Workaccount2 5y ago
I would be making 1/4 of my current salary if I didn't work in a place were impromptu discussions could happen. If my job was WFH (its not and can't be), I would still probably be doing the same stupid entry level shit with mediocre raises. Thanks to impromptu/casual conversation though, I got pulled out from under my manager and moved to a much higher position in another department (this was over a year or so, not just a one off conversation) I could interact with higherups without being viewed as "going over my bosses head", and to me that's insanely valuable.

Dave3of5 5y ago

What's even weirder is that is the low level employees that are being told to go back. The execs probably never worked fully in office even before the pandemic. This should tell you exactly why they are asking you back and it's not "collaborating". That's an excuse. It's because they don't trust you and think you're goofing off at home.

Tade0 5y ago

> When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else. The other day my manager said that he misses coming to the office because back then if he wanted something he could just come over and ask. Meanwhile I've specifically chosen to work remotely so as to not be bothered by anyone when I need to focus.

subpixel 5y ago
In my pre-COVID job I had a manager who would come over and tap me on the shoulder, sometimes not to engage me in conversation but just as a sort of primate greeting. That was about as low on the morale barometer I have ever been, and I hope I never have to anywhere near an environment like that again.

underdeserver 5y ago

I strongly disagree. I find that talking to other people is required at every single level. Junior engineers need mentoring, need to talk to other people to understand what's asked of them. Mid-level engineers/ICs need to talk to other people to understand the architecture design, collaborate with other mid-level engineers, and push back or report back issues that arise during the work. Seniors and up need it for design reviews and achieving consensus. Critically, to advance in your career, you need to start participating in conversations with the next stages. All of this is easier face to face.

afiori 5y ago
if you use something better than Teams then group calls and screen sharing are quite simple and effective.
adamsmith143 5y ago
>All of this is easier face to face. Yet somehow the world of open source keeps putting out high quality software with teams distributed across the planet in different time zones with different native tongues.
acoard 5y ago
I fully agree that conversations are necessary to advancing a career, technical or otherwise. But I believe these technical conversations translate online pretty well, and have pre-pandemic too (eg successful FOSS that's all coordinated remotely, like Linux). That's not the case for the more management-centric decisions. If you're discussing other people (both in an HR sense and in a process design sense) body language and other non-verbal cues are much more important. I've found these technical discussions, pair-programming, mentoring, architectural consensus building, are all much easier to do "remotely" than typical management-style discussions. Our project's technical team size fits into the "two pizza" rule, although just barely probably, so it's not like we're super tiny. Pair-programming is great online. Better than in-person in my experience. Simply share your screen, and I can put it up on my second monitor. We've successfully mentored numerous junior-ish devs during COVID, with heavy use of remote pair-programming. Architecture type discussions main drawback is missing a whiteboard, but there are a plethora of online tools of varying quality. In practice we often use draw.io and show a bit more finished copies than pure whiteboarding, but we've used other more simpler solutions for whiteboarding here too. Design discussions/architectural consensus take place fine online, we just haven't had any issues. Just like pair-programming or architecture, we might screenshare but mostly we talk. And we find we don't lose anything from this. Sure, you don't get body-language, but that isn't needed for discussing bearer tokens. In summary, while I agree that technical discussion is necessary at all stages, I believe that technical discussions is far less negatively impacted by remote when compared to non-technical discussions (i.e. managerial).

tablespoon 5y ago

>> Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. > I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. That's also undermined by other decisions, like offshoring and distributed teams. > The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc). That's not true. Maybe only "higher up management roles" are exclusively like that, but there are plenty of other roles that include a significant amount of that, or a significant amount that occurs at irregular/unplanned intervals. Also remote work is a lot more socially isolating, and I feel it makes work relationships a lot more one-dimensional an tenuous. That might be fine if you're a loner, but that's certainly not true of everyone.