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Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.

by diob 5y ago

noahtallen 5y ago
(I work at one of the listed companies, and these views are my own.) Honestly, on-site just wouldn’t work well with the existing company culture at all. My current team has members in at least 7 countries in North America and Europe. Some teams are more time-zone collocated, but many are not. The culture is built so that async communication — and in particular, publicly searchable written communication — is the default for nearly everything. So having a big time zone split isn’t a problem when you’re used to communicating via long-form written communication. Obviously, on-site is hugely different. If I went on-site, I would not be working with my specific team. I’m not even sure how the company could possibly reorganize to make that happen at all. It’s not like new hires in X geographic region are placed in Y division. So the best that could be done on-site is you get to make social connections. Can’t really have an on-site collaborative culture if none of your teammates live in the same city. And you can’t change that after the fact either, because people live in so many different places! And as a side note, having frequently worked in OSS projects, communication and work is very distributed anyways. So it’s important to be habitually in tune with that style of communication and work to be effective in a large OSS project with maintainers spread the world. So I would argue that even trying to have an on-site collaborative culture doesn’t make any sense if your company is truly globally distributed.
BaseballPhysics 5y ago
> Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_. Having worked for a company with a strong in-office culture that's significantly eroded during remote work, no, this isn't remotely true and is an almost comical underestimation of how hard it is to convert from an office-first to remote-first company. The real issue is that if you're gonna be a remote-first company, you have to truly commit to it, and that requires significant effort and a complete change in mindset across many activities, including a profound retraining of management and staff behaviours.
- diob 5y ago
  I would argue the same things that make remote successful (good communication, documentation, processes) are things that would benefit an onsite company just as much. I am interested in what you strong in-office culture, like, what does that mean? What things didn't translate to remote?
  - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
    Well, as just one example, communication patterns have to drastically change. Ours is a very open access office culture. If someone wants to come and ask me a question they are encouraged to do so because we strongly believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. The result is I cannot count the number of times colleagues have taken advantage of the fact that they could just pop by to ask a quick question, inform me of a decision they're taking, or raise a concern. The remote work equivalents of that are ad hoc text-based communications--which are extremely low bandwidth, disadvantage slow typists, and lack the emotional subtext provided by facial expressions or body language--or scheduling voice or video calls, which is relatively high friction and still is at best a lackluster substitute for a face-to-face conversation due to poor quality, laggy audio, crappy video, and so forth. As a result, a ton of that communication has simply shut down in our organization. The reality is we are not, and for a very long time will not be, in a world where virtual communications tools are as effective as face-to-face interactions. In this world of Zoom, who hasn't accidentally interrupted a colleague, struggled to get a word in edgewise, or found it difficult to hear someone due to a poor audio connection? Or wished for a whiteboard you could use to draw out a concept during an ad hoc problem solving activity? Or thought about pinging someone to have a quick conversation about some topic, only to give up and just write an email because setting up a video session just seemed like a little too much work? And if your organization relies on a lot of ad hoc communication to function, it will suffer without changes to culture and practices.
    - diob 5y ago
      I don't think they have to change though. As long as there is transparency and an "open door", those same folks can ask questions in open channels on slack or elsewhere. I really don't understand why the can't pop by virtually... The benefit of this is folks who would otherwise be left in the dark also get the benefits of seeing whatever answers are given (and recorded!), and reciprocate in realizing that there is a no culture of fear around questions or consulting others for advice / help. You dismiss communications tools, but it's more about who is using them than the tools themselves in my opinion. I work at an all remote org and we have definitely believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. And folks definitely take advantage of being able to pop by (huddle in slack, etc.), inform others of decisions, or raise concerns virtually. On the flip side, I've worked in an org that was "move fast, open door, etc." but onsite and folks were constantly accidentally out of the loop because decisions would be made face to face but not propagated to the rest of the company (oops, sorry Jim, we forgot you were in the other office or god forbid on vacation). That's what I mean when I say these remote practices (ask in the open, having processes, effective communication) actually help onsite companies as well, and I feel most onsite companies simply ignore them for adhoc face to face lossy communication.

Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.

by diob 5y ago

Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.

noahtallen 5y ago

(I work at one of the listed companies, and these views are my own.) Honestly, on-site just wouldn’t work well with the existing company culture at all. My current team has members in at least 7 countries in North America and Europe. Some teams are more time-zone collocated, but many are not. The culture is built so that async communication — and in particular, publicly searchable written communication — is the default for nearly everything. So having a big time zone split isn’t a problem when you’re used to communicating via long-form written communication. Obviously, on-site is hugely different. If I went on-site, I would not be working with my specific team. I’m not even sure how the company could possibly reorganize to make that happen at all. It’s not like new hires in X geographic region are placed in Y division. So the best that could be done on-site is you get to make social connections. Can’t really have an on-site collaborative culture if none of your teammates live in the same city. And you can’t change that after the fact either, because people live in so many different places! And as a side note, having frequently worked in OSS projects, communication and work is very distributed anyways. So it’s important to be habitually in tune with that style of communication and work to be effective in a large OSS project with maintainers spread the world. So I would argue that even trying to have an on-site collaborative culture doesn’t make any sense if your company is truly globally distributed.

BaseballPhysics 5y ago

> Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_. Having worked for a company with a strong in-office culture that's significantly eroded during remote work, no, this isn't remotely true and is an almost comical underestimation of how hard it is to convert from an office-first to remote-first company. The real issue is that if you're gonna be a remote-first company, you have to truly commit to it, and that requires significant effort and a complete change in mindset across many activities, including a profound retraining of management and staff behaviours.

diob 5y ago
I would argue the same things that make remote successful (good communication, documentation, processes) are things that would benefit an onsite company just as much. I am interested in what you strong in-office culture, like, what does that mean? What things didn't translate to remote?
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago
  Well, as just one example, communication patterns have to drastically change. Ours is a very open access office culture. If someone wants to come and ask me a question they are encouraged to do so because we strongly believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. The result is I cannot count the number of times colleagues have taken advantage of the fact that they could just pop by to ask a quick question, inform me of a decision they're taking, or raise a concern. The remote work equivalents of that are ad hoc text-based communications--which are extremely low bandwidth, disadvantage slow typists, and lack the emotional subtext provided by facial expressions or body language--or scheduling voice or video calls, which is relatively high friction and still is at best a lackluster substitute for a face-to-face conversation due to poor quality, laggy audio, crappy video, and so forth. As a result, a ton of that communication has simply shut down in our organization. The reality is we are not, and for a very long time will not be, in a world where virtual communications tools are as effective as face-to-face interactions. In this world of Zoom, who hasn't accidentally interrupted a colleague, struggled to get a word in edgewise, or found it difficult to hear someone due to a poor audio connection? Or wished for a whiteboard you could use to draw out a concept during an ad hoc problem solving activity? Or thought about pinging someone to have a quick conversation about some topic, only to give up and just write an email because setting up a video session just seemed like a little too much work? And if your organization relies on a lot of ad hoc communication to function, it will suffer without changes to culture and practices.
  - diob 5y ago
    I don't think they have to change though. As long as there is transparency and an "open door", those same folks can ask questions in open channels on slack or elsewhere. I really don't understand why the can't pop by virtually... The benefit of this is folks who would otherwise be left in the dark also get the benefits of seeing whatever answers are given (and recorded!), and reciprocate in realizing that there is a no culture of fear around questions or consulting others for advice / help. You dismiss communications tools, but it's more about who is using them than the tools themselves in my opinion. I work at an all remote org and we have definitely believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. And folks definitely take advantage of being able to pop by (huddle in slack, etc.), inform others of decisions, or raise concerns virtually. On the flip side, I've worked in an org that was "move fast, open door, etc." but onsite and folks were constantly accidentally out of the loop because decisions would be made face to face but not propagated to the rest of the company (oops, sorry Jim, we forgot you were in the other office or god forbid on vacation). That's what I mean when I say these remote practices (ask in the open, having processes, effective communication) actually help onsite companies as well, and I feel most onsite companies simply ignore them for adhoc face to face lossy communication.