6 ms·

Did extroverts ruin remote work for the rest of us?

40 points by rustoo 4y ago

fxtentacle 4y ago
I feel like the article focuses on the wrong things. Before, it was difficult for introverts to be included in critical decisions. Now, getting into the meeting and being heard is easy, albeit a bit uncomfortable. But overall, I strongly believe that moving meetings to zoom has empowered those people that feel shy in person.
mnd999 4y ago
Betteridge's law says no. Not hard to see how this rubbish is top of the site when we’re flagging interesting technical articles off the site.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  - mnd999 4y ago
    Cain’s book is a good read and introversion is definitely a thing. It isn’t an in indicator of anti-social behaviour though and nor is it an excuse for it. This article however is not about that.
  - unmole 4y ago
    Asocial, not anti-social.
    - burnished 4y ago
      I think they are referring to people who are actively unpleasant to interact with but blame 'introversion' for it, as opposed to recognizing poor social skills or refusal to abide by normal politeness as the real problem.
      - AmericanChopper 4y ago
        To be antisocial is simply to have a preference against social behaviour. Whether that manifests in hostile behaviour or not isn’t relevant to the definition of the word. To succeed in organised society almost always requires pro social participation in social settings. My point is that articles like this simply appeal to people who are looking for an excuse for their anti-social behaviour, whether that behaviour is openly hostile (as some commenters in this thread are self-reporting), or simple as an aversion to participate.
        unmole 4y ago
        I've only seen antisocial to mean socially harmful. I thought it was a American vs. Commonwealth English quirk but both Oxford and Collins list your definition too. I was mistaken.
        burnished 4y ago
        >>To be antisocial is simply to have a preference against social behaviour. Whether that manifests in hostile behaviour or not isn’t relevant to the definition of the word Unlike the sibling commenter, the definitions I found still had hostility as a relevant factor. I believe we likely now understand what the other means by the word now, but for curiosities sake I'd appreciate your own definition or a link to a definition of the word you believe authoritative. >>My point is that articles like this simply appeal to people who are looking for an excuse for their anti-social behaviour I think we broadly agree.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
porcoda 4y ago
Well, not just the extroverts. We can’t ignore the people who define their lives (social, choice of home location, etc) around work. People like that who don’t have much of a life outside work are just as big of an influence in ruining remote work for those of us who don’t define our lives by the workplace.
raverbashing 4y ago
> 'Shall we jump on a call?’ someone said to me last week Yeah, the answer is no. Make an effort and try to articulate what you're trying to say by text. Make an effort I certainly won't give my time to something that can be clearly explainable by text (and no, your difficulty in doing that is not my problem)
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  "never ask a quick question by email when an hour long meeting with 6 people will do" I think about 50% of my meetings and hence maybe 20% of my salary are to satisfy perceptions of social etiquette and / or to hack around equitable allocation of time / priority / resources.
- teekert 4y ago
  Haha, replace every instance of text with voice and you have my preference, I hate long back-and-Forths over e-mail when things can be settled with a quick call.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Yeah for things where you need to, let's say, schedule an appointment, or where there are a lot of yes/no questions back and fourth I agree But most of the time I see people wanting to "jump on a call" for something that's one or two simple questions Sure, it is also on both parts to make this work efficiently, like, if you're not synchronous, don't answer things with just yes/no, but give more detal
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  Often, that's not even being extroverted, that's being lazy and valuing your time more than anyone else's. If I had a penny for every time I say "please check the channel topic and link bar it's in there" I could quit work. The worst of all is people who ask extremely obvious questions. If you use GitHub Enterprise with SAML, you need to "authorize" every PAT and SSH key you use to pull enterprise repos. If you don't, GitHub will even tell you right on the command line that you need to do this and adds a link to authorize that particular credential. And yet not a month goes by that someone will paste the full message with the link to their solution and complain that their GitHub account doesn't work. Preferably with a team mention so you pull everyone out of focus because you were too lazy to actually read the error message. I really wish some tools like Slack put more work into enabling and, to some degree, enforcing asyncronous communication.
teekert 4y ago
Hmm I think I’m considered an extrovert, but isn’t this a spectrum? Anyway I also hate too many meetings and I need the makers schedule at least a couple of days a week. Fortunately I can just pass on many meetings and nobody cares, as long as I am there occasionally and get stuff done.
basisword 4y ago
>> When it comes to deciding how plans will unfold or the way that organisations will run, true to form, the extroverts speak up and call the shots. This is absolutely nothing to do with introversion. Introverts can, and should, assert themselves. I say this as quite an extreme introvert. Being an introvert is separate from being weak/quiet/unassertive. Mixing the concepts is almost insulting. I think there are a few types of people who want to go back to the office (and it’s nothing to do with introverts/extroverts): 1. People who think working from home during the pandemic == normal remote work. 2. People who like to be around others when they work but don’t want to put the effort in to find a co working space they could work from and new work friends. 3. People who have no social life outside of work and have come to consider their colleagues their close/only friends (even if their colleagues don’t see it the same way).
- thesumofall 4y ago
  4. people who realized that _some_ work can be done more effectively face-to-face. (and please note: this is true the other way around as well) There are obvious examples (care work) and a whole lot of grey in between the extremes. One of the problems I noticed in this endless discussion is that people really seem to have a hard time imagining that other people might have just very different jobs and that companies typically have a wide range of jobs. More challenging, people tend to have several hats and like some of these hats more than others
Guthur 4y ago
Honestly i don't think extro intro is useful i believe that it's more verbal vs written communicators, read some Drucker for more info. But yet we'll just find that there is not one size fits all and what will be great for one is not so great for another.
largbae 4y ago
Remote work isn't ruined, first of all. The power of remote work is unlocked by working asynchronously with many folks at a time, each of whom can choose for themselves when to focus and when to interact. This is lost on people who insist on using Zoom et al to simulate the synchronous in-person experience. Blocking "focus time" space on your calendar is the best way to push back on Zoom culture, and is both rational and easy to defend the business value of. I ask the engineers on my team to aim for two full days a week of focus time (Tue and Thu seems to be working) and at least one 3 hour block on each of the remaining days (in whatever part of the day overlaps least with the rest of the team timezone-wise). We miss this for incidents or voluntary hacking together, but n for required/ritual meetings. Also, I guess I took the clickbait, but stop it: extroverts as a category didn't do any purposeful harm to introverts as a category, and certainly didn't ruin anything for them. Play to your strengths and GLHF!
- teekert 4y ago
  +1 for blocking focus time in your calendar. Added bonus: you look busy to those who think you are only working hard when you have a booked calendar ;) Btw I consider myself a bit of an extrovert and I feel slightly offended by this article. I love you introverts and I apologize for any harm “we” caused.
- chrismcb 4y ago
  I feel like you missed the point. If remote work is unavailable then there are no zoom meetings. As far as working asynchronously, that can happen remotely or in the office.
madrox 4y ago
The older I've gotten, the less I find the introvert/extrovert deliniation useful. It's a characterization that brings a ton of assumptions to it, especially when employed in a Myers-Briggs-like fashion like this article is. A better headline would be "Did people who don't like remote work ruin remote work for the rest of us?" But that's practically a tautology. When you step away from that, this article is really just a rant about meeting culture. Different companies have different ways of getting things done to build concensus, and some are more compatible with remote work than others. The fact that you see so many different ways of doing things implies that they're all valid and relatively efficient. That's why most large companies that went remote during the pandemic are returning to their old ways. Two years isn't enough time to shift that culture.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Spot on. The article rants, for example, that extrovert behaviours tend to be extrapolated to leadership skills. I think perhaps instead, leadership requires basic people skills which come naturally to “extroverts”. Being able to look someone in the eye instead of their navel (or worse) is a basic requirement. But beyond that people skills are skills that most people can learn and be successful leaders. I’d go as far as say, with experienced managers, it can be hard to tell if they are introverts or extroverts. They are good at directing teams using a variety of means of communication, during paid hours. Not bubbly chatterboxes or addicted to WoW or whatever cliche you want to use.
  - gonewest 4y ago
    “Being able to look someone in the eye instead of their navel” is a crude caricature of introversion. It’s exactly the sort of misconception that causes people to assume introversion is a negative trait.
- bloqs 4y ago
  Myers briggs is unhelpful and unscientific. The Big Five inventory, is the opposite.
  - 4y ago
wronglyprepaid 4y ago
I don't think I am an extrovert and I am incredibly happy being back in the office.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  what do you like about it?
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    Presumably, one or more things.
GoodJokes 4y ago

40 points by rustoo 4y ago

I feel like the article focuses on the wrong things. Before, it was difficult for introverts to be included in critical decisions. Now, getting into the meeting and being heard is easy, albeit a bit uncomfortable. But overall, I strongly believe that moving meetings to zoom has empowered those people that feel shy in person.

mnd999 4y ago

Betteridge's law says no. Not hard to see how this rubbish is top of the site when we’re flagging interesting technical articles off the site.

AmericanChopper 4y ago
- mnd999 4y ago
  Cain’s book is a good read and introversion is definitely a thing. It isn’t an in indicator of anti-social behaviour though and nor is it an excuse for it. This article however is not about that.
- unmole 4y ago
  Asocial, not anti-social.
  - burnished 4y ago
    I think they are referring to people who are actively unpleasant to interact with but blame 'introversion' for it, as opposed to recognizing poor social skills or refusal to abide by normal politeness as the real problem.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      To be antisocial is simply to have a preference against social behaviour. Whether that manifests in hostile behaviour or not isn’t relevant to the definition of the word. To succeed in organised society almost always requires pro social participation in social settings. My point is that articles like this simply appeal to people who are looking for an excuse for their anti-social behaviour, whether that behaviour is openly hostile (as some commenters in this thread are self-reporting), or simple as an aversion to participate.
      - unmole 4y ago
        I've only seen antisocial to mean socially harmful. I thought it was a American vs. Commonwealth English quirk but both Oxford and Collins list your definition too. I was mistaken.
      - burnished 4y ago
        >>To be antisocial is simply to have a preference against social behaviour. Whether that manifests in hostile behaviour or not isn’t relevant to the definition of the word Unlike the sibling commenter, the definitions I found still had hostility as a relevant factor. I believe we likely now understand what the other means by the word now, but for curiosities sake I'd appreciate your own definition or a link to a definition of the word you believe authoritative. >>My point is that articles like this simply appeal to people who are looking for an excuse for their anti-social behaviour I think we broadly agree.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

porcoda 4y ago

Well, not just the extroverts. We can’t ignore the people who define their lives (social, choice of home location, etc) around work. People like that who don’t have much of a life outside work are just as big of an influence in ruining remote work for those of us who don’t define our lives by the workplace.

raverbashing 4y ago

> 'Shall we jump on a call?’ someone said to me last week Yeah, the answer is no. Make an effort and try to articulate what you're trying to say by text. Make an effort I certainly won't give my time to something that can be clearly explainable by text (and no, your difficulty in doing that is not my problem)

zmmmmm 4y ago
"never ask a quick question by email when an hour long meeting with 6 people will do" I think about 50% of my meetings and hence maybe 20% of my salary are to satisfy perceptions of social etiquette and / or to hack around equitable allocation of time / priority / resources.
teekert 4y ago
Haha, replace every instance of text with voice and you have my preference, I hate long back-and-Forths over e-mail when things can be settled with a quick call.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Yeah for things where you need to, let's say, schedule an appointment, or where there are a lot of yes/no questions back and fourth I agree But most of the time I see people wanting to "jump on a call" for something that's one or two simple questions Sure, it is also on both parts to make this work efficiently, like, if you're not synchronous, don't answer things with just yes/no, but give more detal
sascha_sl 4y ago
Often, that's not even being extroverted, that's being lazy and valuing your time more than anyone else's. If I had a penny for every time I say "please check the channel topic and link bar it's in there" I could quit work. The worst of all is people who ask extremely obvious questions. If you use GitHub Enterprise with SAML, you need to "authorize" every PAT and SSH key you use to pull enterprise repos. If you don't, GitHub will even tell you right on the command line that you need to do this and adds a link to authorize that particular credential. And yet not a month goes by that someone will paste the full message with the link to their solution and complain that their GitHub account doesn't work. Preferably with a team mention so you pull everyone out of focus because you were too lazy to actually read the error message. I really wish some tools like Slack put more work into enabling and, to some degree, enforcing asyncronous communication.

teekert 4y ago

Hmm I think I’m considered an extrovert, but isn’t this a spectrum? Anyway I also hate too many meetings and I need the makers schedule at least a couple of days a week. Fortunately I can just pass on many meetings and nobody cares, as long as I am there occasionally and get stuff done.

basisword 4y ago

>> When it comes to deciding how plans will unfold or the way that organisations will run, true to form, the extroverts speak up and call the shots. This is absolutely nothing to do with introversion. Introverts can, and should, assert themselves. I say this as quite an extreme introvert. Being an introvert is separate from being weak/quiet/unassertive. Mixing the concepts is almost insulting. I think there are a few types of people who want to go back to the office (and it’s nothing to do with introverts/extroverts): 1. People who think working from home during the pandemic == normal remote work. 2. People who like to be around others when they work but don’t want to put the effort in to find a co working space they could work from and new work friends. 3. People who have no social life outside of work and have come to consider their colleagues their close/only friends (even if their colleagues don’t see it the same way).

thesumofall 4y ago
4. people who realized that _some_ work can be done more effectively face-to-face. (and please note: this is true the other way around as well) There are obvious examples (care work) and a whole lot of grey in between the extremes. One of the problems I noticed in this endless discussion is that people really seem to have a hard time imagining that other people might have just very different jobs and that companies typically have a wide range of jobs. More challenging, people tend to have several hats and like some of these hats more than others

Guthur 4y ago

Honestly i don't think extro intro is useful i believe that it's more verbal vs written communicators, read some Drucker for more info. But yet we'll just find that there is not one size fits all and what will be great for one is not so great for another.

largbae 4y ago

Remote work isn't ruined, first of all. The power of remote work is unlocked by working asynchronously with many folks at a time, each of whom can choose for themselves when to focus and when to interact. This is lost on people who insist on using Zoom et al to simulate the synchronous in-person experience. Blocking "focus time" space on your calendar is the best way to push back on Zoom culture, and is both rational and easy to defend the business value of. I ask the engineers on my team to aim for two full days a week of focus time (Tue and Thu seems to be working) and at least one 3 hour block on each of the remaining days (in whatever part of the day overlaps least with the rest of the team timezone-wise). We miss this for incidents or voluntary hacking together, but n for required/ritual meetings. Also, I guess I took the clickbait, but stop it: extroverts as a category didn't do any purposeful harm to introverts as a category, and certainly didn't ruin anything for them. Play to your strengths and GLHF!

teekert 4y ago
+1 for blocking focus time in your calendar. Added bonus: you look busy to those who think you are only working hard when you have a booked calendar ;) Btw I consider myself a bit of an extrovert and I feel slightly offended by this article. I love you introverts and I apologize for any harm “we” caused.
chrismcb 4y ago
I feel like you missed the point. If remote work is unavailable then there are no zoom meetings. As far as working asynchronously, that can happen remotely or in the office.

madrox 4y ago

The older I've gotten, the less I find the introvert/extrovert deliniation useful. It's a characterization that brings a ton of assumptions to it, especially when employed in a Myers-Briggs-like fashion like this article is. A better headline would be "Did people who don't like remote work ruin remote work for the rest of us?" But that's practically a tautology. When you step away from that, this article is really just a rant about meeting culture. Different companies have different ways of getting things done to build concensus, and some are more compatible with remote work than others. The fact that you see so many different ways of doing things implies that they're all valid and relatively efficient. That's why most large companies that went remote during the pandemic are returning to their old ways. Two years isn't enough time to shift that culture.

rich_sasha 4y ago
Spot on. The article rants, for example, that extrovert behaviours tend to be extrapolated to leadership skills. I think perhaps instead, leadership requires basic people skills which come naturally to “extroverts”. Being able to look someone in the eye instead of their navel (or worse) is a basic requirement. But beyond that people skills are skills that most people can learn and be successful leaders. I’d go as far as say, with experienced managers, it can be hard to tell if they are introverts or extroverts. They are good at directing teams using a variety of means of communication, during paid hours. Not bubbly chatterboxes or addicted to WoW or whatever cliche you want to use.
- gonewest 4y ago
  “Being able to look someone in the eye instead of their navel” is a crude caricature of introversion. It’s exactly the sort of misconception that causes people to assume introversion is a negative trait.
bloqs 4y ago
Myers briggs is unhelpful and unscientific. The Big Five inventory, is the opposite.
- 4y ago

wronglyprepaid 4y ago

I don't think I am an extrovert and I am incredibly happy being back in the office.

andrekandre 4y ago
what do you like about it?
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Presumably, one or more things.

GoodJokes 4y ago