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I disagree with the premise. Remote workplace and asynchronous workplace are two different things. Perhaps they’re on a scale. Remote work is not having to spe

I disagree with the premise. Remote workplace and asynchronous workplace are two different things. Perhaps they’re on a scale. Remote work is not having to spend two hours every day commuting. Remote companies hire more broadly because they’re not limited to a single very specific geographic zone (while they may just limit themselves to time zones instead, regardless of the city/state/country). To say this is not "remote" is a strange moving of the goal posts. It sounds like this person might work at a dysfunctional company, or they might actually be looking for an asynchronous company/team. Edit: the great irony/timing of this is I’m currently mid flight meeting all my colleagues for the first time…

rdl 5y ago
They don't even need to be on the same axis (although probably not really orthogonal in practice). Async on-site work is entirely possible -- if you're working in a high-security place, or where the physical infrastructure is the point, or where you're building some physical object, it might make sense that work can only be done on site, but scheduling might be entirely up to you. Similarly remote but synchronous is easy to understand (calls, etc.). Another dimension is probably consistent vs. variable on both of those dimensions over time -- my ideal job is sync remote, sync in person, async in-person, and async remote at different times.
Draiken 5y ago
Others pointed out the same. I agree with that too. But colloquially I've only ever seen the term "remote" being used, which is why I chose it. I'd love to be able to search for jobs with the keyword "async" instead!
zzyzxd 5y ago
A remote first company almost has to encourage asynchronous workplace. Because expecting to have synchronous communication is just not very efficient. If everyone is in the office, you can observe if a person is busy, turn your chair and ask "do you have a sec", knock on their door, or walk into their cubical and interrupt their workflow. But when everyone's working from home, you have less visibility on other people's availability. When you send a message to a person on slack, that person is likely doing something else, they may be working on something different, eating a meal, or even sleeping in another timezone. As a result, you should not expect people to always be ready to have a synchronous conversation with you. To keep communication efficient in a remote workplace, you have to consider all these facts. People says "how are you" on slack to me everyday, not because they really care about how I am doing, nor do they love wasting time waiting for my response to that, but .simply because mentally, when they type messages in slack, their brain is still thinking about mimicking a face-to-face synchronous conversation. They only realize this is a problem after they are exposed on the recipient side frequently enough.
closeparen 5y ago
>Remote work is not having to spend two hours every day commuting Choosing a home and workplace that are reasonable in relation to each other is not having to spend two hours every day commuting. Voting for local politicans who will do reasonable housing and transportation planning and instead of suburban sprawl, is not having to spend two hours every day commuting.
- kkfx 5y ago
  Things change: you can plan and build the perfect city for today needs, it can be built and be that perfect for a bit of time, but can't evolve so sooner or later the disaster happen. USA/CA suburbs does not work because they are residential-only and you generally need to commute, Rivieras does work far better IF they are not that dense, but in general there is nothing that keep working without changes eternally and as density grow changes became harder and harder. So it does not matter if you feel an USA failed sub-urb or an EU failed dense city or a too dense Riviera: they equally might work for a certain timeframe, than an "innocent & small" evolution at a time and things became ugly, perhaps in different ways, but with equal outcome. No politicians can solve that, people's can't solve that because they can't always reach agreements. That's for instance one of the reasons why we start saying since a decade at least that the "really sustainable transportation of the future" can only be by air and where possible by open water: you can change routes depending on needs, while you can't change much rails and roads, at least not with sustainable costs. That's why very few say that urbs aren't sustainable because they are effective for a certain timeframe than needs changes and they can't adapt etc. Efficiency, resilience and sustainability are not much different than the CAP theorem, you can't have all, you have to choose just two. Seeing Darwin works personally I prefer the last two at the expense of the first one.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Sure, live where you want. That’s the point.

rdl 5y ago

They don't even need to be on the same axis (although probably not really orthogonal in practice). Async on-site work is entirely possible -- if you're working in a high-security place, or where the physical infrastructure is the point, or where you're building some physical object, it might make sense that work can only be done on site, but scheduling might be entirely up to you. Similarly remote but synchronous is easy to understand (calls, etc.). Another dimension is probably consistent vs. variable on both of those dimensions over time -- my ideal job is sync remote, sync in person, async in-person, and async remote at different times.

Draiken 5y ago

Others pointed out the same. I agree with that too. But colloquially I've only ever seen the term "remote" being used, which is why I chose it. I'd love to be able to search for jobs with the keyword "async" instead!

zzyzxd 5y ago

A remote first company almost has to encourage asynchronous workplace. Because expecting to have synchronous communication is just not very efficient. If everyone is in the office, you can observe if a person is busy, turn your chair and ask "do you have a sec", knock on their door, or walk into their cubical and interrupt their workflow. But when everyone's working from home, you have less visibility on other people's availability. When you send a message to a person on slack, that person is likely doing something else, they may be working on something different, eating a meal, or even sleeping in another timezone. As a result, you should not expect people to always be ready to have a synchronous conversation with you. To keep communication efficient in a remote workplace, you have to consider all these facts. People says "how are you" on slack to me everyday, not because they really care about how I am doing, nor do they love wasting time waiting for my response to that, but .simply because mentally, when they type messages in slack, their brain is still thinking about mimicking a face-to-face synchronous conversation. They only realize this is a problem after they are exposed on the recipient side frequently enough.

closeparen 5y ago

>Remote work is not having to spend two hours every day commuting Choosing a home and workplace that are reasonable in relation to each other is not having to spend two hours every day commuting. Voting for local politicans who will do reasonable housing and transportation planning and instead of suburban sprawl, is not having to spend two hours every day commuting.

kkfx 5y ago
Things change: you can plan and build the perfect city for today needs, it can be built and be that perfect for a bit of time, but can't evolve so sooner or later the disaster happen. USA/CA suburbs does not work because they are residential-only and you generally need to commute, Rivieras does work far better IF they are not that dense, but in general there is nothing that keep working without changes eternally and as density grow changes became harder and harder. So it does not matter if you feel an USA failed sub-urb or an EU failed dense city or a too dense Riviera: they equally might work for a certain timeframe, than an "innocent & small" evolution at a time and things became ugly, perhaps in different ways, but with equal outcome. No politicians can solve that, people's can't solve that because they can't always reach agreements. That's for instance one of the reasons why we start saying since a decade at least that the "really sustainable transportation of the future" can only be by air and where possible by open water: you can change routes depending on needs, while you can't change much rails and roads, at least not with sustainable costs. That's why very few say that urbs aren't sustainable because they are effective for a certain timeframe than needs changes and they can't adapt etc. Efficiency, resilience and sustainability are not much different than the CAP theorem, you can't have all, you have to choose just two. Seeing Darwin works personally I prefer the last two at the expense of the first one.
madeofpalk 5y ago
Sure, live where you want. That’s the point.