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I'm on an all-remote team right now and I totally miss the level of ambient information I used to have when working with a collocated team in a good environment

I'm on an all-remote team right now and I totally miss the level of ambient information I used to have when working with a collocated team in a good environment. On the other hand, a lot of collocated teams, especially at larger companies, have bad enough environments that they're essentially remote workers as far as communication goes. I've visited plenty of teams in open-office environments where all the coders are packed in, hunched over wearing headphones all day, while random people blather loudly nearby about things unrelated to the coding, and key people for their project are scattered across the building. Or farther. If I could have a properly collocated team with dedicated space and the correct layout for collaboration, I'd love that. But I'd still prefer all-remote over the average BigCo setup, where space is set up for the convenience of managers and office planners, not the actual work.

throwaway2037 4y ago
Hi. Great post. Thank you to raise the important topic of relevant ambient information. If you are pure tech writing new features for sales, you might want to sit right next to them. (Listen to how they use my software / interesting business problems.) However, if you are working on credit card payment settlement, you do not give a sh-t about sales team golf scores / "amazing" drinking stories. It is a bother / nuisance. But maybe sitting next to the account team makes good sense!
- wpietri 4y ago
  Yes, absolutely! Relevance makes the difference between information and noise. Relevant information is hugely powerful. But noisy environments just make for bad output.
throwaway2037 4y ago
You wrote: "ambient information" This is a brilliant term. I never heard it before this post. (Thank you!) My whole career is working next to traders and sales at global investment banks. Everytime I hear someone say: "Sales & traders can all work from home / [low cost] country X,Y,Z", I cringe. They fundamentally do not understand "ambient information".
- wpietri 4y ago
  Here I must credit Ambient Devices, maker of the Ambient Orb: http://www.ambientdevices.com/about/consumer-devices http://www.ambientdevices.com/about/consumer-devices It was a tricolor LED connected to the pager network that came out circa 20 years ago. By default you could hook it up to the weather, stock prices, and the like. What I hooked it up to was early Continuous Integration servers, so that everybody could see if the build was broken. It made a huge difference for some teams, where the build went from usually broken to usually green. Sometimes because people changed on their own, sometimes because executives suddenly had a thing they could understand about the room full of people typing furiously. And yes, totally agreed. The best work I've ever done was in close contact with the people I'm serving. It can make a huge difference.

throwaway2037 4y ago

Hi. Great post. Thank you to raise the important topic of relevant ambient information. If you are pure tech writing new features for sales, you might want to sit right next to them. (Listen to how they use my software / interesting business problems.) However, if you are working on credit card payment settlement, you do not give a sh-t about sales team golf scores / "amazing" drinking stories. It is a bother / nuisance. But maybe sitting next to the account team makes good sense!

wpietri 4y ago
Yes, absolutely! Relevance makes the difference between information and noise. Relevant information is hugely powerful. But noisy environments just make for bad output.

throwaway2037 4y ago

You wrote: "ambient information" This is a brilliant term. I never heard it before this post. (Thank you!) My whole career is working next to traders and sales at global investment banks. Everytime I hear someone say: "Sales & traders can all work from home / [low cost] country X,Y,Z", I cringe. They fundamentally do not understand "ambient information".

wpietri 4y ago
Here I must credit Ambient Devices, maker of the Ambient Orb: http://www.ambientdevices.com/about/consumer-devices http://www.ambientdevices.com/about/consumer-devices It was a tricolor LED connected to the pager network that came out circa 20 years ago. By default you could hook it up to the weather, stock prices, and the like. What I hooked it up to was early Continuous Integration servers, so that everybody could see if the build was broken. It made a huge difference for some teams, where the build went from usually broken to usually green. Sometimes because people changed on their own, sometimes because executives suddenly had a thing they could understand about the room full of people typing furiously. And yes, totally agreed. The best work I've ever done was in close contact with the people I'm serving. It can make a huge difference.