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I’m an eng manager at a public company. Short answer - relationships cannot be made via zoom. Thus, interactions are transaction based. I can provide a million
by mtpockets 4y ago
I’m an eng manager at a public company.
Short answer - relationships cannot be made via zoom. Thus, interactions are transaction based. I can provide a million examples of why this is a fact in as simple as online dating where you always want to end up meeting the person and digital correspondence is not sufficient to cross the boundary of trust between 2 humans.
…and trust is the one thing that gets you promoted, gets you the benefit of the doubt when you need to leave the office and inconveniently make your coworkers pickup your slack, provides a social barrier via awkward convo when your manager has to let someone go and is debating who vs the simplicity of 3 clicks to removing even a more productive person with whom they have no relationship with by just removing a person on slack and zoom and your jira board. Do you let go the person you know that has 2 kids and you met their kids and they do ok work vs the solo ic who does not seem to want to talk about anything but their work and go home? Surprise surprise most managers would easily coach the ok person they feel closer to vs even the most productive person who they cant get a read on and assume they may even leave some day. Humans being humans.
Trust also forms camaraderie, your tribe in an office, the people you can gripe to with trust in their silence vs someone can easily record or back talk you with your manager via zoom. In office, you can see where people move and who they talk to and thus their relationships.
Therefore, you cannot solve building better relationships via more technological solutions. Humans grasp many small pieces of meta data via in person contact.
Small companies may want whatever your solution is, but large ones where divisions need to scale and trust needs to scale already know this truth and will not buy into it. They would rather wait for covid to be less fearful amongst their constituents and bring them in office which is already happening at banks and apple and soon to be many other orgs next year.
BUT! For the fully remote small companies where work is distributed amongst maybe 20 people in different geos, maybe some small tools will work.
Just remember, a bunch of startups tried to build products to address this at the start if the pandemic and failed learning this truth that human relationships need in person contact.
And as you solicit more advice, notice how the proponents of wfh typically are in roles that are more transactional in nature or accept the risks of or want a more transactional relationship with their work. Most people, especially young ones without enough background understanding how human orgs work, will think they want wfh but in fact want in office with some flexibility to get their outside work life tasks done more easily. And it is not until peoples heads are on chopping blocks or they are passed up for a promotion that they will realize the mistake of wanting 100% remote work.
- throwawaysleep 4y agoCan't you just haul in the managers then? I don't need or desire anyone's trust. My code gets reviewed, so there is no real need to trust me. Bring in the decision makers and leave the minions like me who just silently spin in chairs during meetings at home.
- mtpockets 4y agoHah yeah, I can relate when I was IC. If you have enough leverage to know you don’t need relationships to be safe, to get promoted, to do what you want to do, more power to ya! I speak of large orgs where not all people and teams can be like that. And unfortunately, large orgs cannot say “team a you stay wfh team b you come in since you need to gel with team c in office” due to fairness. So a one size fits all will be applied like Apple is doing.
- syed_h5 4y agoI have been loving your comments. I very strongly agree with your other comment about how to do you get two introverts to talk? of course people will offer up info to the managers. If you don't mind, please check out what we are doing here: https://www.getparallel.io/ https://www.getparallel.io/ We are big fan of WFH and want it to stay. We just wrapped up our MVP and talking to accelerators.
- brainfish 4y agoAs an eng mgr of a fully remote team, I do not agree with your assertion that "relationships cannot be made via zoom." Of the sixteen people I work closely with, I have met fewer than half in person, including a similar fraction of the engineers reporting to me. I seek to balance the lack of in-person interactions by leaning heavily into interest, compassion, and vulnerability. I take time in my 1:1s to ask about folks' lives, making sure to remember past details they have shared and to make it clear that I am generally interested in everything they have to share about themselves. But I think more importantly, I am conscientiously more vulnerable in my own sharing with those who take an interest than I might be otherwise. I put a little extra effort into "broadcasting" my interest in my colleagues as humans to make sure some of that truth makes it over the wire. The result is that I have very real human connections with nearly all of them, and the engineers on my team have stuck with me through some crazy s** that I don't think they all would have had it not been for those connections. It's easy to get into a work mindset when using work tools. That can in turn cause us to skip those human interactions such as more personal conversations that might usually happen at lunch or whatever. Taking the time to elicit them, where natural, without the natural cues is hugely important. I have honestly never felt more connected with a team than I do with my current one, which was formed almost entirely post-pandemic. Hell, folks were building real human relationships with just pen and paper for ages not long ago. It can absolutely be done.