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Two main problems 1. Middle and senior management who don't want to lose control or be rendered less effective. 2. Engineers who are not trained in written com

Two main problems 1. Middle and senior management who don't want to lose control or be rendered less effective. 2. Engineers who are not trained in written communication and largely cannot autonomously move a group towards a goal without a lot of supervision. If you solve for no 2, then that acts counter to no 1 - because middle management will be questioned - why do we need you ? If a group of engineers can function on their own towards a common goal, then the manager's role is more or less rendered redundant. Sure there may be a need for psychological support but you surely won't need the current ratio of engineers: managers. There is a deep rooted old school interest in staying physically connected. This won't go away anytime soon. I am not debating whether that is right or wrong, but the general notion that 'we are better if we are physically together' still persists. I don't know if this is a genuine feel-good-together feeling or just a made up emotion to mask point no 1 above. I am flummoxed by how executive leadership is simply blind to these facts in most companies. I mean the CEO can declare a fully remote constraint sort of like the exact opposite of what Musk did at Twitter and drive productivity higher. The cynic in me says execs can't force this decision because the senior management simply will come back and say 'we cannot be this productive with a fully remote team anymore'. I don't know but I for one cannot understand the irrational exuberance behind RTO.

gundmc 4y ago
What do you consider the role of a manager that makes it change significantly based on where their team is sitting?
- deepGem 4y ago
  I didn't catch the question but I will attempt to answer based on what I understand. Role of a manager that will change significantly based on where the team is sitting - The ability to convey meaning and emotion over written comms and over video calls, to drive the team forward without being too mechanical about it.
- bonniemuffin 4y ago
  One key role for a manager is being able to detect who's feeling unmotivated or trying to bullshit you or has something going on in their life that's affecting their work, so that you can dig in to understand more and address the issues proactively. When you casually see people in person every day throughout the day, it's easier to notice when someone's demeanor changes, vs. mostly talking on slack and having a couple of zoom meetings per week.
adql 4y ago
From my experiences (everywhere from full office to full WFH), even in heavily technical low management environments it still feels more productive to do any of the planning stuff in person. In my case small percentage of total time and making the 5% more effective to make the remaining 95% less effective doesn't seem like good tradeoff, just not having co-workers interrupt me because I'm near and know the answer is a blessing. But from manager position I can see that, my 5-10% spent on meetings & related stuff is what they do maybe 80% of the time. Then again bringing 20 people to office just to keep one or two managers happy is also a waste. > The cynic in me says execs can't force this decision because the senior management simply will come back and say 'we cannot be this productive with a fully remote team anymore'. I don't know but I for one cannot understand the irrational exuberance behind RTO. Remote work does require shift of habits, training can help (maybe a niche here for company doing the training?) but it still takes time and effort if you did it in person for last 10-20 years
jondeval 4y ago
It think this is mostly right. Within your point number (1), I see the problem as more to do with senior management. Specifically I think the major disconnect is not so much between middle managers and IC's, it's between executives and the rest of the org. Unfortunately I'm beginning to think that this is truly a case of misaligned incentives that may prove hard to fix. What I mean is that executives are directly incentivized to be in the office. Almost all of their career capital is tied up in relationships and patterns of decision making with other executives. Good day for a manager or IC - 'Wow, I really got a lot done today and I'm moving the team goals forward.' Good day for an executive - 'That conversation with Dan and Steve went really well.'
beachtaxidriver 4y ago
I also think that junior new engineers are less productive remote, because they can't absorb the context and experience of their more senior coworkers. Probably the only group made more productive are senior independent engineers.
- sitkack 4y ago
  > can't absorb the context and experience of their more senior coworkers How so? What prevents that? I don't believe it, but people like saying it without evidence.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    My own experience as a junior during the forced WFH transition of the pandemic is, albeit anecdotal, proof for me. It sucked. If the company doesn't shift and completely overhaul its entire culture from the ground up to full remote including junior mentoring, it's difficult to see, especially from the managers and senior perspective who already know the "games" of the organization and the know-how to get their work done and be productive while advancing their career, just how much knowledge and development potential I missed out on as a remote junior. When I was in the office, I would pass by a coworkers and see some new development environment or tool on their monitor and I would ask them "Hey, sorry, what's that <thing> you use", "Oh yeah, it's a tool for doing X, it's very useful, you should try it.", "Oh neat, thanks". When we switched to remote I would have no way of seeing the tools others use that later help me also be more productive. Or when two of the most senior colleagues who sat next to me would be discussing some very high level technical stuff together, I would sometimes listen in and learn something new and sometimes ask them questions later about it and even volunteer to work on that if they need help. With the switch to remote, I have no chance of hearing 1:1 technical discussion calls between the seniors and find out new things or challenges they face. Basically, I was missing out on a lot of ideas, challenges, solution, technical development know-how, and became this anonymous avatar that needs to takes Jira issues as input and produce Gitlab merge requests as output, pigeonholing myself and stagnating my growth both as an engineer and inside the organization. I suspect these issues might be less common in startups and companies that have been built from the start as distributed remote, but are probably very present for older organizations that have always ben in the office, and switched to hybrid or remote because of the pandemic.
helloharvey 4y ago
This kind of a comment where middle and senior management will be rendered useless (and therefore feel threatened) by communication-competent engineers is both prevalent on HN and absurdly wrong from a business organization perspective. Joel Spolsky’s writing on this subject should be mandatory reading before people spout nonsense. If this is a website supposedly for startups, the audience missed that mark by a wide margin.

gundmc 4y ago

What do you consider the role of a manager that makes it change significantly based on where their team is sitting?

deepGem 4y ago
I didn't catch the question but I will attempt to answer based on what I understand. Role of a manager that will change significantly based on where the team is sitting - The ability to convey meaning and emotion over written comms and over video calls, to drive the team forward without being too mechanical about it.
bonniemuffin 4y ago
One key role for a manager is being able to detect who's feeling unmotivated or trying to bullshit you or has something going on in their life that's affecting their work, so that you can dig in to understand more and address the issues proactively. When you casually see people in person every day throughout the day, it's easier to notice when someone's demeanor changes, vs. mostly talking on slack and having a couple of zoom meetings per week.

adql 4y ago

From my experiences (everywhere from full office to full WFH), even in heavily technical low management environments it still feels more productive to do any of the planning stuff in person. In my case small percentage of total time and making the 5% more effective to make the remaining 95% less effective doesn't seem like good tradeoff, just not having co-workers interrupt me because I'm near and know the answer is a blessing. But from manager position I can see that, my 5-10% spent on meetings & related stuff is what they do maybe 80% of the time. Then again bringing 20 people to office just to keep one or two managers happy is also a waste. > The cynic in me says execs can't force this decision because the senior management simply will come back and say 'we cannot be this productive with a fully remote team anymore'. I don't know but I for one cannot understand the irrational exuberance behind RTO. Remote work does require shift of habits, training can help (maybe a niche here for company doing the training?) but it still takes time and effort if you did it in person for last 10-20 years

jondeval 4y ago

It think this is mostly right. Within your point number (1), I see the problem as more to do with senior management. Specifically I think the major disconnect is not so much between middle managers and IC's, it's between executives and the rest of the org. Unfortunately I'm beginning to think that this is truly a case of misaligned incentives that may prove hard to fix. What I mean is that executives are directly incentivized to be in the office. Almost all of their career capital is tied up in relationships and patterns of decision making with other executives. Good day for a manager or IC - 'Wow, I really got a lot done today and I'm moving the team goals forward.' Good day for an executive - 'That conversation with Dan and Steve went really well.'

beachtaxidriver 4y ago

I also think that junior new engineers are less productive remote, because they can't absorb the context and experience of their more senior coworkers. Probably the only group made more productive are senior independent engineers.

sitkack 4y ago
> can't absorb the context and experience of their more senior coworkers How so? What prevents that? I don't believe it, but people like saying it without evidence.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  My own experience as a junior during the forced WFH transition of the pandemic is, albeit anecdotal, proof for me. It sucked. If the company doesn't shift and completely overhaul its entire culture from the ground up to full remote including junior mentoring, it's difficult to see, especially from the managers and senior perspective who already know the "games" of the organization and the know-how to get their work done and be productive while advancing their career, just how much knowledge and development potential I missed out on as a remote junior. When I was in the office, I would pass by a coworkers and see some new development environment or tool on their monitor and I would ask them "Hey, sorry, what's that <thing> you use", "Oh yeah, it's a tool for doing X, it's very useful, you should try it.", "Oh neat, thanks". When we switched to remote I would have no way of seeing the tools others use that later help me also be more productive. Or when two of the most senior colleagues who sat next to me would be discussing some very high level technical stuff together, I would sometimes listen in and learn something new and sometimes ask them questions later about it and even volunteer to work on that if they need help. With the switch to remote, I have no chance of hearing 1:1 technical discussion calls between the seniors and find out new things or challenges they face. Basically, I was missing out on a lot of ideas, challenges, solution, technical development know-how, and became this anonymous avatar that needs to takes Jira issues as input and produce Gitlab merge requests as output, pigeonholing myself and stagnating my growth both as an engineer and inside the organization. I suspect these issues might be less common in startups and companies that have been built from the start as distributed remote, but are probably very present for older organizations that have always ben in the office, and switched to hybrid or remote because of the pandemic.

helloharvey 4y ago

This kind of a comment where middle and senior management will be rendered useless (and therefore feel threatened) by communication-competent engineers is both prevalent on HN and absurdly wrong from a business organization perspective. Joel Spolsky’s writing on this subject should be mandatory reading before people spout nonsense. If this is a website supposedly for startups, the audience missed that mark by a wide margin.