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> "It doesn’t matter where you work, as long as you get the work done." This sentiment is weird to me. When people express this, I think they have a myopic vie

by rcme 4y ago

> "It doesn’t matter where you work, as long as you get the work done." This sentiment is weird to me. When people express this, I think they have a myopic view on work. Like they view work as a series of JIRA tickets that need to be closed out. As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently. Your personal output is not that important. You are there to be a force multiplier. Teaching is much easier in person. It's like people who hate the interruption of a colleague sending a Slack message. Yes, such an interruption is slightly annoying, but part of your job is to help other people. Unblocking someone is most certainly more productive than whatever you were doing individually. Ultimately, very few things are built solely by an individual. "Doing work" is mostly about collaboration if you want to build anything substantial.

ARandomerDude 4y ago
> As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently. I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. It's so much easier to get the team talking about some code over Teams/Slack/etc. than it is awkwardly huddled around someone's monitor or looking at a TV in the office. Remotely, you're able to see the code and have high-quality audio, and you don't have to worry about some higher up manager seeing a group gathering and thinking now's a good chance to get some internal publicity... Of course, none of the above applies if the tools aren't used. I think the key to mastering remote teaching is good scheduling.
- tsgagnon 4y ago
  I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. I'm in a agreement on this. I find reviewing changes much easier with screen-share than in person. It also makes the process feel less confrontational in some respects.
  - simmerup 4y ago
    I got to wonder if it feels less confrontational only because it’s harder to see their reactions to your comments. Obviously I don’t know how these meetings go, just a passing observation
- kevinskii 4y ago
  I agree that remote screen sharing can be sufficient, but I'm personally a much more effective mentor in person with lots of whiteboard space.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    Is that your opinion or those who you mentor? In my experience, most people learn much better from being shown concrete examples inside the workspace they already use compared to abstract examples on a whiteboard with lots of lines and arrows.
    - 3D25157725 4y ago
      I agree. Also, when viewing/listening remotely, I will record the session -- especially if they're assigning a complex task or series of tasks. This allows me to playback and get things exactly right. In person, I would have to smuggle in a recorder and it's often awkward or infeasible.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. For years now, well before the pandemic, this is how such things have been done everywhere I've worked. The two people aren't huddled around the same machine, they're each in their cubes doing screen-sharing. It's just a better way to do it, remote work or not.
- rcme 4y ago
  As a junior engineer, most of what I learned wasn't explicitly taught to me. Just a really basic example: a service outage happened and the senior engineers started trying to debug the issue. Watching them debug taught me a lot about our system and how to diagnose problems in general.
FpUser 4y ago
>"As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently. Your personal output is not that important. You are there to be a force multiplier. Teaching is much easier in person." I am actually doing mentoring every once in a while and it goes just fine over Skype thank you. I am remote since 2000.
pc86 4y ago
> Teaching is much easier in person. In my experience this is not the case for developers. Being over someone from behind or having someone peer at my screen while I'm typing is much worse than just screen sharing where we both have our keyboards and two large monitors.
nakor 4y ago
I don't understand how this sentiment is weird at all and I think you're reading a lot of your own biases into it. The statement talks about where the work gets done and doesn't speak to how efficiently the work gets done. There's nothing that prevents remote work from not being efficient enough to further the goals of an organization. It also doesn't prevent one from being a leader and teaching younger folk. In fact, I've had to do this a lot and it's much nicer to get people on a video call and share my screen to teach or do team programming than it is to find a meeting/conference room in the office. Some people don't like interruptions _precisely_ because it prevents from doing an efficient job. And it's more than slightly annoying when you're getting interrupted multiple times per hour. Yes, _very_ few things are built solely by an individual, but _nothing_ prevents remote work from "Doing work" as you put it or collaboration between teams.

by rcme 4y ago

ARandomerDude 4y ago

> As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently. I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. It's so much easier to get the team talking about some code over Teams/Slack/etc. than it is awkwardly huddled around someone's monitor or looking at a TV in the office. Remotely, you're able to see the code and have high-quality audio, and you don't have to worry about some higher up manager seeing a group gathering and thinking now's a good chance to get some internal publicity... Of course, none of the above applies if the tools aren't used. I think the key to mastering remote teaching is good scheduling.

tsgagnon 4y ago
I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. I'm in a agreement on this. I find reviewing changes much easier with screen-share than in person. It also makes the process feel less confrontational in some respects.
- simmerup 4y ago
  I got to wonder if it feels less confrontational only because it’s harder to see their reactions to your comments. Obviously I don’t know how these meetings go, just a passing observation
kevinskii 4y ago
I agree that remote screen sharing can be sufficient, but I'm personally a much more effective mentor in person with lots of whiteboard space.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  Is that your opinion or those who you mentor? In my experience, most people learn much better from being shown concrete examples inside the workspace they already use compared to abstract examples on a whiteboard with lots of lines and arrows.
  - 3D25157725 4y ago
    I agree. Also, when viewing/listening remotely, I will record the session -- especially if they're assigning a complex task or series of tasks. This allows me to playback and get things exactly right. In person, I would have to smuggle in a recorder and it's often awkward or infeasible.
JohnFen 4y ago
> I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. For years now, well before the pandemic, this is how such things have been done everywhere I've worked. The two people aren't huddled around the same machine, they're each in their cubes doing screen-sharing. It's just a better way to do it, remote work or not.
rcme 4y ago
As a junior engineer, most of what I learned wasn't explicitly taught to me. Just a really basic example: a service outage happened and the senior engineers started trying to debug the issue. Watching them debug taught me a lot about our system and how to diagnose problems in general.

FpUser 4y ago

>"As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently. Your personal output is not that important. You are there to be a force multiplier. Teaching is much easier in person." I am actually doing mentoring every once in a while and it goes just fine over Skype thank you. I am remote since 2000.

pc86 4y ago

> Teaching is much easier in person. In my experience this is not the case for developers. Being over someone from behind or having someone peer at my screen while I'm typing is much worse than just screen sharing where we both have our keyboards and two large monitors.

nakor 4y ago

I don't understand how this sentiment is weird at all and I think you're reading a lot of your own biases into it. The statement talks about where the work gets done and doesn't speak to how efficiently the work gets done. There's nothing that prevents remote work from not being efficient enough to further the goals of an organization. It also doesn't prevent one from being a leader and teaching younger folk. In fact, I've had to do this a lot and it's much nicer to get people on a video call and share my screen to teach or do team programming than it is to find a meeting/conference room in the office. Some people don't like interruptions _precisely_ because it prevents from doing an efficient job. And it's more than slightly annoying when you're getting interrupted multiple times per hour. Yes, _very_ few things are built solely by an individual, but _nothing_ prevents remote work from "Doing work" as you put it or collaboration between teams.