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He’s not saying that everyone had lower productivity through the pandemic, but that those hired during the pandemic and working remotely had much lower producti

He’s not saying that everyone had lower productivity through the pandemic, but that those hired during the pandemic and working remotely had much lower productivity.

moomin 4y ago
I mean, there are many possibilities here. One is that no-one got onboarded properly (possibly because the people who were meant to be doing it were busy trying to demonstrate productivity). Another possibility is that he doesn’t know how to measure productivity in the new environment and the whole thing is sampling error.
- rrdharan 4y ago
  Yet another possibility is that it’s an entirely credible, accurate and valid statement based on meaningful data.
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    Honestly there’s a contingent of WFH-or-die tech people that are as much an unjustified stick in the mud as the elusive bums-in-seats-or-die middle management stereotype. Multiple years on from the widespread proliferation of WFH, I still see a large contingent of people who are completely unwilling to even consider that physical colocation brings something to the table that can’t be replicated online, even during onboarding where building that sense of social cohesion is most important, and a management style that would otherwise be considered ‘’micromanagement’ is more justifiable. Ultimately it seems like people (on all sides) aren’t willing or able to separate “I prefer this” from “this makes me a better worker”. Don’t get me wrong. Remote work has its advantages. I say this all as someone that works remotely. But I also say this as someone managing a remote-first team.
- JCharante 4y ago
  Maybe it's a generational thing? I grew up using the computer in my bedroom, I have known friends for 10+ years online only and I've used to async communication from participating in guilds thoughout many games. I'm used to timezone differences through state of the guild meetings being held at awkward times and from running an in-game logistics company with important strategic deadlines due to wars. Working online and communicating through slack & zoom seemed very natural to me because I've used slack/discord/irc through jabber/trello/mumble/ts3/custom forum software throughout my teenage years. Continuing that into working in an online-only environment feels very natural. Some guilds literally have HR people that contact you when you first join to make sure you can login to the documentation (usually a mediawiki setup) and see the guides for setting up auth for all the services. They have been practicing onboarding people remotely for all of their existence.
- rtpg 4y ago
  My experience was that basically everyone hired in 2020 did not get good on boarding. This lead to people's capabilities being misunderstood, people's roles being not well defined, a lack of healthy relations between them and the rest of the company (that could rely on already-existing social bonds to weather the troubles), and just generally bad experiences for everyone. 2021-onwards was better. This was not at Slack, of course, but I imagine every company basically was this.

He’s not saying that everyone had lower productivity through the pandemic, but that those hired during the pandemic and working remotely had much lower productivity.

moomin 4y ago

I mean, there are many possibilities here. One is that no-one got onboarded properly (possibly because the people who were meant to be doing it were busy trying to demonstrate productivity). Another possibility is that he doesn’t know how to measure productivity in the new environment and the whole thing is sampling error.

rrdharan 4y ago
Yet another possibility is that it’s an entirely credible, accurate and valid statement based on meaningful data.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Honestly there’s a contingent of WFH-or-die tech people that are as much an unjustified stick in the mud as the elusive bums-in-seats-or-die middle management stereotype. Multiple years on from the widespread proliferation of WFH, I still see a large contingent of people who are completely unwilling to even consider that physical colocation brings something to the table that can’t be replicated online, even during onboarding where building that sense of social cohesion is most important, and a management style that would otherwise be considered ‘’micromanagement’ is more justifiable. Ultimately it seems like people (on all sides) aren’t willing or able to separate “I prefer this” from “this makes me a better worker”. Don’t get me wrong. Remote work has its advantages. I say this all as someone that works remotely. But I also say this as someone managing a remote-first team.
JCharante 4y ago
Maybe it's a generational thing? I grew up using the computer in my bedroom, I have known friends for 10+ years online only and I've used to async communication from participating in guilds thoughout many games. I'm used to timezone differences through state of the guild meetings being held at awkward times and from running an in-game logistics company with important strategic deadlines due to wars. Working online and communicating through slack & zoom seemed very natural to me because I've used slack/discord/irc through jabber/trello/mumble/ts3/custom forum software throughout my teenage years. Continuing that into working in an online-only environment feels very natural. Some guilds literally have HR people that contact you when you first join to make sure you can login to the documentation (usually a mediawiki setup) and see the guides for setting up auth for all the services. They have been practicing onboarding people remotely for all of their existence.
rtpg 4y ago
My experience was that basically everyone hired in 2020 did not get good on boarding. This lead to people's capabilities being misunderstood, people's roles being not well defined, a lack of healthy relations between them and the rest of the company (that could rely on already-existing social bonds to weather the troubles), and just generally bad experiences for everyone. 2021-onwards was better. This was not at Slack, of course, but I imagine every company basically was this.