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I am totally for remote work but this is absolutely a real problem, and I see my junior engineers suffer tremendously from it. One asked me what made me so succ

I am totally for remote work but this is absolutely a real problem, and I see my junior engineers suffer tremendously from it. One asked me what made me so successful at my job, and there were many factors but being in the office really did help me. Success here doesn’t just mean solving chunks of problems from jira tickets but creating entirely new products and solutions which have then gone on to become important parts of the organizations offerings. This was only possible because of my initial years where I was constantly absorbing and brainstorming with folks in the office on a daily basis. We really need to find a way to replicate that magic in the remote environment. One of the ideas I’m thinking about is to hire only within a metropolitan area, but keep remote. Every month we just organize a 3 day retreat where everyone’s expected to attend it, which could be in a resort or a hotel even. This might satisfy the interaction and brainstorming itch while still keeping everyone happy with their remote arrangements.

jon-wood 4y ago
Very much agreed on this. One of the key things in me being where I am now is spending a few years working for an ISP staffed by technology nerds in my early 20s, where I'd spend all day surrounded by people who knew what they were doing, and then spend several evenings a week in the pub with the same people. Its possible to get the same experience remotely - I got started in the industry via open source work, where mailing lists had a similar atmosphere, but it is so much easier if you can just bounce ideas around. I love the idea of regular 3 day retreats, but being in my late 30s with a child now doing them anywhere near that regularly is a non-starter for me. Maybe quarterly, but even then you're going to have to really sell it for me to commit to all of them.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  It’s 3 days a month though, and to clarify my thoughts are that you still go back home every day. How would that be a problem?
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    I guess it depends where the retreat is held. And how long the commute is to get there. Taking my house as an example - I'm ~1 hour from the city center (assuming no major delays). If the retreat ended up downtown, I'd hate that. If it was on the far side of the city, I'd want to stay overnight. But, if the retreat was at the corporate office, I'd love it - as that's one mile down the road and I can walk.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      This is the exact reason executives favor return-to-office. Asking remote employees to assemble just 3 days per month becomes a major hassle, see above. If a job is work-from-office every day, the employees will either figure it out or quit, any other arrangement and the logistics of when and where to meet becomes a major distraction.
      - e44858 4y ago
        Traveling every day to the office sounds like a much bigger hassle than traveling three days a month.
        listenallyall 4y ago
        That's the whole point. The executives offer remote + 3 days together, and employees like alistair complain about the 3 days as opposed to the benefit of working from home the rest of the time. So the execs say fuck it, ok just come to the office every day.
        ipaddr 4y ago
        Then they can't find workers
  - bomewish 4y ago
    Straight up just get everyone to bring their families. Head out Friday afternoon, back Monday morning. Two days of work kinda lost, but the weekend is for hanging out and chatting about work stuff -- both structured and unstructured. Go to family friendly places; let the kiddos play together. I love it already.
- TheGigaChad 4y ago
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- moate 4y ago
  Imma be honest, if it was not explained to me during hiring that mandatory "3-day retreats" were part of my job on a quarterly basis, I would be finding a new job before the next one. Some people care about their "careers". Other people care about paying their rent and see jobs as the only tangible way to meet that need. I will never give a fuck about being good at my job, only competent. I am currently at that competent level and have had this actively avoidance mindset since I got into the tech space. I'm very curious, love learning and have a ton of hobbies...that have fuckall to do with converting my time on this planet into profits for my overlords and financial crumbs for myself. The Career people seem to think, falsely, that the Job people can be coached into changing. Some can, but some of us will fight the happy hours and the retreats and the optional mentorships.
  - CleaveIt2Beaver 4y ago
    I can't stress enough how refreshing it is to see this take on HN. The usual rise-and-grind crowd always seem to dominate the discussions - likely because they have that investment (emotional and professional) in the first place; I don't want to invalidate anybody by saying this - so it at times feels alienating to read these threads. I don't want to be friends, I don't want to constantly be growing and mastering my field, etc; I want to be good at what I do, fulfill my objectives for the day, and leave it at the desk when I go home.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  Why are you not able to bounce ideas around in a text chat room, audio chat room, video chat room, 2d/3d/VR shared space? Why is it so hard for you to do it unless you are literally in the same physical location?
  - postalrat 4y ago
    Because we are human not machine.
croutonwagon 4y ago
Personally my team does stand up meetings weekly on Mondays. This is mostly to allow folks (and force a few) to think about their tasks and goals and organize them into "what can I accomplish this week" style bullet points. But then we also have a Teams channel carved out to "watercooler" or Daily meets. These are non-structured and you are free to come and go as needed. But its a place for folks to hang out and verbalize their tshooting or seek advice/help/opinions on problems etc. For some, its a good place to listen and be a wallflower. For others, its a good place to bounce ideas. If you are trying to focus you dont join. If someone specifically wants to bring someone into the fold they are free to ping them and just say "hey im in the daily, could really use your help when you get a chance". Sometimes that person can join immediately. Sometimes they may sit for a bit working on other things until the person they wanted to ask has the time. Sometimes that person just says "im busy, lets schedule a time or catch tomorrow". Its worked....okay enough. And was specifically setup because I had several FTR guys well before COVID that specifically stated they felt distant and out of touch with the pulse or overall goals of the department. Frankly I am in them so much I have a small Amazon Basics conference mic with a physical mute button and a blue/red indicator light. The only habit that can be "bad" coming from it is sometimes folks will have an affinity to "rally the troops" and engage multiple people on something they themselves havent spent much or any time chewing on first because it can be perceived as easier or quicker to a resolution. This is especially true with "fires". But I have seen the same in person as well. Especially with teams of weaker IC's.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I feel like random teams chat just died the day they made channels threaded. Now writing a message feels like a newsletter rather than a chat.
  - croutonwagon 4y ago
    Yeah we use a group chat for normal day to day chatter. Teams channels are for topic specific content and comments that will likely need to be tracked/re-referenced down the line. The sole exception is the water cooler meeting channel that is just a channel to host that meeting. Overall teams is awful for searching though.
comfypotato 4y ago
My company has three days in office each month, and it’s during a week specified by the company so that you synchronize with your team. Very similar to what you’re talking about.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  How do you feel about it? Any feedback?
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    Love it. Privately owned company (doesn’t have to conform to shareholder wants) with good leadership; lots of the policies resonate with the employees. I’ll admit: I’m particularly extroverted, and this makes the in-person days more enjoyable. I get much more work done at home, and I generally enjoy life better working remotely. I thought I would have preferred full remote, but I have no desire to leave because everything else about the company is ideal. My understanding is that they have, before and after the pandemic, drawn a connection between remote work and attrition. Their hybrid policy is based on this, and they have found it solves the attrition issue. We could theorize all day as to exactly how/why :) Some combination of forcing people to be geographically located, see their teammates face to face, and then giving employees the majority of the time to themselves seems to work better for keeping employees than being fully remote. My personal theory is that, counterintuitively, just about everyone actually ends up feeling/doing better if they have a bit of in-person interaction. I was staunchly in the camp of full-remote even before the pandemic, yet I don’t have any desire to change companies. It’s just a great place to work, and 3 days a month is extremely manageable. I have lots of connections at Google, for example (good full-remote options) and I could get an interview at the drop of a hat. I have no interest in this right now, though, even with much lower compensation.
    - aix1 4y ago
      To support your theory, I am an extreme introvert managing a fully distributed team. Yet I choose to regularly come to the office for a bit of in-person interaction (mainly social since my direct co-workers aren't based here). I should mention that I live within a ten-minute walk to the office. For example, I can easily walk there for lunch and then walk back home. If the commute was much longer, that would significantly change the calculus. A pleasant half-hour train ride? Maybe, but not very frequently. An hour drive? No way I'd go unless I absolutely have to.
stetrain 4y ago
I saw similar results when we first started hiring after moving full remote. The group that had worked together in the office handled remote work spectacularly. New hires tended to flounder a bit compared to what we were used to. We achieved some better results once we realized this and started putting some more specific mentorship time in with new hires. Like in the first week their manager/lead should be meeting with them multiple times a day, then ramping down to at least once a day with screen sharing / pair programming etc. when they have questions. Plus inclusion and involvement in meetings that help provide a bigger picture of how the product works, customer needs, etc. And making sure they are introduced to many team members and know where to ask questions for the best feedback. Of course this depends on the team, the new hire, and how things are going. But it seemed like the default case for many people was to spend hours silently not progressing when they were stuck on a problem, from dev machine setup to their first assigned tasks. Getting dumped into a Slack instance with dozens of channels and hundreds of people can certainly be overwhelming and being guided through these first steps seemed to help a lot. I think it’s completely possible to give a new dev the same kinds of experience and mentorship, but with remote work that has to be done more deliberately. In a close office environment a lot of that happened via natural interaction and osmosis without anything needing to be scheduled on a calendar.
- lostcolony 4y ago
  This is the main thing I've noticed - the people who talk about how there is something lost in how work gets done haven't changed how work gets done. You can't just move to being remote without rethinking how you do everything. People were forced to be remote with COVID, but corporate essentially just tried to port the way things were done to remote, and on realizing it didn't work as well, want to move back. A few places are doing things correctly and building specifically for remote work. I honestly believe this is why we have such stark disparity in studies.
  - pnutjam 4y ago
    100% this. I've been remote since covid. First job was transitioned and I mentored and onboarded people. It was alot of screen sharing, and messaging back and forth. This was no different (but better) then onsite where they would cram into my cube and try to take notes. Remote made this 100% better. Next company, I was the new guy and there were issues getting up to speed. Nobody really owned the onboarding process and this "remote first" environment had alot of technical debt and poor documentation. Now I'm at another remote first company, and it's great. I know who to ask and I get answers real-time or asynchronous, depending on what needs to happen. People are responsive and regular meetings keep us on the same page. Documentation is stressed and kept up to date.
jollofricepeas 4y ago
Or… Just have optional office hours, Slack huddles and mob sessions every few days. Some of my engineers… - have a open huddle for a few hours a day where anyone can drop into their project while they work - others make use of our scheduled themed mob sessions (ie. Maintenance Mondays, deployment Thursdays). have a problem, idea or just want to hangout then come by? - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a weekly office hour to assist juniors or teach something of their choice. The default doesn’t always have to be return to office for a physical meet. There’s lots of other options.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  There is absolutely something that gets lost in virtual meets. It’s not just for within team discussions. It’s also about discovering colleagues in other teams across the org. Tools like Donut help a bit but the magic is still lost.
  - ahnberg 4y ago
    I think the biggest issue is people who claim it can't be done and that the only way to accomplish this is to physically meet. I feel like the biggest hinderance to making the most out of a remote option are the ones who prefer going to the office or explain all kinds of issues with "it's because we don't meet in person". One just have to embrace and apply the mindset that it is possible. Different, surely, but still possible! I'm not saying there is something WRONG with going to the office, it is lovely to hang out in person with lots of people, but it is very limiting in many ways as well. Just limiting in other ways than remote. You learn to deal with both, when you need to, though. The issue is mostly that people deal with the office-problems but don't care much about dealing with the remote-problems.
    - jxramos 4y ago
      that's an interesting angle, I wonder if this pattern of defaulting to "because we don't meet in person" is that a giveaway for some lacking of communicating in writing I wonder. Just people who can't get an idea out effectively in textual form for complex ideas on a repeated basis and chalking it up to needing that in person outlet. That's curious, does being face to face elicit other modes of communication and ability to articulate and connect things. Maybe. But I suppose it could also be an opportunity to lean on the "see what I mean", "do you know what I'm saying" and allow body language and other social lubricant type bits and pieces to smooth glossing over when another doesn't follow or see what they mean.
bonestamp2 4y ago
I agree, although I will add that one of the biggest breakthroughs I came up with was when I transitioned to remote when most other people still worked at the office (this is long before covid). I changed something so that I can use it remotely, and that had a profound impact down the line -- it coincidentally fixed some licensing/piracy issues we had and made the product better in several ways. I think the moral of the story is that more diversity, in as many ways as we can apply that word, is probably a benefit to most organizations.
walthamstow 4y ago
We basically do your idea at my current company. All the engineers have to be within traveling distance of London and we are all expected to be in the office together on the the same day every month. One day per month, that's it. Some are in more frequently but that's the baseline. You can live wherever you want but you have to travel to London once a month and if that takes several hours and costs £100s, that's your problem. It works really well. We do our retros and other group sessions in person, eat lunch together, chat with other functions, go for a beer or play a board game after work, etc.
broast 4y ago
Personally, I grew up on the internet, learning from people in chatrooms and forums which were strong communities where most of my personal adult relationships have come from (many of whom I've not met in 20 years of knowing them). From what I've seen, if your seniors and your juniors are both from this era and culture, your remote team will excel without missing a beat. I think it's the people used to the "old ways" that will suffer, for having expensive requirements like an office to capture the same value.
- inconceivable 4y ago
  hehe - just go ahead and say it... if you grew up on irc, this is your natural habitat. many people who never irc'd have adapted just fine, but those who struggle with typing at 100wpm+ are obviously going to hate remote work.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    that is an interesting connection, the habit of chat in general. I never considered my days in the chat rooms as prepping me for life in chat. I occasionally see various critiques and complaints at work with some folks getting disoriented and frustrated working in slack and I never quite get where they're struggling or coming from. Could it be just general inexperience in chats like AOL, IRC, yahoo, MSN, hangouts, or whatever the medium was. Keyboard chatting is definitely different from mobile chatting for sure with the keyboard and speed. Maybe individuals haven't spent earlier years in their youth in the chatrooms quite possibly.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    Yeah this is so true. I casually type like 110-130wpm and didn't think anything of it... it wasn't until I got into the business world that I realized this isn't too common, even among other career programmers. Huh, didn't everyone stay up until 3am chatting on [IRC/etc.] and then fall asleep in class the next day? haha ;)
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      > Huh, didn't everyone stay up until 3am chatting on [IRC/etc.] and then fall asleep in class the next day? haha ;) Chaotic many-users chatrooms (including, but not exclusively, IRC) and text chat in video games. You have to get fast at typing to use either—in the former, if you're too slow, you'll drop out of the flow of conversation, and in the latter, speed is key because being slow makes you vulnerable in the game, and if you're not pretty damn fast you can't really afford to use it at all. I learned the basic mechanics of typing from Mavis Beacon, but I got fast because of those.
zeku 4y ago
IMO, just make that 3 day retreat during work days so you don't require people to work weekends. With that small change I think this would be great for software teams. Perhaps too, every month is too often for anyone with a family. Consider making the interval larger.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Is the “being in the office really did help me” because you were in the office so figured out how to be successful in the office? I look at GitHub and I see thousands upon thousands of highly successful highly complex software written by all levels of experience collaboratively without an office environment. I got started with open source in the 1990’s and it was amazing how fast we wrote stuff, and the level of mentoring I got was amazing. When I started working in professional office environments it was amazing how little could get done in such a long period of time with so many people, and mentoring was something I had to eek out of people who were too busy meeting and jockeying. I think folks see in office as necessary because it was their experience and they don’t have a frame of reference for any other way of career development. That’s simply an emergent reality, not necessarily the singular reality. Investing time in juniors is a conscious decision. It’s just as easy to ignore a junior developer in person than it is remotely. But I firmly believe asynchronous work habits lead to the best mentoring possible - juniors can ask their questions in slack or whatever, and seniors can answer as they have the chance to. Soft skill mentoring happens just fine over zoom, and that stuff is better scheduled as a private convo.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Open source is an interesting subject to look at. Obviously it's possible to build software without an office environment, but when you look at most of these projects, they have 1-3 main contributors and others who submit a single patch and leave. I've tried a few times to contribute to OSS projects and found it to often be an impossible barrier to get over. I'm decently experienced with 10 years programming experience across a few jobs, and I just have not found a good way to get all the required knowledge to start contributing to a project. I quickly build up a list of questions and the only channel for asking them is usually IRC where no one responds. Meanwhile I get up to speed super fast in an office/work environment where another dev will sit with you for a chunk of time and show you the ropes. So much faster than floundering around the codebase making assumptions.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    OSS is hard mostly because there’s an enormous number of zombie projects out there and you need to find the one that fits you. Sort of like, say, a job. I’m mostly in the rust world, but try these crates: ratatui-rs, nushell. Python: cadquery, build123d They’re active, the contributors and maintainers are helpful, and are doing interesting (to me) work. My point however wasn’t that open source monolithically solves the problems. My point was it can solve the problems that an endemic to office culture, and I’ve rarely found office cultures that solve these problems. My assertion was that the modalities of OSS work can apply to corporate work, with strong effect, but only if people are committed to making it work and invest in each other. The same is true of in office, but I hold that the asynchronous style of work is inherently more efficient due to the fact that asynchronous work in general is more efficient than synchronous. In my career I’ve seen a lot of fads including importing OSS style work into the office. These were done by cargo culting- using pull requests, open code base, etc. The real magic behind OSS is that everyone works asynchronously - irc, slack, discord, mail lists, Usenet, uucp, etc except for when it’s absolutely necessary to stop the world and synchronize. This is intuitively more productive, or at least as an engineer you should see clearly how that applies to computers, programs, logistics, and every every production process - why not to software development? The primary “why not” is “I like working in an office with people because after college I’m lonely.” But that’s just because you’ve not re-adapted to living in your community. Before the automobile and it’s associated infrastructure most people worked from home, or extremely proximate. You can have friends again outside college and without an office. It’ll just take some adapting to being human again. The human hamster wheels aren’t necessary.
theGnuMe 4y ago
The problem with in office work as an IC is that all day is spent helping other people and then you have to do your own IC work in the evenings. The problem with remote work is the constant slack interruptions to help other people and you have to do your own IC work around that. We have essentially a documentation, coordination, and communications problem that nobody has figured out how to solve in a remote first world. I'd be interested to hear people's solutions to this.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  You have to communicate with people that you need a block of time without interruptions and that you only have a certain amount of the day to dedicate to things that aren't your own work. Your manager has to be on board and enforce this. Otherwise you need to get another job. To be fair I do get interruptions from Discord for my website that aren't related to other projects but I usually deliberately prioritize them because it's my business and no one else can provide support for it.
scarface74 4y ago
> One of the ideas I’m thinking about is to hire only within a metropolitan area, but keep remote How does everyone being in the same metro area help? The idea of working remote is being able to choose where you want to live?
- digging 4y ago
  That's part of it. The main part is working at the physical location of your choice, usually home, and not having to commute.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The physical location in many people’s circumstance is far away from the high cost of living area that the company is located. “Working remotely” and still having to be in a designated city really doesn’t help much for most people.
ilaksh 4y ago
I just don't buy into the idea that it's impossible to effectively "absorb" or "brainstorm" over the internet. It sounds like a lack of effort and/or knowledge of how to use the tools.
Salgat 4y ago
It boils down to work culture. Everything you can do in person, you can do remotely, you just need to ensure the company enforces a culture that embraces the tools required to make that possible. Pair programming? With modern tools it's trivial to do. Discussions? Start a call or use a channel. If anything, remote work forces you to better document what's going on, rather than some poor junior having to hunt down the right guy the office to help them figure something out. A junior suffering due to remote work is a junior whose company has failed them.
ChancyChance 4y ago
I think the word you are looking for is "osmosis". People learn faster when they have someone to teach them in a multi-modal environment. Videoconferencing is only a shadow of this, and everything is scheduled. There is zero chance for spontaneity with such a sterile structure. I'm nearing the end of my career, but I certainly would not have learned as fast as I did without many, many mentors. Just reading the internet, especially when the technology is cutting edge and not even ON the internet, would have left me far behind. And if everyone falls behind, the company falls behind. I think companies that mandate some amount of in-person time will have less risk of falling behind than those that are 100% remote. I don't see how all of those junior 100% remote engineers will keep up. Maybe they are all just very very very smart.
moistoreos 4y ago
This is less of a problem if there's a culture that provides positive & honest paired programming w/o judgement on a regular basis. I try to do this, not just to glean business context from other engineers, but so I can learn from others. For this to work well, toxicity needs to be nonexistent. I would even advocate for a "no tolerance" for toxic comments/behavior from peers/colleagues.
theonething 4y ago
I'm at a fully remote company and I hate our onsite team retreats. A waste of time and money. Apparently I'm not the only who thinks this. https://nypost.com/2022/06/15/companies-are-shelling-out-for-lavish-retreats-and-workers-hate-them/ https://nypost.com/2022/06/15/companies-are-shelling-out-for...

jon-wood 4y ago

Very much agreed on this. One of the key things in me being where I am now is spending a few years working for an ISP staffed by technology nerds in my early 20s, where I'd spend all day surrounded by people who knew what they were doing, and then spend several evenings a week in the pub with the same people. Its possible to get the same experience remotely - I got started in the industry via open source work, where mailing lists had a similar atmosphere, but it is so much easier if you can just bounce ideas around. I love the idea of regular 3 day retreats, but being in my late 30s with a child now doing them anywhere near that regularly is a non-starter for me. Maybe quarterly, but even then you're going to have to really sell it for me to commit to all of them.

ramraj07 4y ago
It’s 3 days a month though, and to clarify my thoughts are that you still go back home every day. How would that be a problem?
- alistairSH 4y ago
  I guess it depends where the retreat is held. And how long the commute is to get there. Taking my house as an example - I'm ~1 hour from the city center (assuming no major delays). If the retreat ended up downtown, I'd hate that. If it was on the far side of the city, I'd want to stay overnight. But, if the retreat was at the corporate office, I'd love it - as that's one mile down the road and I can walk.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    This is the exact reason executives favor return-to-office. Asking remote employees to assemble just 3 days per month becomes a major hassle, see above. If a job is work-from-office every day, the employees will either figure it out or quit, any other arrangement and the logistics of when and where to meet becomes a major distraction.
    - e44858 4y ago
      Traveling every day to the office sounds like a much bigger hassle than traveling three days a month.
      - listenallyall 4y ago
        That's the whole point. The executives offer remote + 3 days together, and employees like alistair complain about the 3 days as opposed to the benefit of working from home the rest of the time. So the execs say fuck it, ok just come to the office every day.
        ipaddr 4y ago
        Then they can't find workers
- bomewish 4y ago
  Straight up just get everyone to bring their families. Head out Friday afternoon, back Monday morning. Two days of work kinda lost, but the weekend is for hanging out and chatting about work stuff -- both structured and unstructured. Go to family friendly places; let the kiddos play together. I love it already.
TheGigaChad 4y ago
[dead]
moate 4y ago
Imma be honest, if it was not explained to me during hiring that mandatory "3-day retreats" were part of my job on a quarterly basis, I would be finding a new job before the next one. Some people care about their "careers". Other people care about paying their rent and see jobs as the only tangible way to meet that need. I will never give a fuck about being good at my job, only competent. I am currently at that competent level and have had this actively avoidance mindset since I got into the tech space. I'm very curious, love learning and have a ton of hobbies...that have fuckall to do with converting my time on this planet into profits for my overlords and financial crumbs for myself. The Career people seem to think, falsely, that the Job people can be coached into changing. Some can, but some of us will fight the happy hours and the retreats and the optional mentorships.
- CleaveIt2Beaver 4y ago
  I can't stress enough how refreshing it is to see this take on HN. The usual rise-and-grind crowd always seem to dominate the discussions - likely because they have that investment (emotional and professional) in the first place; I don't want to invalidate anybody by saying this - so it at times feels alienating to read these threads. I don't want to be friends, I don't want to constantly be growing and mastering my field, etc; I want to be good at what I do, fulfill my objectives for the day, and leave it at the desk when I go home.
ilaksh 4y ago
Why are you not able to bounce ideas around in a text chat room, audio chat room, video chat room, 2d/3d/VR shared space? Why is it so hard for you to do it unless you are literally in the same physical location?
- postalrat 4y ago
  Because we are human not machine.

croutonwagon 4y ago

Personally my team does stand up meetings weekly on Mondays. This is mostly to allow folks (and force a few) to think about their tasks and goals and organize them into "what can I accomplish this week" style bullet points. But then we also have a Teams channel carved out to "watercooler" or Daily meets. These are non-structured and you are free to come and go as needed. But its a place for folks to hang out and verbalize their tshooting or seek advice/help/opinions on problems etc. For some, its a good place to listen and be a wallflower. For others, its a good place to bounce ideas. If you are trying to focus you dont join. If someone specifically wants to bring someone into the fold they are free to ping them and just say "hey im in the daily, could really use your help when you get a chance". Sometimes that person can join immediately. Sometimes they may sit for a bit working on other things until the person they wanted to ask has the time. Sometimes that person just says "im busy, lets schedule a time or catch tomorrow". Its worked....okay enough. And was specifically setup because I had several FTR guys well before COVID that specifically stated they felt distant and out of touch with the pulse or overall goals of the department. Frankly I am in them so much I have a small Amazon Basics conference mic with a physical mute button and a blue/red indicator light. The only habit that can be "bad" coming from it is sometimes folks will have an affinity to "rally the troops" and engage multiple people on something they themselves havent spent much or any time chewing on first because it can be perceived as easier or quicker to a resolution. This is especially true with "fires". But I have seen the same in person as well. Especially with teams of weaker IC's.

Gigachad 4y ago
I feel like random teams chat just died the day they made channels threaded. Now writing a message feels like a newsletter rather than a chat.
- croutonwagon 4y ago
  Yeah we use a group chat for normal day to day chatter. Teams channels are for topic specific content and comments that will likely need to be tracked/re-referenced down the line. The sole exception is the water cooler meeting channel that is just a channel to host that meeting. Overall teams is awful for searching though.

comfypotato 4y ago

My company has three days in office each month, and it’s during a week specified by the company so that you synchronize with your team. Very similar to what you’re talking about.

ramraj07 4y ago
How do you feel about it? Any feedback?
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Love it. Privately owned company (doesn’t have to conform to shareholder wants) with good leadership; lots of the policies resonate with the employees. I’ll admit: I’m particularly extroverted, and this makes the in-person days more enjoyable. I get much more work done at home, and I generally enjoy life better working remotely. I thought I would have preferred full remote, but I have no desire to leave because everything else about the company is ideal. My understanding is that they have, before and after the pandemic, drawn a connection between remote work and attrition. Their hybrid policy is based on this, and they have found it solves the attrition issue. We could theorize all day as to exactly how/why :) Some combination of forcing people to be geographically located, see their teammates face to face, and then giving employees the majority of the time to themselves seems to work better for keeping employees than being fully remote. My personal theory is that, counterintuitively, just about everyone actually ends up feeling/doing better if they have a bit of in-person interaction. I was staunchly in the camp of full-remote even before the pandemic, yet I don’t have any desire to change companies. It’s just a great place to work, and 3 days a month is extremely manageable. I have lots of connections at Google, for example (good full-remote options) and I could get an interview at the drop of a hat. I have no interest in this right now, though, even with much lower compensation.
  - aix1 4y ago
    To support your theory, I am an extreme introvert managing a fully distributed team. Yet I choose to regularly come to the office for a bit of in-person interaction (mainly social since my direct co-workers aren't based here). I should mention that I live within a ten-minute walk to the office. For example, I can easily walk there for lunch and then walk back home. If the commute was much longer, that would significantly change the calculus. A pleasant half-hour train ride? Maybe, but not very frequently. An hour drive? No way I'd go unless I absolutely have to.

stetrain 4y ago

I saw similar results when we first started hiring after moving full remote. The group that had worked together in the office handled remote work spectacularly. New hires tended to flounder a bit compared to what we were used to. We achieved some better results once we realized this and started putting some more specific mentorship time in with new hires. Like in the first week their manager/lead should be meeting with them multiple times a day, then ramping down to at least once a day with screen sharing / pair programming etc. when they have questions. Plus inclusion and involvement in meetings that help provide a bigger picture of how the product works, customer needs, etc. And making sure they are introduced to many team members and know where to ask questions for the best feedback. Of course this depends on the team, the new hire, and how things are going. But it seemed like the default case for many people was to spend hours silently not progressing when they were stuck on a problem, from dev machine setup to their first assigned tasks. Getting dumped into a Slack instance with dozens of channels and hundreds of people can certainly be overwhelming and being guided through these first steps seemed to help a lot. I think it’s completely possible to give a new dev the same kinds of experience and mentorship, but with remote work that has to be done more deliberately. In a close office environment a lot of that happened via natural interaction and osmosis without anything needing to be scheduled on a calendar.

lostcolony 4y ago
This is the main thing I've noticed - the people who talk about how there is something lost in how work gets done haven't changed how work gets done. You can't just move to being remote without rethinking how you do everything. People were forced to be remote with COVID, but corporate essentially just tried to port the way things were done to remote, and on realizing it didn't work as well, want to move back. A few places are doing things correctly and building specifically for remote work. I honestly believe this is why we have such stark disparity in studies.
- pnutjam 4y ago
  100% this. I've been remote since covid. First job was transitioned and I mentored and onboarded people. It was alot of screen sharing, and messaging back and forth. This was no different (but better) then onsite where they would cram into my cube and try to take notes. Remote made this 100% better. Next company, I was the new guy and there were issues getting up to speed. Nobody really owned the onboarding process and this "remote first" environment had alot of technical debt and poor documentation. Now I'm at another remote first company, and it's great. I know who to ask and I get answers real-time or asynchronous, depending on what needs to happen. People are responsive and regular meetings keep us on the same page. Documentation is stressed and kept up to date.

jollofricepeas 4y ago

Or… Just have optional office hours, Slack huddles and mob sessions every few days. Some of my engineers… - have a open huddle for a few hours a day where anyone can drop into their project while they work - others make use of our scheduled themed mob sessions (ie. Maintenance Mondays, deployment Thursdays). have a problem, idea or just want to hangout then come by? - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a weekly office hour to assist juniors or teach something of their choice. The default doesn’t always have to be return to office for a physical meet. There’s lots of other options.

ramraj07 4y ago
There is absolutely something that gets lost in virtual meets. It’s not just for within team discussions. It’s also about discovering colleagues in other teams across the org. Tools like Donut help a bit but the magic is still lost.
- ahnberg 4y ago
  I think the biggest issue is people who claim it can't be done and that the only way to accomplish this is to physically meet. I feel like the biggest hinderance to making the most out of a remote option are the ones who prefer going to the office or explain all kinds of issues with "it's because we don't meet in person". One just have to embrace and apply the mindset that it is possible. Different, surely, but still possible! I'm not saying there is something WRONG with going to the office, it is lovely to hang out in person with lots of people, but it is very limiting in many ways as well. Just limiting in other ways than remote. You learn to deal with both, when you need to, though. The issue is mostly that people deal with the office-problems but don't care much about dealing with the remote-problems.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    that's an interesting angle, I wonder if this pattern of defaulting to "because we don't meet in person" is that a giveaway for some lacking of communicating in writing I wonder. Just people who can't get an idea out effectively in textual form for complex ideas on a repeated basis and chalking it up to needing that in person outlet. That's curious, does being face to face elicit other modes of communication and ability to articulate and connect things. Maybe. But I suppose it could also be an opportunity to lean on the "see what I mean", "do you know what I'm saying" and allow body language and other social lubricant type bits and pieces to smooth glossing over when another doesn't follow or see what they mean.

bonestamp2 4y ago

I agree, although I will add that one of the biggest breakthroughs I came up with was when I transitioned to remote when most other people still worked at the office (this is long before covid). I changed something so that I can use it remotely, and that had a profound impact down the line -- it coincidentally fixed some licensing/piracy issues we had and made the product better in several ways. I think the moral of the story is that more diversity, in as many ways as we can apply that word, is probably a benefit to most organizations.

walthamstow 4y ago

We basically do your idea at my current company. All the engineers have to be within traveling distance of London and we are all expected to be in the office together on the the same day every month. One day per month, that's it. Some are in more frequently but that's the baseline. You can live wherever you want but you have to travel to London once a month and if that takes several hours and costs £100s, that's your problem. It works really well. We do our retros and other group sessions in person, eat lunch together, chat with other functions, go for a beer or play a board game after work, etc.

broast 4y ago

Personally, I grew up on the internet, learning from people in chatrooms and forums which were strong communities where most of my personal adult relationships have come from (many of whom I've not met in 20 years of knowing them). From what I've seen, if your seniors and your juniors are both from this era and culture, your remote team will excel without missing a beat. I think it's the people used to the "old ways" that will suffer, for having expensive requirements like an office to capture the same value.

inconceivable 4y ago
hehe - just go ahead and say it... if you grew up on irc, this is your natural habitat. many people who never irc'd have adapted just fine, but those who struggle with typing at 100wpm+ are obviously going to hate remote work.
- jxramos 4y ago
  that is an interesting connection, the habit of chat in general. I never considered my days in the chat rooms as prepping me for life in chat. I occasionally see various critiques and complaints at work with some folks getting disoriented and frustrated working in slack and I never quite get where they're struggling or coming from. Could it be just general inexperience in chats like AOL, IRC, yahoo, MSN, hangouts, or whatever the medium was. Keyboard chatting is definitely different from mobile chatting for sure with the keyboard and speed. Maybe individuals haven't spent earlier years in their youth in the chatrooms quite possibly.
- amatecha 4y ago
  Yeah this is so true. I casually type like 110-130wpm and didn't think anything of it... it wasn't until I got into the business world that I realized this isn't too common, even among other career programmers. Huh, didn't everyone stay up until 3am chatting on [IRC/etc.] and then fall asleep in class the next day? haha ;)
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > Huh, didn't everyone stay up until 3am chatting on [IRC/etc.] and then fall asleep in class the next day? haha ;) Chaotic many-users chatrooms (including, but not exclusively, IRC) and text chat in video games. You have to get fast at typing to use either—in the former, if you're too slow, you'll drop out of the flow of conversation, and in the latter, speed is key because being slow makes you vulnerable in the game, and if you're not pretty damn fast you can't really afford to use it at all. I learned the basic mechanics of typing from Mavis Beacon, but I got fast because of those.

zeku 4y ago

IMO, just make that 3 day retreat during work days so you don't require people to work weekends. With that small change I think this would be great for software teams. Perhaps too, every month is too often for anyone with a family. Consider making the interval larger.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Is the “being in the office really did help me” because you were in the office so figured out how to be successful in the office? I look at GitHub and I see thousands upon thousands of highly successful highly complex software written by all levels of experience collaboratively without an office environment. I got started with open source in the 1990’s and it was amazing how fast we wrote stuff, and the level of mentoring I got was amazing. When I started working in professional office environments it was amazing how little could get done in such a long period of time with so many people, and mentoring was something I had to eek out of people who were too busy meeting and jockeying. I think folks see in office as necessary because it was their experience and they don’t have a frame of reference for any other way of career development. That’s simply an emergent reality, not necessarily the singular reality. Investing time in juniors is a conscious decision. It’s just as easy to ignore a junior developer in person than it is remotely. But I firmly believe asynchronous work habits lead to the best mentoring possible - juniors can ask their questions in slack or whatever, and seniors can answer as they have the chance to. Soft skill mentoring happens just fine over zoom, and that stuff is better scheduled as a private convo.

Gigachad 4y ago
Open source is an interesting subject to look at. Obviously it's possible to build software without an office environment, but when you look at most of these projects, they have 1-3 main contributors and others who submit a single patch and leave. I've tried a few times to contribute to OSS projects and found it to often be an impossible barrier to get over. I'm decently experienced with 10 years programming experience across a few jobs, and I just have not found a good way to get all the required knowledge to start contributing to a project. I quickly build up a list of questions and the only channel for asking them is usually IRC where no one responds. Meanwhile I get up to speed super fast in an office/work environment where another dev will sit with you for a chunk of time and show you the ropes. So much faster than floundering around the codebase making assumptions.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  OSS is hard mostly because there’s an enormous number of zombie projects out there and you need to find the one that fits you. Sort of like, say, a job. I’m mostly in the rust world, but try these crates: ratatui-rs, nushell. Python: cadquery, build123d They’re active, the contributors and maintainers are helpful, and are doing interesting (to me) work. My point however wasn’t that open source monolithically solves the problems. My point was it can solve the problems that an endemic to office culture, and I’ve rarely found office cultures that solve these problems. My assertion was that the modalities of OSS work can apply to corporate work, with strong effect, but only if people are committed to making it work and invest in each other. The same is true of in office, but I hold that the asynchronous style of work is inherently more efficient due to the fact that asynchronous work in general is more efficient than synchronous. In my career I’ve seen a lot of fads including importing OSS style work into the office. These were done by cargo culting- using pull requests, open code base, etc. The real magic behind OSS is that everyone works asynchronously - irc, slack, discord, mail lists, Usenet, uucp, etc except for when it’s absolutely necessary to stop the world and synchronize. This is intuitively more productive, or at least as an engineer you should see clearly how that applies to computers, programs, logistics, and every every production process - why not to software development? The primary “why not” is “I like working in an office with people because after college I’m lonely.” But that’s just because you’ve not re-adapted to living in your community. Before the automobile and it’s associated infrastructure most people worked from home, or extremely proximate. You can have friends again outside college and without an office. It’ll just take some adapting to being human again. The human hamster wheels aren’t necessary.

theGnuMe 4y ago

The problem with in office work as an IC is that all day is spent helping other people and then you have to do your own IC work in the evenings. The problem with remote work is the constant slack interruptions to help other people and you have to do your own IC work around that. We have essentially a documentation, coordination, and communications problem that nobody has figured out how to solve in a remote first world. I'd be interested to hear people's solutions to this.

ilaksh 4y ago
You have to communicate with people that you need a block of time without interruptions and that you only have a certain amount of the day to dedicate to things that aren't your own work. Your manager has to be on board and enforce this. Otherwise you need to get another job. To be fair I do get interruptions from Discord for my website that aren't related to other projects but I usually deliberately prioritize them because it's my business and no one else can provide support for it.

scarface74 4y ago

> One of the ideas I’m thinking about is to hire only within a metropolitan area, but keep remote How does everyone being in the same metro area help? The idea of working remote is being able to choose where you want to live?

digging 4y ago
That's part of it. The main part is working at the physical location of your choice, usually home, and not having to commute.
- scarface74 4y ago
  The physical location in many people’s circumstance is far away from the high cost of living area that the company is located. “Working remotely” and still having to be in a designated city really doesn’t help much for most people.

ilaksh 4y ago

I just don't buy into the idea that it's impossible to effectively "absorb" or "brainstorm" over the internet. It sounds like a lack of effort and/or knowledge of how to use the tools.

Salgat 4y ago

It boils down to work culture. Everything you can do in person, you can do remotely, you just need to ensure the company enforces a culture that embraces the tools required to make that possible. Pair programming? With modern tools it's trivial to do. Discussions? Start a call or use a channel. If anything, remote work forces you to better document what's going on, rather than some poor junior having to hunt down the right guy the office to help them figure something out. A junior suffering due to remote work is a junior whose company has failed them.

ChancyChance 4y ago

I think the word you are looking for is "osmosis". People learn faster when they have someone to teach them in a multi-modal environment. Videoconferencing is only a shadow of this, and everything is scheduled. There is zero chance for spontaneity with such a sterile structure. I'm nearing the end of my career, but I certainly would not have learned as fast as I did without many, many mentors. Just reading the internet, especially when the technology is cutting edge and not even ON the internet, would have left me far behind. And if everyone falls behind, the company falls behind. I think companies that mandate some amount of in-person time will have less risk of falling behind than those that are 100% remote. I don't see how all of those junior 100% remote engineers will keep up. Maybe they are all just very very very smart.

moistoreos 4y ago

This is less of a problem if there's a culture that provides positive & honest paired programming w/o judgement on a regular basis. I try to do this, not just to glean business context from other engineers, but so I can learn from others. For this to work well, toxicity needs to be nonexistent. I would even advocate for a "no tolerance" for toxic comments/behavior from peers/colleagues.

theonething 4y ago

I'm at a fully remote company and I hate our onsite team retreats. A waste of time and money. Apparently I'm not the only who thinks this. https://nypost.com/2022/06/15/companies-are-shelling-out-for-lavish-retreats-and-workers-hate-them/ https://nypost.com/2022/06/15/companies-are-shelling-out-for...