10 ms·

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

by broast 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  I'm somewhere around 30~50* wpm with maybe 80% accuracy and I max out around 700 words per hour (12 wpm) when writing fiction. I've never had an issue participating online, including IRC. *: Not for lack of trying. My brain has trouble doing language operations in real time. I'm just grateful I can touch type!
timr 3y ago
The internet has existed since before I was in college, so I also "grew up" on the internet. But you're vastly overestimating what you can learn from randos in chatrooms and forums. Most of the best, highly experienced people in this industry never post in chatrooms or forums. You're getting a biased sample, and don't know what you don't know. Will this work for low-value piecework, or learning how to use an API? Yes, for a while. But this will only take you from absolute noob to moderately competent junior. In order to grow in your career, the broader context, business knowledge, connections and intangibles you gain from being around senior colleagues are invaluable. I say this from hard experience. At the start of my career, I thought I could learn everything I needed to know on the internet. I was wrong. Even if most of the technical details were there (they weren't) and correct (they aren't), in every career, your accomplishments are based on your personal relationships. Always. I can't emphasize this enough. It's hard enough to make those relationships, even when you're in the office every day. Trying to do it all by video call is just living life on hard mode. --- Edit: people seem to keep interpreting this comment as "it's impossible to grow in a remote career". That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just going to respond once here: a) I don't know if it's "impossible" to form strong personal relationships remote-only, but it's much harder. b) Obviously, everyone defines success differently, and maybe your definition is different than my own, but c) In my experience, all other things being equal, the more time you spend around other people, the better your career will be.
- broast 3y ago
  Your take is very dismissive and does not align with my experience. We work on complicated technical high value things and my juniors are very fast learners. And we learn from each other and not necessarily from the internet. We also don't need video calls. I have never met them, and rarely have I seen their faces. Kind of like my life long friends on the internet, we didn't have video calls then either. We can connect through text just fine. We sometimes play games together to blow off the steam, and we collaborate on meaningful work problems.
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bugglebeetle 3y ago
Right? If you can learn how to get good at Elden Ring from a fan wiki and a couple YouTube videos, I’m pretty sure you can learn how to do most office jobs with basic documentation and some video chats…
- uxp100 3y ago
  Video Games are environments that are designed to teach you how to master them. That includes very hard video games; I don’t feel like video games are a good point of reference. YouTube is also pretty good at teaching you how to change the headlights on your car, but it’s not so good at teaching you a foreign language. I’m not sure where a basic office job like programming falls on that continuum.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    >Video Games are environments that are designed to teach you how to master them …and any decent workplace should be the same. >YouTube is also pretty good at teaching you how to change the headlights on your car, but it’s not so good at teaching you a foreign language. YouTube is fantastic at this and used by language-learners all over the world.
  - matwood 3y ago
    > Video Games are environments that are designed to teach you how to master them Pretty much every workplace?
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Funny thing is, promotions in your career are very rarely about your pure skill at something. Hard pill to swallow for the Just Log On And Deliver crowd but it's more like (skill * how much your boss likes you * social connections in the team where others vouch for you).
  - broast 3y ago
    Which some of us are way better at making online text-only relationships than face-to-face ones, which is how my career accelerated, and where most of my closest and longest lasting relationships in life have come from.
michaelt 3y ago
On the other hand, plenty of people going through college are exposed to a culture that you should work on a problem set for a good long time before resorting to the professor's office hours (which are probably only once a week anyway) and that asking a peer is practically cheating. And indeed, when filing bugs in open source projects - there is often a culture that you should have exhausted every other option before bothering the nice volunteers.
thatfrenchguy 3y ago
I also grew up on the internet, most of folks at my workplace grew up with the internet and... everyone noticed that during covid you miss out on a lot of growth and interesting conversations from unplanned meetings, I think it's a bit silly to assume there's nothing to gain from having a shared space at the office, the same way it's silly to think there's no cost in having to go to an office either.
- tkiolp4 3y ago
  What you say is true, but on the other hand remote work (usually) brings benefits to your “non-work” life. I definitely wouldn’t like to trade the niceties of the office (not many, but not zero either) with the niceties of remote work (which are many, from my point of view). So, honest question: you wouldn’t mind trading them?
  - thatfrenchguy 3y ago
    > So, honest question: you wouldn’t mind trading them? Hybrid is obviously the best of both worlds? I'd never want to work fully remote, there's a lot of benefits both for me and for the company in having in-person time.
    - tkiolp4 3y ago
      In an ideal world, yes hybrid is the best. But hybrid becomes easily non-realistic when 99% of job offers in country X come from city Z and you live in town W (which is not close to Z). In an ideal world, I would love to go to the office every now and then, just by crossing the street. In the real world, it’s either moving to the city and paying a high price for a tiny apartment so that you can go commute once or twice per week to the office, or it’s living in a big house in a decent town working 100% remotely. There middle-point options, of course, but those are rather less likely to occur.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
I also grew up on the internet, but disagree strongly: the challenge of onboarding remotely is real, and more challenging the equivalent on-site experience. And to be very precise: I don't think that remote vs in-office onboarding is simply different, or even that it simply requires more intentional efforts, but that it is on the whole entirely more complex in non-trivial ways (in time, effort, and attention by all parties - aka: more cost).

by broast 3y ago

inconceivable 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
I'm somewhere around 30~50* wpm with maybe 80% accuracy and I max out around 700 words per hour (12 wpm) when writing fiction. I've never had an issue participating online, including IRC. *: Not for lack of trying. My brain has trouble doing language operations in real time. I'm just grateful I can touch type!

timr 3y ago

The internet has existed since before I was in college, so I also "grew up" on the internet. But you're vastly overestimating what you can learn from randos in chatrooms and forums. Most of the best, highly experienced people in this industry never post in chatrooms or forums. You're getting a biased sample, and don't know what you don't know. Will this work for low-value piecework, or learning how to use an API? Yes, for a while. But this will only take you from absolute noob to moderately competent junior. In order to grow in your career, the broader context, business knowledge, connections and intangibles you gain from being around senior colleagues are invaluable. I say this from hard experience. At the start of my career, I thought I could learn everything I needed to know on the internet. I was wrong. Even if most of the technical details were there (they weren't) and correct (they aren't), in every career, your accomplishments are based on your personal relationships. Always. I can't emphasize this enough. It's hard enough to make those relationships, even when you're in the office every day. Trying to do it all by video call is just living life on hard mode. --- Edit: people seem to keep interpreting this comment as "it's impossible to grow in a remote career". That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just going to respond once here: a) I don't know if it's "impossible" to form strong personal relationships remote-only, but it's much harder. b) Obviously, everyone defines success differently, and maybe your definition is different than my own, but c) In my experience, all other things being equal, the more time you spend around other people, the better your career will be.

broast 3y ago
Your take is very dismissive and does not align with my experience. We work on complicated technical high value things and my juniors are very fast learners. And we learn from each other and not necessarily from the internet. We also don't need video calls. I have never met them, and rarely have I seen their faces. Kind of like my life long friends on the internet, we didn't have video calls then either. We can connect through text just fine. We sometimes play games together to blow off the steam, and we collaborate on meaningful work problems.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 3y ago

bugglebeetle 3y ago

Right? If you can learn how to get good at Elden Ring from a fan wiki and a couple YouTube videos, I’m pretty sure you can learn how to do most office jobs with basic documentation and some video chats…

uxp100 3y ago
Video Games are environments that are designed to teach you how to master them. That includes very hard video games; I don’t feel like video games are a good point of reference. YouTube is also pretty good at teaching you how to change the headlights on your car, but it’s not so good at teaching you a foreign language. I’m not sure where a basic office job like programming falls on that continuum.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  >Video Games are environments that are designed to teach you how to master them …and any decent workplace should be the same. >YouTube is also pretty good at teaching you how to change the headlights on your car, but it’s not so good at teaching you a foreign language. YouTube is fantastic at this and used by language-learners all over the world.
- matwood 3y ago
  > Video Games are environments that are designed to teach you how to master them Pretty much every workplace?
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Funny thing is, promotions in your career are very rarely about your pure skill at something. Hard pill to swallow for the Just Log On And Deliver crowd but it's more like (skill * how much your boss likes you * social connections in the team where others vouch for you).
- broast 3y ago
  Which some of us are way better at making online text-only relationships than face-to-face ones, which is how my career accelerated, and where most of my closest and longest lasting relationships in life have come from.

michaelt 3y ago

On the other hand, plenty of people going through college are exposed to a culture that you should work on a problem set for a good long time before resorting to the professor's office hours (which are probably only once a week anyway) and that asking a peer is practically cheating. And indeed, when filing bugs in open source projects - there is often a culture that you should have exhausted every other option before bothering the nice volunteers.

thatfrenchguy 3y ago

I also grew up on the internet, most of folks at my workplace grew up with the internet and... everyone noticed that during covid you miss out on a lot of growth and interesting conversations from unplanned meetings, I think it's a bit silly to assume there's nothing to gain from having a shared space at the office, the same way it's silly to think there's no cost in having to go to an office either.

tkiolp4 3y ago
What you say is true, but on the other hand remote work (usually) brings benefits to your “non-work” life. I definitely wouldn’t like to trade the niceties of the office (not many, but not zero either) with the niceties of remote work (which are many, from my point of view). So, honest question: you wouldn’t mind trading them?
- thatfrenchguy 3y ago
  > So, honest question: you wouldn’t mind trading them? Hybrid is obviously the best of both worlds? I'd never want to work fully remote, there's a lot of benefits both for me and for the company in having in-person time.
  - tkiolp4 3y ago
    In an ideal world, yes hybrid is the best. But hybrid becomes easily non-realistic when 99% of job offers in country X come from city Z and you live in town W (which is not close to Z). In an ideal world, I would love to go to the office every now and then, just by crossing the street. In the real world, it’s either moving to the city and paying a high price for a tiny apartment so that you can go commute once or twice per week to the office, or it’s living in a big house in a decent town working 100% remotely. There middle-point options, of course, but those are rather less likely to occur.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago

I also grew up on the internet, but disagree strongly: the challenge of onboarding remotely is real, and more challenging the equivalent on-site experience. And to be very precise: I don't think that remote vs in-office onboarding is simply different, or even that it simply requires more intentional efforts, but that it is on the whole entirely more complex in non-trivial ways (in time, effort, and attention by all parties - aka: more cost).