3 ms·

Damn, even @paulg?? Someone help me out here. Most incredibly smart people I know and even most of you here on HN, we basically grew up on discord, irc,etc...

by _8j50 3y ago

Damn, even @paulg?? Someone help me out here. Most incredibly smart people I know and even most of you here on HN, we basically grew up on discord, irc,etc... I hate to make myself look bad but if my IRL social skills and sociability is 3/10, remotely it is at least 7/10. Are there really a lot of high caliber people who somehow spent time to develop IRL social and communication skills? My theory is that people who are now in their 40s or older can't figure out how to work remotely, especially as managers. There are people that talk to me in private message when I work remotely and then there are those that only engage with me in person, that's why I theorized that. They need to train people explicitly and show them how they unconsciously avoid engaging with others remotely. Also, my coworkers that like to brown-nose the most and they are social butterflies that are very attentive to managers and respond socially to their every needs get the most recognition but really smart full-WFH guys that are getting so much quality work done basically don't exist in the eyes of management. It is a travesty, I specifically chose this field because your technical skills are rewarded, and that was my strength. I am not an extremist, a balanced approach is what I advocate for. If you can't manage people remotely, you can't manage people. For regular employees, they should let people WFH based on performance and partially (bad performance=3days office, good=1day office). If that isn't viable then at least let it be at the discretion of managers instead of company wide. I also theorize that founders are very social people and they especially typically can't figure out remote management.

Dirak 3y ago
Tangential, but I think strong social skills are very important if you want to improve as a software engineer. Examples of strong social skill would be being able to set project direction, set up cross team collaborations, communicate impact, mentor and grow your colleagues, etc. Exclusively having strong technical skills can lead you down the "evil genius" archetype, where you're able to deliver technically complex software, but in a way that alienates contributors and collaborates (ie Haskell elitists).
- _8j50 3y ago
  I think you are mixing soft skills with social skills. To me, social means you are good at chit-chat,watercooler talk, going to lunches, parties, events,etc... i.e.: a social person is what oldschool hr people mean when they say "can I strike a conversation with this person in a line at the airport or starbucks". What you are talking about imo is "soft skills", being able to work with others and communicate well. You can have great softskills and also have terrible table manner or bad emotional-intelligence. I am 100% with you on technical-skills only being a bad thing. But you can communicate and do all those things you mentioned virtually. You can ping someone and just chat with them about stuff without taking them to lunch, dinner or walking up to their cubicle/desk and interrupting them. Look at open work areas for example, even before covid, I and many others were screaming in pain over them. Out brains are just wired different. Extroverts tend to become managers and founders and refuse to consider that others think and function differently. Look at most opensource projects, did people sit around in an office to code them? Was there a Linux kernel developers office somewhere? Then paulg's point is invalid.
Kina 3y ago
> I also theorize that founders are very social people and they especially typically can't figure out remote management. I think this is a large part of the problem that isn’t being explicitly pointed out. Extroverts likely hate this style of work and it feels like some folks, instead of really compromising or trying to find an effective model that works with this new reality, just go the safe route. I was happier with the way things were...
danielrpa 3y ago
Ahem, I'm an older manager and one of the biggest proponents of remote in my company, and I know many 40+ managers who are big into remote too. So your theory is wrong. More than half of my team live on different states (and even countries at one point), so even if we were not working from home, they would not be in the same office as me "collaborating". You probably just know a bunch of bad managers that gave you the impression this is age-related. Interestingly, and this is an anecdote, it's the younger managers who usually haven't yet sorted out the control problem and are less into remote work.
- _8j50 3y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that it was because of age or that only older managers had that issue. My observation was that people who spent 10+ years managing people in the office have a hard time managing people remotely, and undesrstandablu so, that's why I suggested remote management training.

by _8j50 3y ago

Dirak 3y ago

Tangential, but I think strong social skills are very important if you want to improve as a software engineer. Examples of strong social skill would be being able to set project direction, set up cross team collaborations, communicate impact, mentor and grow your colleagues, etc. Exclusively having strong technical skills can lead you down the "evil genius" archetype, where you're able to deliver technically complex software, but in a way that alienates contributors and collaborates (ie Haskell elitists).

_8j50 3y ago
I think you are mixing soft skills with social skills. To me, social means you are good at chit-chat,watercooler talk, going to lunches, parties, events,etc... i.e.: a social person is what oldschool hr people mean when they say "can I strike a conversation with this person in a line at the airport or starbucks". What you are talking about imo is "soft skills", being able to work with others and communicate well. You can have great softskills and also have terrible table manner or bad emotional-intelligence. I am 100% with you on technical-skills only being a bad thing. But you can communicate and do all those things you mentioned virtually. You can ping someone and just chat with them about stuff without taking them to lunch, dinner or walking up to their cubicle/desk and interrupting them. Look at open work areas for example, even before covid, I and many others were screaming in pain over them. Out brains are just wired different. Extroverts tend to become managers and founders and refuse to consider that others think and function differently. Look at most opensource projects, did people sit around in an office to code them? Was there a Linux kernel developers office somewhere? Then paulg's point is invalid.

Kina 3y ago

> I also theorize that founders are very social people and they especially typically can't figure out remote management. I think this is a large part of the problem that isn’t being explicitly pointed out. Extroverts likely hate this style of work and it feels like some folks, instead of really compromising or trying to find an effective model that works with this new reality, just go the safe route. I was happier with the way things were...

danielrpa 3y ago

Ahem, I'm an older manager and one of the biggest proponents of remote in my company, and I know many 40+ managers who are big into remote too. So your theory is wrong. More than half of my team live on different states (and even countries at one point), so even if we were not working from home, they would not be in the same office as me "collaborating". You probably just know a bunch of bad managers that gave you the impression this is age-related. Interestingly, and this is an anecdote, it's the younger managers who usually haven't yet sorted out the control problem and are less into remote work.

_8j50 3y ago
I didn't mean to imply that it was because of age or that only older managers had that issue. My observation was that people who spent 10+ years managing people in the office have a hard time managing people remotely, and undesrstandablu so, that's why I suggested remote management training.