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Anecdotally having spent several years at my current job in person and now several years fully remote (whole company, full remote) I find it much much easier to

Anecdotally having spent several years at my current job in person and now several years fully remote (whole company, full remote) I find it much much easier to do quick huddles and swarm on tasks/ideas. Before you had to convince everybody you wanted to talk to to leave their desks and hopefully find a free conference room and you had to premeditate this by days for scheduling (and free conference rooms). Now we can meet almost right away, no physical context switching. As with most things it really depends, also having some people be remote and some in person is always going to disadvantage the remote workers and set them up for failure in management’s eyes so no surprise there.

nostrademons 3y ago
"Before you had to convince everybody you wanted to talk to to leave their desks and hopefully find a free conference room and you had to premeditate this by days for scheduling (and free conference rooms)." This may be a company-culture thing, but before remote work, collaboration at my past employers was always "Swing your chair around and open your mouth". It didn't take a whole lot of convincing or a conference room.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  IMO this is the worst kind. It means I can be interrupted at a moments notice. Unfortunately, even the act of asking "hey are you free?" means I am sometimes broken from very deep concentration. Remote Work lets me silence the things I don't need to deal with right away while those that truly need my attention I can prioritize ahead of time or there are ways to "break through" the silence because its urgent enough to warrant it. I hated not having that level of autonomony in the office. Mostly, so did everyone else once they realized how this wasn't as nice as it seemed
  - scottLobster 3y ago
    Unpopular opinion, but this seems more like an issue of developer comfort than actual productivity, similar to how taking adderall can make you feel more productive than you actually are. If the product quality depends on you maintaining a flow state for extended periods, then you're either working in a research lab or it's a poorly designed product. I say this as a dev who also gets annoyed when my deep focus is interrupted, but so long as the interruption is actually warranted (and with my company's culture it usually is) I swallow my annoyance, task-switch and get the job done anyway. I'm already earning a higher salary than than most people in the world with good benefits and flexible hours. I can be mildly annoyed at work sometimes if it helps get the job done.
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      I disagree. I can move through quite alot, quite well, when I can work in a deep flow. 2-4 hours of deep work can be incredibly productive end to end and we follow TDD pretty strictly, which lends itself well to really thinking about problems and their solutions in my experience thus far, but it requires the ability to really walk through a problem space. Our code quality here has improved significantly around this, and we are shipping faster than ever. That isn't to say I'm unavailable (or anyone else) its that there is an acceptance that not all things are urgent, and if they are, its warranted to break through any focus periods.
      - scottLobster 3y ago
        Doesn't sound like we disagree that much. You are actually available, but not all things are urgent. I'd say the difference at my workplace is that pieces of the product are extremely old, developed under different architectures with different technologies under multiple management regimes of varying quality. There's a lot of tribal knowledge, so everything is kind of urgent by default as someone new to a specific piece of code can't move forward efficiently without picking the relevant SME's brain. Forbidding interruptions would be akin to mandating "only the SMEs can work, and the rest of you need to waste money twiddling your thumbs or banging your head against obscure legacy code until they feel like helping you". Most of the time when I'm interrupted it's because someone's blocked and I have the knowledge to unblock them, or I can at least point them to who does, so my loss of flow state is their gaining the ability to move forward at all, and everyone benefits. By contrast it sounds like you guys designed your product around maximizing the impact of flow states and minimizing the need for interruption. I bet you have good documentation too. I'm honestly jealous, it would take tens of millions and years of re-writes to do the same here, and our prime customer wouldn't be willing to accept the delay even if we had the funding.
        diracs_stache 3y ago
        It may not be that "only SMEs can work" but that "SMEs don't have 5 tickets this sprint but 3 high level deliveries over the next quarter" thus they are allowed work uninterrupted from the daily churn and focus intensely (contributing to their already high base knowledge). Whereas other engineers are constantly distracted and stay surface level trying to stay afloat.
  - jayd16 3y ago
    Did you notice that the grand parent is promoting instant interruptions with remote meetings? You're talking about being able to ignore your coworkers requests easier. Seems pretty contradictory, no? I also do wonder what the real value of it ignoring live requests is. You personally get to stay on task but what about what's lost? If you block two or more people isn't it worse overall?
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible in the first place. If its not, there is either an issue in planning, resources, or in (unlikely) cases, truly it has to be serial, in which case it should be planned accordingly I'd also argue, that 2 people being blocked because of X should warrant breaking through any focus period, as thats clear indication of an issue that needs more attention. If you're talking about 2 people being blocked simply because they don't know what to do, thats why companies should have proper mentorship programs in the first place, it was a need hidden because being in-office made this less visible of a need, but it was always there, and dedicated mentorships are better than ad-hoc problem solving in these types of cases. Not every senior needs to be in the "deep work" pool (we do mentorship on rotation where I work)
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible Which works if the work is predictable. If you’re in a dynamic environment, that’s not possible. Hence, agility. To take an absurd example, military command shouldn’t be RO.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      Noobs mostly do the interrupting and want to be able to interrupt. On the other hand, the experts are just getting interrupted with noob questions, and end up helping several people with their tasks in a day and their own task is still there undone. Noob get promoted and expert doesn't. Expert hates the noob. Clear enough?
  - helen___keller 3y ago
    This is exactly the tradeoff, right? By definition this is more efficient communication when you can ping someone irl, interrupt their flow, and get an immediate response. And yes, it’s significantly worse for deep work. In exchange for losing deep work, you no longer have to write a detailed thought to your PM, wait 5 hours for them to ping back “sounds good to me”, then begin working on it the next business day not feeling sure if they even read what you wrote.
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      That sounds more of a planning / culture issue than something thats unavoidable. At the beginning of the pandemic, this happended alot, where I had to wait for PM input or what have you, but eventually, culture molded to be more async and we were given more trust to do things we felt were right. We re-structured meetings to be more productive, for example: PMs are required to write all the requirements in advance of a refinement session so everyone can read them first, and you are expected to have read them. This opens up for async discussion (via Jira messages) and come refinement meetings, a way to ask and discuss directly. In the last 2 years since thats taken place, I have not had another instance of waiting on a PM for a response. In cases where we need something more urgent, there are always ways to get a PM on the line ASAP, we have protocols for that (seldom used, but they exist)
      - helen___keller 3y ago
        Yes, there exist company cultures and management styles that greatly assist remote teams
    - commandlinefan 3y ago
      > This is exactly the tradeoff, right? But you're also expected to meet your weekly "commitments" in JIRA - which means you're going to be working nights and weekends to do the work you're supposed to be doing since you were interrupted all day to do the work other people were supposed to be doing. But you're right, this _is_ the tradeoff, and it's by design, since you're "exempt".
  - OfficeChad 3y ago
    If you want to work in silence - become a monk.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Feels like and environment problem. One workplace I had was an open office, but it also had a few dozen "focus rooms". Very tiny booth sort of room with A desk and outlets. Someone in a focus room clearly shouldn't be disturbed, but in the open space you're generally a bit more open.
- garciasn 3y ago
  Sr. Director; team is entirely remote. Company is half remote with 1 day per week required for non-remote employees. My team is highly technical and generally requires deep thinking and little interruptions to make progress. The single best thing that remote work has done is stop the endless interruptions via shoulder tap at the desk.
  - taway1874 3y ago
    Glad to hear! How do your engineers deal with impromptu messages in Teams/Slack disrupting their deep work?
    - garciasn 3y ago
      It's a lot easier to put yourself in Do Not Disturb via whatever team chat option you're using than having to hide from someone tapping your shoulder at your desk.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      I wrote localslackirc :) I basically have the ability to completely block certain people, quietly ignore channels until I get mentioned directly (@here gets ignored), and cause the abusers of @here to not generate a notification for me. I also don't see gifs and reactions, which is a big help in not getting distracted.
- op00to 3y ago
  I would never feel comfortable interrupting people like that in an office. What if they’re in flow state?
commandlinefan 3y ago
> leave their desks and hopefully find a free conference room I've spent the last 20 years or so working for large conglomerates that have multiple satellite offices in different continents so huddles were always on zoom anyway. But they're still insisting on RTO.

nostrademons 3y ago

"Before you had to convince everybody you wanted to talk to to leave their desks and hopefully find a free conference room and you had to premeditate this by days for scheduling (and free conference rooms)." This may be a company-culture thing, but before remote work, collaboration at my past employers was always "Swing your chair around and open your mouth". It didn't take a whole lot of convincing or a conference room.

no_wizard 3y ago
IMO this is the worst kind. It means I can be interrupted at a moments notice. Unfortunately, even the act of asking "hey are you free?" means I am sometimes broken from very deep concentration. Remote Work lets me silence the things I don't need to deal with right away while those that truly need my attention I can prioritize ahead of time or there are ways to "break through" the silence because its urgent enough to warrant it. I hated not having that level of autonomony in the office. Mostly, so did everyone else once they realized how this wasn't as nice as it seemed
- scottLobster 3y ago
  Unpopular opinion, but this seems more like an issue of developer comfort than actual productivity, similar to how taking adderall can make you feel more productive than you actually are. If the product quality depends on you maintaining a flow state for extended periods, then you're either working in a research lab or it's a poorly designed product. I say this as a dev who also gets annoyed when my deep focus is interrupted, but so long as the interruption is actually warranted (and with my company's culture it usually is) I swallow my annoyance, task-switch and get the job done anyway. I'm already earning a higher salary than than most people in the world with good benefits and flexible hours. I can be mildly annoyed at work sometimes if it helps get the job done.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    I disagree. I can move through quite alot, quite well, when I can work in a deep flow. 2-4 hours of deep work can be incredibly productive end to end and we follow TDD pretty strictly, which lends itself well to really thinking about problems and their solutions in my experience thus far, but it requires the ability to really walk through a problem space. Our code quality here has improved significantly around this, and we are shipping faster than ever. That isn't to say I'm unavailable (or anyone else) its that there is an acceptance that not all things are urgent, and if they are, its warranted to break through any focus periods.
    - scottLobster 3y ago
      Doesn't sound like we disagree that much. You are actually available, but not all things are urgent. I'd say the difference at my workplace is that pieces of the product are extremely old, developed under different architectures with different technologies under multiple management regimes of varying quality. There's a lot of tribal knowledge, so everything is kind of urgent by default as someone new to a specific piece of code can't move forward efficiently without picking the relevant SME's brain. Forbidding interruptions would be akin to mandating "only the SMEs can work, and the rest of you need to waste money twiddling your thumbs or banging your head against obscure legacy code until they feel like helping you". Most of the time when I'm interrupted it's because someone's blocked and I have the knowledge to unblock them, or I can at least point them to who does, so my loss of flow state is their gaining the ability to move forward at all, and everyone benefits. By contrast it sounds like you guys designed your product around maximizing the impact of flow states and minimizing the need for interruption. I bet you have good documentation too. I'm honestly jealous, it would take tens of millions and years of re-writes to do the same here, and our prime customer wouldn't be willing to accept the delay even if we had the funding.
      - diracs_stache 3y ago
        It may not be that "only SMEs can work" but that "SMEs don't have 5 tickets this sprint but 3 high level deliveries over the next quarter" thus they are allowed work uninterrupted from the daily churn and focus intensely (contributing to their already high base knowledge). Whereas other engineers are constantly distracted and stay surface level trying to stay afloat.
- jayd16 3y ago
  Did you notice that the grand parent is promoting instant interruptions with remote meetings? You're talking about being able to ignore your coworkers requests easier. Seems pretty contradictory, no? I also do wonder what the real value of it ignoring live requests is. You personally get to stay on task but what about what's lost? If you block two or more people isn't it worse overall?
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible in the first place. If its not, there is either an issue in planning, resources, or in (unlikely) cases, truly it has to be serial, in which case it should be planned accordingly I'd also argue, that 2 people being blocked because of X should warrant breaking through any focus period, as thats clear indication of an issue that needs more attention. If you're talking about 2 people being blocked simply because they don't know what to do, thats why companies should have proper mentorship programs in the first place, it was a need hidden because being in-office made this less visible of a need, but it was always there, and dedicated mentorships are better than ad-hoc problem solving in these types of cases. Not every senior needs to be in the "deep work" pool (we do mentorship on rotation where I work)
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible Which works if the work is predictable. If you’re in a dynamic environment, that’s not possible. Hence, agility. To take an absurd example, military command shouldn’t be RO.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    Noobs mostly do the interrupting and want to be able to interrupt. On the other hand, the experts are just getting interrupted with noob questions, and end up helping several people with their tasks in a day and their own task is still there undone. Noob get promoted and expert doesn't. Expert hates the noob. Clear enough?
- helen___keller 3y ago
  This is exactly the tradeoff, right? By definition this is more efficient communication when you can ping someone irl, interrupt their flow, and get an immediate response. And yes, it’s significantly worse for deep work. In exchange for losing deep work, you no longer have to write a detailed thought to your PM, wait 5 hours for them to ping back “sounds good to me”, then begin working on it the next business day not feeling sure if they even read what you wrote.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    That sounds more of a planning / culture issue than something thats unavoidable. At the beginning of the pandemic, this happended alot, where I had to wait for PM input or what have you, but eventually, culture molded to be more async and we were given more trust to do things we felt were right. We re-structured meetings to be more productive, for example: PMs are required to write all the requirements in advance of a refinement session so everyone can read them first, and you are expected to have read them. This opens up for async discussion (via Jira messages) and come refinement meetings, a way to ask and discuss directly. In the last 2 years since thats taken place, I have not had another instance of waiting on a PM for a response. In cases where we need something more urgent, there are always ways to get a PM on the line ASAP, we have protocols for that (seldom used, but they exist)
    - helen___keller 3y ago
      Yes, there exist company cultures and management styles that greatly assist remote teams
  - commandlinefan 3y ago
    > This is exactly the tradeoff, right? But you're also expected to meet your weekly "commitments" in JIRA - which means you're going to be working nights and weekends to do the work you're supposed to be doing since you were interrupted all day to do the work other people were supposed to be doing. But you're right, this _is_ the tradeoff, and it's by design, since you're "exempt".
- OfficeChad 3y ago
  If you want to work in silence - become a monk.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Feels like and environment problem. One workplace I had was an open office, but it also had a few dozen "focus rooms". Very tiny booth sort of room with A desk and outlets. Someone in a focus room clearly shouldn't be disturbed, but in the open space you're generally a bit more open.
garciasn 3y ago
Sr. Director; team is entirely remote. Company is half remote with 1 day per week required for non-remote employees. My team is highly technical and generally requires deep thinking and little interruptions to make progress. The single best thing that remote work has done is stop the endless interruptions via shoulder tap at the desk.
- taway1874 3y ago
  Glad to hear! How do your engineers deal with impromptu messages in Teams/Slack disrupting their deep work?
  - garciasn 3y ago
    It's a lot easier to put yourself in Do Not Disturb via whatever team chat option you're using than having to hide from someone tapping your shoulder at your desk.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    I wrote localslackirc :) I basically have the ability to completely block certain people, quietly ignore channels until I get mentioned directly (@here gets ignored), and cause the abusers of @here to not generate a notification for me. I also don't see gifs and reactions, which is a big help in not getting distracted.
op00to 3y ago
I would never feel comfortable interrupting people like that in an office. What if they’re in flow state?

commandlinefan 3y ago

> leave their desks and hopefully find a free conference room I've spent the last 20 years or so working for large conglomerates that have multiple satellite offices in different continents so huddles were always on zoom anyway. But they're still insisting on RTO.