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After doing a WFH job for 2 years, and then going back to the office for a different job, what strikes me is how terribly everything is documented here--because
by khafra 2y ago
After doing a WFH job for 2 years, and then going back to the office for a different job, what strikes me is how terribly everything is documented here--because when someone walks over and asks someone else how something works, that doesn't get automatically documented like it does in Slack.
At my WFH job, I spent a lot of time searching Slack, and reading through documentation which had been distilled from Slack conversations. I learned a lot faster than I have, so far, at this job.
- wildrhythms 2y agoIn general, I find less and less time is given to me and other coworkers to document things compared to a few years ago.
- vundercind 2y agoSimilar circumstances (but longer time wfh) and similar observation. The in-person place is full of these absurd chains of tracking down the person who knows the thing, terrible processes for communication and defining what work needs to be done, et c, in ways that would never survive in a remote company because you can’t work that way when you’re remote. It’s a huge drag on their efficiency, in person or remote, and hurts hiring because they struggle to provide even a handful of of remote days per year in a market where every office worker I know (aside from here) is at least hybrid-leaning-remote (and most office workers I know aren’t in tech, nor is this a tech company). They have no idea that it’s bad, though.
- RandomLensman 2y agoAre these huge differences in efficiency visible in financial numbers?
- nottorp 2y agoHow do you propose to establish that, clone the people at one company, run both clones for a couple years and find out which made more money?
- RandomLensman 2y agoWe kind of have natural experiments: switching to WFH and then switching back (at least for some some), so there should be groups of companies that could be compared.
- vundercind 2y agoFor companies like this one, WFH probably would look bad. It’d both be harder to work that way because they’re already dysfunctional, and it’d make the existing dysfunction more visible (and so probably be blamed for things that would have been going wrong even with everyone in the office).
- pards 2y agoSearchable chat history works when people communicate in public channels. My experience at large financial institutions is that the vast majority of chat is person-to-person. I try to encourage public (or group) chats but I _think_ people, especially juniors or new-joiners, are reluctant to look unknowledgeable.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoMy employer had a great culture of talking things out in public channels, but after the acquisition, nearly everything is in private channels & DMs now. For some things, I've explicitly told people: "can you copy and paste this question in our support channel, so I can answer there?" But for a lot of things, I've just accepted that this is the new normal, and for some of it, I even understand why it is the way it is.
- vundercind 2y agoTeams encourages this awful pattern because their public “teams” don’t just have a normal-ass chat (and you can’t change it to be one), but a weird interface that seems to mainly be for announcements-with-comments. So 1-on-1 and ad hoc small group chats and chats attached to meetings are where everything happens. And god help you if your org also has a short chat retention policy.
- cflewis 2y agoI had a manager who thought putting questions in group chats would make it look like we were not competent and so should be only posted in DMs. Same about asking questions to other team members in bug tickets: don't do it, others will think the team is incompetent. Spoiler alert: He was one of, if not the worst, manager I have ever had because, surprise! he was awful in every other dimension as well.
- stroupwaffle 2y agoThis to me seems not a problem with remote vs. office, but a particular company culture. Meeting notes aren’t difficult to create. The problem with chat-based solutions is people get lazy in articulation. So instead of a cohesive idea it’s spread across a giant thread. And instead of actually creating a proper document, it’s easy to say, “Meh, I’ll do it later it’s in slack.” But then it never gets done, and the info is privy to only those in the conversation. It can be good or bad either way, but there’s no substitute for in-person communication; and there’s no substitute for a thoughtfully constructed document.
- qwytw 2y ago> instead of actually creating a proper document, it’s easy to say, “Meh, I’ll do it later it’s in slack.” Seems like an actual use case for LLMs. Yeah I understand the potential issues but (worst case) confusing documentation with some errors and flawed assumptions yet proper citation and sources (so it can be manually improved and eventually turned into thoughtfully constructed document) seems better than having no docs or entirely outdated ones.
- khafra 2y agoI'd say that, for people just starting a career who need to develop the illegible/intangible skills, in-person mentoring has no replacement. But after that, it's a real tradeoff. You can't just expect people to create and publish meeting notes when they catch a senior in the hallway and get an explanation they need, even if it would help others in their situation (or help themselves, in 6 months when they need to do that again and can't quite remember the steps (Unless their mentor modeled this important skill, I guess?)). https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-trivial-inconveniences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri...
- dzhiurgis 2y agoIt's almost like Github needs to come up with chat app that summarises discussions into a wiki...
- nunez 2y agoThis falls apart at places that default to DMs.