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I’m 50 and started working in 1996. I started working remotely in consulting in mid 2020. I’ve led multiple medium to large consulting projects over the pas

I’m 50 and started working in 1996. I started working remotely in consulting in mid 2020. I’ve led multiple medium to large consulting projects over the past 4.5 years where the entire team and the customer are in different locations. There are all sorts of remote white boarding tools and even something as simple as two people working on a shared LucidChart.

notyourwork 2y ago
I’d love to learn about more tools you use to collaborate productively in a virtual arrangement.
- eisa01 2y ago
  Especially if anyone has tips for getting Zoom-like annotation support in Teams!
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Yeah, if you are using Teams, I assume you are working for a “Big Enterprise” company. I work for a company that was born working remotely. We use GSuite which has great support for annotations.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Nothing really special that we use now. They are all SaaS tools we login to via SSO. GSuite, Notion, and LucidChart are all great for collaboration. Of course Slack and Zoom.
- anotherhue 2y ago
  Honestly, an actual telephone would go a long way. It was how the 90's ran.
JediPig 2y ago
I too hit the 50. For the last 8 years I been 100% remote and seen the office ONE time only and that was just to hug a buddy happy retirement. Later on I found out his wages were cut and he found a new job. I quickly joined him with a competitor. The pro RTO people are nothing short of power hungry. They like flexing their will against others. That’s why having leverage and a huge f*ck you fund is necessary. Especially when it’s going to take a year to un frack this IT job economy. A quick fix would be removal of all IT h1b. The that would get Americans back to work. We all know they use it to keep wages down.
- asoneth 2y ago
  > The pro RTO people are nothing short of power hungry. It depends. I have no issue with companies that RTO'd after lockdowns ended. Some teams and orgs work better in person, others can work fine remotely. But promising new hires that they can work remotely only to renege on that promise a few years later when the job market tightens is a despicable bait-and-switch.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Exactly this. If you worked in the office, then went remote after Covid and the company made no promises about being permanently remote, I have no issues with that. In my case, Amazon Retail reached out to me in mid 2020 about an SDE position. They made it clear I would have to relocate eventually. There was no way in hell I was going to uproot my life and move to Seattle for Amazon already knowing there reputation. They then suggested I apply for a role in Professional Services that was “field be design” and that would be permanently remote. That department was exempted from the first round of RTO requirements while I was still there. As of this year, even those positions are required to be in an office even though it’s more than likely no one on a project will be in the same office and the clients will definitely be remote. It means you are either at a customer site or on a call with a client from the office. I got Amazoned in late 2023. The RTO mandate from them just came into affect this year. The equivalent positions at GCP are also hybrid. They reached out to me. But when they said that, I said no thanks
backtobasix 2y ago
There are ZERO online collab tools that even come close to the speed of a whiteboard. Fumbling with a mouse to write a word or draw a straight line is 10x slower than pen. Sorry, I think you're either used to working slow, or strait up bs'ing.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Well, I have done consulting working for AWS. Just because you haven’t learned how to adapt doesn’t mean the rest of the world hasn’t adapted.
  - asoneth 2y ago
    > Just because you haven’t learned how to adapt doesn’t mean the rest of the world hasn’t adapted. The truth is a little more complicated. We've definitely found some tasks where CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work) performs better than colocated work, particularly for well-structured tasks that involve any sort of automation, documentation, or governance. But collaboration tools still aren't a satisfactory replacement for many kinds in-person work. Studies routinely find colocated teams have higher creativity, efficiency, team cohesion, and job satisfaction. Whether that's worth the higher costs (office space and salaries) depends on the domain, but there are certainly companies that would be better off being in-person.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      You think more people would be satisfied with coming into loud noisy open offices everyday with constant interruptions than being at home? There have also been plenty of studies about how long it takes people to get back on task after an interruption and studies about the deleterious affects of long commutes. Not to mention increase risk of car accidents (unfortunately every link I found was from a law office). And let’s not forget about disease spreading (even before COVID), increase cost of childcare, and how RTO affects mostly women more than men because they are more often than not the primary caretakers of children and aging parents. It’s not just about children who are too young to be in school. It’s about children too young to stay at home when they are sick. Speaking of which, there is the entire knock on effect of parents sending kids to school sick because they have to go into the office and can’t get last minute childcare. But most day to day work doesn’t require “creativity”. At most it requires bouts of collaboration and maybe creativity and then everyone goes in their corner and does their own work and can collaborate remotely - pull requests, online screen sharing, shared documents you can edit, “virtual war rooms”, etc. The first time I worked at a company where the rest of my team was in another city, I had no problem driving 200 miles each way once a quarter (and get reimbursed at the IRS mileage rate) once a quarter. Later as I got into consulting, we could all hop on a plane and meet at a central office somewhere or with a client.

notyourwork 2y ago

I’d love to learn about more tools you use to collaborate productively in a virtual arrangement.

eisa01 2y ago
Especially if anyone has tips for getting Zoom-like annotation support in Teams!
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Yeah, if you are using Teams, I assume you are working for a “Big Enterprise” company. I work for a company that was born working remotely. We use GSuite which has great support for annotations.
scarface_74 2y ago
Nothing really special that we use now. They are all SaaS tools we login to via SSO. GSuite, Notion, and LucidChart are all great for collaboration. Of course Slack and Zoom.
anotherhue 2y ago
Honestly, an actual telephone would go a long way. It was how the 90's ran.

JediPig 2y ago

I too hit the 50. For the last 8 years I been 100% remote and seen the office ONE time only and that was just to hug a buddy happy retirement. Later on I found out his wages were cut and he found a new job. I quickly joined him with a competitor. The pro RTO people are nothing short of power hungry. They like flexing their will against others. That’s why having leverage and a huge f*ck you fund is necessary. Especially when it’s going to take a year to un frack this IT job economy. A quick fix would be removal of all IT h1b. The that would get Americans back to work. We all know they use it to keep wages down.

asoneth 2y ago
> The pro RTO people are nothing short of power hungry. It depends. I have no issue with companies that RTO'd after lockdowns ended. Some teams and orgs work better in person, others can work fine remotely. But promising new hires that they can work remotely only to renege on that promise a few years later when the job market tightens is a despicable bait-and-switch.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Exactly this. If you worked in the office, then went remote after Covid and the company made no promises about being permanently remote, I have no issues with that. In my case, Amazon Retail reached out to me in mid 2020 about an SDE position. They made it clear I would have to relocate eventually. There was no way in hell I was going to uproot my life and move to Seattle for Amazon already knowing there reputation. They then suggested I apply for a role in Professional Services that was “field be design” and that would be permanently remote. That department was exempted from the first round of RTO requirements while I was still there. As of this year, even those positions are required to be in an office even though it’s more than likely no one on a project will be in the same office and the clients will definitely be remote. It means you are either at a customer site or on a call with a client from the office. I got Amazoned in late 2023. The RTO mandate from them just came into affect this year. The equivalent positions at GCP are also hybrid. They reached out to me. But when they said that, I said no thanks

backtobasix 2y ago

There are ZERO online collab tools that even come close to the speed of a whiteboard. Fumbling with a mouse to write a word or draw a straight line is 10x slower than pen. Sorry, I think you're either used to working slow, or strait up bs'ing.

scarface_74 2y ago
Well, I have done consulting working for AWS. Just because you haven’t learned how to adapt doesn’t mean the rest of the world hasn’t adapted.
- asoneth 2y ago
  > Just because you haven’t learned how to adapt doesn’t mean the rest of the world hasn’t adapted. The truth is a little more complicated. We've definitely found some tasks where CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work) performs better than colocated work, particularly for well-structured tasks that involve any sort of automation, documentation, or governance. But collaboration tools still aren't a satisfactory replacement for many kinds in-person work. Studies routinely find colocated teams have higher creativity, efficiency, team cohesion, and job satisfaction. Whether that's worth the higher costs (office space and salaries) depends on the domain, but there are certainly companies that would be better off being in-person.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    You think more people would be satisfied with coming into loud noisy open offices everyday with constant interruptions than being at home? There have also been plenty of studies about how long it takes people to get back on task after an interruption and studies about the deleterious affects of long commutes. Not to mention increase risk of car accidents (unfortunately every link I found was from a law office). And let’s not forget about disease spreading (even before COVID), increase cost of childcare, and how RTO affects mostly women more than men because they are more often than not the primary caretakers of children and aging parents. It’s not just about children who are too young to be in school. It’s about children too young to stay at home when they are sick. Speaking of which, there is the entire knock on effect of parents sending kids to school sick because they have to go into the office and can’t get last minute childcare. But most day to day work doesn’t require “creativity”. At most it requires bouts of collaboration and maybe creativity and then everyone goes in their corner and does their own work and can collaborate remotely - pull requests, online screen sharing, shared documents you can edit, “virtual war rooms”, etc. The first time I worked at a company where the rest of my team was in another city, I had no problem driving 200 miles each way once a quarter (and get reimbursed at the IRS mileage rate) once a quarter. Later as I got into consulting, we could all hop on a plane and meet at a central office somewhere or with a client.