The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace

This is my experience of British management over the last quarter of a century. I am an expensive contract resource but I still get paid for turning up and not so much for providing working software.

When I am working remotely, due to the organisation's inability to measure productivity, fostered by their management's "bums on seats" culture, I can't demonstrate that remote work is a benefit to them.

I call this “general wants to see his army”. I can read Wikipedia all day, but I must be present. Funny thing, all managers are allowed to work from home. Developers not! There is open office with small desks for 8-12 people in one space.

> As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get the impression they're not working."

This really hits the nail on the head, in my experience this is accurate for employers that are anti-remote, they want to be able to see people "work". I've argued that that means they are essentially paying people to be there 8 hours a day, not that they're working 8 hours a day. You see it a lot in stale offices, people are sitting at their desks appearing busy. Work doesn't get completed in the that time and they start hiring more busy drones.

It's absolutely baffling to me that we can't look at the statistics at a higher level and recognise that it's a highly inefficient way of working.

Maybe the problem is you were trying to invalidate their e tire management worldview with those studies. Instead, a more effective strategy might have been convincing management that while their methods were generally fine, for your specific case you might buck the trend. At least, that's how I've had luck with this problem. And also reassuring(and proving through my actions) that they wouldn't need to devote special time just to managing me vs managing the horde.

The interesting question is: "why?".

David Graeber's book "Bullsh*t Jobs" is about that.

These companies main priority is not efficiency and productivity. If it was, they could hire less people to do the same work and that would foster unemployment.

They have a political and social role: hire as many people as possible. Keep them employed and busy and keep an eye on them.

Become too big to fail and you'll be rewarded with overbudgeted contracts (and even bailouts, sometimes).

I personally just do it.

It's then empirically obvious that I get more done and am happier.

If they don't like it, they can sack me. I earn more than twice minimum wage, ergo I can work half the year and get by.

It's never happened yet because it turns out actually people like people who get stuff done. Who knew?

Behind this monitor I'm looking out at the river, watching Winter roll in as I eat lunch. :)

It’s a valid concern. If you don’t have transparency into ongoing work, then you aren’t ready for remote workers.

If the only method for your manager to know what people are working on is to tap people on shoulders, then doing that isn’t a “bad behavior” for the manager, it’s necessary behavior.

Of cause a better solution is to have trust and plans. (Agile, scrum, waterfall, napkin sketches or whatever it doesn’t matter as long as people align during planning and have transparency into the plan). But in the absence you still need to have management in sync with what is going on.

Naturally the best pathway forwards is to look into changing your system to include all these value adding elements. But enabling remote work while management is critically dependent on physical presence to continue operation is not a good idea. And the solution is not just for managers to “give up the mindset” of knowing what’s going on below them. Trust is great when it works, and toxic when it doesn’t. The agile mantra of increasing trust is not just supposed to advocate blind trust. It’s about building a framework and working routine where we are validated in trusting each other.

> interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something

Well, yes, that's what you're being paid for.

The alternative is hard KPI's and getting fired for not meeting them, which is not something you really want.

Personally I work remotely in Norway with a similar commute, but I do travel into the office for some face to face meetings. Most is done via slack or something similar though and my productivity is vastly higher. I also don't need to waste 2 hours every day of my personal time that I can instead spend with my wife and children.

They also save on office space.. I don't see how this is not a win win for everyone either.

Your ex CEO sounds like a psychopath.

Unless your work output is very easy to measure, demanding you show up to work in one of the only ways to ensure you're at least putting in an effort for your employer.

Of course, one of the hardest professions to measure output for is software engineers.

I once worked with a guy who, it was discovered after a long time, actually had two Silicon Valley jobs. That he actually showed up at! He walked/drove between them a few times a day, and managed to keep the illusion up for quite a while.

I'm guessing he has 4 "remote" jobs now :)

The worst thing is that Europeans take this attitude with them when they move to USA and then enforce it everywhere. They just can't imagine somebody working remotely properly and have the need to micromanage over IM, i.e. employees getting messaged immediately when one's status switches to "away" or similar.

As someone who has gone to the dark side, there's an interesting tradeoff here. There's basically three scenarios:

(1) all employees are trusted and unmeasured, but you have to tap people on the shoulder every once in a while to confirm that they're on track. Naturally, this is easier if everyone is on-site.

(2) everyone is accountable for producing of tickets, and you can check that everyone is at least doing some work. Check-ins can happen via comments in tickets.

(3) Everyone just does whatever they think they're supposed to be doing, and the manager only finds out something is wrong when the employee volunteers the information or the project isn't delivered on-time.

(1) is the common case, (2) requires time and skills many managers don't have (and creates @#$% Jira commentary form the peanut gallery), (3) requires building an excellent team with years of mutual trust between them, and still goes wrong all the time.

Seeing you at your desk working, and asking a casual question or two at the water cooler is by far the easiest (laziest?) way to make sure things don't go too far sideways.

Remember, we live in a corporate culture where people who have offices with doors that close praise the “collaboration” of the open office that the rest of us serfs suffer under. You’re dreaming if you think productivity is actually the goal: power is the goal (their power over you). If you manage to produce anything in spite of management’s best efforts to thwart you, that’s entirely accidental.

Businesses optimize for low middle management quality (being able to keep track of attendance == good enough), not for good grunt quality.

I believe a change must come from bottom up and not from top down. Management won't change since they have little incentive to do so. Employees who are not happy with synchronous office work with a lot of interruptions should quit and start small successful companies that are asynchronous and remote.

To help this movement, we built open source SaaS boilerplate. We also built Async, an asynchronous team communication tool designed specifically for small teams of software engineers.

> the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something.

Yeah, the answer to the OP articles question about why the remote studies work out that way isn't a big mystery.

The first thing you learn working from home is self-motivation and training yourself to get "in the zone". Then try doing the same at an office, where interruptions are far more often.

But that said not all offices are like this. A lot of companies work to 'protect' their creatives/engineers from disruption from the extroverts/talkers. Either by isolating them in separate closed office rooms or having rules like headphones on = don't bother them.

If there's anything I've learned working office jobs at corporations, it's that you can't change the culture around "butt in seats" management because it's almost like one of the core identities of the leadership. There's always a non-technical C-level executive at the top who values "butt in seats" management, and remote work isn't one of those things that anybody will speak out to defend, particularly against the superior(s) at the top of the food hierarchy.

It's kind of like how legalizing prostitution makes way more sense especially for the sex workers, but nobody ever talks of legalizing it because nobody wants to be the guy to bring it up or challenge the status quo.

Just leave and get a job at any remote-friendly company. The grass is really greener.

Remote has already taken off. Some people will always be stuck in the slave master mentality by choice, not because they don't know any better. They just love to control others and make others' lives miserable. Many managers literally have no other skills or purpose in this world other than that. Fuck them. The rest of us will be productive remotely while the master and slaves will work in open offices where the idiot executives actually believe that random sharing of bullshit is what writes code, fills in the accounting books, and in general does actual work. As long as those morons are making money though, their idiocy will live on. And how can you not make money in advertising these days? So it's a long uphill battle for the rest of us who prefer to get things done and do non work stuff afterwards than the moronic control freaks who think collaboration is the key and somehow the code or article writes itself. The alternative is starting that fifth game of foosball before lunch and getting to actual work sometime in the afternoon, continuing at home, and maybe finishing by two to three am if you're lucky. No wonder people work so many hours with such little efficiency.

> On the downside, I suffer from being far from where decisions are taken

And your employer suffers from your lack of input in those decisions.

My personal experience with lying down to work is that it feels good in the short term, but causes problems in the long term (increased pain).

I have no data to back this claim, but I can provide this single data point.

I completely agree with both your other points about trust/discipline and important decisions though.

This was exactly my experience too, but I would gladly do remote again still. No chance of "advancement" within the company though for remotes.

Yea, I've also noticed that I'm actually way more responsive working remotely because I overcompensate to signal that I'm available and working (or at least not slacking off). The fact that I'm in a totally opposite timezone makes me further want to ensure the high degree of trust. I'll immediately respond to Slack messages I get even at 2am if I still happen to be awake.

Meanwhile when I was working in an office, I felt that Slack messages were often a distraction that pulled me out of my flow state. I felt that if it were really that important or urgent (it rarely is), then they'd just come to my desk and tap me on the shoulder.

Looks like "working harder to compensate for not being there" is a common theme among us remote workers.

By the way, regarding:

> I suffer from back pain when sitting in a chair for too long. At my place, I can lie down if needed.

I suggest wearing a smartwatch that will notify you when you have been inactive for at least an hour. Try to do a couple minutes of stretches or bodyweight exercises when you get the notification. I see the opportunity to be able to squeeze in tiny amounts of exercise as another benefit of working remotely.

Was there any mention about how virtual interactions might add to the quota?

I'm curious if daily social video calls with your remote co-workers would be helpful in that regard.

I think it's absolutely true that most people will prefer an office or at least a community to work in most the time in person. I've done both and normally prefer an office. However most offices nowadays are very badly run and promote open layout and daily scrums etc. If offices weren't effectively sabotaged this way they would be much better. Every office critique in the OP article was made as well by my father in convo. He isn't in tech but ran a small biz his whole life. Not unique problems to tech we just have a weird culture atm. So my thought is the breakout companies that are learning how to respect engineering and get away from the hokey practices of current middle management will be the only ones attracting senior talent. Things will shift eventually and the office can maybe make a comeback.

I accept there's some daily "human interaction" quota for optimal happiness, but reject that ordering a big mac in person moves that needle at all. At a store where the salesperson walks you through options for a few minutes, sure, but not for purely transactional interactions.

Here's an anecdote for you. I work remote and normally make time for activities or groups at least a few times a week. Once, after something upset me I decided to spend a couple weeks not going out. I rapidly went toasty. By the end of the first week I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was restless, anxious, and desperately unhappy. So yes, I need some social interaction to feel normal. But it doesn't come from my co-workers.

Good points. As someone who's had the option to work remotely for most of my ~21 year career, I find the sweet spot is a mix. For writing code / solving hard problems / doing "Deep Work", I am much more effective when I can control my environment and eliminate not just time and stress of commute but rule out whole categories of distraction and interruption. OTOH, there is no substitute for human connection; in terms of team dynamics, personal energy / motivation, and effectiveness in driving change, my most impactful moments and projects have all benefited hugely (if not outright depended on) my physical presence. Of course YMMV. So much depends on your personality, your role, your team and manager and company... but IMHO / IME, a mix of remote and onsite is ideal.

A problem with most theories like this is that they treat interaction as though it can only ever add up to a positive impact. Too much unwanted interaction can burn somebody out just as much as not enough wanted interaction. That's one of the reasons that we talk about "emotional labor".

This is interesting, and reflecting a bit, it show to me why I like remote work. I train a few times a week in a gym setting that is very social, I have 3 roommates, I call my coworkers quickly if I need something, I'm pretty outgoing and friendly when I go to a coffee shop or market. Overall, I feel like I have other paths to get my social interactions from, so the ability to isolate myself for hard work gives me a lot of relief from the negative parts of work, without feeling like I miss a lot of the positive ones.

I'm much happier not interacting with people like tellers, clerks, cashiers, and the like, because I have a speech impediment and I'd much rather not have to devote the mental and physical effort to talking. I also live in an area where travel can become treacherous and I don't own a car. Do those things apply to everyone? No. But they apply to me. I actively dislike people who think "the study says it's a good thing so I'm going to force it on you... you're welcome" is a valid mindset.

Similarly, I've noticed that being open to being disturbed means being open to having random tasks dumped on you outside the ticketing system, which takes time away from what they're actually tracking your time on. Email and Slack can do the same thing, but seeing someone right there sitting all alone and lonely without my task to keep them occupied seems to be a powerful incentive for some people to air-drop random work.

I'm sympathetic to this line of thought. I don't think remote work is for everyone.

However, I see fewer people on net because I work in-office. Basically just my coworkers, no one else. The vast majority of public interactions I have going into work are fleeting and poor (driving next to someone, ignoring someone on the train with headphones). At work, I talk to the same people every single day. Then because of my commute time, I get home late enough that I can't go out or do anything after work. On weekends, I usually have chores to do that I can't do during the week because of how busy I am.

In comparison, back when I was working from home, I would go running and pass people on trails. I would go to meetups at my local church after I got out of work, or take trips into the city to attend conferences on weekends. If you're spending 2 hours or above commuting to work every day (which is not that unusual), you're going to be pushed towards human interactions that are very brief and inconsequential, because you literally will not have time to do anything more significant.

Quality vs quantity matters a lot here. I think people occasionally hype up inter-office relationships too much. I like the people I work with, but I would much rather spend my limited "interaction time" on family members or friends that I've known for years, instead of on coworkers and commuters on the train. I make casual conversation with my coworkers, I don't talk to them about intimate struggles or goals in my life.

Not everyone wants to work remotely because they're antisocial -- sometimes it's literally the opposite motivation.

I find interacting with people who are forced to be there (like fast food workers/coworkers/bank tellers) doesn't really count for in-person interaction.

Personally, I'd rather interact with people who are honestly there, and aren't economically forced to submit to me or me to them.

EDIT: Wait, are you a manager referring to your subordinates? If so, you may have forgotten how stressful it is to constantly be submissive to everyone around you. If you're the same rank or above everyone else I can understand wanting interaction, but if you're on the receiving end then any interaction is an implicit demand you cut more flesh off yourself to please them.

"but interacting with the teller adds to your quota of needed interaction for happiness"

Is there some evidence that mundane interactions with total strangers actually make everyone happier? I know some people who thrive on social interactions, but for many of us it is a chore rather than an opportunity. A rather taxing chore at that.

I didn't like most of my colleagues in the office and beyond work we had not much to talk about; almost no "office friendships" survived when I moved jobs. OTOH I throw parties at home where I invite people I consider interesting. Remote work is perfect for that, do your 100% at work, then just forget about it and live your life for the rest of the day.

I have a family, wife, kids, and I prefer my remote job, because I can focus on them, not on the relationships with co-workers. The commute is another problem.

To fill up the social meter without a family I think I would prefer one or two days in an office, but similar results could be achieved at a co-working space or taking the time to make friendships locally and spend time with them in the evening.

If anyone is interested its episode 163: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2019/10/08/yanss-163-why-pursui...

Socializing is important, but commuting, sitting in an open office with bright lights, loud co-workers etc doesn't balance against my social needs very well. I work on a small team, me and my co-workers see each other usually twice a week, once in the office and once at the coffee shop. Along with my other social activities, I get plenty of interaction and I still don't have a daily commute. The social aspect of work only becomes super important when work is your whole life and you've got nothing else going on.

I feel like someone always chimes in to say this, but the underlying assumption here is that a significant portion of one's social fulfillment should come from their office workers, which I think is ludicrous.

Let's be real here, what percentage of people - especially engineers - really find that their social needs are being satisfied through their office jobs? After you or your co-worker leaves their job, how many ex-coworkers do you actually still remain in contact with?

I've always found office relationships to be fairly boring. Because they're you're co-workers, you have to keep a certain level of professionalism and political-correctness so as to avoid offending people. This basically confines the realm of acceptable dialogue to banal things like the weather and small-talk. If you want to say anything interesting about anything interesting like say politics, you basically have to first probe them to make sure they're not going to get offended and passive aggressively retaliate. Anything you do outside of work like a cool side project or that band you're in can't be seen as threatening to your dedication to your job, so it's safer not to bring it up.

And I'm prob going to get a lot of flack for this, but I think most office workers are fairly boring - going to work, going home to their significant others/kids, and waiting to retire. Or maybe they're really interesting but don't feel comfortable talking about interesting things at the office for the reasons I mentioned above.

Ultimately I think it's better to find social fulfillment on your own and not expect it in the office, otherwise you're bound to be disappointed. But I get that it's unfortunately hard to make friends after school. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but that would require another long post that's outside the scope of this comment.

EDIT: Just after I posted this I see this on the front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21274511#21274909 Kind of supports my thesis.

I would like to see an improvement in the culture, too, and I've seen organisations experiment with "Do Not Disturb" desks, with very limited success.

Every office I've been in has been open-plan. If it's full of developers it will mainly be quiet and conducive to work. Put just one person in there who needs to talk, especially Sales and Marketing, and it's all going to fall apart.

Great points, the pendulum is still swinging so I expect more and more pro-remote content in the coming years.

I personally prefer mostly remote work, but I think it's much harder to pull off - there are no play books on how to do it and if you don't do it from the start it becomes exponentially more difficulty to execute correctly.

While "remote workers are more productive" is in the article's title, I disagree that the author is suggesting that working remotely is a necessary part of the solution. The article's subtitle is "Async isn’t just for remote teams".

I think the post makes it clear to that office workers could benefit a ton from async communication. And I agree completely. Sync communication at my previous job was such a drain on my productivity. For me, Slack made communication easier, but it made focus more difficult and work more stressful.

I think you're right that software tools can make a big difference. The author seems to be promoting its product - Twist - as a great Slack alternative. And I think it looks solid.

I agree with you that neither is inherently superior. However, I think this with regards to the business and generating business value. If you consider the quality of love improvements, they are phenomenal for the employee.

Personally, I believe in a hybrid solution. You work remotely say 2 days of the week, and you spend rest of the time in the office. This makes sure that you get your dose of water-cooler talk, as well as having time to yourself to get things done.

Actually I think you kinda nailed it earlier with “among them: ...the people themselves”. A company’s / managers job should be to maximize each workers productivity and comfort (because comfort will lead to longer service, and longer service means increased productivity). Given that studies show that remote work isn’t destroying productivity, the rational thing to do is to allow workers who find remote work beneficial to work that way without stigmatizing them.

^ This, 100%. It's all about decoupling physical presence from notions of "working" or "interruptible".

I find async comm tools like Slack invaluable for allowing ppl to display their status (eg "DND"), as well as the ability to control notifications -- and to catch up on topics when unable to participate in realtime. These things have immense value, whether you're remote or not.

I'll never forget the experience, some 20 years ago, being on the critical path for an imminent major release, heads-down, working furiously to deliver a mission-critical feature, and enduring a steady stream of shoulder-taps (despite headphones and body language) that made it ~impossible to do my job. Silver lining was, it made it crystal clear to me that I needed to carve out time for "deep work", and empowered me to push for and receive permission to work remotely at a time and in an org where that was a nearly unique exception. I chose to spend about half my working days remote, and across various jobs and companies and industries since, have sought and pushed for and mostly maintained this balance. I'm convinced we'd all be happier and more effective if such a balance were available more broadly.

I find that acceptance of remote work (or conversely, aversion to remote work / working from home) is an excellent signal of whether or not a company will be a good cultural fit for me and a satisfying place to work.

You’ll probably be interested to read about Bullshit Jobs. The authors’ name escapes me currently.

Many, if not most, jobs have a peak utilization rate well below 100%. The most obvious example is fire fighting. IIRC, a firefighter should spend less than 10% of their time fighting fires. If they're spending more than that, then they're likely to be busy when you need them.

Sure, they're likely to spend a good chunk of the other 90% working, but it's just busywork. That busywork might be important: they spend a lot of time inspecting and maintaining their fire trucks, for example. But it's not their "real job". Their real job is to be close to the fire truck so that they can respond when an alarm rings.

It's much the same for the rest of us, except that the line is grey, not black and white like it is for firefighters. We have a priority list, and stuff on the bottom of the list will never get done unless it bubbles up in priority for one reason or another. That stuff at the bottom is real work, but since there's always stuff that's more important it's comparable to "washing the fire truck".

And even the stuff at the top of the list is busywork in a way: it's always possible for more important stuff to come in and bump it out of the way. A server can go down, or an important customer can call, or ...

It should always be "I get paid for giving my employee 40h/ week of availability for work". that doesn't necessarily mean code. there's design, meetings, bugs to find, etc.

ofc, short breaks should be in those paid times. And the hour/week is not the same in every country.

But 40/week doesn't have to be every week, just average (as some times there is less work to do, and other times stuff is on fire and must be fixed)

also, that rate has nothing to do with being remote or on-site.

I would guess in some positions, like those requiring clearances, that it is more important to have cleared employees there when needed than micromanaging if they are working 40 hours per week.

You wont keep most employees around for part time work, but you want to make sure if your production systems go down or customer orders need to be expedited, or an emergency patch, etc... that you have a team that knows how to do the work, can get it done fast enough and is cleared to do the work (if applicable).

In some cases it might be cheaper to have employees that might be idle a bit than to lose money on downtime. Just a guess though.

As you optimize a process to get 100% resource utilization, response time for any change gets closer and closer to infinity. You need some slack for things to work, and the more things change, the more slack it requires.

And that's not even considering how humans are physically unable to work 8 hours day in and day out.

I worked with both types of people.

Funny thing is, when I am a freelancer, who gets paid much more money per hour than an employee, people valued my time and would send me mails or text messages and wait hours or days for an answer,.

When I was an remote employee, people paid me less and called me three times before 10am.

Somehow, many employers have the perception to own every minute their employees are awake.

I would never go back to such a work culture.

Is it possible your approach to instant messaging is wrong?

How did you find the 6h target system. I've wondered if I should do something similar.

I am, however, bad at time tracking by disposition, and haven't made a full system yet.

That is roughly consistent with my experience.

When I was using the "pomodoro" technique, I first started with the goal of 14 pomodoros per day (14 x 25min of focused work). My (fairly successful) friend who had done pomodoro told me that was not a reasonable goal. 10-12 seems a more reasonable goal for most people.

When doing focused reading in grad school I could do maybe 8-9 hours on a good day.

Working on a personal project I enjoy at home, I can do maybe 7-8 hours of focused coding in a day (but probably not multiple days in a row).

At work I probably do 4 hours of focused coding on average. This is partly because of non-coding tasks, but also my attention tends to peter out beyond 4.5 hours.

How do you know people expect you to answer immediately? I haven't noticed that expectation.

Why would you install Slack on your Phone?

Your phone is with you at all times. Work should not be.

I'm similar, but perhaps for less positive reasons.

Being able to work from home if I need to is nice, and I sometimes take advantage of it, but generally I like to be in the office so I can have a better idea of what is going on.

This is partly paranoia due to astonishingly (often deliberately) terrible communication under a previous regime where for instance I discovered my own line manager was leaving two days before he did by overhearing it mentioned in a conversation between people who worked on a completely different project, though even now under a much better environment I feel being in the office keeps me better abreast of things I need to know, before it becomes an emergency that I don't know them.

It also creates opportunities for unplanned collaboration whereby I hear a problem that I can help with, saving others time banging their heads against it, and sometimes works the other way around for me too.

And contrary to many of the other anecdotes here, I have far more attractive distractions at home than my colleagues could hope/fear to provide for me! Though maybe that speaks more about my will-power than it days about my work & home environments...

"sharing goals and ideas and hyping each other"

I will be cynical but this does not sound like some work is being done there. Reminds me of the guys of the gym who spend 90% time here just talking.

I could work from home 80% of the time if I wanted, but actually prefer working at an office because I find it less distracting. The office is a 'clean' space where I'm only surrounded by work related thing. I have my work computer on my work desk with my work setup, and nothing else. There is pretty much nothing else to do here other than work. Home is cluttered and I'm surrounded by all kinds of 'distraction' not related to working.

> At home this obviously never happens for me.

Interesting, you never get phone calls, texts, Amazon deliveries etc.?

This is probably the ideal split. The one period when I was working from home four days a week and going to the office once was without a doubt the most productive of my life.

Get all the staff meetings and brainstorming and shit-shooting done in one day, then actually work the rest of the time. As it is, I have at least a half dozen different ways that you can get in touch with me if you really need to, over text, voice, video, screensharing, etc.

The other thing about working remote is that you need to actually commit to it, and get prooerly setup. It's difficult to do that if it's an irregular or one-day-a-week thing; the work-from-home day just becomes an unofficial vacation day.

Nobody is adapted to asynchronous communication, it's always going to make you less productive. The key is that your immediate request is forcing someone else to put down their thing to help you, the same way that other people interrupt you when they message you. In optimizing for team performance, we don't get individual maximums.

Mostly, try to reduce switchyness. Not all input is blocking, sometimes you can put a question out early and have hours/ days/ weeks before you need an answer. Work on identifying potential hangups early and often. Try to handle your communication in batches. Respond to urgent messages faster, but spend time between deep tasks or in the lame duck part of the day doing email.

i have a personal kanban type page in ms onenote. one section is Waiting For... where I add things I'm waiting for like responses to questions I've emailed out. I can scan that in the morning to see who hasn't responded to what questions and send out follow ups or schedule calls, etc

thanks for your honesty; i think it takes some adjusting both personally and culturally from the company so not entirely your fault.

i would broach the subject with the team to the extent possible. i think it requires buy in from others to the extent that if you're getting stuck with regularity, then those with whom you work don't seem to be empowering you with either the autonomy or information you need to work async.

so, the company needs to resolve that either via empowering you (=> individuals), or get their knowledge/discussion norms set up to empower async/remote type stuff, to include such things as escalation guidelines (e.g. can use phone call for urgent matters, but gitlab issue is 24hr turn around), project planning, decision provenance/knowledge storage, etc.

> I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for a remote team. Hope you find it helpful:

> I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for remote teams. Hope you find it helpful.

> I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for remote teams. Hope you find it helpful:

Joke about async communication or copy-paste error?

I have this issue as well. People will show up at my desk to get something done. Yes it should be in some sort of ticket, but then they are in a queue and might get another admin, so if they just show up they will probably get their stuff done so they will leave me alone and i can get onto other work (it is not that i don't want to see people, but i have lots of work usually).

I hope flexibility is the future. I take advantage of this a lot, but unfortunately, my company has a lot of new managers. They LOVE meetings. I really cant stand it.

I think this is key, but it costs a lot from companies (and also people), culturally, economically, and sometimes constrained by law.

Should you keep all seats even when 20% of your workforce prefers to work remote? What do you do with those seats when they are empty? It's possible, and it's great when it's there, just not as simple as choosing one option or the other.

I happen to prefer to work alone, but I recognize those times when meetings or pair programming are truly valuable and needed, and I jump to it at once when needed. It's about recognizing the pros and cons of each approach, and minimize the impact of the cons as much as you can.

Communications can often be better working from home. Open offices really inhibit conversations because you don't want to disturb your neighbors. At home you can talk to whoever you want for as long as you want as loud as you want.

For the same pay, would you rather have one person get a lot done in 6 hours or another person get little done in 9 hours? If an employee was underperforming for 10 hours a day, would your friend keep them on? Truthfully, the only things that matter from the company's perspective are the output and the price. It's wrong to misrepresent your hours worked, just as it's wrong to lie about the color of your pants, but a rational company wouldn't ask about either.

> The rest is chatting and socializing. I like it.

The problem I have with this is that I don't really get to choose who I can chat and socialize with -- I like my work colleagues, but they're not my main social circle and never will be because I find it unhealthy if your colleagues are your core friends since if you ever want or need to leave (or get fired), it makes it all the more painful and makes an already stressful situation even more stressful. I'm a firm believer that you should enjoy the company of the people you work with, but that you should have a strong social life outside of work too so that you don't feel socially trapped in that job.