5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Remote Workers
betterprogramming.pub
betterprogramming.pub
Some people aren’t comfortable being on camera. Some people don’t have a nice workspace and don’t want to feel shame over it. There should be no requirement to have the camera on, it really adds very little over voice alone and there are countless valid reasons to not want it on.
> how do you think a lone person with their camera on feels?
If you don’t like being the only one on camera, by all means shut yours off. Work was done by voice alone aka by phone for decades.
Now, I admit that it makes sense to request camera time or meetings in real life once in a while, to maintain that human connection. But I'd argue that it should be mandatory only in contexts where it is reasonable to expect deception or where the stakes are especially high. For example in performance meetings, job interviews or negotiations.
While I agree that people shouldn't be required to have their camera on for the first reasons you mentioned, I disagree on this point. I find that without a face to read, I have a very difficult time navigating conversations. It's the same reason phone calls give me so much anxiety. There are subtleties happening in facial expressions while a person is talking and gesticulating that communicate important information.
Maybe you've adapted to a set of circumstances throughout your life that means this doesn't affect you as much (maybe you spoke a lot on the phone when you were younger, I don't know), but I personally rely quite heavily on facial expressions for social cues. Without them, I fall apart.
https://www.howtogeek.com/693237/how-to-use-memoji-during-a-...
Toss in some deepfake and you can map those expressions into a digital version of your face. So a touched-up, AI-generated version of your face- but not your actual face at the moment.
Often enough, the other party's camera is off to the side so they appear as though they're not engaged, even though they are.
I _know_ they're probably paying attention, but it's reminiscent of a face-to-face conversation where the other party is staring at their phone more than they're looking at me.
So even though I know they're engaged, my brain's circuitry keeps telling me they're not.
The benefits are that I don't need to mind what clothes I wear, since comfort is a major improvement for WFH. I can have my child running around while being on mute, dedicating to him small slices of my time. Anybody who has kiddo or two knows how perfectly clean place gets into messy state in few minutes, so there are toys and stuff just lying all around. Being so corporate, 3-5 meetings/day is a norm. I can have the meeting anywhere where phone can ring if quiet enough. If we need more cooperation, sure skype/screen sharing is an option too.
There are almost always more people on the call then really need be, or their time is 5-minute slice out of 30 minutes, so we all still stay in case of sudden questions/brainstorming, but we do our other stuff (and there is endless stream of it). Actually when randomly 1-2 persons come with video, it looks a bit weird. You don't want to study their facial expressions when they do other work, and I've seen a butt crack of a very high manager once or twice on a call with 10+ very senior people. If you think video is helping you stand out and looking oh-so-well dedicated, well not in such cases.
Nobody is bothered by this lack of video, once you get used to audio-only, it works great. I mean we are all adults here, if any doubt or unclarity, why being afraid to ask? There are no stupid questions as we all know.
Why do you assume I'm afraid to ask questions? I'm probably the most outspoken person at my workplace.
I suppose whenever I make a joke, I could ask "did anyone understand my joke? I just want to clarify that I was joking". Or maybe it would be safest to never make jokes at all anymore. My point is that it makes conversation more difficult. There are many more subtle human interactions, other than jokes, that are similarly hamstrung when you're not able to see a face on the other end.
I hear this a lot, and in my long experience I find that most people are terrible at reading others in the business world. I've seen so many misunderstandings because of people reading into others tone, body language, etc, instead of just listening to the words and interpreting them.
Not true. Audio only communication increases the cognitive load on the listeners, as well as giving _ample_ opportunity for distraction to any participant as they are more likely to alt-tab and begin some other task instead of paying attention to the call.
For the person speaking it's also a strain to not have visual cues from participants. Yes, even seeing a few simple nods, or confused faces, can make a difference.
Taking "camera breaks" is fine if it's a lengthy call (which is a problem itself, nobody should be having lengthy meetings of any kind IMHO, let alone remote) but otherwise just put the damn thing on.
Anyone "shaming" workspaces or whatever else is a different matter and I will wager a big chunk of money your org has far greater problems already that should be enough to warrant a new job before being shamed for your workspace is anywhere near the top of the heap.
One giant exception I have to this rule is MS Teams is so terrible at managing multiple videos that even my high end laptop wants to melt.
If you, and the rest of the team, turn on your cameras most of the time then it's fine if you have to turn it off some of the time. Because sure there's reasons to turn it off. But if you default to off then everyone knows you aren't turning it off because of some good reason. You can tell yourself otherwise, BUT PEOPLE KNOW YOU AREN'T ENGAGED.
I've encountered a few cases where someone who consistently kept their video off was highly engaged, but it's very uncommon. You should assume other people have noticed this as well, and know that you have something to prove if you do that.
I actually liked the article, but then point 5 directly contradicts itself.
Point one is what makes engagement clear. I.e. keeping people out of meetings that don't need to be there. People can happily play PS5 while on CAM, doesn't mean the meeting is any more relevant or people are any more engaged.
If CAM is what you need for measuring engagement, your metrics are completely off.
It's kinda like how people used to say that you have to keep eye contact when having a conversation. But for people like me I focus with my ears. I can pretend to care and look into your eyes, but if you want my full attention, I'm actually not looking at you, or anything else for that matter.
I couldn’t disagree more. You can see if people are agreeing, disagreeing, confused by something someone said, even if they won’t say it out loud. There’s a million important and valuable cues that get lost when people do meetings without a camera.
Ans “work was done by voice alone for decades” is just not true in any significant way. Most teams that needed to communicate and have meetings regularly were in the same room. People flew (and still fly) around the planet to have a single meeting with a group of people.
I’m just a student and employee, and therefore in no position to make anyone behave in any particular way when it comes to Zoom calls. But I think it’s rude and uncomfortable to have work meetings or lectures to a faceless crowd because someone “isn’t comfortable on camera”. If you don’t enforce any minimum etiquette for such meetings, it all just converges on the least effort, lowest engagement, minimum communication version because every person who drops off camera makes it creepier for the remaining ones to talk to a bunch of black rectangles.
Someone has to lose.
Are you really going to force everyone else to look straight at the camera and pretend to be engaged for the entire meeting? Even if that means they’re shutting off their brains? Just to make you feel comfortable?
How many more people are you going to inconvenience with your demands that everyone turn on their camera and pretend to be engaged, versus me turning off my camera so that I can actually focus on what is being said?
A coworker tells a joke and sees me legitimately smile and laugh at it, what effect does that have on my coworkers opinion of me?
Someone is expressing a weird idea and I get to frown and shake my head on camera, what power does this give me in the conversation? If I'm the only one with my camera on I've got a complete monopoly on a channel of communication, and humans only have 2 or 3, one of them is all mine.
People with higher quality audio are perceived as smarter [0]. I wouldn't be surprised if those with video enabled are perceived as smarter as well, and more likeable.
But a lot of that gets lost in a sea of tiny postage-stamp size sub-screens in a video wall.
What is the remaining percentage that is valuable?
How much mental effort do those people have to put into looking at the camera and pretending to be engaged?
Are you going to force all the lefties to write in a right-handed manner? Are you going to force all the females to adopt male pronouns? Where along that spectrum do the video-averse people rank compared to those who are video-craving and at what point are you costing the company way more money by forcing everyone to adhere to your particular preferences that may not be widely shared?
I’m not saying I have any answers.
I am saying that this is a problem that is more complex than a lot of people think it is, and a lot of thought needs to go into whatever standards you choose to set.
I was only suggesting that people turn on their camera if they want to be more relatable and have more influence.
This is not the secret to remote work. The key to remote work is empathy towards the situations that other people are likely to be in. People come to the door, kids are home, problems arise. Flexibility is important.
To be an effective remote worker, you must have a personal queue that allows you to continue doing work when otherwise planned activities cannot happen on time. Work to make sure your calendar isn't full of dependencies, etc. Telling other people how to do their jobs (and how to behave in their jobs) is not helpful.
1. Maintain an accurate calendar. Internally, this means marking available/working hours. Externally, this means calendly or something. You don't need to be perfect, but make it easy for other people to self-serve. When trying to meet with others, be aware of their timezone, their working blocks, etc. Try to schedule meetings that start 5 minutes after if you have to book against time that is already blocked.
2. Be flexible in your own hours to accommodate the work. If you work with people in very different time zones, you will need to make concessions to this. There will be 5am calls and 10pm ones sometimes. But, you are remote, block out the 2-4pm block to go for a walk or call your mom.
3. Manage a cadence with colleagues. It is easy to go a long time without speaking to someone if you only work tangentially. it is helpful to treat colleagues with a CRM process. Don't book pointless standing meetings, but do try to communicate either verbally or in writing with remote colleagues to ensure they are aware of what you are working on. Be available to help others, and don't only be the person asking for help.
4. Recognize the difference between business and productivity. Everyone gets overbooked, but you have to know when that impacts output. Assume others are also managing it and be flexible in how much time you consume.
5. Not everyone is going to work the way you do when remote. This is fine. Be accommodating to them when possible and communicate to them when they need to accommodate you.
Re: timezones, I work extended hours, by my own preference, to coordinate with a team in eastern europe. I space out the hours and take many breaks during the day to ensure I don't burn out. I find it less exhausting to work a longer but chill day, than to work a shorter nonstop day.
I think that some of these habits are actually examples that regularly apply to mid-level management.
Mgmt being oversubscribed to meetings, or needing to ensure that work has someone on it, or stepping in and out because of meeting conflicts we view as normal. Additionally, a typical role of mgmt is around barrier removal, and prioritization of existing workstreams, and no novel work unless truly needed. I don't take it as highly ineffective though because it works in our system.
My work also eschews video feeds since we use Teams, and Teams performance seems so bad at scale on VPN........
Edit: it's a waste to send Teams video traffic via VPN and it probably goes to a Microsoft cloud server anyways. The VPN should block this traffic, and the worker's PCs should be configured to not attempt to route it via the VPN.
This person should try some % of async remote and then rewrite their post, it comes across as probably well intentioned but a bit inexperienced.
“To keep reading this story, get the free app or log in.”
No thanks. I’ll pass.
Personally, nowadays, I think people should just use a static site generator like Hugo, Jekyll, mkdocs etc. They’re pretty easy to use and you can host for free on github pages, digitalocean app platform or even cloudflare worker sites. Yes it’s a little more effort getting started and I guess it’s scary for non-technical people, but at least programmer/tech people who occasionally write an article should do it.
> 2. They presume availability
> 3. They disappear mysteriously
> 4. They pretend to be useful
> 5. They operate undercover
Agree with all points except the last. I don't see a need for cameras on during meetings.
As a manager, the part about not being a backseat manager hits home for me. There’s something about Slack chats that make some people feel like they need to be involved in every conversation even if they’re not contributing anything useful. I’ve had to coach a few people about how to ignore Slack conversations that aren’t relevant to their own work. Slack is hard enough to keep up with without a constant influx of unhelpful comments from unrelated people.
Another two habits that make for ineffective coworkers:
1) Trying to force everything to be synchronous. “Can we hop on a quick call?” can’t be your response to everything. You also can’t delay discussions until you can schedule a meeting slot with multiple people. Learn to leverage Slack and have productive quick discussions, escalating to a call or meeting only after you’ve tried a chat or e-mail.
2) Trying to force everything to be asynchronous. There are some people who think remote work should mean they can isolate themselves, get their work from the ticket tracker, and only respond to e-mail once per day. This doesn’t work in any collaborative environment where people’s work overlaps and depends on what other people are doing or have done. It’s important to find a balance between working in isolation and being part of discussions, but forcing everyone to work around your asynchronous work habits quickly grows old for everyone else. Be assertive about protecting your focus time, but make a point of being available and part of the conversation.
No, having your camera off is nothing like showing up to work in an anonymous mask with your initials embroidered on your clothes (point probably made tongue in cheek but the author still used it to support their argument)
No, going to lunch at noon without typing "brb" is not the same as turning around mid conversation with someone and walking away unexpectedly.
Points can be made without hyperbole.
Maybe. As anyone who’s played Overcooked knows, if you’re the critical resource in a crisis, too many “what can I do?” requests can quickly become of negative value.
Often better is to observe the situation, use your judgment to guess what they might need, and make a specific offer.
In Overcooked, that might be, “Looks like you’re going to need some tomatoes in a sec. I’ll start bringing them over.”
In a production outage, “I see your pager’s melting; do you want me to mute the alerts you already know about?” or to get meta, “I’ll start coordinating communication about the incident so you don’t have to keep repeating yourself to #outage newcomers who keep asking what’s going on or how they can help.”
AKA schedule unfocused meetings. Unfocused meetings have been a problem for years, or perhaps centuries. Has nothing to do with remote work, or even being an "effective worker" in the general sense.
> They presume availability
The body text for this section has nothing to do with presuming availability. In any case, neither the section header or the examples have anything to do with remote work or being an "effective worker". Sure, they're annoying, but that's about it.
> They disappear mysteriously
If you need synchronous collaborative time with me, let's schedule it. Otherwise, asynchronous communication should have no default expectation of availability. Obviously it would be polite to mention that you have to step out for a bit.
Also, again, has nothing to do with remote work or being an "effective worker". Most of us communicate digitally sometimes, even when we're in the office. I haven't suddenly become ineffective because you incorrectly assumed that you had my undivided attention for an unspecified amount of time.
> They pretend to be useful.
AKA they chime in pointlessly in issue threads. While annoying or pointless, this also has nothing to do with remote work or being an "effective worker".
> They operate undercover
AKA turn off their camera. Plenty of comments here already about this. Also has nothing to do with being an effective worker.
> 5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Remote Workers
This is a short, low-quality list of personal pet peeves about communication and expectations, under a click-bait title. Effective workers solve problems and add value to the company. People can be quite effective despite poor communication skills. At the same time, everyone could probably benefit from improving their workplace communication skills. The payoff for improved communication is greater when everyone is remote, or at least communicating digitally.
A lot has been written about what does and does make for effective meetings and workplace communication, and this doesn't contribute much to that discussion.
Really, I should conclude with a personal list that actually does relate to effective remote work. I've been remote for 7 years. But I haven't found it to be complicated or significanly different from effective work in the office.
The intent is obvious: stop everything else that you are doing and join, so that it's the only thing that you are doing.
(Even worse is the ones who reply to a chat by sneaking up behind your desk and tapping your shoulder while you’re wearing headphones.)
Work from home can be less structured and as a result requires more intention. This can involve communicating Deep Work and Deep Breaks (e.g. with Slack Status [1]) so that teammates know when you're unavailable.
I've learned to set a clear intent each morning. I allocate and protect Deep Work time for my Main Thing and don't let almost anything pre-empt it. As different tasks from Work and Home come up, I capture them quickly in such a way that I can deal with them later.
(full disclosure - building bytebase.io to make it really fast to get things down to come back to later).
This is BAD advice. Always start with something generic. 99.99% of the time it doens't matter, but you need to be in the habit. Otherwise you will be in that .001% of the time where you send "Hey, how’s it going? About the plan to fire lay off Joe" and it turns out Joe is physically standing next to your target and sees the message. Maybe it never happens to you, but better to give the other person time to respond "in a meeting" letting you know not to discuss a sensitive topic right now.
But if we are talking about in-house teams, my experience was always better to address issue immediately.
However I never had international in-house teams before though.
Getting pinged with generic 'hi', 'you there', 'hello' messages that have zero context are one of the most disruptive things that one can be subjected to with real time messaging. If a message clearly states a need or intent, the recipient can glance at it and make an instant determination about prioritization of any response/change in workflow.
Didn't read TFA due to paywall.
It's all about the topic discussed. Most of the time you just need to get the question out there. It's not confidential but you don't want to waste time with an extra round trip. So just write it down. No matter chat or email.
And sometimes something sensitive comes up. Then you take precautions, like booking a meeting, or having an understanding within management that your mail inbox/chat contents/.. are considered confidential (which they should) or similar.
This is plain stupid. I never put my camera on unless there is a specific need, usually for small meetings when I actually participate instead of just listening someone talking for an hour. One of the best aspects of remote work is that you can actually be very productive during these corporate rituals without offending anyone (except the guy who insists everybody should turn on the cameras).
Like they should probably turn off their camera too?
The author is a prime example of a person with one nuero-type expecting every other person they work with to operate the same way as them. It is anti-empathetic to folks with a neurodiverse background. The mentality is hostile to everyone that you work with.
Let me address each point.
1. Some folks do well in an environment that is just to "catch up" or "hangout". This is called an unstructured meeting and it has value. It is impossible to ascertain if an unstructured meeting is going to have value to you or anyone else. Sometimes it's just going to be about getting people in the same room to chat (or even just to hang out and have fun -- and yes, fun and camaraderie is important and has value). You should not expect every meeting to be structured.
2. Asyncronous communication... or even just communication with other members on your team is important. Someone dropping into your DMs and asking you a question is... normal. How else are people supposed to communicate with you? Are you expecting them to call you? Are you going to be upset if they email you? Come on! -- You aren't going to be expected to respond immediately, and if you are just tell the person you are busy and will get back to them later.
3. Some people... a lot of people actually... are perfectly fine with dropping a conversation when it has finished. You don't have to cap every conversation with "goodbye". Again, remote communication is asynchronous by default. People have other things going on. They could be driving. They could be dealing with their kids. They could have been called by a higher-up to an inpromptu meeting. They might even... GASP... think differently than you do, or process information and communication differently than you do. Can you believe it? Some people are different!!!
4. There are a great many types of people out there who are terrible at "deep work" (i.e. programming / design / whatever), but excellent at organizing people and tracking tasks / removing blockers, and helping people "get shit done". These people are valuable. If you don't recognize this value... I really question your engineering prowess overall.
5. Some people are introverts, have social anxiety, are autistic, or otherwise self-conscious. As someone who is openly autistic the author's mentality here is... frankly disgusting and offensive to me. Not everything is about you, brah. Have you ever considered how the person not turning on their camera is feeling? Did it ever cross your mind that maybe that has a debilitating effect on them -- or otherwise harms or hinders them?
People are different. Fucking deal with it.
This author...Daniel Yefet... sounds like a total ass to work with. Daniel, it's not others that need to grow and change. It's you. You are the problem.
Did the author mean "afk"?