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Comment by ignu | Hacker News Reader

I'd prefer to work an environment where I can't get interrupted synchronously by someone wanting their problem resolved that moment.

Also, one thing with those in person interactions is you have no artifact of the interaction. Slack or tickets are great for documenting how decisions are made.

But ultimately, I have no desire to waste an extra 5 to 10 hours of my life just driving back and forth to sit at a different computer.

I do think it's great to meet your coworkers so they're more than faces in Zoom, but I am absolutely never going back to rotting away in a car and office most of my waking week.

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> I'd prefer to work an environment where I can't get interrupted synchronously by someone wanting their problem resolved that moment.

FWIW, I found synchronous interruptions to be more of a problem when remote. Too many people used Slack messages or video calls for everything because it was only a click away, as opposed to having to get up and walk over to someone’s desk

> Also, one thing with those in person interactions is you have no artifact of the interaction. Slack or tickets are great for documenting…

Slack is terrible for documenting. It needs to be reserved for ephemeral communication.

Forcing people to search through Slack archives works when the team is small and company is new, but it becomes useless at scale.

Someone messaging on Slack can be ignored quite easily, without it being rude. If someone is starting a video call with you without arranging a time with you first then I agree you need to get in physical proximity with that person, but only to smack them.

Slack is not usefully searchable, true, but its purpose for documentation is not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. If you have a link to the conversation you have the whole conversation; that can be useful to share context. Likewise meetings; being able to record them is HUGE. But either way, you mention Slack should only be used for ephemeral communication...all in person communication is ephemeral. Slack at least has it saved, even if it's a pain to find; in person does not. I can share a Slack link; if you missed it, forgot it, or disagree about what was said, you're out of luck with in person.

Especially once you get big enough to require a retention policy and have to delete your years of knowledge repository! Better off documenting separately from the start.

Slack is a poor tool for that job, but that isn't the fault of the remote work.

>>Also, one thing with those in person interactions is you have no artifact of the interaction. Slack or tickets are great for documenting how decisions are made.

>Forcing people to search through Slack archives works when the team is small and company is new, but it becomes useless at scale.

The OP was comparing it with someone walking over to his desk to tell him something, which if you are busy and eager to get back to what you were doing, is easy to forget. At least Slack has a record while vibrations in the air have none. He also said Slack or tickets, so you weren't even attempting to refute his actual argument.

I don't understand why people get so upset about slack messages. Do you get berated by your boss if you don't reply immediately?

At my company, we send messages when we need help, but the expectation is that the reply comes at the convenience of the person being asked.

> I don't understand why people get so upset about slack messages. Do you get berated by your boss if you don't reply immediately?

Sort of, yeah.

Sorry to hear that, it sounds stressful.

That’s not an issue of Slack, IM, or remote work, though.

Yes. When the pandemic started this, a boss berated someone in the main channel for not responding within 5 minutes.

Incidentally he accidentally posted porn in the slack.. and never made a deal out of it from then on.

Lmao. Do you actually like working somewhere like that? Why not quit?

I was a freelancer and it was my first gig in the industry. The parent company eventually fired him and in doing so, everyone lost their jobs. True story.

Sounds like a 2022 version of The Office (UK)

If you don't answer a Slack message immediately, how to you remember to answer it later? It's not like email where you can archive threads that are done. Instead chats (i.e. channels, private messages or threads) with unanswered questions look exactly like other chats.

This assumes some messages are urgent and some are not, and that you can't know which is which until you open the chat and thus mark it as read.

Slack has saved messages. I use this as an inbox/todo list. Any message that takes longer than two minutes to reply to, I move to my actual todo list and un-save the message.

Thank you, I will try this.

You either mark it as unread if you are going to get to it as soon as you wrap you what you're currently doing, or you click "More actions" and select a "Remind me about this" option.

"Mark as unread" just makes it look like an unread message. I want to read every message as it comes in, in case it's urgent. "Mark as unread" would either obscure new incoming messages from the same sender, or cause me to unnecessarily triage the same message several times.

"Remind me" is time based, which is too arbitrary. I want to instantly see everything unanswered, not have it trickle in at random intervals. Using the "Save" button as "Move to inbox" as nthj suggested makes more sense. It's also easier to click.

Yeah, I either had never really noticed the Save functionality, or never thought to use it as a pseudo-todo list. Will definitely give it a try.

The difference is when I work remotely, I can quit Slack, block my calendar and do “deep work”.

Do you think the Slack interruptions are going to stop when you return to the office? You must not be familiar with how people work.

Treat your slack messages as a queue, something asynchronous you respond to when you are free. If management forces you to immediately respond to every slack message, then you have a dysfunctional culture that will of course clash with WFH. They should be using something like pagerduty if it's urgent.

It's way more than just interruptions, travel, etc.

I recently found /r/overemployed [1] on VC Twitter, and a lot of folks are using this setup to work two (or more) jobs. They know that they'll only need to dedicate 4 hours a day to any given job and as long as they can schedule non-overlapping meetings, they can get away with it.

It's got me thinking though - this might be an opportunity for startups to knowingly hire less than full time employed engineering staff at a reduced comp rate with low stress / low pressure work. Say, 10-20 hours a week, choose your own hours. You might be able to grab a few MANGA/FAANG folks and get them to work on your project instead of their "110% time" pet project at the giantcorp. It might be an operational advantage.

Has anyone looked into this?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed ; the lingo is J2 = "job two", J3, etc.

Plenty of people work more than one job. As long as someone does the work that's expected of them and performs their job duties well, it isn't any employer's business what someone does in their time off.

Actually, most tech companies have employment agreements that prevent exactly this sort of behavior. When you are dealing with IP, you don’t want this leaking to a competitor. And when you are a big tech company, almost any other tech company is potentially a competitor.

IP can be negotiated, though. I've seen it done many times. I've done it myself.

If companies don't want IP leaking, then society provides them plenty of avenues and incentives to prevent that from happening, from NDAs to fines and prison time.

If companies don't want employees working for anyone else, then they should compensate those employees for that privilege. They don't own anyone's free time unless they pay for that privilege.

In general they do pay for your time outside of work and you agree by taking the job.

Let's say you work strict hours 9am to 5pm M-F. On Thursday at 8:47pm you happen to think of a solution to a problem you're having at work. Are you suggesting the company should pay you more because the idea occurred outside of your strict hours?

In general, companies pay white collar workers / knowledge workers, for their knowledge. That happens regardless of when that knowledge is acquired. It seems pretty common sense and there are also plenty of laws to it up. Any other arrangement would seem full of issues.

Most companies have requirements on the handling of IP and conflicts of interest. Using separate workstations and working in two different industries solves this problem. Remember, most only require that IP relevant to their company and industry are owned by them.

Yes, see these threads on HN about part time work. Startups can definitely hire such people, I personally know Gumroad does this.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Part+time

MANGA:

* Microsoft

* Amazon

* Netflix? (Why not META?)

* Google

* Apple

* Meta

* Amazon

* Netflix

* Google

* Apple

Source: https://twitter.com/MorningBrew/status/1453797543096238080

I don't get why they would pick Netflix over Microsoft. And if they are using Meta instead of Facebook, surely it should be Alphabet instead of Google.

I don't get it either, but I live on the other side of the world to Silicon Valley, so it has no impact on my work life.

> I do think it's great to meet your coworkers so they're more than faces in Zoom, but I am absolutely never going back to rotting away in a car and office most of my waking week.

I feel the same way.

I have been remote for over 10 years but prior to that, it was another 10 in an office.

That included an hour commute each way, random downtime and interruptions.

I honestly have no doubt I am more productive now, given that was "leave at 7 AM get home at 7 PM".

There is no way in any given day I am getting less work done in 12 hours than I was then.

I will never again go back to bumper-to-bumper traffic on the expressway again, even if we end up in a race-to-the-bottom on salaries. QoL is more important to me now.

>Also, one thing with those in person interactions is you have no artifact of the interaction. Slack or tickets are great for documenting how decisions are made.

Not exactly.

Some organizations have limits to how long historical chats are stored.

True, but still it seems like some records are preferable to no records?

Yep, that's fair. However at that point I'd say anything of note like that should really be recorded somewhere with a more long-term/permanent record, like in a wiki or similar, rather than ephemerally.

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