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Comment by baskethead | Hacker News Reader

I work at a fully remote company. To be honest, I don't like it very much. I like that I don't have to commute, but I pay for it in lost productivity waiting to hear back from my coworkers when I have questions. What would normally be a 5 mins conversation turns into pinging on chat, setting up a meeting, and then chatting at a further time. Collaboration is much harder and the rate of doing work is much slower.

If companies are okay with this, then it's the "new normal" I suppose, but I can understand why Apple and Google want people face to face. If I knew I could go into work twice a week and meet with my team, I would enjoy that, but my team is global so it will never happen. It's definitely a weird experience.

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Exactly. Just today in the office there was a coworker who was unfamiliar with a particular internal tool. He asked me, I walked to his desk, and pointed out the couple of buttons he needed to click in that internal tool. The whole exchange finished in one minute. After that minute I went back to coding. I stayed in my flow.

But if this request for help arrived via group chat, I wouldn't have bothered to help. It was simply too much effort to either do screen sharing, or open the internal tool on my computer, replicate the state of that UI, and then describe the buttons the coworker needed. The one-minute interruption would be a ten-minute interruption. I wouldn't stay in my flow.

Sounds like something that could be solved by better documentation.

I work for a fully remote company, and better documentation is definitely something I've noticed here compared to on-site roles.

Better docs and better tools. I jump on calls with little notice all the time. Zoom has a personal link you can use.

What software do you all use for screen sharing? That seems like something that could be done in a fairly trivial manner in teams. Teammate calls you (1 click), shares screen (1 click), and then you tell him where the couple of buttons he needs to click are.

Personally I've worked remotely and in person, and I'm much more productive at home than in the office. There's a plethora of tools that enable us to get as much done if not even more without all of the distractions that exist in the office. This has been true in my former career working in sales and marketing, and is true now in my career as a software developer.

I joined a company remotely for the first time in March.

I've been able to avoid stalling by anticipating questions I could have and ask them ahead of time. That might be a (partial) solution to this problem.

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