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Comment by pdpi | Hacker News Reader

I keep saying this — as a fairly senior engineer, remote has basically blocked me from actually doing many of the things that made me good at my job.

I don't have all my juniors around me, so I can't overhear their conversations, so I can't jump in when they talk themselves into trouble. I can't help people debug problems I'm not aware of, and frustrated grumbling often comes a few steps before actively asking for help. I don't have people from other teams around me, so I can't grab them for coffee/lunch and catch up on what they're doing. I used to have a couple of PMs from other teams who regularly came to me for help because their engineers weren't great at talking to non-technical people.

Fundamentally, information is the biggest asset you can have on the job, and I lost access to all the information that came from organic, unstructured, ad-hoc, and often passive interactions. Unfortunately, the more structured, proactive alternatives cost a lot more of my time and effort, so it's all around less effective.

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> I don't have all my juniors around me, so I can't overhear their conversations, so I can't jump in when they talk themselves into trouble. I can't help people debug problems I'm not aware of, and frustrated grumbling often comes a few steps before actively asking for help. I don't have people from other teams around me, so I can't grab them for coffee/lunch and catch up on what they're doing. I used to have a couple of PMs from other teams who regularly came to me for help because their engineers weren't great at talking to non-technical people.

There is nothing here that can’t be addressed in a remote setting, you just need different methodologies (tight feedback loops for juniors, public channels for team comms, etc). You may simply have a preference for being around people and using the methodologies you listed here, which is fine enough, but remote doesn’t fundamentally block any of the outcomes you mentioned.

I've never understood why people think that remote should just work magically, without any effort on their part.

I don't expect it to work magically without effort on my part. What I'm saying is that it's a tradeoff, and that the tradeoff doesn't really work that well for me.

I'm simultaneously pretty gregarious and pretty introverted. Having to take the lead and proactively arrange for social interactions is exhausting for me, but being a mostly passive observer and tactically jumping in is much more manageable, and all around a more efficient use of my resources. Work better in a pull- rather than push-based setup, if you will.

Thanks for clarifying.

> Having to take the lead and proactively arrange for social interactions is exhausting for me

This is definitely the case for me as well. I've set up regular meetings once, to avoid all kinds of discomfort that arise when doing so every time. Though, I understand that such arrangements may not flow as easy as in-person ones for everyone.

You conveniently left out the part where they address that:

> Unfortunately, the more structured, proactive alternatives cost a lot more of my time and effort, so it's all around less effective.

chronofar's comment isn't incompatible with that.

I don't think a remote-first approach inherently takes more time and effort, but it requires a culture change.

If you alone are trying to adopt a remote-first strategy I definitely think it will take more of your time and effort, but if your company culture is remote-first I don't think it should.

> I don't think a remote-first approach inherently takes more time and effort, but it requires a culture change.

Culture change requires time and effort.

And without structured guidance shaping the change, progress will not be evenly distributed.

I think the harsh reality is that remote-first does inherently take more time and effort, even if some of that is a one time investment.

The trouble is that this one time investment is difficult to quantify.

I worked remotely for many years prior to the pandemic so I’m not against remote work. But I don’t think it’s fair to claim that it comes at no cost. I did find it incredibly important to still get to the office periodically for team bonding and to catch up on the 100 little hallway conversations that can’t happen remotely.

Cmon dude, you're twisting words.

I agree culture change requires time and effort, but "upfront investment" is not the same as "inherently takes more time and effort".

I even said it takes more time and effort if you are adopting it when other people aren't (I.e. unevenly distributed progress like you mention).

Not trying to twist your words, but to point out that remote-first really does require inherently more time investment.

I think you’re underselling the impact of the prerequisite culture change, because very few companies are remote-first or even know what a good remote-first strategy looks like.

If a company already has a solid and effective remote culture, great! But this is pretty rare, and can’t be considered a general case. Those companies are also made of people who fit the mold of that remote culture, and I question the merit of generalizing their success to a broader workforce made up of people who weren’t pre-selected for their compatibility.

And to be clear, I’m not saying I don’t think the investment is worthwhile; just necessary and not trivial.

> "upfront investment" is not the same as "inherently takes more time and effort".

We can agree to disagree here, but I just find this to be a rather odd conclusion. I’m not trying to split hairs, but think that “just change the culture” hand waves away a massive undertaking for most orgs, and it’s better to address this head-on than pretend it doesn’t exist.

That sounds a bit like "I don't want to adapt to this new work environment, please everyone, back to working like it works for me."

I don't know if that's fair. Consultants were flying "on site" for meetings at expense to clients for decades (for hotels, meals, etc) and the money was worth it, because being in person is, for some people, is more efficient for some forms of collaboration. I feel like we're having battles about the "best" way when they are just different - and the market will show the results.

I don't think referencing the value of consultants is going to help your argument lol.

Fair. I was one of those consultants (experts in software being implemented by the local team), though, and - specifically with teams that needed more help and interventions - going onsite was hugely valuable. I'm not saying remote is impossible, but I got much more done when I could sit with people 1-on-1 and build relationships/see what they didn't know to show me.

I've been consulting for well over a decade. I used to fly to visit my clients. During the pandemic they all learned to work remotely and I haven't made a trip since. We actually communicate more than we did before, and it feels like overall everyone is better at communication.

It's more like "we have to put in 2x more work for half the benefit" which kinda supports the idea that remote is less efficient (in some ways)

Who is "we"? It sounds like it's just him, and everyone else benefits.

You're exaggerating.

Requesting for people to communicate more in group chats instead of direct messages takes 5 seconds.

Scheduling regular 1:1s with juniors keeps a tight feedback loop. Schedule it once every x weeks and there you go.

> Requesting for people to communicate more in group chats instead of direct messages takes 5 seconds.

Requesting something and something actually happening are two very different things.

There is also a meaningful difference between an in-person group chat and a group chat that will remain visible to the whole team for months or years to come.

This request becomes far more than just changing the medium, and requires everyone involved to adjust to the idea that everything they ask can be later analyzed without the context of the moment, and this has a chilling effect on the kinds of things that people are willing to ask. This in turn fundamentally changes the dynamic into something that doesn’t really replace the original junior/senior relationship effectively.

Accomplishing what the parent comment is talking about requires far more than “please use the group chat”.

> Requesting something and something actually happening are two very different things.

i.e., I don't have the respect of the people that are working for me.

I never had issues with people making sure chat remained in public channels.

> There is also a meaningful difference between an in-person group chat and a group chat that will remain visible to the whole team for months or years to come.

One can be referenced later with a simple text search.

The other could have been an email. And will probably end up with people forgetting what exactly was said.

> requires everyone involved to adjust to the idea that everything they ask can be later analyzed without the context of the moment, and this has a chilling effect on the kinds of things that people are willing to ask.

i.e., I work at a toxic company with toxic management.

Because those same people were speaking up regularly during in-person meetings and weren't being judged there.

Also, let's forget about video/audio.

> Accomplishing what the parent comment is talking about requires far more than “please use the group chat.”

Sure. It requires effort. No more so than what was required before. The difference? We blindly accepted what came before as the way things were.

>i.e., I work at a toxic company with toxic management. >Because those same people were speaking up regularly during in-person meetings and weren't being judged there.

Since there's far less lawyers on this site than devs (naturally), I'll chime in with my .02c. Face to face is king. Don't say anything you wouldn't want your mom, dog, or the news saying when you wake up tomorrow morning. And you'd be surprised the stuff that people will put into writing, even after repeated notice. Ever work in healthcare and have to deal with HIPAA? It's insane how flippantly I've seen patient info shared, like it's not the first thing drilled into you. It doesn't matter if you are Jesus reincarnate, I'm sure you have said some things you wouldn't want to be read out in court.

>Requesting for people to communicate more in group chats instead of direct messages takes 5 seconds.

i just did that to my team and not only our productivity got better, but now everyone knows what everybody is doing (my team is brand new, and the company has this culture where everything is DMd instead of being sent into channels).

Part of the problem is that the tools we have are awful. Using a group chat on teams feels less like a casual chat with the people around you, and more like ringing a bell in the office to give a formal announcement.

> you just need different methodologies (tight feedback loops for juniors, public channels for team comms, etc)

Can you be more specific? "Public channels for team comms" -> they explicitly addressed that ("frustrated grumbling").

> but remote doesn’t fundamentally block any of the outcomes

Remote forces us to change the way we have been operating for decades. Why should we?

> Can you be more specific? "Public channels for team comms" -> they explicitly addressed that ("frustrated grumbling").

"Frustrated grumbling" goes to the tight feedback loops, make sure juniors aren't on their own island for too long without a checkin of some sort (if you want to manage things that way, I could also argue for letting juniors flail a bit in some cases but the person I replied to obviously prefers a more micro approach). Public channels were related to the desire to know what others were working on.

Further specifics depend on the dynamics of the team, but the point in there are various relatively easy ways to systematize remote work efficiently.

> Remote forces us to change the way we have been operating for decades. Why should we?

Why should people be forced to continue operating in ways they find suboptimal for a myriad of reasons (commute, distractions, tethering living location/family/friends to job, etc) just because some are unwilling to adapt even though solutions are readily available? The historical status quo is not often a great place to look for arguments for how things should be.

> There is nothing here that can’t be addressed in a remote setting, you just need different methodologies (tight feedback loops for juniors, public channels for team comms, etc).

The debate between remote and in-office communication reminds me about the debates around generative vs human made art. Is text messaging "real communication", is a generated painting "real art"?

Depends on what your purpose is. Of course text message isn't equivalent to a face to face meeting, nor is a face to face meeting over zoom the same as a face to face in person.

If the goal of the communication is specific (need requirement X by Y time), text is actually quite probably better (can take time to be concise and clear, use tools catered to the specifics, remove various other subtleties of face to face meetings). If you want to get to know someone or have low specificity communication needs, clearly an in person rendezvous is best.

I'm working a job at the moment that's fully remote and where everyone technical on the project is a senior dev. It's a completely different experience to pervious projects I've worked where we had junior devs and where I can relate to what you're saying here.

For me this is the first time I've ever felt far more productive working remotely since I can trust other team members are doing a good job, and when there are blockers or things to discuss it's easy for us to jump on a call and work it out.

I'm not saying there are no drawbacks, but I think for this particular project the pros far outweigh any cons of remote working.

I was very much in the hybrid camp a year ago, but now I think it really depends more on the team and the project you're working on. Some projects I've worked on before I can't even imagine working on from home since they've required a lot of collaboration with non-technical teams. But for projects where the technical work needed is well scoped and where you have strong developers, you might as well just let them work however they please.

I wonder if this is why devs have such strong disagreements on this – I doubt there is a right answer here, it just depends on the nature of the work.

>I wonder if this is why devs have such strong disagreements on this – I doubt there is a right answer here, it just depends on the nature of the work.

It's worth jumping into the HN Looking For Work threads from time to time to get a general picture of the people who use this site. I find it enlightening to realise that dogma about programming that seems foreign to me is mainly coming from people with massively different technical backgrounds. It also explains the webdev defaultism.

Yep. Peek into a thread about web frameworks and you’d think that software architecture never existed, and that very few are actually capable of working without them.

Tech’s skill requirements create a bimodal distribution of jobs, seemingly. Some places manage to break away sufficiently to spend less time dealing with poor code.

You can't work remote as if you were in-office but just have conference calls now. You need to restructure communication and norms a bit, but if you do it can completely address all the thing you brought up.

That's perfectly fine and you can be 100% sure you will find an employer who will be happy to have an employee like you. Many other senior engineers, however, are different and prefer to work in a more structured way. For example, I regularly have scheduled meetings with juniors where we discuss their current work. I make sure they feel at ease and speak their mind so I instantly see when they go wrong. And I make sure everybody in my time has time aside in our calendars for the main work - and that time is the same for all team. We are regularly praised by the management and our teams for how effective we are. And we meet in person every 3 months or so.

Same here.

Have you tried having an always on video meeting for your team? Our team was fairly similar, and for a time felt like we lost a lot during the lockdown. But an always on team-video meeting really saved us. It has its drawbacks, interruptions become a lot more disruptive and emoting is harder with a smaller face, but there are advantages that more than weigh up for this, instantly sharing the screen with the entire team is really useful, and not having to travel several floors to help people lowers the barrier for helping people in other parts of the organization. And with the always on video meeting people can even drop by to say hello. It also helps focus the team on one thing, which is often a good thing. People can still do their thing on the side, but working as a team on one focused task is a lot easier.

I feel like there's a mid-level sweet spot of independence where remote work is just 100x better than in office - you don't need consistent support, and you don't need to consistently influence/help lots of other people.

But if you need consistent support (juniors) or you need to influence/help others (seniors, managers), then it's such a huge hindrance to getting traction.

I managed several dozen people scattered across Hong Kong, NYC, London and Bangalore. I couldn't even overhear the team at my location because I was often in meetings. Nearly everything was done async, with weekly video calls. The main cultural challenge was getting people to IM frequently and casually like gamers on discord.

From a CS angle, we know async is more efficient than synchronous code, but requires very careful implementation. Same for people. It works for OSS volunteers, it can certainly work for full-time employees.

None of these issues couldn't be addressed in remote teams. It's not as if you can just take an office culture, make everyone be remote overnight, and have everything continue to chug along exactly the same as if nothing happened. Remote does require some adaptations. But in my experience, ultimately remote work is a drastic increase of quality of life without any decrease in productivity.

My company has worked pretty hard imo to reduce silo-ization caused by WFH. It has not worked. Everyone complains that about the stuff the parent did. Maybe our management is incompetent, but management isn't changing at this point. Some companies just don't have what it takes to transition to wfh, and I'd say the bigger the company the more likely that is.

I've still hit some of these same issues during 'co-location' periods. I'm somewhat comparing apples/oranges, but I've been at some large-ish orgs (1000s of employees colocated) and my experience was info-hoarding was pretty string outside a small network of the 'inner-circle'. Each dept had a few of these, and you'd routinely get hit with stuff out of left-field that apparently had "been in the works" for "some time", but the requests/items/issues were fundamentally flawed (logic, whatever). 30 minutes of talking with someone outside the inner circle would have helped, but... info is power. Hoarding it helps some people more than others.

I saw it happening in a 'remote' setup a few years back, except, it wasn't as intentional as it was in co-located work environments. It was more a natural consequence of people being remote. Issues/delays that might have been more naturally noticed in f2f settings lingered for months before surfacing. And... the more I dug, the more I was noticing this. More teams separated and working independently with few 'info hoarders' acting as informal intermediaries. There wasn't actual info hoarding with a political motivation behind it, but it happened all the same. Some aspects of working in that team were far better than '9-5 @ office' of 20 years ago, others were worse.

I'm not a "remote work at all costs" person, but also not a "return to shared office at all costs". Flexibility/choices I think are the optimal setup. Not everyone has a great home to work from. Many people work better with routine and physical space between 'home' and 'work'. We do, indeed, often get new info/ideas from the proverbial water cooler chats. There's no one 'best' way for people to get work done, and not one 'best way' for people to work together. My 'best' working style even changes depending on the skills and personalities of the other folks I'm working with.

I used to do this "intercepting bad ideas" out of habit, but often the people who had the bad ideas had more senior job titles and salaries than me. It got me in a lot of trouble, mostly because I gained a reputation for being very knowledgeable (invited to everything) and for making supposed seniors look bad. They were not actually senior, the place just didn't pay enough and any actual experienced people were incidental and often didn't hold the title.

I eventually had to leave because I turned into a human Confluence replacement and architect on top of my existing work and still was one of the worst paid people (with little to do about that, management hates "mercenaries"). So I'm very happy I no longer feel compelled to do this working remote anymore, except when people abuse our platform.

There's some rules one can add when working in a remote setting to address these sorts of issues, for example set a time limit for when an Engineer needs to engage with their team and ask a question, 30 mins/1 hour/2 hours (depending on your culture and allowance for investigation) max. This ensures they're not spinning their wheels and allows them time to investigate/learn while ensuring they reach out to their team and share the situation to get the necessary feedback/discussions to move forward. This has the additional benefit of not having every minor issue be answered by colleagues, increasing the amount of learning and work of the individual Engineer versus offloading to their peers unnecessarily.

>so it's all around less effective.

Organizing and growing teams is a challenge no matter what the environment, especially for a group that trends introvert. It is hard, whether in office, hybrid, remote, or mixed.

It is hard enough that it seems to me that people pick a side and then stop thinking about how to make the other options work - because why would you? If you picked iOS, why would you waste your precious time thinking about how you'd do it on Android?

But if you're not thinking about how to solve the problems you perceive in remote work, it's not useful to announce your problems with it as if that is any kind of conclusive argument. You haven't solved the problem, but that doesn't mean the problem can't be solved.

Another problem is that many companies are doing hybrid, and that means 40% of the time spent remote. Do the juniors just not get help on those days? Do they just "talk themselves into trouble" without the talking? If we can answer these questions for the two remote days, we can answer them for five remote days.

>I used to have a couple of PMs from other teams who regularly came to me for help because their engineers weren't great at talking to non-technical people.

Great. You're one of these talky people. Lucky you! We're not all like that. Let's see if we can be friends rather than competitors/enemies.

Good point. I haven't even considered that overhearing "fuck this stupid bulllshit" and helping them out is much less friction than a junior clumsily writing out the issue they are facing (and overcoming the urge not to ask for help in the first place)

> I haven't even considered that overhearing "fuck this stupid bulllshit"

Why can’t this happen over IM ?

You still only overhear those within earshot

What if you were in a meeting at that time ?

Our cultural norm is to have 90% of 1:1 communication in team specific chatrooms to let other team members chime in. This works best if everyone is remote or in separate offices. People in the same office obviously prefer direct communication, but I find this harmful if done extensively. My team has always been geographically diverse so strangely going more remote helped overall team communication.

You think you are good, while you sound like a shitty micromanager.

Your job at the office is to sit and listen to conversations like KGB?

Seriously, it sounds like you dont know how to structue work, nor manage people.

> so I can't jump in when they talk themselves into trouble.

Why cant you use standups to give updates and then take it offline if anyone is struggling?

You seem to be having some kind of Messiah complex where people always need you for help. If you leave the company tomorrow, the company will do just fine without you.

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