Hacker News Reader

Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and talks to the manager who’s sitting at home. That’s how return to the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving soon.

View on HN

The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.

Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions via 1-1 asides.

If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room where it's visible but incomprehensible.

And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts.

> If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room where it's visible but incomprehensible.

Bonus points if it's at a steep angle from the camera, making only one side of it slightly comprehensible, as the other side diminishes into unreadable scribbles

>And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts.

as if the snacks one has in their own home are so undesirable that this is the compelling factor. such a good post left on such a weak point.

The indignity of getting excluded from free cake is not an economic calculus.

Lots of people could go to the grocery store and buy themselves a sheet cake. They don't.

But you're assuming that one likes cake/pizza/whatever cheap mediocre food product that's been mentioned. If I was that manager, I'd raise your cake/pizza/whatever with a freshly grilled filet and baked potato with a nice glass of wine. Remind them just what possibilities they are missing for being in the office like peasants! After all, isn't that the point of having direct reports being in the office while you're at home?

To be clear, I've worked remotely for a decade. It's worth it on balance, but there's no need to try to sugarcoat missing office food. It's lame!

I’m currently hybrid and the in-office food is absolutely one of the main reasons I like going in.

> Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts

I've been in the position of being the sole remote guy (technically in office but working from a satellite site) and this happened soooo many times. The meeting would start and a box of donuts would be on the table and I'd hear "sorry, we'll mail a leftover to you!" followed by uproarious laughter.

It almost made missing the 1-1 asides and whiteboard visuals worthwhile. Declining junk food in person is much more challenging than simply having it 1000 miles away and obviously out of reach.

At some point say 'ooh, is someone making popcorn?', then leave, make popcorn, and come back and share.

If you get decent enough video conferencing equipment (e.g. microphone/camera designed for this kind of setup) and have good internet connections then this can actually work pretty well.

lol

I recently moved in to a new office, centrally located in Malmö (which is an incredibly easy to navigate city by bike, foot or public transport).

However, my company is remote first, and when I saw there was a conference room I didn't even think twice about the fact that I would put a large conference table in there and the best A/V equipment that I could afford.

Then I went to Paradox's leaving drinks[0] and met a founder of Frictional Games[1]; they too are remote first but from long before the pandemic, and had a lot of people asking for advice.

I was no different and asked what he learned; He told me, in no uncertain terms, (and without prompting about what to do with my new conference room- merely what worked well for him): that a conference room no matter how well equipped creates implicit asymmetry in meetings.

When I thought back on my career, I realised he was completely right. I have used some truly excellent video conferencing solutions (those big Microsoft TVs that fully integrate with Teams- JAMF boards, the best that logitech as to offer), but it was always more friction than it was worth, and often there was a recap once the "meeting" was over IRL anyway.

So that room is now a relaxing area.

[0]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/paradox-closing-ume-a...

[1]: https://www.moddb.com/games/amnesia-the-dark-descent/news/in...

In that situation we would use a meeting room. The dynamic would make the manager feel like they are the outsider in that case, though.

They literally are the outsider in that case though

You seem to think these managers have even a shred of self-awareness...

Rule #1 for effective management from any reputable ivy league executive MBA program is to have less self-awareness than any of your subordinates.

> Good that I am leaving soon.

I get the impression the manager is thinking the same thing.

If you're leaving, why not stay home like the manager? If you start a trend he'll have to explain himself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com