Hacker News Reader

Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

It's probably closer to the outputs (and differences in output) not being measurable enough.

I had a private office setup in one place. It was phenomenal and by far the best work environment (physical and otherwise) I've ever had.

The biggest problem was: we couldn't double the size of the team without it being a half-year leasing and construction project. So, we'd sawtooth among "far too much space and lots of pent-up hiring; a Goldilocks zone; out of space; hiring freeze; lease/construct offices; loop".

My office now is whatever I want to do with my house. That's also good for heads-down work (and obviously for the commute), but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work.

View on HN

> but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work.

Not at all.

If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.

In my experience, there is nothing like being in a room with a team. There is something about the physicality of presence, the way the communication has both lower latency (because it is not intermediated by electronics) and higher bandwidth (because in person even things like the way someone shifts in his shoes or his eyelid quivers is information).

I have worked remotely for a significant portion of the past few decades. I work remotely. I anticipate working remotely for the remainder of my career. I enjoy working remotely. But working in-person has some real advantages. I just don’t believe that they outweigh the disadvantages.

Similar here. I expected to hate working remotely when my company decided to switch. It turns out that I love it overall once through the adaptation period (for individuals and for the company).

Even with that, I think there is an optimal number of times per year to get the team together in one physical space and that number is probably somewhere in the one to three range, but by my estimation it sure isn't zero.

I agree communication is better when everyone is present. If a remote team was required to be available that would solve most of the problems. It’s about the culture of WFH which currently assumes slow async responses.

That's a cultural thing. All my remote colleagues are present and responsive. I certainly do not think it's a healthy assumption.

WFH does not imply async.

Timezones do.

Ive always been very surprised at companies that want in-office but then spread the workforce across a handful of timezones

My new year resolution is to never do remote work at my next job. I wanna be that guy known for being always there, at his job, doing what he's paid to do.

This has seriously diminishing returns.

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, did it fall?

If your the only one at work, did you work? Are you going to optimize to others view of your work habits or are you going to optimize to outcomes?

outcomes trumps all, however, I learned the hard way, as most of us do, that optics play a role.

You can be known for always being there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do, and still work remote. Just be there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do.

Fair enough. But I just can't replace real human interaction with remote communication. I just can't. Same way I could never get in a long distance relationship with someone. I need to be in the same room as them and look them in the eye when I'm explaining something to them. I actually like the 2-5 minutes of chit chat in the common kitchen every morning, talking about where my colleague went skiing that weekend.

And I am an introvert.

> But I just can't replace real human interaction with remote communication. I just can't.

That's entirely fair. You work best in a particular sort of arrangement, just as others work best in other sorts of arrangements. Nobody is wrong here.

For sure, I was just describing it the way I frame it for myself. I'm not gonna judge people who prefer to do nothing but remote

Honest question because I'm curious. What is your definition of an introvert and how do you know you are one?

Since GP has replied, I'll now add: I think of the divide as "extroverts gain energy from group social interactions; introverts lose energy during group social interactions".

IMO, it's not shy vs open, as my wife is on the shy side but clearly extroverted, while I'm more visibly/apparently comfortable but I find it exhausting to be in groups for a long period of time.

I don't care to be in the center of attention I guess and I'm very comfortable with silence.

When I socialize with friends typically 1h is enough.

I don't "collect" friends. I only get close to people when it makes sense. I am not socially inept however, just selective

Not sure why this is down voted. A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than physical. No more chicken-scratch text labels, plenty of pre-drawn widgets to drop in, easily shuffle things around, sticky arrows, everyone can have a different color pointer, etc. The learning curve is a bit higher than physical, yet worth the pain.

Also, no judgement about attire, eye contact, stance, or demands to stay during a fire alarm ("it's just a drill!").

Shame that Slack killed Screen Hero. Perhaps the founder's Pop.com effort will catch on.

I've been working remotely for most of my career and I intend to keep doing so, but if a "decent" virtual whiteboard can do that, I've yet to see it. FigJam, Miro, etc. all seem to be technically fine but unable to come up with flows that are as clearly obvious for collaboration as "two people standing there at a whiteboard". I can use all these tools quite effectively (I've got a LucidChart tab open right now) for solo use or semi-independently with close colleagues on the same board, but attempting to add other people creates chaos and a mess over the conference bridge because the affordances are so different from what people want out of rapid, high-bandwidth low-worrying-about-the-color-of-the-rectangle idea swapping.

Though I disagree with them and with you--I downvoted that post for its writer being a jerk, not for being subjectively wrong. "If you think virtual whiteboards maybe aren't very good you should give somebody else your remote job" is "man, shut up" territory.

When people are in a room you can have multiple voice conversations at once. When you are remote, you cannot. I know you can replace voice side channels with text, but this is a lossy proposition.

Turn-taking in general is better in person due to high bandwidth channels for nonverbal communication.

I say all of that as an autistic person who has trouble with all kinds of tacit communication (it may be that I have studied it so much in order to fit in that I really notice it), so yes there are downsides to being in person (I can pretend to make eye contact on a video), but I'm talking here about why the average developer or product person might have good reason to prefer in-person for a two pizza meeting.

Nice whiteboarding app affordances are great, but the low effort of onboarding to a physical whiteboard also encourages broader participation.

> A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than physical.

Interesting. I honestly assumed that virtual whiteboarding was universally considered worse than physical whiteboarding, purely because it is amongst everyone I've worked with.

It's interesting to learn otherwise.

> Not at all

The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.

> The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.

It's my least favorite thing about HN, but it's one of the opiates of the internet. Alternate phrasing like "not in my experience" might be slightly better.

I still think "downvote to grey" is a regression vs. simply letting popular comments be voted higher.

It's human nature to think that our personal experience and worldview is representative of the general population, even though it almost never actually is. It's a thing we have to consciously be on guard about.

"We tend to mistake the limits of our vision for the limits of the world."

If you allow the misperception to take hold, it's a short step to concluding that anyone who isn't like you is weird or wrong in some way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com