[cdavid]

> All 7 companies were process driven companies, with discipline. The processes were not overly complicated, nor bureaucratic in nature, but they were followed religiously. If the process wasn't working everyone still followed it, but the issues were raised and addressed quickly. Which meant everything worked and made sense.

That sounds like a strict requirement for remote work to work, and intuitively so. In your experience, how was the training done for less experienced IC ?

[crustacean]

I’m just as curious about how the managers were trained to be process-driven. Manager behavior seems to me just as if not more important than IC behavior here.

Since managers have power, and engineers usually don’t personally know their skip levels, managers can easily replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings. And they can silence dissent! They can wreak havoc in a way no IC could ever do.

[52-6F-62]

> replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings.

This has been a particular pain-point for me at times. Example: two meetings with the same team members on two connected subjects of about 45mins to an hour in length, spaced half an hour apart when they could easily be combined. That's just in one day. There are others that have mirrored those throughout a week. The meetings don't need to be as long as they are, but they're scheduled for that long and the rest of the time is often filled with awkward chit-chat. But it fills the manager's calendar slots so that they appear effective, even if a lot of time is being squandered. Add on all the frustration of the back and forth across floors, wandering the halls looking for a meeting room that isn't double-booked or waiting on people to vacate rooms, etc etc.

IC time is more directly controlled this way. Occasionally it makes sense, but the amount of duplication is, at times, staggering and can be frustrating.

[shantly]

We had a client one place I worked that liked to schedule 1-2hr meetings, never bring up the topic at hand, and then the three or four folks from their company would just chat things through on the phone with one another, mostly unrelated to anything we could conceivable influence or care about, while we sat there twiddling our thumbs. This was probably a majority of their irregularly scheduled meetings. One or more of us would get roped into one of these every week or two. A couple of their folks also liked to schedule 30min calls with 3-4 people in response to Slack questions that should have been answerable in under 5min (total time spent, not necessarily within 5min, not everyone's always ready to respond on Slack at the drop of a hat) with no phone call. I strongly suspect they had a culture that rewarded their middle managers for having calendars full of meetings, with no regard whatsoever for whether the meetings accomplished anything.

Their core business was management consulting.

[papln]

I'd love to hear from managers and others who saw compensation increases from having their meeting calenders arificially full, and not from what that managers got from those meetings.

Has anyone ever promoted a manager because they have so many meetings?

[Foobar8568]

Consider yourself lucky if your co-workers could connect these two meetings/subjects...

[52-6F-62]

They're smart people, so I'm sure that's not the issue.

My complaints are probably less about co-located offices and more just corporate cruft.

[crustacean]

I think you’re right to connect “co-location” with “cruft”, though. “Co-location for the sake of the flourishing of cruft” is a management philosophy.

[scruple]

It also doesn't help that, at least it seems that, most organizations are, or are close to becoming, manager top-heavy these days.

[paulkearney]

The only point I'd disagree with is "these days". Overmanagement is the perennial problem in my experience. More do'ers less say'ers is my proposed solution.

[scruple]

That's true. I wrote that because I was thinking specifically about the concept of the PMC and the estimate I recall reading in the WikiPedia article.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional-managerial_class

[ben_jones]

If anyone else was wondering, IC seems to mean Independent Contractor.

[bdickason]

Can’t speak for OP but at my company IC stands for ‘individual contributor’ (as opposed to a manager)

[mekoka]

I don't know why this comment was downvoted for trying to provide clarity, because I too, started scanning OP's reply in search of a meaning for that acronym that appeared from thin air. If someone disagrees then they should simply state what they think is the correct definition. But in my opinion this comment contributes value by making it clear that not everybody is familiar with this jargon.

[NoodleIncident]

Incorrect definitions should be downvoted to make it clear that they're mistaken.

[necovek]

Uhm, I would expect a reply to provide that clarification.

I expect to find useless and inappropriate comments downvoted, but there is no official policy that I remember, so those are only my ideas of how downvoting would help moderate a discussion.

[SignalsFromBob]

Then the people that downvoted should provide a correction. I still don't know what IC is supposed to stand for. I'm assuming it's not integrated circuit which is what I think about when I see IC.

[notbryan]

IC typically means 'individual contributor'.