Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chank 1225 days ago
So you're saying that your ability to get work done is dependent on forcing time with your co-workers on your schedule instead of theirs? This would be rude even if in the office. I've had the complete opposite experience of being able to get co-workers to respond in chat and jump onto meetings when needed.

I can definitely agree that if your company doesn't set an expectation of how remote/hybrid work will be conducted then there will always be some people who are overly laissez-faire with it. My own opinion is that remote work should be conducted mostly the same as if you were in the office. You're just not sitting in the same building anymore. Everyone should keep sensible hours that are close to the same hours of your team and be generally available. Seems to have worked so well for my company that they've begun closing down physical offices.

1 comments

"So you're saying that your ability to get work done is dependent on forcing time with your co-workers on your schedule instead of theirs? This would be rude even if in the office. I've had the complete opposite experience of being able to get co-workers to respond in chat and jump onto meetings when needed."

I'm saying on average, everyone's ability to get stuff done is higher if everyone can interrupt everyone.

> I'm saying on average, everyone's ability to get stuff done is higher if everyone can interrupt everyone.

There's no actual evidence of that being true though. It's very much your personal take on it as you've said. I'm also hesitant to ask that if your work relies so much on being able to interrupt your coworkers at a moments notice is that evidence of other issues. Not having power to make decisions on the direction of your work? Poor documentation? Dare I say lack of confidence and/or ability to do your (not you specifically) own job? Seems to me the whole case against remote/hybrid boils down to certain peoples feelings about how they feel comfortable working. Not any actual statistical proof on the matter.

I agree that there's no good data to back this up, it seems really hard to collect. Unless you have a rock solid idea on how to measure productivity? The rest of your post is essentially "I hesitate to ask, but are you bad at your job?"

No, it's more that when you're venturing outside your usual territory it can be so much quicker to ask your teammates who are area owners.

If I'm modifying widget X that John built, and I encounter something non-obvious, I can spend an hour figuring out why that was, or I can ask John sitting next to me, and he can usually unblock me in about 30 seconds.

When I help people get up to speed in code I've written I usually say something along the lines of "if you get stuck and you've spent 5 minutes trying to figure it out, please ask me about it".

So coming back, your main problem still seems to be the unresponsiveness of your teammates when you can't force them to respond by being directly in front of them? If you're teammates are really that bad at responding then perhaps they are "bad at their job". Just about every job description usually has something about ability to communicate included in it.

So basically trying to fix one problem with another one. Can't please everyone 100% of the time.

A very works on my system take.

If you interrupt me it takes me hours to get back on speed.

What do you work on and what % of the day do you work on tasks that complex?

Hours is an incredibly long time. I'm not against people blocking off specific time when dealing with an especially gnarly bug or planning out a major feature, but for day-to-day tasks the cost of an interruption is usually a "right, where was I" once it's over.