[dheera]

It also means

- You can't take calls from cars

- People leave 2 bullshit comments like "justification needed" for participation points and then go drink coffee instead of actually reading the doc or googling for said justification

- People waste inordinate amounts of time writing docs for things that could be discussed in 10 minutes

[tyre]

Not taking calls from a car sounds like a feature. We don't need more distracted drivers or meeting participants.

[CydeWeys]

People taking calls from cars (and thinking it's OK in the first place) is exactly why we're going back to 5 days in office. People are simply taking too much advantage. You're being paid to work those 40 hours a week, not do whatever the hell you want to during the day and try to cram in work while you're driving from one errand to the next.

[Sgt_Apone]

In my experience it’s the people who are working in the office that take calls from the car because they got stuck in traffic during their commute.

[ABraidotti]

Both sides of the RTO bell curve (the abusers and the hyper dedicated) are taking a hit here.

For an example of the latter, it's the people who can stomach a long commute three days a week but not five.

[dheera]

Exactly this. It's 15 total hours per week of commuting for some people in my area. Housing near the office is not affordable for families.

And possibly post-commute fatigue and not being able to get anything done after 1.5 hours on the road in the morning.

[DiggyJohnson]

Why does any comment always assume the average American is commuting ludicrous distances each morning. People do this, but its very, very rare. Hyperbole is getting in the way of discussion.

[dheera]

1-hour one way commutes are NOT rare at all in Amazon's hub locations. Housing near the office is supremely expensive, school districts are also not the best, and most people have partners and need to live in a location that balances 2 peoples' commutes. On top of that, Amazon is such a big employer that they single-handedly make the traffic worse in at least Seattle.

Also, keep in mind that it isn't just the commute time. For a 1-hour commute I also need to prepare for the 1-hour commute, which includes making and packing up a lunch (because many offices have no cafeteria or no options that I'm able to eat), packing up my electric toothbrush and water flosser (because I need to brush 3 times a day for my braces and they won't let me leave shit at the office). Others need to deal with feeding pets, blah blah. For people with train commutes they need to deal with uncertainty in traffic just getting to the train station, so they have to leave an extra 15-20 minutes early and kill time waiting for the train on the platform because the next train won't come for a fucking hour (this is America), and leave time to line up to buy the goddamn parking ticket for the train station.

For the past 2 years people were able to roll out of bed and into a meeting, grabbing something from the fridge on the way. That's why stuff was efficient. Now we're going back to an inefficient world with the same high expectations of an effecient world.

[NeutralCrane]

It absolutely isn’t rare.

[NeutralCrane]

I haven’t seen a single instance of someone taking a call from their car since working remotely, likely because no one was commuting. It was fairly common prior to the pandemic and I was in office.

[tkzed49]

Yeah this is wild. If someone joined my meeting while driving I'd end the call and reschedule it.

[tekknik]

but why be so controlling? imagine someone is so busy they have to commute at 45 min commute in the 15 minute gap between meetings. so you’re refusal to be more understanding is blocking progress. likely it’ll be you removed from the meeting and going forward you’ll be included less. have fun being a low level IC!

[tkzed49]

lol you have too many meetings. I don't care if the manager with back to back meetings listens in from transit or something. im literally suggesting being more flexible

[adriand]

> People waste inordinate amounts of time writing docs for things that could be discussed in 10 minutes

I’m very much a writing kind of person when it comes to organizing my thoughts and I worked at a place where we did a ton of written documentation kind of like this. Then I left there and worked remote with a different company whose CEO, when I sent him an email, would pick up the phone and call me. We would then have the 10 minute conversation you’re talking about here. I came to love it because it’s true, a short focused conversation can be a huge timesaver. Since then, I’m often really frustrated by vendors and partners who steadfastly refuse to get on a call, when it’s very obvious to me that a quick call would be a far better use of time than endlessly going back and forth on email.

[tayo42]

These are informal quick chats work nicely, until it doesn't, then it's a disaster and docs are needed.

With certain people I can work like that. With others that I don't trust, have seen don't shoddy work, don't communicate well, then write a doc and we'll discuss it.

[tekknik]

if we were coworkers, and i detected this unequal behavior from you i would force you to communicate with me using only docs.

egos in engineers need to die.

[base698]

The doc culture is great and I prefer meetings having the time upfront to get everyone up to speed. However, I regularly saw six page docs written for 25 line lambda functions.

[hughesjj]

This is why one pager/two pagers also exist, but agreed doing it for every piece of infra glue would be excessive even for a one pager.

[Cthulhu_]

Was it an important lambda function though? How often would it be called, would it still be around in 10 years, etc? If the six page document justified the existence of a separate deployable, then clearly it was important enough to warrant it. If you claim six pages was excessive, did the lambda even need to exist in the first place?

[Cthulhu_]

> - People waste inordinate amounts of time writing docs for things that could be discussed in 10 minutes

What about if someone wants to know what was discussed? You end up telling and retelling the same thing over and over again to get people in the loop, vs pointing to the doc and its remarks. (Depends on the subject of course)

[dheera]

Technical things (algorithms, locations of docker images, code, data, checkpoints, things that were tried but failed) should be documented.

Unfortunately most of the doc culture is people trying to convince each other within the same team that we need XYZ even when everyone with half a brain already knows it. Like "we need more GPUs to get shit done" should be a 10 minute call, not a PRFAQ.

[computerfriend]

I was in a meeting with an AWS engineer who took it from their car. It felt weird to me.