this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
1753 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
59665 readers
3065 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I found that keeping up with people over video works better when you're in the same time zone. When I was managing teams at +8 hours and -12.5 relative hours, communication and trust just weakened steadily over time and creative collaboration stalled. Spending a week there in person usually got things unstuck.
I know people on split engineering teams between LA and Seattle who prefer all virtual and it's worked long term. LA to NY I think would be a heavier lift.
And, of course, this whole discussion is always dominated by software engineers; there are lots of jobs that involve actual manipulation of matter where in person collaboration is essential to communicate skills.
Oh definitely, timezones do throw a wrench in things a bit, but there are easy ways around that usually, splitting engineering teams like the way you described is a pretty good workaround.
I completely agree that jobs that just can't be done remotely obviously shouldn't be, but any job that can be should have the option available. I just feel like most of the work from home backlash comes from people who cannot do their jobs from home and managers/executives that just want someone to babysit, usually in order to justify their own professional existence. It just seems like a lot of "crabs in a bucket" behavior.