Re:Remote Work Report
by gregmac on Monday April 20, 2020 @01:03PM
(#22925824)
> The reality is that in-office workers have an inherent advantage when it comes to activities that require interaction between people, such as promotions or work assignments.
I don't think those two things are an inherent advantage, rather, it's the reality of managers that don't understand how to remote work.
If "work assignments" require in-person communication, it seems like something is severely broken with your work assignment system and/or process. For software development, to me, that is basically tickets, kanban/scrum/whatever, and the regular communication that takes place to discuss. This communication doesn't need to be "in-person" to work, which brings me to the next point: meetings.
Having remote people exposes many problems with meetings. One is having too many meetings, ad-hoc meetings, or agenda-less meetings. These are problems in-person too, but they're not as directly noticeable.
The other meeting problem comes more from how the meetings take place. The most remote-friendly orgs have a rule like "one person remote, everyone remote" which basically means everyone does the meeting with a webcam and headset, even if they're in the office. At a minimum, meeting rooms need good audio/video (as in: no PSTN speakerphones, and no laptop mics or webcams allowed), and all meeting invites are always sent with an online meeting URL, at a minimum the day before.
There can be inherit advantage in being in-person both for ad-hoc technical discussions and building personal relationships, but if those are job advantages I think it's also a management failure. Ad-hoc technical discussions should quickly be moved online and inclusive of remote people, and that's something a manager should be constantly encouraging/enforcing. It should also without saying that a manager that favors employees for promotions with whom they have better personal relationships isn't doing their job properly (and note this isn't directly a "remote worker" problem).
I don't think those two things are an inherent advantage, rather, it's the reality of managers that don't understand how to remote work.
If "work assignments" require in-person communication, it seems like something is severely broken with your work assignment system and/or process. For software development, to me, that is basically tickets, kanban/scrum/whatever, and the regular communication that takes place to discuss. This communication doesn't need to be "in-person" to work, which brings me to the next point: meetings.
Having remote people exposes many problems with meetings. One is having too many meetings, ad-hoc meetings, or agenda-less meetings. These are problems in-person too, but they're not as directly noticeable.
The other meeting problem comes more from how the meetings take place. The most remote-friendly orgs have a rule like "one person remote, everyone remote" which basically means everyone does the meeting with a webcam and headset, even if they're in the office. At a minimum, meeting rooms need good audio/video (as in: no PSTN speakerphones, and no laptop mics or webcams allowed), and all meeting invites are always sent with an online meeting URL, at a minimum the day before.
There can be inherit advantage in being in-person both for ad-hoc technical discussions and building personal relationships, but if those are job advantages I think it's also a management failure. Ad-hoc technical discussions should quickly be moved online and inclusive of remote people, and that's something a manager should be constantly encouraging/enforcing. It should also without saying that a manager that favors employees for promotions with whom they have better personal relationships isn't doing their job properly (and note this isn't directly a "remote worker" problem).