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Re:Written communication is remote work super power by codingdave on Friday June 19, 2020 @04:39PM (#23578658)
> misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle.

True, but readily fixed with "Can we talk about this when you have a minute?"

Also, losing "an async cycle" is a completely alien concept to me. I've been working remotely for a decade, never heard that phrase, and not entirely sure why it matters. Does a conversation that takes 14 Slack messages make the business less efficient than one that only took 11?

Honestly, I'm not trying to just nitpick, but why would a room full of people be beneficial to decisions "when they verge toward the arbitrary"? Wouldn't that be the perfect time for everyone to send their async opinions, and let a single decision-maker just decide? Large calls/meetings work when you don't know what you don't know - to get all the information on the table, and have all the knowledge in the same place at the same time. You talk, give answers where needed, assign some action items to people, and go back to your async lives.

As far as the initial statement that you must be competent at writing and reading prose... I'd love to hear more about that than "it's harder than it sounds". I've worked remotely with people with dyslexia and reading disabilities and C-level personalities that refused to get in-depth in any single communication. And one guy who had all those traits - the CEO... and it worked fine. None of that stopped us from doing our jobs effectively. You did need to learn how your co-workers communicated, but let me assure you - we were not excellent writers, we just knew our co-workers well enough to know their communication styles.

That is what remote work comes down to, at the end of it all. Not communication frameworks and rules of when to use what communication channel - but getting to know your team well enough that you know how to work together. If you do that, you succeed, whether remote or in an office.

Re:Written communication is remote work super power by Leherenn on Saturday June 20, 2020 @11:01AM (#23584314)
Well if one async cycle takes 1 day due to timezones, that 11 vs 14 cycles becomes not negligible.
Re:Written communication is remote work super power by abhayb on Friday June 19, 2020 @10:20PM (#23580964)
Hmm... I think the idea with synchronous communication is very much the same as it is with with synchronous method calls. Synchronous communication lets you break your thoughts down into smaller chunks and thus make them easier to understand. Synchronous methods do very much the same (at least how I write them).

I like what you say about needing to "learn how your co-workers communicate[d]". Maybe that's the abstraction layer that makes async everything possible. Still a leaky abstraction and I'd prefer not to have it. But it might actually have worked for me over the last couple of months.