|
I'm really struggling. My entire team consist of people approaching retirement, they're all working from cabins dotted around the country, and nobody gives a poo poo about what I do.
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 15:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 19:56 |
|
|
LLSix posted:
My solution for this on Teams is to request control and then use the mouse cursor to point at stuff. Your cursor will have a little picture of your avatar on it, it works great!
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 15:24
|
|
|
others have touched on this already but I wanted to add another voice to reinforce it the thing that makes the most difference for how my team interacts with each other is a weekly watercooler on friday afternoon attendance optional, shop talk forbidden the meeting is also timed so that the work day functionally ends at 3pm
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 15:27
|
|
|
thotsky posted:I'm really struggling. My entire team consist of people approaching retirement, they're all working from cabins dotted around the country, and nobody gives a poo poo about what I do. Sorry for your troubles, but as an outsider this is really funny. What a time to be alive! When you say nobody gives a poo poo, do you mean just your peers or does that include your management chain and the business at large?
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 16:17
|
|
|
Edly posted:Sorry for your troubles, but as an outsider this is really funny. What a time to be alive! I mean nobody; not my peers, managers, or the consultancy hiring me out. I am pretty sure most of my managers and peers find me a nuisance, since I am not really allowed to touch the stuff they really care about, yet too competent to simply get rid off in case some important task does come along. I think the middle managers resent having to find me work, and the team would rather not hear what I have to say during stand-ups since it is a distraction from the stuff they've collectively been working on for over 25 years.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 16:29
|
|
|
You interviewing?
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 16:32
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:You interviewing?
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:05
|
|
|
Thank you all for the remote lead advice! It’s encouraging to hear some success stories to offset my apprehension.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:08
|
|
|
thotsky posted:I mean nobody; not my peers, managers, or the consultancy hiring me out. I am pretty sure most of my managers and peers find me a nuisance, since I am not really allowed to touch the stuff they really care about, yet too competent to simply get rid off in case some important task does come along. I think the middle managers resent having to find me work, and the team would rather not hear what I have to say during stand-ups since it is a distraction from the stuff they've collectively been working on for over 25 years. It sounds like you’re not happy there, which is far more than enough reason to bounce. There might be reasons not to bounce, to be fair, but I don’t know what those are and they’re for only you to consider anyway.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:08
|
|
|
I have let my consultancy know I want a new gig once I have finished my one year contract. The place I am working at want to extend it though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:11
|
|
|
Pollyanna posted:It sounds like you’re not happy there, which is far more than enough reason to bounce. There might be reasons not to bounce, to be fair, but I don’t know what those are and they’re for only you to consider anyway. are you interviewing? i read your cjs posts. you hate that fuckin job, and the goog's solidly stamped on your resume anyways. might as well get out
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:14
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:are you interviewing? i read your cjs posts. you hate that fuckin job, and the goog's solidly stamped on your resume anyways. might as well get out I certainly should be. Total overall comp is still good, job is still comfortable (WFH MWF), and it’s become clear to both me and my manager that I’m not the problem. But the work is unfulfilling, I find everything here frustrating, my RSUs are losing value, my depression has spiked, and the threat of layoffs still looms. So it’s a rest and vest for the foreseeable future until layoffs happen again. Which sucks, actually! I hate doing that. I’m a sadsack for multiple reasons right now and being so idle/stuck doesn’t help at all. Unfortunately the tech market is a shitshow right now and even then I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life and career anyway. Considering a sabbatical - or just a straight-up break TBQH, I don’t think modern companies do sabbaticals anymore.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:24
|
|
|
Artemis J Brassnuts posted:Thank you all for the remote lead advice! It’s encouraging to hear some success stories to offset my apprehension. I’m not sure if you counting me as a success story. I agree however, that public praise is definitely something we don’t see often enough, plus it also feels good to give, so don’t underestimate it. So, maybe as a follow up question to the thread, how do you manage your energy and availability? My team is in high spirits, but lately it feels like I’m burning my own sanity for this. I would like to be able to say, ok, today I just want to code to regenerate but there’s a, probably self inflicted, pressure to be available. In my case, my particular version of being autistic really doesn’t help. So, Artemis, try to take care of yourself better than I do for myself 
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:25
|
|
|
My own strategy is to explicitly schedule breaks, focus time, and office hours. I'm not super strict about enforcing those times, but just having them on the calendar makes a huge difference in how other people interact with my time and the little reminder popups help me remember to break away from things if I need to.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:53
|
|
|
Wii Spawn Camper posted:My solution for this on Teams is to request control and then use the mouse cursor to point at stuff. Your cursor will have a little picture of your avatar on it, it works great! Thanks! I didn't know you could do this. To reciprocate with a weird teams trick: If you right click on the send button you can set a time to send a message instead of sending it immediately. You can continue to edit update the message until you send it. I have several recurring meetings and this has been great for letting me prep the agenda ahead of time and then only send one message the day of with the new agenda. thotsky posted:I have let my consultancy know I want a new gig once I have finished my one year contract. The place I am working at want to extend it though. On the bright side - that they want to extend means someone there must value you and your work. The Fool posted:My own strategy is to explicitly schedule breaks, focus time, and office hours. Some of my peers will block out whole days at a time and mark the meeting private. I assume they're mostly making time for personal projects and not literally in back to back meetings all day. I'm getting close to that with all my 1:1s, but I've been able to keep half hour breaks between most of them so I've got some time to recharge and prep between meetings.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 18:27
|
|
|
I plan and block out the day's focus time at 9 AM the same morning. People know that if they need to schedule me for stuff they can do it reasonably fast, but if you want me same day you're reaching out on Slack
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 20:40
|
|
|
Since I started as a staff/TL I've learned to actively manage my calendar. If I need to block off time I do it. If I need to rearrange some meetings to optimize time blocks I do it. If a particular meeting is low value I'll skip or cancel it. It's a really big thing that keeps me sane, I highly recommend it. Just don't be that guy that blocks off 70% of his calendar with "private".
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 21:00
|
|
|
Edly posted:Solving problems together - if you have a team of 5, don't have 5 projects in flight with everyone working off in their own corner. We follow a "no 1-person projects" rule and it's been effective. I would love to institute a rule like this but my team is spread across many countries/timezones so it's been really hard to get people to work together in person consistently. People don't seem to like self-organizing; I have to constantly push them to setup meetings to collaborate with each other, it's exhausting.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 21:21
|
|
|
minato posted:How does this look in practice, if everyone's remote? Like, is it a combo of pair programming, code reviews, and people on the task coordinating on what each of them are doing each day during standup? A little of all of the above; for the most part folks are still working on tasks individually. A lot of the collaboration comes in the form of impromptu design discussions in Slack, or in the weekly Zoom project sync where they're scoping out/strategizing the next chunk of work. We're all in the continental US though, a big timezone disparity is a whole different beast. I've worked on a couple teams split across the US and Europe and I've never seen this solved to everyone's satisfaction; either project teams are clustered by timezone and separate team cultures develop, or you force everyone to work across timezones and it adds a ton of friction.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 22:07
|
|
|
e: ^^^ we've got Europe and pan-US team members. The west coasters have to start at 7am, no way around it. But otherwise, we have most of our meeting overlap between 10am and 12pm eastern time. The puts the European folks right up on quitting time, but generally collaboration happens around that overlap and then the devs either spend their mornings or afternoons on focus time. It works out pretty well, TBH, as long as the European devs are willing to work until 5 or 6 and the west coast devs are willing to wake up by 7. We have a few, rare 9am meetings, and those I always mark as optional for our west coasters because I don't expect anyone to be awake for a 6am.minato posted:How does this look in practice, if everyone's remote? Like, is it a combo of pair programming, code reviews, and people on the task coordinating on what each of them are doing each day during standup? Yes, that's what it looks like. I've found it most effective to have your leads build space within their project at which point you can have space for everyone to work on it. It's a lot of splitting up tickets in grooming so that you have atomic tasks, and removing or at least ordering those tickets so they aren't just waterfall dependencies of the preceding one. You don't have to have people pairing, a good, collaborative team will do that on their own. Your job is to make sure that 1) they have room to work on the same project, and 2) they are all participating in code review and communicating about what they're working on. kayakyakr fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Mar 6, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 22:09
|
|
|
remote isnt so bad, but timezone deltas are that bad
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 22:13
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:remote isnt so bad, but timezone deltas are that bad
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 22:15
|
|
|
My manager's performance review for me was less than worthless and included such highlights as "Now that you're a team lead pick 2-3 leaders you want to emulate and write them down and then iterate on this process" and "Think about leadership best practices and read literature on the topic, I can recommend some books". His skip said they were making me TL because of the leadership skills and effort I show already, which is also very funny. Good Will Hrunting fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Mar 6, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 22:27
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:remote isnt so bad, but timezone deltas are that bad A third of my team is in Ukraine and a third is in Vancouver, we basically have like two hours per day when we can have meetings. Good Will Hrunting posted:My manager's performance review for me was less than worthless and included such highlights as "Now that you're a team lead pick 2-3 leaders you want to emulate and write them down and then iterate on this process" and "Think about leadership best practices and read literature on the topic, I can recommend some books". Pick Lieutenant-General Fedorenko and spend your L&D budget on my books, thanks in advance
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 00:47
|
|
|
I have become a big fan of timezone deltas. All my meetings are in the morning, and then afternoons are when I get my individual work done.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 00:53
|
|
|
minato posted:How does this look in practice, if everyone's remote? Like, is it a combo of pair programming, code reviews, and people on the task coordinating on what each of them are doing each day during standup? Ensign Expendable posted:A third of my team is in Ukraine and a third is in Vancouver, we basically have like two hours per day when we can have meetings. Good Will Hrunting posted:My manager's performance review for me was less than worthless and included such highlights as "Now that you're a team lead pick 2-3 leaders you want to emulate and write them down and then iterate on this process" and "Think about leadership best practices and read literature on the topic, I can recommend some books".
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 00:58
|
|
|
even like, the rest of east asia is materially better than singapore lol
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 01:08
|
|
|
Plorkyeran posted:I have become a big fan of timezone deltas. All my meetings are in the morning, and then afternoons are when I get my individual work done. For a while I was working on the east coast while most of my colleagues are in California. The uninterrupted mornings were amazing, 9-12 no slack messages or sideband pings.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 03:10
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:For a while I was working on the east coast while most of my colleagues are in California. The uninterrupted mornings were amazing, 9-12 no slack messages or sideband pings. Same except I sleep in.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 04:25
|
|
|
I’m on the west coast and getting all my meetings done in the morning and being free in the afternoon kicks rear endLLSix posted:Thanks! I didn't know you could do this. That’s an awesome way to use the scheduled send, thanks for this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 05:04
|
|
|
Yeah, the time zone issues weigh heavily on me; I’m in Europe but all my connections are in the US and I’d love to make a US salary without moving back, lol. I made a spreadsheet to make sure I could actually divide my day across US hours without my wife or kid hating me. It would be a little weird but even after the aggressive taxes in my adoptive country I could easily double my take-home. I could probably convince my wife to go back to SoCal if I got one of those 300k/yr jobs but as a c++ / gamedev guy I’m probably out of luck on that one.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 09:24
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:A third of my team is in Ukraine and a third is in Vancouver, we basically have like two hours per day when we can have meetings. Look at it from the positive side, there is a very strict limit on how many stupid meetings you can have :v
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 11:17
|
|
|
This is a great time for these conversations because us daylight savings is Sunday and euro is end of the month I think. I may have scheduled myself for a 6a meeting
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 18:39
|
|
|
StumblyWumbly posted:I used to be pretty much one person per project, but I much prefer teaming up now. It requires more planning and architecture, which is healthy for the project, and it means people have someone they can talk to about problems. People don't self-organize, that's why managers exist, and I think it is standard to need to push them to talk about issues, and follow up on the pushing to make sure it happened. Leading these meetings at first might be needed, depending on your team, but they should figure it out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 20:16
|
|
|
StumblyWumbly posted:This is a great time for these conversations because us daylight savings is Sunday and euro is end of the month I think. I may have scheduled myself for a 6a meeting There are a bunch of Euro countries that have opted out of DST too, right? I know it's becoming less and less common.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 22:34
|
|
|
Subscribe to the tz announcements mailing list if you want a good ~quarterly facepalm. "Casey, Antarctica changed time zones five times since 2020."
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2024 00:23
|
|
|
I'm glad I'll be dead by the time software has to be written for a multi-planet economy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2024 02:10
|
|
|
Xik posted:I'm glad I'll be dead by the time software has to be written for a multi-planet economy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2024 14:13
|
|
|
Xik posted:I'm glad I'll be dead by the time software has to be written for a multi-planet economy. The singularity is going to surprise us all and hit about 2 decades early, just to spite you and sentence you to eternity writing code for a pan-solar and interstellar economy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2024 16:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 19:56 |
|
|
kayakyakr posted:The singularity is going to surprise us all and hit about 2 decades early, just to spite you and sentence you to eternity writing code for a pan-solar and interstellar economy. so still long after all of us posting here are dust
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2024 16:20
|
|
