I’ll probably get downvoted, and your mileage may vary, but it’s possible that being visible and in-person with your coworkers increases your chances of getting a raise or promotion.
In a perfect world it wouldn’t make a difference if your performance is good in a remote position, but humans are not perfectly logical and rational creatures. There’s going to be bias and emotion involved when it comes to giving promotions.
but it’s possible that being visible and in-person with your coworkers increases your chances of getting a raise or promotion.
On my current job for about 2 years, I had 2 promotions. Both times I had to literally go to my boss and tell “for current payrate and for current set of responsibilities, you can go fuck yourself, I’m out”. Only after that I got promoted. Doubt it will work third time, so I actively look for new job.
Point is - no one in our company gets promotions, no matter if you literally suck CEO dry (CEO is a “she”, so that would be at least funny to watch) or if you freelancer that no one seen in office even once (me).
and your mileage may vary
Maybe I’m in this category tho, but feels like it’s global problem, judging by comments.
I find it works better for staff to come in if they are still learning on a task. I am far more likely to get people to ask me and each other questions in person than over email and instant message.
I’ve literally given a job to two people, broken out the components on who would do what, told them to coordinate with each other, them found out later they never reached out to each other once. Then I had to get involved in redoing the task.
Yeah, I’d forgotten this aspect. I’ve been mostly fully remote for six years. Whenever I very occasionally work in the office, being knowledgeable on many of the things we work on, I get bombarded with questions all day.
As others have said, many managers are kind of stupid and don’t have good object permanence.
There’s a guy at work who’s very visible but most of what he’s doing is bad. He’s like writing a linter from scratch instead of just using the tools we already have. But he’s visible, and idiot managers that don’t understand how computers work think he’s doing great work. The engineers that actually get shit done competently are quietly whispering about how to block and delay this guy’s nonsense.
At my last job, whenever the manager and one of the guys would both be in the office together, by the end of the day they’d have cooked up some horrible idea. Then the rest of us would struggle to take stop it without losing all our social capital. Maybe if we’d all been in the office that would’ve been easier, but if they knew how to fucking collaborate it also would have been fine.
Maybe that’s your point. There are people who are incompetent at collaboration and communication. They will never get better. Being in office with them is maybe the only way to deal with that.
One thing I noticed when people would call into a meeting and other people were in a room for same meeting, the computer screen was always shared so any data or presentation was shown to the call-in people but then someone in room would ask a question and the presenter would draw a diagram or a drawing on the white board and the call in person completely missed it.
Like a presenter would report data and say something like “the measurements of dimension 0.45 +/- 0.005 are trending upwards close to the control limit” and then someone in room asks “what is that dimension for”. The presenter would then go to the white board and draw a diagram. You might say can’t you just pull up the drawing on the computer and the answer in yes except for where 2 parts interact. You could pull up both drawings and kinda move mouse around like see this feature, then switch to second drawing, move mouse around second feature and be like feature one snaps into feature 2. Or draw a simple diagram in 30 seconds.
Off the top of my head at that office I think there were 22 meeting rooms. Most with 2 white boards if not more. So you would need to buy 44 cameras. Alot of them werent even real white boards but like these clear glass boards which were hung infront of a white wall.
I don’t know if you know who Casey muratori is but I would of loved a white board in the style he has. It’s basically translucent and he writes on the back of it and it’s over laid on his stream. He jumps between his computer to show code and then goes to board to do diagrams or quick math or whatever.
Owl cameras area great, they follow speakers around the room. You could even mount a plain old security camera on the ceiling and attach it to the videoconference system.
Does that guy just flip his video so that he can write forwards and you still see it forwards? Writing equations backwards would be a hell of a skill. I’d probably end up forgetting how to write them forwards.
I have no idea how he does it but let me find a video to demonstrate. The content doesn’t really matter if your not technical but I’m just referring to the board he has.
Or… You can use one of the many tools that meeting software providers that lets you draw on your shared screen. I’m pretty sure Teams solved this problem in at least 2022, possibly before.
Yeah, I’ve been remote for most of the last 20 years. Some people seem to lack object permanence and organization skills and completely forget that their remote coworkers/subordinates exist.
I’ll probably get downvoted, and your mileage may vary, but it’s possible that being visible and in-person with your coworkers increases your chances of getting a raise or promotion.
In a perfect world it wouldn’t make a difference if your performance is good in a remote position, but humans are not perfectly logical and rational creatures. There’s going to be bias and emotion involved when it comes to giving promotions.
On my current job for about 2 years, I had 2 promotions. Both times I had to literally go to my boss and tell “for current payrate and for current set of responsibilities, you can go fuck yourself, I’m out”. Only after that I got promoted. Doubt it will work third time, so I actively look for new job.
Point is - no one in our company gets promotions, no matter if you literally suck CEO dry (CEO is a “she”, so that would be at least funny to watch) or if you freelancer that no one seen in office even once (me).
I find it works better for staff to come in if they are still learning on a task. I am far more likely to get people to ask me and each other questions in person than over email and instant message.
I’ve literally given a job to two people, broken out the components on who would do what, told them to coordinate with each other, them found out later they never reached out to each other once. Then I had to get involved in redoing the task.
Yeah, I’d forgotten this aspect. I’ve been mostly fully remote for six years. Whenever I very occasionally work in the office, being knowledgeable on many of the things we work on, I get bombarded with questions all day.
As others have said, many managers are kind of stupid and don’t have good object permanence.
There’s a guy at work who’s very visible but most of what he’s doing is bad. He’s like writing a linter from scratch instead of just using the tools we already have. But he’s visible, and idiot managers that don’t understand how computers work think he’s doing great work. The engineers that actually get shit done competently are quietly whispering about how to block and delay this guy’s nonsense.
At my last job, whenever the manager and one of the guys would both be in the office together, by the end of the day they’d have cooked up some horrible idea. Then the rest of us would struggle to take stop it without losing all our social capital. Maybe if we’d all been in the office that would’ve been easier, but if they knew how to fucking collaborate it also would have been fine.
Maybe that’s your point. There are people who are incompetent at collaboration and communication. They will never get better. Being in office with them is maybe the only way to deal with that.
One thing I noticed when people would call into a meeting and other people were in a room for same meeting, the computer screen was always shared so any data or presentation was shown to the call-in people but then someone in room would ask a question and the presenter would draw a diagram or a drawing on the white board and the call in person completely missed it.
Like a presenter would report data and say something like “the measurements of dimension 0.45 +/- 0.005 are trending upwards close to the control limit” and then someone in room asks “what is that dimension for”. The presenter would then go to the white board and draw a diagram. You might say can’t you just pull up the drawing on the computer and the answer in yes except for where 2 parts interact. You could pull up both drawings and kinda move mouse around like see this feature, then switch to second drawing, move mouse around second feature and be like feature one snaps into feature 2. Or draw a simple diagram in 30 seconds.
Why wouldn’t there be a camera on the white board? Poor tech implementation.
Off the top of my head at that office I think there were 22 meeting rooms. Most with 2 white boards if not more. So you would need to buy 44 cameras. Alot of them werent even real white boards but like these clear glass boards which were hung infront of a white wall.
I don’t know if you know who Casey muratori is but I would of loved a white board in the style he has. It’s basically translucent and he writes on the back of it and it’s over laid on his stream. He jumps between his computer to show code and then goes to board to do diagrams or quick math or whatever.
Owl cameras area great, they follow speakers around the room. You could even mount a plain old security camera on the ceiling and attach it to the videoconference system.
Does that guy just flip his video so that he can write forwards and you still see it forwards? Writing equations backwards would be a hell of a skill. I’d probably end up forgetting how to write them forwards.
I have no idea how he does it but let me find a video to demonstrate. The content doesn’t really matter if your not technical but I’m just referring to the board he has.
https://youtu.be/tD5NrevFtbU?is=pfHZxt9tf68gNpcD
I no longer work at that company so the camera situation is not my problem.
Or… You can use one of the many tools that meeting software providers that lets you draw on your shared screen. I’m pretty sure Teams solved this problem in at least 2022, possibly before.
True but drawing with a marker and drawing with a mouse never mind a laptop touchpad are very different skills.
I was honestly assuming the person would be using a smartboard or large touchscreen for a presentation anyway…
This was a huge company. I was at a “small” facility with 22 meeting rooms. There were over 150 facilities world wide. The cost of that would be huge.
Yeah, I’ve been remote for most of the last 20 years. Some people seem to lack object permanence and organization skills and completely forget that their remote coworkers/subordinates exist.