
The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace - amix
https://doist.com/blog/asynchronous-communication/
======
ChuckNorris89
I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare
me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't
interested at all.

Management there only values _" butt time in seats"_ and the ability to come
over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need
something.

As one of my ex CEOs put it: _" If I don't see my employees stressing out at
thier desks I get the impression they're not working."_

Until we get over this psychological attachment of management loving to
visually see their slaves on the open office plantation through their private
panopticon[1] offices, remote won't take off no matter how many studies get
published.

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)

~~~
fizx
As someone who has gone to the dark side, there's an interesting tradeoff
here. There's basically three scenarios:

(1) all employees are trusted and unmeasured, but you have to tap people on
the shoulder every once in a while to confirm that they're on track.
Naturally, this is easier if everyone is on-site.

(2) everyone is accountable for producing of tickets, and you can check that
everyone is at least doing some work. Check-ins can happen via comments in
tickets.

(3) Everyone just does whatever they think they're supposed to be doing, and
the manager only finds out something is wrong when the employee volunteers the
information or the project isn't delivered on-time.

(1) is the common case, (2) requires time and skills many managers don't have
(and creates @#$% Jira commentary form the peanut gallery), (3) requires
building an excellent team with years of mutual trust between them, and still
goes wrong all the time.

Seeing you at your desk working, and asking a casual question or two at the
water cooler is by far the easiest (laziest?) way to make sure things don't go
too far sideways.

~~~
VonGuard
Reminds me of an old adage about tech work and other skilled labors: If you
give me a task that takes a normal perosn 8 hours, and I finish it in 30
minutes, you're paying me for the skill, knowledge and experience that allows
me to do it in 30 minutes. I do not owe you another 7.5 hours of work. I owe
you the job being done, not the hours it should take to do it.

~~~
umvi
> I do not owe you another 7.5 hours of work.

Only if you are a contractor and you've fulfilled your contract. If you are a
salaried employee I expect you to keep your hopper of tasks full so you aren't
sitting around idle 95% of the day waiting for me to feed you 30 minute
taskers

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Why? As a salaried employee you're literally paying me for my ability to get
work done, not for my hourly output. If the goal is to keep me busy for X
number of hours a day, instead of getting a job done whatever it requires, why
am I salaried?

~~~
umvi
> If the goal is to keep me busy for X number of hours a day, instead of
> getting a job done whatever it requires, why am I salaried?

The "goal" in a lot of cases is nebulous (i.e. "keep developing the product",
"improve stability", etc). There might not be a manager feeding you tasks
every time you run out. At least in my company, you are expected to figure out
on your own how to continually make the product better and proactively do it,
not sit around idle after rapidly finishing the last task your manager gave
you.

If you are just a dumb worker that can only work when your manager fills your
queue, you are not valuable to me as a salaried employee (you are more
valuable as a contractor who I can call upon for a one-off difficult task that
you can then complete in 30 minutes).

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
So you're not trusting the salaried employee to use their judgement on how
best to utilize their time, but instead assuming they instead use their skill
to be a butt in a seat and working for at least 40 hours? What's special about
the salary then? It's just easier than an hourly system?

~~~
umvi
You seem to be presenting confused ideas.

Here's what I believe:

If I pay you a salary, I want (roughly) 40 hours per week of productive work
at your current skill level. Note: I consider sitting around thinking about
things relevant to the product or company to be productive work. If you
believe your level of output deserves higher compensation than you are
receiving, come talk to me or find a company that will pay what you think you
are worth. However, accepting a salary and then doing tasks really fast and
then going idle (watching netflix, working on side projects, etc.) until your
manager cattle prods you is not acceptable for a salaried employee; that would
be more appropriate for a contractor where you can idle on your own dime.

~~~
malvosenior
If this is happening, it's 100% due to bad management. It means the employee
wasn't given creative freedom and a strategic direction to go in. The very
last thing any manager should ever do is punish their best employees (e.g. the
person who can finish a whole day's worth of work very quickly).

~~~
umvi
> The very last thing any manager should ever do is punish their best
> employees (e.g. the person who can finish a whole day's worth of work very
> quickly).

They are not the "best employees" if they are constantly idling, waiting for
me to tell them what to do next. People here seem to think the ideal
manager/subordinate relationship is that of a worker thread pool where the
manager fills the queue and the worker threads pull tasks off the queue.

Not so. The "best employees" are ones who can examine the current state of
affairs, and then come to me and propose things to work on. The ideal
manager/subordinate relationship is actually one where the workers are all
artificial general intelligences that learn over time what the product is, how
to improve it, and proactively create tasks to work on.

If you are a rockstar but only work as a a super-fast super-efficient thread
in a worker thread pool, you are less valuable to me than a non-rockstar AGI
who can dynamically recognize which tasks need to be done and only
occasionally needs guidance and course-correction.

~~~
malvosenior
It sounds like you do value creativity and autonomy. If that's the case why
would it matter how many hours someone was working? Judge them by their
output, not how they got there.

~~~
beefalo
This depends a lot on what the value of their output was. If they want to do
their tasks 5 times faster than the interns and leave then they can do that
for intern pay since that's the value they bring. If they are actually doing
more valuable work that involves understanding the product, working with other
teams, designing new systems, and they can still do it in less than 40 hours
then that is fine. Being effective at driving projects and making decisions
are a different kind of work that usually take some time.

------
yodsanklai
I work remotely.

I've noticed that one thing that make me work harder than in an office, is
that I feel that I need to earn the trust that my employer gives me. In an
office, sometimes I feel that just being there is enough to justify my salary,
even if I'm just chatting with colleagues or browsing the web. I discipline
myself better when I work remotely.

Another thing that makes a difference for me: I suffer from back pain when
sitting in a chair for too long. At my place, I can lie down if needed.

On the downside, I suffer from being far from where decisions are taken, and I
sometimes miss important information.

~~~
BurningFrog
> _On the downside, I suffer from being far from where decisions are taken_

And your employer suffers from your lack of input in those decisions.

~~~
tick_tock_tick
That may or may not have consequences for them but almost always will hurt the
employee's career.

------
greggman2
Since remote work seems to be the topic this article on async communication
spawned I wanted to throw this out there for reactions.

First off let me acknowledge that some people prefer remote work and also say
up front I do not.

I recent YouAreNotSoSmart podcast interviewed Laurie Santos from Yale and if I
understood her research basically claims we often both individually and as a
society choose things we think will make us happy but actually don't. Examples
seemed to include anything that takes you away from people. One example was
the ATM machine. It's more convenient than a bank teller but interacting with
the teller adds to your quota of needed interaction for happiness. Things like
the fact that you can order a Starbucks coffee on your phone and pick it up
with no interaction as another tiny example. I'm sure those were minor
examples but she was basically claiming we're often inadvertently choosing
things that actually make us less happy.

For me I prefer in office work because I want to be around other people. I
want them to interrupt me too. Not 100% of the time but I enjoy the
camaraderie, the conversations, going over solutions together, etc...

So in that context, is it possible the push for remote work fits in that line?
We think it will make us happy but it for many people it will have the
unintended consequence of isolating them and actually make them less happy.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be given the choice. Maybe you are different.
Maybe you have special needs (someone you need to take care of for example) or
maybe you're remote location has family or friends around. But, if Laurie
Santos is correct then maybe a large percent of people are actually making a
bad choice?

PS: I don't know if I trust her research. I'm only passing on my
interpretation what I though she said in the interview.

~~~
jschwartzi
Here's an anecdote for you. I work remote and normally make time for
activities or groups at least a few times a week. Once, after something upset
me I decided to spend a couple weeks not going out. I rapidly went toasty. By
the end of the first week I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was restless,
anxious, and desperately unhappy. So yes, I need some social interaction to
feel normal. But it doesn't come from my co-workers.

~~~
WarDores
I think this is the key. I'm not sure "forced interaction" is the answer for
everyone. I work remotely and spent yesterday morning for 2 hours just
chatting with some folks at a coffee shop I regularly work out of over some
common interests. That filled my "meaningful interaction" bucket more than 2
or 3 days of office work in my previous office'd life. My 2 cents as well.

------
settsu
The issue I often have with discussions of remote work vs. on-site, is how
much confirmation bias tends to be incorporated into the conclusions made.

After about 16 years of on-site work (at various jobs), I did almost 5 years
of remote work (for a single company), having just recently returned to an in-
office role (despite focusing on landing another remote position, the best
opportunity wasn’t.)

And, frankly, I find neither inherently, categorically superior. It has far
more to do with a number of unique variables, among them: culture, software
tools, and the people themselves.

So while I do largely agree with the core argument of the linked post (roughly
summarized: asynchronous communication helps facilitate productivity for
knowledge workers), I also feel too much emphasis is placed on working
remotely as inherent in part of the solution.

How about we just teach and incentivize people to, for example, not interrupt
others unnecessarily, how to recognize when someone may be deeply focused on a
task, how to indicate such an effort is currently underway, plus to recognize
when it may be appropriate, necessary, and healthy to stop the “deep work“ and
address communal, biological, and psychological needs? All regardless of the
exact mode of the work.

~~~
mkolodny
While "remote workers are more productive" is in the article's title, I
disagree that the author is suggesting that working remotely is a necessary
part of the solution. The article's subtitle is "Async isn’t just for remote
teams".

I think the post makes it clear to that office workers could benefit a ton
from async communication. And I agree completely. Sync communication at my
previous job was such a drain on my productivity. For me, Slack made
communication easier, but it made focus more difficult and work more
stressful.

I think you're right that software tools can make a big difference. The author
seems to be promoting its product - Twist - as a great Slack alternative. And
I think it looks solid.

~~~
cbzbc
Slack can be used as a asynchronous mechanism - but too many teams develop
into using direct IMs/convos as a preferred communications style.

~~~
kasey_junk
It _can_ be but nothing about it makes that the default or even easy.

I’d love to see companies abandon chat in favor of discussion threads.

For “water cooler” conversations video is almost always better.

------
jrockway
Sometimes I wonder if the underlying issue is that there isn't enough actual
work for people to do. I worry that I'm about to sound super out of touch, but
hear me out; I'm not making a value judgement about anyone's job.

It is assumed that everyone needs to do exactly 40 hours of work per week, but
ask yourself this: for every person in your company, what do their next 40
hours look like? 40 hours worth of HR policies need to be created. 40 hours
worth of sales calls need to be made. 40 hours worth of snacks need to be
ordered for the office. 40 hours worth of website text updates need to be
made. 40 hours worth of UIs need to be designed. 40 hours worth of code needs
to be typed in. Isn't it strange that all these vastly different tasks take
the same number of hours to complete in a week? My guess is that chattin' is
what takes up whatever time remains; people are required to pretend that they
do 40 hours of work every week, so they come up with their own way of filling
the time. Planning is always valued (and a good idea!), so if you report "yeah
I spent the week planning for our Q3 XXX" then it sounds like the money spent
on your salary was worth it, and it continues to pay.

As a software engineer, I've never had the problem of not having enough work
to do. Tasks are always added to the backlog at a faster rate than they are
removed from the backlog. But I feel like a lot of other jobs aren't like
this, and the "there is infinite work forever!" thing is most prevalent in
fields like engineering, design, art, fabrication, etc.

Meanwhile, most of the people in your average office aren't doing any of those
things. To some extent, they're on retainer, waiting for their skills to be
needed. And, trying to optimize this is perilous. If you get employee
utilization up to 100%, people complain loudly (Amazon fulfillment center
workers aren't sending 1000 Slack messages a day). If you try to not pay
people for the time periods where they're not being utilized, you just get the
"gig economy" which is awful.

I dunno, it all makes very little sense to me. Sometimes I wonder what
percentage of the US economy is about doing work that doesn't need to be done,
and how many people would not have jobs if we decided "we're not paying for
this anymore". I think I'm scared about it, though.

~~~
hrbf
You’ll probably be interested to read about Bullshit Jobs. The authors’ name
escapes me currently.

~~~
_Microft
Is it this one, maybe?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

You're shadow-banned btw (which I normally wouldn't tell) but your comments
look OK, so maybe this has happened by accident? You could try to challenge
that (maybe via the email support?).

~~~
shinryuu
I can see the parent comment, so I think he isn't shadowbanned..?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Comment history is mainly dead, so my guess is they are. Someone likely
[vouch]ed for the dead comment in this thread, so it's now visible to
everyone.

------
BeetleB
This is amusing. Not long ago I was in a thread about how to do remote work
well and the top complaint amongst remote workers was "not responding quickly
to IM" ( _between_ remote workers). And the general sentiment was the
expectation to respond quickly is greater in remote work. That alone made me
not want to take remote jobs. At my current work place, my IM status says that
whoever IM's me should not expect a response and that if their query is
urgent, they should simply walk over to my cube and talk (I don't mind). If
not urgent, they should email.

The other thing that came out of that thread was "If you're remote and don't
respond quickly enough, people assume you're slacking off - while in the
office people visibly slack off all the time and it's considered OK".

~~~
k__
I worked with both types of people.

Funny thing is, when I am a freelancer, who gets paid much more money per hour
than an employee, people valued my time and would send me mails or text
messages and wait hours or days for an answer,.

When I was an remote employee, people paid me less and called me three times
before 10am.

Somehow, many employers have the perception to own every minute their
employees are awake.

I would never go back to such a work culture.

~~~
JDiculous
Yea, I'm contracting remotely and the difference between working a full-time
job in the office seems to be night and day.

As a remote contractor, they judge me by my results and trust me to do my job
however I see fit. No hand-holding or micromanaging, only one standup every
couple days.

Meanwhile at the office I've got to attend a morning attendance meeting
everyday, a bunch of other useless meetings, and I need to ask for permission
if I need to take a couple hours to go to the doctor and apologize if I
happened to sleep in one day.

Can't say I miss office life.

~~~
k__
Especially the sleeping...

I have not set an alarm for months now.

~~~
JDiculous
I've always said one of my primary goals in life is to not have to wake up to
an alarm. I'm so used to it now I didn't even think to mention it, but reading
your comment I just realized I've achieved that.

~~~
k__
But I sleep till noon lol

------
Tade0
Except for the occasional visit to the office to give a few high fives and
have some chit-chat I work remotely.

Until recently we used Toggl to track work time and the guidance was to have
"6h of focused work daily".

I'm managing 5h 15min-ish, but only when working remotely. When I'm in the
office that number organically drops to around 3h 40min.

Only person really doing those hours(and above) is one guy who's not into
chit-chat.

~~~
greenshackle2
That is roughly consistent with my experience.

When I was using the "pomodoro" technique, I first started with the goal of 14
pomodoros per day (14 x 25min of focused work). My (fairly successful) friend
who had done pomodoro told me that was not a reasonable goal. 10-12 seems a
more reasonable goal for most people.

When doing focused reading in grad school I could do maybe 8-9 hours on a good
day.

Working on a personal project I enjoy at home, I can do maybe 7-8 hours of
focused coding in a day (but probably not multiple days in a row).

At work I probably do 4 hours of focused coding on average. This is partly
because of non-coding tasks, but also my attention tends to peter out beyond
4.5 hours.

~~~
WestCoast
I can't tell you how unburdening it is to read your response. Thank you for
your honesty.

~~~
potta_coffee
I can tell you, I'm in the same boat. I can't really do more than 4 -5 hours
of actual coding on a typical day. I've done days with 7 - 12 hours of coding
but those are outliers. Also by Thursday, I'm pretty burned out. I rarely get
a lot done on Friday.

~~~
Tade0
We all are, but we play this little game with our employers so that we don't
get fired.

My take is that you can't shoehorn creative work into your desired time slots.
Not if the result is supposed to have any quality.

I have found that sometimes I just need to stare away from the screen and
forget what exactly I have written in order to obtain a fresh perspective and
spot any problems.

No way to speed up this process, and what's worse is that if I try to log only
the time during which I did "focused work", the result generally doesn't go
over the mentioned 5h 15min daily.

Every person I ever asked about this is in the same situation.

------
atilaneves
Been working 100% remotely for 3 years now. My biggest fear is having to go
back to an office at some point in my career. I hope it never happens.

------
ninkendo
This article hits on a lot of good points to me, because I often see people
treat chat like it's a stand-in for an IRL conversation.

People will start conversations with just "Hello", and wait for me to respond,
as if we're talking on the phone or something. This, to me, fundamentally
misses out on the benefits of online communication: You don't need to wait to
establish a conversation with me to ask me your question; you can just come
out with it. And your question/problem can become just another item on my TODO
list, which I can prioritize throughout the day:

\- If it's something I can answer/address right away, I can do so

\- If it's something that will take some investigation, I can start
investigating it (and let you know how much time I'll need, etc)

\- If it's something clearly low-priority, I can wait until later when I'm not
as busy to address it

\- If it's something that doesn't really make sense, or there are things I can
explain to you to help point you in the right direction, I can spend a moment
to help dig up some information for you.

If you just say "Hello" (or "Ping", etc) you're taking away my ability to
prioritize your question/problem, and are asking me to agree to spend time on
something before I know what it is.

If instead you begin the conversation with the question/problem that needs
addressing, you're adding an item to my TODO queue, which can be re-sorted/re-
prioritized continuously throughout the day, and allows me to be more
effective. I can get to your question when it makes sense for me to do so.

I have my status permanently set to [http://nohello.com](http://nohello.com)
to hopefully drive this point home with people, and anecdotally I've seen a
lot less drive-by "Hello" messages on Slack. Additionally I've just stopped
responding to people when they say "Hello". I just hope that doesn't come off
as me being a jerk, though...

------
k__
20-40% of the stuff you do at work are considered "real work", this is totally
normal on-prem, but not remote.

Where do I get the best ideas to solve a problem?

Not when I'm sitting in front of it for 8h a day.

I get them when I stand up, buy groceries, do my laundry, shower, etc.

Does this provide huge value to the company I work for? Totally

Does the people at the company think I cheat them? Many do

Would they feel better if I sat in their office for 8h, have worse ideas,
provide lower value and generally feel worse? Somehow many do too

------
jillesvangurp
An important point about asynchronous vs. synchronous is that it's not just
about the communication but about the work processeses. What enables people to
work more effectively is removing synchronization bottlenecks in processes.
Any kind of synchronization point causes people to do silly things like wait
for that to happen, delay activities until after they've happened, or try to
organize meetings around these points. The more synchronization points you
have, the slower things get. Usually we call this bureaucracy.

Any kind of meeting is a synchronization bottleneck. People synchronize their
workday around these. Workdays and office hours are synchronization points as
well. They create bottlenecks in our traffic system even where literally
everybody is trying to get to work at the same time just so they can be at a
standup meeting.

Treat it as a technical problem and get rid of unnecessary blocking activities
and things run smoother. It's true for software, it's true for logistics, and
it is true for work processes. The same principles apply and you can use
similar design patterns (queues, events, etc.). A side effect of non blocking
processes is that people can work more effectively without waiting for people
to talk to them or meetings to happen. It enables remote work but is just as
effective when used on site.

Git was invented to support asynchronous development where independent groups
of developers work on their own branches and exchange patches or pull requests
when they want to synchronize. Works great for OSS but it is now also common
in non remote software teams. Create a ticket, assign it, create a branch for
it, do some work, create a pr, pr gets reviewed, ci builds trigger and if you
figured out deployment automation, ultimately the change goes to production as
well. It's all orchestrated via events that trigger somebody or something to
pick up the work for the next thing. It's great. It replaced a work process
where people were bottle-necked on central version repositories that required
a lot of ceremony around branching and merging because it was so tedious;
which in turn made commits a big deal and necessitated commit freezes and lots
of communication overhead, meetings, and delays. Git got rid of most of that.

------
everdrive
If a boss needs to see you in your seat to "know" you're working, it's very
likely that said boss cannot actually tell which employees are effective or
talented, either.

------
gm
"No expectation of immediate reply"? HA! I SO wish. Slack kills any async
expectation. Specially if you install it on your cellphone. Then you're on the
clock 24/7.

I guess the article also assumes different time zones when working remotely?

I filed the article under the "rubbish bin". I've worked remotely for several
years, and maybe I live in a different planet, because "async" and remote work
do NOT go hand in hand for me. If anything, Slack means people can reach me
even when I'm taking a dump, and I'm expected to reply at that moment.

~~~
mewpmewp
How do you know people expect you to answer immediately? I haven't noticed
that expectation.

~~~
gm
They ask questions which imply "I'm sitting on my hands until you answer me".

~~~
0xffff2
Is that your problem? Why?

------
TheThickOfIt
Anecdotal but I'm the opposite. I hate working from home and love having a
team around me, sharing goals and ideas and hyping each other. Different
strokes etc.

~~~
rimliu
"sharing goals and ideas and hyping each other"

I will be cynical but this does not sound like some work is being done there.
Reminds me of the guys of the gym who spend 90% time here just talking.

~~~
anbotero
To me it sounded like the other 10%. While the 90% will be there and not all
will necessarily interrupt on purpose (they can be guided to increase the
10%), you focus your most productive interactions with the 10%. From time to
time you work with the other 90%, and that helps everybody up the game.

I prefer to work/live alone, but to deny the benefits of camaraderie and
relationships with a high-performing team? Absurd.

------
Udik
The article starts by simply assuming its conclusion in a complete non-
sequitur: that all the listed benefits of remote working stem from
asynchronous communication.

Sharing the space with your children or partner? Asynchronous communication.
Being able to take short breaks in your own space? Asynchronous communication.
Not being distracted by people chatting about their weekend? Asynchronous
communication.

One of the major benefits of remote working, for me, is just not having other
people around. It's not much a matter of communication but simply of the relax
and focus I get when I don't have to be aware of others.

------
mscasts
I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At
work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by
people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation.

At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is
Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk.

So I can attest to this.

~~~
dagw
I could work from home 80% of the time if I wanted, but actually prefer
working at an office because I find it less distracting. The office is a
'clean' space where I'm only surrounded by work related thing. I have my work
computer on my work desk with my work setup, and nothing else. There is pretty
much nothing else to do here other than work. Home is cluttered and I'm
surrounded by all kinds of 'distraction' not related to working.

~~~
keymon-o
Remote work boosting is becoming a company shaming trend for not allowing
workers to escape company rules, routines and procedures. Sure, remote work
should be promoted, but in a way to give companies useful resources on how to
analyze the neccessity and implement in their workflow.

Instead of writing arguments how remote work is just awesome, it would be more
useful to have statistics on how many people are actually capable and
accountable to work from home, and what do people really want out of their
workspaces or by asking for remote work.

------
tomasGiden
It is easy to make a case for either synchronous or asynchronous communication
just as easily as making cases for on collocation or remote work or office
landscapes or individual rooms. But what is most often missing us the context.
And it is quite naive to believe one way is always better than the other.

I can recommend the work on Dynamic work design by Nelson P. Repenning to make
a case for both in what context either is best but even more importantly, when
and how to move back and forth between different work modes. Here is a good
introduction: [https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/a-new-approach-to-
design...](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/a-new-approach-to-designing-
work/)

------
dunkelheit
I think I am not really well-adapted for async communication.

I can't really do "fire and forget" messaging. When I ask something I want the
reply to arrive as quickly as possible because I don't want to lose the
context that I have in my mind right now and load it again later when I
receive a reply. On an async channel this results in compulsive checking for
replies which of course kills productivity. Almost-sync channels like Slack
are the worst - who didn't experience the frustration of their chat partner
suddenly disappearing without a word in the middle of a discussion?

On a related note I very much prefer a focused half-hour meeting to a whole
day of async back-and-forths.

Inbound messages are problematic too because they provide the same kind of
addictive random gratification that social media is infamous for.

Any tips for dealing with these problems?

~~~
kbsletten
Nobody is adapted to asynchronous communication, it's always going to make you
less productive. The key is that your immediate request is forcing someone
else to put down their thing to help you, the same way that other people
interrupt you when they message you. In optimizing for team performance, we
don't get individual maximums.

Mostly, try to reduce switchyness. Not all input is blocking, sometimes you
can put a question out early and have hours/ days/ weeks before you need an
answer. Work on identifying potential hangups early and often. Try to handle
your communication in batches. Respond to urgent messages faster, but spend
time between deep tasks or in the lame duck part of the day doing email.

------
jpincheira
The benefits you get from implementing asynchronous communication with your
organization are huge. This is exactly why I felt the need to resign from my
job last year to go build a platform that is designed from the ground up to
support this.

As a remote team, implementing the async communication style will allow you to
never have to depend on fixed calendar meetings. No need to have to organize
everybody together in a room, at a specific time, to just make a decision.

I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a guideline
into how to set a basic async comm process for a remote team. Hope you find it
helpful:

[https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-
communi...](https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-
communication/)

~~~
detaro
> _I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a
> guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for a remote team. Hope
> you find it helpful:

> I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a
> guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for remote teams. Hope
> you find it helpful.

> I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a
> guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for remote teams. Hope
> you find it helpful:_

Joke about async communication or copy-paste error?

------
atoav
A thing to consider is that these remote methods are not bound to remote
workers. I had a job were I had two choices when a certain situation occured
that stopped me from finishing work:

1\. Find the person involved, talk to them and try to resolve it right away

2\. Write a mail to them, print it out, clamp it to the related paper and hang
it on the wall.

We were a very tiny 7-person company with rooms in the same building and still
the approach outlined in point 1 rarely was more productive than just waiting
for them to reply. For situations that happened more often I created email
templates so there was even less work.

Another advantage of method 2 is that unresolved work in the end of the day is
already taken care of and if you are working in shifts the handover is easier
then.

------
bryanmgreen
I think an asynchronous workplace (remote or not) is mostly a good one as
people tend to be more effective without interruption.

Anyways, I think a big barrier to this dream are the tools that can promote
and sustain asynchronicity.

It's really hard to keep communication open and job
responsibilities/deliverables clear without being mircomanage-y. Lots of
leaders will have to give up control - which is going to be really hard, to
say the least. Software tools will need to be security-blankets for managers
as much as performance trackers for employees. Give them a little pat on the
head that "it's all ok". That's going to be hard to accomplish.

------
zarro
The reason people don't like remote workers by instinct isn't because they
don't realize that they people COULD be more productive at home.

Its because they worry that it creates incentives that could lead to a
decrease in productivity over time.

I think the root of it really is the first line Management. These guys need to
be really good at their job in order for WFH FT to be more productive. If
these aren't all that efficient to begin with, that will make it much more
visible in a WFH situation. I think all parties intuitively feel this.

------
kmlx
my office is hell to work in. everyone simply shows up next to your screen and
starts talking. that is why async comms from remote locations has been a
blessing for me. i can simply queue the non important messages for later. once
they've realised that i won't answer for a couple of hours they started being
a lot more aware of what messages they're sending. thus comms improved greatly
once everyone started working from home. the occasion call takes care of any
face2face situations. overall major win

~~~
siffland
I have this issue as well. People will show up at my desk to get something
done. Yes it should be in some sort of ticket, but then they are in a queue
and might get another admin, so if they just show up they will probably get
their stuff done so they will leave me alone and i can get onto other work (it
is not that i don't want to see people, but i have lots of work usually).

------
UserIsUnused
Their tool Twist is the result of their own problems while developing their
app (Todoist) , and they use it internally. Usual tools made by companies that
use it (dogfooding) use to be better.

------
monkeydust
Personally I think flexibility is the future. Allow employees to decide or
work inhouse or remotely. I work in a very large financial services technology
company. I value to closeness to colleges and the quick, sharp interactions
that can happen with that - but - there are times when I am wokring on
something larger I would be more effective at home or a remote location where
sales etc can physically come to my desk and suck my time.

~~~
anbotero
I think this is key, but it costs a lot from companies (and also people),
culturally, economically, and sometimes constrained by law.

Should you keep all seats even when 20% of your workforce prefers to work
remote? What do you do with those seats when they are empty? It's possible,
and it's great when it's there, just not as simple as choosing one option or
the other.

I happen to prefer to work alone, but I recognize those times when meetings or
pair programming are truly valuable and needed, and I jump to it at once when
needed. It's about recognizing the pros and cons of each approach, and
minimize the impact of the cons as much as you can.

------
iblaine
This article conveniently overlooks problems when remote workers need
supervision to keep them in line with expectations. I’ve had both good and bad
experiences managing remote teams. The difference seems to be the quality of
the remote workers. The quality of a remote persons work is inversely
proportional to the supervision they require.

------
auiya
> It leads to lower quality discussions and suboptimal solutions. When you
> have to respond immediately, people don’t have time to think through key
> issues thoroughly and provide thoughtful responses. Your first response to
> any given situation is often not your best response.

I feel like this is the main benefit.

------
WomanCanCode
Management here doesn't like remote employees because they cant order them
around like they do us. Also they don't like the fact that those employees
don't stay in the office longer and are not bonding with other people here.

------
mattoxic
Oh it's quite simple, I don't get interrupted. At work I might get 15 minutes
of work done before there is someone at my desk, and headphones are the
international sign of "hey lets bother that guy".

------
MarkMc
If remote workers are more productive, why aren't most office jobs remote?

------
vkaku
It works very well when you need a clear documented interface for
communication. It will not work on a culture which demands more facetime.

And more often, the answer is somewhere in between, and it's hard to
generalize.

------
yason
Productivity depends on the phase of work. Simplisticly put there are two
phases of mental work such as programming: i/o bound and brain bound.

If you're in the i/o bound phase remoting is often hard. You need to talk to
people, pull answers from them, communicate, coordinate, reach agreements and
nail down development plans. You can't do anything anyway unless you agree on
the next steps first.

Conversely if you're brain bound all you want is a laptop and being alone at
home because it's way more efficient to focus on a problem when you can forget
about everything else. You can't plan ahead anyway unless you dig down in the
code and see for yourself first what will work and what needs to change.

These phases alternate in worklife, maybe based on projects, time of the
month, the whatever happenstances take place in the progress of development.
Usually when you're stuck in one phase you really need to spend time in the
other phase for a while. This is normal.

This has consequences. People working remotely tend to maximise their time on
what they're efficient at, i.e. brain bound programming. At the office it's
easier to invite people to meetings through the week to get work done that way
because you can't really be brain bound at the office anyway. Thus remote
types and office types tend to inflate their favourite phase as much as
possible.

This inflation happens because these two phases are inherently incompatible
with each other, and crossing the gap to switch phases is tedious.

But if you only ever work i/o bound you begin to wonder how could people work
remotely at all. After all, everything happens in the office anyway so maybe
working from home could work if only we add enough meetings to keep the remote
people more tightly in the loop... And people working steadily from home begin
to fathom, in time, whether it's possible at all to work at the office as all
you have is constant breaks, meetings, people coming to ask about stuff and
you can't ultimately get any _real_ work done.

Different things begin to become important for people who don't alternate. So
there's a slight confirmation bias in how people flock to the position and
environment that maximises the kind of work they're really good at. But the
caveat is that in doing this that you could be comfort-siloing yourself. So
natural and healthy alternating between phases is what keeps you open and able
to adjust to changes in work life and work projects.

On the other hand, people who alternate too often begin to get nothing done.
You need to allocate batches of time for both phases in some moderate
proportion. How to balance that is more of an art than anything else.

Sounds familiar, anyone? This is a dynamic I've observed in my own work life
over and over again.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Communications can often be _better_ working from home. Open offices really
inhibit conversations because you don't want to disturb your neighbors. At
home you can talk to whoever you want for as long as you want as loud as you
want.

------
travisoneill1
I think there is a component of selection bias here. Only productive workers
will be allowed by their bosses to work from home.

------
buboard
good old email is King when working remotely. I think most IM apps are used as
monitoring tools. Maybe there is a better solution for that

------
xtat
How do I upvote this harder!

------
helpPeople
I wonder where they get productivity data.

An owner of a company I'm close with found her employee was abusing work from
home. This same employee was formerly a Superstar or so we thought.

Maybe bad management, but I found myself calling a 7 hour work from home day 8
hours too.

~~~
whatshisface
For the same pay, would you rather have one person get a lot done in 6 hours
or another person get little done in 9 hours? If an employee was
underperforming for 10 hours a day, would your friend keep them on?
Truthfully, the only things that matter from the company's perspective are the
output and the price. It's wrong to misrepresent your hours worked, just as
it's wrong to lie about the color of your pants, but a rational company
wouldn't ask about either.

------
joshuakarjala
(promo) - For builders we have created
[https://www.yourtempo.co](https://www.yourtempo.co) to help you manage e-mail
and only process / reply once or twice a day.

------
PunchTornado
I don't get it why the workplace is viewed as only a place to work. We spend
8h of the day there. That would be a sad life if you only worked in those 8h.
The workplace is actually a place to socialize, to do the things that you
love, chat with your friends, have fun.

I bet most people from those 8h work a maximum 4. The rest is chatting and
socializing. I like it.

~~~
dkersten
> The rest is chatting and socializing. I like it.

The problem I have with this is that I don't really get to choose who I can
chat and socialize with -- I like my work colleagues, but they're not my main
social circle and never will be because I find it unhealthy if your colleagues
are your core friends since if you ever want or need to leave (or get fired),
it makes it all the more painful and makes an already stressful situation even
more stressful. I'm a firm believer that you should enjoy the company of the
people you work with, but that you should have a strong social life outside of
work too so that you don't feel socially trapped in that job.

~~~
PunchTornado
depends on the type of work. if you're in tech and you change jobs every 3
years, yes that's harder. but in medical people stay much much longer, 20-30
years. Most of my team has been here over 10 years. It's seems stupid not to
create strong friendships.

