
Tough Call: Handling “Difficult” Remote Conversations Like a Pro [video] - deepersprout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyM8FRIO0b0
======
nsxwolf
I was laid off a few months ago over Zoom. The thing that irked me about it
was I got an invite to it with a dishonest description the night before. Since
this was a director I didn't ordinarily communicate with, I wanted to make
sure I knew what I was talking about so I did a few hours of research on the
fake subject that night.

~~~
op00to
Same. One manager of mine gave me a special project to work on which turned
out to be busy work while they waited for HR to complete the lay-off
paperwork. The meeting to share my results was remote, and had him and an HR
person it it. Fuck that guy.

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tyingq
I wonder how many _" performance improvement plan"_, salary reduction, or
layoff discussions are happening over chat, email, and video this week. I
imagine this week's unemployment numbers will eclipse last week's record
setting number.

I've had to lay people off in the past, but face-to-face. Which is, at best, a
terrible experience for both parties. Can't imagine having to do it remotely.

~~~
T3OU-736
[https://mobile.twitter.com/mjnblack/status/12436416374204538...](https://mobile.twitter.com/mjnblack/status/1243641637420453889)
(posted in HN as
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707935))
as as a particularly bad example.

~~~
tyingq
Oy. Pre-recorded video? That requires both a shit company and a shit manager.
Personally, I'd have made sure to do something more than what the company
decided.

~~~
praptak
\- Knock, knock. \- Who's there? \- Not you anymore, lol.

~~~
hinkley
Everybody who still works here, take a step forward.

Slow down, Steve.

------
User23
The most efficacious way to make these conversations less “difficult” is
offering a generous separation agreement.

------
lonelappde
47min video. Presented slowly, very little of the info is about "difficult
conversations". It's largely about giving presentations. A written summary of
key points would be helpful.

~~~
Jugurtha
I watch videos that don't have slides at 16x using Video Speed Controller
extension[0]. A 47 minute video becomes a 3 minute video I can go through and
judge information density, slides quality, topics addressed, depth of said
topics, whether there's a topic that matters to me that's addressed there.

Then I decide if I'm going to watch the thing, which I note using Taskwarrior
with a +watch tag, a link to the video, a description on what it's about. Then
I watch it and take some notes, augment some issues with the information
acquired or references, etc.

I don't really do this with great quality speakers I'm familiar with, as I'm
sure I will learn things.

[0]:
[https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed](https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed)

~~~
wcarss
Do you keep any notes or record of the good talks/speakers online? It sounds
like it would be valuable!

~~~
Jugurtha
Sort of. Since all I think about in my waking hours is product, company,
roadmap, and vision, my notes are very specific to these issues and goals and
simply have become the company's knowledge base.

The notes for the talks are practically non existent and are just a subset,
and a few lines at most.. Other notes are about strategy, handbook to be able
to operate the company from paying taxes to hiring, onboarding, and firing to
how to write issues and commit messages, to tools we use or could use, to
features and roadmap, to the experience from soup to nuts of different
stakeholders, to the induced demand and workers influx it hopefully will
cause, to what the company should focus on for the next two months to become
what it will in the next five to ten years with nth order effects. Different x
maginification from the bug fix to the economic consequences on countries with
poor connectivity, and how closing an issue relating to compressing static
files moves us a hair.

Success is the team not missing a beat if I disappear, because everything
would be in place for continuity and growth and slashing cumulative lifetimes
of suck.

I've always had a proclivity for writing, but there are other reasons I'm
doing it _that_ much and want to do it more. Some hard transitions and
developments that almost killed the company, and we turned it around with some
hard learned lessons and the earned "wisdom" not to have it happen again.

------
Can_Not
I'm also curious about how remote dismissals are returning company laptops.

~~~
nkrisc
When it happened to me (before all this, summer 2019) they gave me a FedEx
account number and asked me to FedEx it back. It was a company account so I
just had to show up and make a minimal effort of stuffing it in a box. And I
was across the country from HQ. I imagine even with people stuck remote even
in the same city, they could just do the same and have people FedEx it back,
either now or later.

~~~
anticsapp
I wonder what the max weight is for a Fed Ex. I would be tempted to send them
the laptop wrapped in bubble packaging and foam, inside a steel safe. With the
combination on a Post-It note. I really want them to get that laptop.

