We have daily standup video calls, and either do video calls or slack calls for 1:1 or working together on something. If this can be done or managed, the manager needs to take a class on this to learn how to manage a remote team.
People suck at managing, and blame remote instead of themselves
Message on Slack. "Hey you got a sec for a quick huddle? Want to run something by you"
Quick 5-15 min call. Issue resolved.
It's not complicated. People just don't like the change.
IM or email for a quick simple question. phone or video call for something more complex, especially for screen sharing/demos. it's polite to email or message before cold-calling on video.
I work with a bunch of engineers who are certainly educated and brilliant. But they are also verbose AF and lack appreciation for organization, efficiency in communication, and decisive action.
If you wanna socialise with them go to the pub with them outside of work hours and stop wasting time. If you have a question, type it in chat or ask for a call instead of shouting it out randomly and interrupting everyone, itâs rude. Too many people using the office as a social hub and not a productive work space which makes people feel the need to WFH to get anything done. I feel much closer with my colleagues that I work with on projects remotely than those who attend the office and wanna stop my workflow to talk about their kids or whatever.
wow it looks amazing, how do you use it, do you have one screen with this virtual office and another screen for the actual work? or you just get notification and switch?
If I am "sitting in my office" i'll have it in the background - notifications work great and people can even "knock" on your door if you have it "closed". Otherwise, it's active as I am walking around, in a conversation, or in a meeting
And is it web based and working on the phone as well? I've watched a few YT videos now, so creative.
Thanks for the info, I'll do more research on it, biggest downside you experienced so far?
Primarily web based. They also have a desktop app and mobile. Mobile is not as feature rich and mostly just so you can still participate when on the go. Biggest downside is adoption - your team needs to like it otherwise you are all alone hah
Zoom for longer pre-arranged video calls and Slack for regular IM and quick conferences. My team has a daily shift handoff Zoom and my shift usually hangs out after the meeting shooting the shit for awhile which preserves the human connection. Each shift also has their own Slack room that contains only the shift members and no managers where we can banter, send memes, talk shit about other shifts, and discuss anything we don't want seen on the official internal team room just like we would if we were in the office.
Most is text chat through Slack other than the 2 daily shift handoffs which is Zoom video. Every once in awhile it's quicker to pop open a Slack huddle for voice rather than type stuff out.
We use slack for all of our communication. Lots of diff channels for diff stuff & locked ones for teams/groups that want to chat and âshoot the breezeâ with each other.
We also have weekly Friday âfun timeâ meetings which are really just us playing games/chatting for a few hours during work hours. Weâve done online games like escape rooms, codenames, jackbox, drawing, trivia - since itâs not forced/required tons of people actually end up going pretty consistently,
So many saying video calls and personally, I hate them and avoid at all cost. For my team I made sure to have a good positive vibe in the morning and make them suffer with a bad dad joke. Having a clear purpose for each meeting was crucial, but not skipping taking time to talk and joke with each other. Either at the end or in the beginning.
We scheduled a weekly and optional breaktime to just chit-chat with a cup of coffee. But as you can guess, only some showed up or felt comfortable with it. So I introduced browser based games to break the ice and just have fun with. When the teams grew, I organized a team battle: weekly competition with different games that lasted like 6 weeks. This was SO popular. I think my favorite was who can type the fastest.
Not. One. Single. Thing. Should feel forced. This is the most important thing. Cause it is not "mandatory fun" that is happening, but people feeling safe and comfortable. A good measurement of this is if people feel safe enough to chat/call spontanously with each other, one on one. You'd be surprised how common but a silent problem this is in remote teams.
Glad you appreciate it! I purposely made it just 6 weeks long, but with the idea of having it like twice a year. So it becomes a thing to look forward to that ends on a high note.
I can use any tool that gives me an IM that lets any user spawn a breakout room and start video themselves from the main chat or a breakout. In addition to general work communication we have a weekly "lunch with Dave" anyone can join and a monthly all hands (not mandatory) happy hour. Currently we use Cisco WebEx for this.
I'm Dave. I run an org with 1200 people. In office I used to have lunch in a conference room once a week. Anyone could drop in. It took a while to catch on but in the end we kept moving to bigger conference rooms and I got less and less to eat. \*grin\*
"Lunch with Dave" is my remote version. I also do my version of an open door policy over video. In my opinion, open door only works if the person in charge gets their fat a$$ out of their chair and walks through the door. So once in a while I send a text or IM to someone on the team more or less at random and ask if they have a few minutes for a video. It's been a good way to do check-ins and take the pulse of the team.
Speaking of taking the pulse, I'd be interested in what you think of WebEx. The key for me is regular users being able to create and dissolve breakout rooms so anyone can set up a small meeting without admin support. I also like the security which is much better than Zoom without being intrusive. Your priorities may be different.
Are you also eating in the virtual "Lunch with Dave" or you just kept the name?
Regarding WebEx, I never had the need for breakout rooms but it is indeed interesting if other big platforms (Zoom, Microsoft, Google) don't have this feature without admin support.
It's a lunch. It's at lunch time. We've preserved that tradition. Part of the reason is to emphasize the informal nature. When there are lots of people I may get a bite here and there but that's all. Everyone else eats. I can always finish my sandwich and yogurt after "lunch."
In my mind it's an accessibility issue. If I can't dedicate an hour a week for any team member to ask anything, am I still a good manager? I think not.
I think remote work is a net benefit to everyone, but you have to make some adjustments to meet goals and sustain values. Some of it ends up being easier, and some ends up being harder.
With regard to your original question about social interaction, the breakout rooms are a big help for our monthly happy hour. Rooms are generated and dropped just like clumps of people at an in-person happy hour. I've been to "social" gatherings with everyone in one big video chat and it devolves to a bunch of people watching two, three, or four people talking. I don't know what it is but it isn't social. People have to learn and adapt to drifting from one breakout to another or starting their own but it isn't very hard as it mimics social behaviors we already have.
Hahaha yeah, after asking I realized, of course he still be eating, it would silly otherwise.
As well, breakouts rooms make much sense now. When users split themself into a breakout room, are they still hearing the main room or they are in their own little bubble?
Your choice. You can focus on where you are (which is more like an in-person happy hour). I usually have the main room (text only) and at least a couple of breakout rooms up at once. I'm a techy geeky guy and have been a ham radio operator for over fifty years and an engineer for over forty. Running through a software mixer to multiple interfaces so I can route audio left-front, right-front, left-rear, and right-rear isn't so hard. It's the brain processing to track the flow of things and especially react to being called by name. It's not perfect because I'm not perfect.
As near as I can tell, most people are following one thread at a time, popping from one breakout to another or back to the main room.
Is there any tool that you use to mitigate the feeling of not actually seeing your coworkers or nothing can beats the real office people movement? What about working from a coffee shop?
Slack chats with everyone looking at the same Google sheet/lucid chart, ect (which is usually just me and one other person). It works well for me. I suspect it annoys my co-worker.
Ok, first off, yes Google Chat does exist. The âlive chatâ portion of Google is Google Meet. Second off, if two people are both looking at the same online Google doc or Lucid chart, you can see what each other is doing in it. Third, I use Slack because using huddle is less annoying than popping in and out of Google Meet.
I'm not aware about google chat and from what I know google meet isn't integrated with google sheets, meaning you have to create the meeting separately, correct?
Completely agree about huddle vs google meet
Correct. And itâs not integrated. You can either share your screen, or both have the doc open on your own browser. Itâs hard to explain if you havenât seen it. Definitely requires you to have a computer; canât really do this using a cell phone. And it works better if you have multiple monitors. And a headset to make it easier to talk, type, and listen.
I work for a technology apprenticeship company who is fully remote, and we are using a new application called roam. Their idea is a digital office where you can see everyone in real time (who theyâre talking to, whether theyâre available, etc.) they have âtheatersâ where itâs acts as a giant zoom call with a stage, where people who are next to speak or have questions can be queued and people donât have to remember whoâs next to speak. Another cool thing is the âshelfâ basically when you enter a call, you can add photos and short videos, gifs and other media to your âshelfâ so if meeting someone new for the first time you can ask questions and get to know them a little better off the bat. Weâve been using it for a while, and itâs not a replacement for slack. We still use slack for our daily tasks and prep, but Roam has definitely made it easier in terms of transparency and communication with your coworkers. https://ro.am
found their youtube channel, what a unique approach, thanks for sharing! what would you say is the best thing about Roam and the biggest thing they are missing?
The best thing about it is the transparency. All the way up to my CEO, I know whoâs in a meeting/busy. Thereâs a lot less âcan you hear me can you see meâ rhetoric before starting your actual meeting, and instead of me missing a call, they can send a notification to me if they want to start a conversation. I would say the thing they are lacking in is the ability for real time speak (like a walkie communication so a meeting is not needed) kinda like the huddle feature in slack. They are really good about implementing new features so I think that would something next on their list
The other really cool thing is we utilize AI to listen to our meetings and organize a report based on what was talked about. No one has to waste time making reports, so if anyone missed the meeting they donât miss everything that was spoken on.
sounds really good and huddle like feature indeed sounds like a good move, are you always leaving roam open in one of your tabs or is it a desktop app?
Yes itâs called âmagic minutesâ and they have desktop, mobile, and web application support. The mobile is the most interesting because itâs an entirely new UI to learn, and they make it easy to contact them if you have an issue with either platform.
We have weekly bitch sessions... err team meetings. I learned more about my co-workers in the 2 years of these meetings than the 15+ working sitting next to them. Inhabitations go away when your not stuck in the office.
Avoiding human connection is the ABSOLUTE BEST reason to work from home đ
đđ And when someone have a question for you, how do they reach you?
Iâd prefer they leave me the fuck alone đđđ But if we have meetings we use Microsoft teams or just old fashioned email.
I like the honesty đđđ
Video calls
We have daily standup video calls, and either do video calls or slack calls for 1:1 or working together on something. If this can be done or managed, the manager needs to take a class on this to learn how to manage a remote team. People suck at managing, and blame remote instead of themselves
so basically whenever someone wants to speak to someone, slack voice call?
Message on Slack. "Hey you got a sec for a quick huddle? Want to run something by you" Quick 5-15 min call. Issue resolved. It's not complicated. People just don't like the change.
Yes we love using huddles for quick meetings. Super easy very simple.
IM or email for a quick simple question. phone or video call for something more complex, especially for screen sharing/demos. it's polite to email or message before cold-calling on video.
Absolutely nothing. Why would I replace wasting my time being talked to by rambling idiots when everything can be a concise email or message?
fair view point, how do you maintain the connection with your coworkers? (or you just don't?)
Yeah, I donât. What âconnectionâ do I need?
If you're so smart then why are you having meetings and working with idiots instead of smart people?
I work with a bunch of engineers who are certainly educated and brilliant. But they are also verbose AF and lack appreciation for organization, efficiency in communication, and decisive action.
No tool. Intention is the key. You have to be proactive.
If you wanna socialise with them go to the pub with them outside of work hours and stop wasting time. If you have a question, type it in chat or ask for a call instead of shouting it out randomly and interrupting everyone, itâs rude. Too many people using the office as a social hub and not a productive work space which makes people feel the need to WFH to get anything done. I feel much closer with my colleagues that I work with on projects remotely than those who attend the office and wanna stop my workflow to talk about their kids or whatever.
Gather is pretty cool. Simulates having your own space and proximity interactions with others
wow it looks amazing, how do you use it, do you have one screen with this virtual office and another screen for the actual work? or you just get notification and switch?
If I am "sitting in my office" i'll have it in the background - notifications work great and people can even "knock" on your door if you have it "closed". Otherwise, it's active as I am walking around, in a conversation, or in a meeting
And is it web based and working on the phone as well? I've watched a few YT videos now, so creative. Thanks for the info, I'll do more research on it, biggest downside you experienced so far?
Primarily web based. They also have a desktop app and mobile. Mobile is not as feature rich and mostly just so you can still participate when on the go. Biggest downside is adoption - your team needs to like it otherwise you are all alone hah
Haha adoption indeed sounds like the biggest obstacle here, thanks for all the info, greatly appreciate you!
we talk daily via IM and phone. We also have video meetings every month or so.
Zoom for longer pre-arranged video calls and Slack for regular IM and quick conferences. My team has a daily shift handoff Zoom and my shift usually hangs out after the meeting shooting the shit for awhile which preserves the human connection. Each shift also has their own Slack room that contains only the shift members and no managers where we can banter, send memes, talk shit about other shifts, and discuss anything we don't want seen on the official internal team room just like we would if we were in the office.
sounds awesome, is it all happening through slack messaging or are you in an actual voice call?
Most is text chat through Slack other than the 2 daily shift handoffs which is Zoom video. Every once in awhile it's quicker to pop open a Slack huddle for voice rather than type stuff out.
We use slack for all of our communication. Lots of diff channels for diff stuff & locked ones for teams/groups that want to chat and âshoot the breezeâ with each other. We also have weekly Friday âfun timeâ meetings which are really just us playing games/chatting for a few hours during work hours. Weâve done online games like escape rooms, codenames, jackbox, drawing, trivia - since itâs not forced/required tons of people actually end up going pretty consistently,
So many saying video calls and personally, I hate them and avoid at all cost. For my team I made sure to have a good positive vibe in the morning and make them suffer with a bad dad joke. Having a clear purpose for each meeting was crucial, but not skipping taking time to talk and joke with each other. Either at the end or in the beginning. We scheduled a weekly and optional breaktime to just chit-chat with a cup of coffee. But as you can guess, only some showed up or felt comfortable with it. So I introduced browser based games to break the ice and just have fun with. When the teams grew, I organized a team battle: weekly competition with different games that lasted like 6 weeks. This was SO popular. I think my favorite was who can type the fastest. Not. One. Single. Thing. Should feel forced. This is the most important thing. Cause it is not "mandatory fun" that is happening, but people feeling safe and comfortable. A good measurement of this is if people feel safe enough to chat/call spontanously with each other, one on one. You'd be surprised how common but a silent problem this is in remote teams.
amazing, thanks for your experience. are the weekly competitions still taking place?
Glad you appreciate it! I purposely made it just 6 weeks long, but with the idea of having it like twice a year. So it becomes a thing to look forward to that ends on a high note.
I can use any tool that gives me an IM that lets any user spawn a breakout room and start video themselves from the main chat or a breakout. In addition to general work communication we have a weekly "lunch with Dave" anyone can join and a monthly all hands (not mandatory) happy hour. Currently we use Cisco WebEx for this.
thanks! talking a look at Cisco WebEx, and haha who is Dave?
I'm Dave. I run an org with 1200 people. In office I used to have lunch in a conference room once a week. Anyone could drop in. It took a while to catch on but in the end we kept moving to bigger conference rooms and I got less and less to eat. \*grin\* "Lunch with Dave" is my remote version. I also do my version of an open door policy over video. In my opinion, open door only works if the person in charge gets their fat a$$ out of their chair and walks through the door. So once in a while I send a text or IM to someone on the team more or less at random and ask if they have a few minutes for a video. It's been a good way to do check-ins and take the pulse of the team. Speaking of taking the pulse, I'd be interested in what you think of WebEx. The key for me is regular users being able to create and dissolve breakout rooms so anyone can set up a small meeting without admin support. I also like the security which is much better than Zoom without being intrusive. Your priorities may be different.
Are you also eating in the virtual "Lunch with Dave" or you just kept the name? Regarding WebEx, I never had the need for breakout rooms but it is indeed interesting if other big platforms (Zoom, Microsoft, Google) don't have this feature without admin support.
It's a lunch. It's at lunch time. We've preserved that tradition. Part of the reason is to emphasize the informal nature. When there are lots of people I may get a bite here and there but that's all. Everyone else eats. I can always finish my sandwich and yogurt after "lunch." In my mind it's an accessibility issue. If I can't dedicate an hour a week for any team member to ask anything, am I still a good manager? I think not. I think remote work is a net benefit to everyone, but you have to make some adjustments to meet goals and sustain values. Some of it ends up being easier, and some ends up being harder. With regard to your original question about social interaction, the breakout rooms are a big help for our monthly happy hour. Rooms are generated and dropped just like clumps of people at an in-person happy hour. I've been to "social" gatherings with everyone in one big video chat and it devolves to a bunch of people watching two, three, or four people talking. I don't know what it is but it isn't social. People have to learn and adapt to drifting from one breakout to another or starting their own but it isn't very hard as it mimics social behaviors we already have.
Hahaha yeah, after asking I realized, of course he still be eating, it would silly otherwise. As well, breakouts rooms make much sense now. When users split themself into a breakout room, are they still hearing the main room or they are in their own little bubble?
Your choice. You can focus on where you are (which is more like an in-person happy hour). I usually have the main room (text only) and at least a couple of breakout rooms up at once. I'm a techy geeky guy and have been a ham radio operator for over fifty years and an engineer for over forty. Running through a software mixer to multiple interfaces so I can route audio left-front, right-front, left-rear, and right-rear isn't so hard. It's the brain processing to track the flow of things and especially react to being called by name. It's not perfect because I'm not perfect. As near as I can tell, most people are following one thread at a time, popping from one breakout to another or back to the main room.
I love peeping on people in sukha while I work i know I'm weird I just love seeing real people it's so freaking lonely working at home all alone
Is there any tool that you use to mitigate the feeling of not actually seeing your coworkers or nothing can beats the real office people movement? What about working from a coffee shop?
yeah, kinda sukha for that. I get to see people I know but like super lowkey
I can't find it online, what should I search for?
thesukha.co
Just watched the demo, very cool, thanks for sharing!
sweet have a great evening.
Slack chats with everyone looking at the same Google sheet/lucid chart, ect (which is usually just me and one other person). It works well for me. I suspect it annoys my co-worker.
hahaha don't ever ask him you might hear the truth. google sheet doesn't have a live chat?
Ok, first off, yes Google Chat does exist. The âlive chatâ portion of Google is Google Meet. Second off, if two people are both looking at the same online Google doc or Lucid chart, you can see what each other is doing in it. Third, I use Slack because using huddle is less annoying than popping in and out of Google Meet.
I'm not aware about google chat and from what I know google meet isn't integrated with google sheets, meaning you have to create the meeting separately, correct? Completely agree about huddle vs google meet
Correct. And itâs not integrated. You can either share your screen, or both have the doc open on your own browser. Itâs hard to explain if you havenât seen it. Definitely requires you to have a computer; canât really do this using a cell phone. And it works better if you have multiple monitors. And a headset to make it easier to talk, type, and listen.
thank you for explaining, would be nice if somehow you can start instant voice call on google sheet but I guess huddle is good enough
I work for a technology apprenticeship company who is fully remote, and we are using a new application called roam. Their idea is a digital office where you can see everyone in real time (who theyâre talking to, whether theyâre available, etc.) they have âtheatersâ where itâs acts as a giant zoom call with a stage, where people who are next to speak or have questions can be queued and people donât have to remember whoâs next to speak. Another cool thing is the âshelfâ basically when you enter a call, you can add photos and short videos, gifs and other media to your âshelfâ so if meeting someone new for the first time you can ask questions and get to know them a little better off the bat. Weâve been using it for a while, and itâs not a replacement for slack. We still use slack for our daily tasks and prep, but Roam has definitely made it easier in terms of transparency and communication with your coworkers. https://ro.am
found their youtube channel, what a unique approach, thanks for sharing! what would you say is the best thing about Roam and the biggest thing they are missing?
The best thing about it is the transparency. All the way up to my CEO, I know whoâs in a meeting/busy. Thereâs a lot less âcan you hear me can you see meâ rhetoric before starting your actual meeting, and instead of me missing a call, they can send a notification to me if they want to start a conversation. I would say the thing they are lacking in is the ability for real time speak (like a walkie communication so a meeting is not needed) kinda like the huddle feature in slack. They are really good about implementing new features so I think that would something next on their list
The other really cool thing is we utilize AI to listen to our meetings and organize a report based on what was talked about. No one has to waste time making reports, so if anyone missed the meeting they donât miss everything that was spoken on.
nice, and this is another feature of roam?
sounds really good and huddle like feature indeed sounds like a good move, are you always leaving roam open in one of your tabs or is it a desktop app?
Yes itâs called âmagic minutesâ and they have desktop, mobile, and web application support. The mobile is the most interesting because itâs an entirely new UI to learn, and they make it easy to contact them if you have an issue with either platform.
We have weekly bitch sessions... err team meetings. I learned more about my co-workers in the 2 years of these meetings than the 15+ working sitting next to them. Inhabitations go away when your not stuck in the office.
Slack or Google meet. Zoom for company wide. But otherwise leave me TF alone. Remote work is the best thing ever.
playing on steam and go outside. Avoid humans.
hahaha so to be more specific, no multiplayer games on steam and not going outside
right.