Forced lockdowns and teleworking, as a counter measure to tackle the Covid pandemic, transitioned Transifex, the company I work for, to the remote-first model, in a “here to stay” policy.
Physical interactions and hall-way chit chatting is now all about text chat and video calls, with Slack being the king of all communication and interaction, the source of truth, where work happens.
However, I cannot help relate this new working experience with a day at an open space office, and I will explain why.
Don’t get me wrong, I think one of the best benefits of the remote-first model is about bridging the gap between remotees and people working in an office. With everyone being treated as a remote employee no one is left behind, which is a great!
Remember this photo from Facebook offices?
What do I see in this photo while picturing myself being a guy working in a desk like this? I see people passing by while I try to focus on getting things done. A team celebrating a release a few desks further. People next to me taking a break to discuss yesterdays match. A bee hive of keyboards typing.. A productivity killer. And this is exactly how I feel about Slack today.
My problem with using Slack, is that it has replaced real-time physical communication with a medium harder to manage (e.g. sentiment in a text message is prone to mis-interpretation) and it has made it 10x worse. Being a senior member in the company and being part of the job to interact with various teams and many different departments, managing communication via a river of text messages is staring to become a big big challenge for me.
With hundreds of text messages being exchanged every day, how do you keep your sanity while getting shit done?
Email is considered an async way to exchange information by design. With Slack in a remote environment, expectations are not quite the same. People expect a more real-time approach to get their work done. For example: - A developer asks for a code review to deliver a project on time - A junior member is requesting a video call for some pair programming and screen sharing - Customer support needs some technical feedback to be able to respond to a ticket - A colleague needs to vent about something and manage a situation - An important announcement is made that needs attention and action - It’s someone’s birthday and it would be nice to share your wishes… today - Alerts and operation messages might indicate a service outage and need attention
Typical stuff, part of the daily interaction and team-work. However managing and distilling information that matters is more challenging than ever.
I am still working on “a plan” to manage all this, while claiming enough focus time for my todo list, without Slack draining so much energy within my working hours. At the end of the day it might all be about the “online” expectations you set about yourself to others. Maybe it’s either “I will respond when and if I can” versus “I am there for you”. I choose the latter for my team and eventually I am going to figure it out… After all we are engineers and this is what we do :)
