> What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so they make themselves look better.
I’m not sure what your role is but zoom calls really don’t mean anything as an IC. Not unless you’re responding to or handling an outage and debugging on the fly.
What you produce and how well it works is how you’re measured. Documentation and written communication is equally as important.
I totally understand your pov and it’s often the one shared by full remote folks who enjoy it that way: “I produce good work nothing else matters”.
I find that a really sad, if not completely rational, outlook.
See I don’t want to work with someone who outputs great work only. I want to work who can share a joke, help out, bounce ideas of, experiment with new things and fail/succeed.
In other words, I like work to be joyful and productive.
I completely agree. I've always worked remotely. This separation is all I know, and I can't imagine why someone would want something different. As a manager, I don't conduct "team building" exercises. I try to ensure that collaboration is flowing, but I don't care if team members are only talking about work or if they develop some social relationship.
This is in stark contrast to my wife, who had worked in the office before the pandemic and continued with the same philosophy during remote work. She finds my way too cold, and I find hers too wasteful. I would dread working on her pseudo-remote environment.
I have times and tasks for which I'm more productive at home, and times and/or tasks where I'm more productive at work.
Good in-person collaboration, sometimes accidentally overhearing someone else, is invaluable. At the same time, people can get off task and chit chat becomes a hindrance.
Sometimes we all know our role and what has to be done, we just have to get it done. Sometimes we don't know how to solve a problem.
Some employees don't have a good work environment at home. A Ph.D. student with a young special-needs child felt horrible ignoring his daughter while working on his dissertation at home (where his wife was caring for his daughter), bit coming into campus was far better for him, productivity-wise and psychologically.
I think the balance might be a dynamic one, in that what's best can change over time and task and stage of a task and stage of a person's career. And by employee, and by task.
Being a good manager must be immensely difficult, but also being an employee also requires adapting and compromising between all of these trade-offs.
I’m not sure what your role is but zoom calls really don’t mean anything as an IC. Not unless you’re responding to or handling an outage and debugging on the fly.
What you produce and how well it works is how you’re measured. Documentation and written communication is equally as important.