Tag: work

A few years ago, one of my co-workers wanted to work remotely for the winter. They received permission and spent 3 or 4 months in France, waking up early to work for an hour or two, skiing in the late morning and early afternoon, and then coming back to work more at night.

I was quite jealous. Mostly because with family, this wasn’t an option for me. Don’t feel too bad for me as I get the chance to slide down mountains plenty during the winter.

During the pandemic, we’ve seen various locales try to entice workers to come live there, spend money, and work remotely. It’s not simple or necessarily cheap, as many countries require workers to provide their own health coverage. However, it’s nice that there is flexibility from some locales, and from some companies. There are tax implications, so moving residences isn’t always possible.

I love the flexibility of working remotely, which I’ve been doing for 20 years. While I get to Redgate offices 4-6 times a year and work with others, most of the time I’m at home. Occasionally at a coffee shop or restaurant around town, but not too often.

Recently, I took advantage of this to work remotely away from home in another state. I scheduled a week trip to see my daughter play volleyball in college. Extended a weekend trip to reduce flight costs, I ended up working near her campus for a few days while she was in class. Remote from a remote spot away from the home office.

Great for finding some balance in life, but not without challenges. I found a few instances where I didn’t have all the data I expected with me. The ergonomics were different, with hotel and coffee shop chairs and desks not being as comfortable as usual. One small screen instead of 3 large ones, no wrist rest, searching out power outlets, and other small items remind me of how much I appreciate the space I’ve set up at home.

Still, I’m glad I was able to go and visit, without taking holiday. I’d have been on my own most of the time, so spending the day working wasn’t distracting. I hope to do this more in the future, and I hope to see more of you doing this as well to better enjoy life while continuing to earn a living.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

I saw a short post on meetings, which made me chuckle. The post said that meetings are work, and sometimes they get in the way of other work. I think that’s a sentiment that many people have, especially when they are pressured to write code or manage systems and their daily calendar gets cluttered with meetings.

I find meetings to be very hit-and-miss for my job. Some are valuable and helpful, with plenty of others being unnecessary and an impediment to getting things done. It is hard to know when a meeting will be helpful or a waste of time, but often I find status meetings to be not worth the time required to attend. They very often are not worth the amount of attention they require, which has me wishing that I could just update status in a system or email rather than listening to others and presenting my own report.

That being said, meetings aren’t likely to completely disappear for any of us. Whether manager, developer, administrator, or anything else, it seems that getting together is still a regular part of working in an organization. While I do think the remote meetings result in more targeted meetings, focused on a particular topic, they also seem to be more jarring to me. The context switch is jarring, going from some piece of work to immediately being around other people. I find myself missing the pace of walking to and from a room and chatting with others. It’s a good way to get prepared before and decompress afterward.

Too many of us, do a poor job of accounting for the impact meetings have on the work we need to get done. Whether we are estimating our own workload or trying to manage others and plan for what they will accomplish in a week, we struggle to consider the work of meetings. Both the time spent in meetings, as well as the time preparing for a meeting. We certainly don’t often consider the need to think about the results and action items from a meeting. That’s not to mention the impact of context-switching on our concentration.

The idea of bunching meetings into a few days or times during the week might be most helpful for me. I like the flexibility to move my creative work around as much as possible. There are times I can code or write, and when those times occur, I want to spend a lot of time in that state of mind. Interruptions are a killer to productivity. I find myself sometimes blocking off sections of days just to prevent meetings from being scheduled. If possible, I prefer a number of back-to-back meetings on one day and nothing on others.

Meetings are a part of work, but they also are work. You can love or hate them, but finding ways to cope with the impact of meetings is helpful to becoming a more productive worker. It’s also important to ensure your management recognizes the impact of meetings and tries to minimize that impact on any other deliverables on which you are working.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

Recently a friend started a new job that didn’t have Slack used as a communication vehicle. The new employer was considering Teams, but most of the communication among employees was done through email or a live meeting.

At Redgate, we use Slack extensively. I also use Teams for some work with Microsoft, and in general, I find I prefer Slack. That might be because I don’t spend enough time in Teams, but regardless, I find myself preferring email for discussions with MS employees over Teams. That’s my preference, but really, what I value is the instantaneous, yet async, nature of using messaging tools over email.

I think one of the reasons I like tools like Slack is the separation of topics into various threads based on some subject. We have more channels at Redgate than people, but this is because there are different needs. For example, there are a few different “ask” channels. One is for advocates (Grant and I), one for tech questions, one for licensing, one for each country, and one populated by queries coming in from customers. We have a public channel for each product, as well as one or more private team channels for their daily work. We have automated channels updated by releases and deployments, and we create quick channels when there is a sales discussion or internal issue to keep our conversations focused on an issue.

Perhaps focus is the real reason that I find these messaging tools handy. If everyone is online, we can have a real-time discussion. If people are not available, we can leave a message and hope they see it later. The one downside I’ve learned is that I can’t assume someone has read a message if they don’t reply or leave a reaction. If I do need someone, I message them in some other way to ask them to look at something in Slack.

I also extensively use messaging options on Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms as well. While I do find email nice for many things, there are a lot of short exchanges that work well in another format. Email tends to work better for me when there is a need for more than a couple of replies and we need to keep track of the discussion. A fast-flowing stream of messages in Slack or Teams can be hard to sort through after a few days.

In some sense, I miss the old days of walking to someone’s desk or calling a short meeting and having a discussion. I still take those opportunities when they present themselves, but most of my communication takes place electronically, and messaging dominates.

Do you feel the same way? Does your company or team use messaging tools? Are they handy? How do you decide where to post things, and is there a good separation of topics and subjects for you? Let me know today.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.