[HN Gopher] Humans hold the key to collaboration no matter how g...
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Humans hold the key to collaboration no matter how good the
software tools
Author : simonpure
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-12-16 14:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| Selfcommit wrote:
| Tools facilitate the process, but can't replace it.
|
| I wonder if there's a measure for how well 2 GPT chat prompts
| collaborate with one another?
| exit wrote:
| this brings to mind the recent announcement of cicero, which
| plays diplomacy:
|
| https://ai.facebook.com/research/cicero/
| donutshop wrote:
| This is still relevant
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDrZEKCWwAAG_Ty?format=jpg&name=...
| gwn7 wrote:
| I know it's heartbreaking to accept, but there are some problems
| in the world that apps cannot help with.
| mistermann wrote:
| "cannot help with" seems very unlikely to me, especially if
| "apps" is not constrained to that which currently exists, but
| even if constrained.
|
| Can you (or others) list a few examples?
| gwn7 wrote:
| I'm speaking in the present tense. Even if "apps" would be
| able to solve all our current problems in a hundred or a
| thousand years [1][2], I really don't have anything to say
| about that. I have no idea.
|
| [1]: Which imo would be delusionally optimistic to believe in
|
| [2]: And which would surely create new types of problems in
| the process
|
| > Can you (or others) list a few examples?
|
| For starters, the posted article illustrates one example.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why would anyone think otherwise? Why would it be
| heartbreaking?
|
| Edit: The parent was sarcasm, I jumped to a conclusion because
| I see so much hatred for tech
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| That might have been sarcasm
| gwn7 wrote:
| Thank you
| gwn7 wrote:
| It was a sarcastic comment alluding to the caricature of the
| tech bros who see nails everywhere for their hi-tech hammers.
| kkfx wrote:
| Humans hold part of the key, human organization another,
| quality/design of tools around human organization do the rest.
|
| Modern tools are made to "keep user on our platform", witch is a
| very BAD thing for collaboration, modern tools tend to be all
| walled gardens, as a result collaboration with the world is VERY
| BAD and so on.
|
| Let's imaging an international payment system NOT designed around
| brokers with a gazillion of proprietary platforms but a COMMON
| API, let's say similar to OpenBank, where ANYONE, not only
| financial institutions participate. Than payments would be far
| simpler for anyone, so they do their part to help collaboration
| for some activities. Let's say we cooperate with plain text
| files, so we do not have formatting issues, version issues etc
| common on crappy WYSIWYG platform. Another part of collaboration
| became easier and so on. YES, this tools are part of the game
| because they are part of the workflow, it's not just specific
| sharing tools. Physical environment is part of the game as well:
| if we are in comfortable places with comfy tools we collaborate
| better.
|
| There is no holistic approach takeable by single companies,
| simply the platform model is nice for the platform owner business
| but harmful for the society and the more we advance the more we
| cut small part of it to allow collaboration. It's about time to
| admit that and start change course a bit more seriously...
| pinkywinky763 wrote:
| This is because collaboration is multidimensional. Software
| really struggles to replicate that. It's a hard problem.
| exit wrote:
| > It's important to frame the plethora of technological platforms
| and applications which have flooded increasingly into the
| workplace as _only ever as good as the human minds_ using them.
| Nothing can replace this--the technology is a utility to
| _augment_ the creativity and dynamics of what happens when people
| work together.
|
| (emphasis mine)
|
| i think this disregards the synergistic effects technology can
| have.
|
| in particular, "good software" can formalise and make explicit
| processes which humans otherwise struggle to manage through tacit
| communication and "norms".
|
| more than augmenting, we extend our capacities through
| technology. in many ways this defines our species.
| cheath wrote:
| https://archive.vn/O2wk9
| [deleted]
| xipho wrote:
| We consciously call those who use our services "collaborators",
| we're on equal-footing, to the point of not trying to say
| "service" (when it is). This week we just met with a potential
| group of users of our open-source software, that we also offer
| free as a service. In the area they are exploring it has some
| shortcomings, and is the newest of the bunch in terms of
| features, overall use in that manner, etc.
|
| When we asked, "Why aren't you using X, or Y (you should consider
| them, they are good too!)?", and "What features are compelling
| you to use 'us'?", the answer came back "we like you, people, you
| talked to us, we know others who use your tools, and we like them
| too". Features, lack there-of, etc. just were not the clincher,
| even when we said repeatedly said "but we can't do that!". The
| important bit was they perceived they were joining a community of
| like-minded folk, who they liked. Not surprising, it's our
| mission to promote this very idea, but it was also the first time
| we heard it stated so bluntly.
| robg wrote:
| So true, when to interrupt or work together or stay focused is
| the biggest productivity challenge for teams. Technology is just
| a communication medium today, intent is the holy grail of
| collaboration.
| olivermarks wrote:
| There are way too many academics, curators and theorists in the
| collaboration theories world. Way too many VCs and tech start ups
| have taken them too seriously.
|
| It's like the old joke 'an economist can tell you a 1000 ways to
| make love but has never touched another person'. The reality with
| collaboration strategies (which I was heavily involved with last
| decade) is that it all about context, scale, the people involved,
| the goals, overcoming silos and rivalries etc. The technology
| enablers are not wildly important except to choose tools that
| don't impede.
|
| Playing wackamole with 57 varieties of Slack channel to make sure
| you are not missing anything vitally important is not efficient
| collaboration and a huge time suck. As long as the academic
| chattering classes keep convincing VCs to pour money into yet
| more collab start ups there will continue to be new generations
| of not very useful tools and the low bar of msft teams and
| email/doc culture will continue to survive. Glacial pace,
| groundhog day film like deja vu experiences in this world as I'm
| sure many have experienced on HN...
| CrypticShift wrote:
| Ok I agree that software is not the primary enabler. But let's
| just pause on these tools. For you :
|
| - On the one hand, mainstream collaborative tools are " _low-
| bar_ ", and Big Tech is responsible for its " _Glacial pace_ ".
|
| - On the other hand, " _new generations_ " are growing too
| wildly, and _" are not very useful"_, and " _academic
| chattering_ " is responsible for it.
|
| The second point is supposed the be the "market" solution to
| the first. You seem to think this is not the case, because of
| _misguided academics, curators and theorists._ Would you care
| to cite some (of the worst) examples ?
| ngoilapites wrote:
| What about the limitations of a human mind, and its needs for
| healthy patterns of frequency and intensity of tasks, are they
| considered in the design of these tools? Maybe one of the keys is
| here.
| mr_tristan wrote:
| Technology is often very, very distracting, and everyone feels
| it. I've noticed that we've hit a point in my team where juniors
| don't even feel comfortable asking questions in a team channel,
| because they think it might add to the noise. It isn't just that
| they don't want to "look dumb", but they genuinely don't want to
| bother a senior engineer. So, paradoxically, the low-effort
| nature of Slack has actually created barriers to communication in
| this case. (I have no idea how common this is, but I suspect, at
| very big companies, there are similar dynamics.)
|
| One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force a
| working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not there to
| do anything specific, just work on something together. This ends
| up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to open up
| with all their questions.
|
| Tech really isn't a direct cause of real social problems, but
| often just presents distractions, which can add up over time.
| Phones have just taken us to a point where tech is just always
| with us, thus, we've hit some kind of "maximum distract-ability"
| point. But the real solution isn't to really ban new tech, it's
| just to learn how to identify and avoid letting it distract us
| further.
| acedTrex wrote:
| This is what I do, semi regular working sessions where I mostly
| watch/do my own work
| Waterluvian wrote:
| One thing I found that helps in some cases, that I wish was
| said (and actually practiced) when I was a junior developer,
| is, "my main job is to help you get comfortable with everything
| and help you be successful. Everything else about my job is
| basically just filler for whenever you don't need my direct
| attention. Never ever feel like you're inconveniencing me
| because helping you is my job."
| adambyrtek wrote:
| > Everything else about my job is basically just filler for
| whenever you don't need my direct attention
|
| That might be taking it a bit too far?
| eof wrote:
| It's not, if your job is to onboard a new engineer. Those
| first few months make all the difference. If the "other
| parts" of your job prevent you from maximally optimizing
| the productivity of your new coworker, the compounding
| negative returns on that onboarding engineers time is
| incredibly expensive.
|
| Unlike almost anything else you could be working on,
| turning someone from nonproductive to productive, or more
| productive, has compounding effects that can quickly help
| or hinder the longer term objectives
| Waterluvian wrote:
| As someone with people who report to me, my #1 job is to
| make sure they're effective, happy, productive. Empowering
| them generates more productivity than me quietly doing
| stuff myself.
| eof wrote:
| > One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force
| a working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not
| there to do anything specific, just work on something together.
| This ends up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to
| open up with all their questions
|
| We have had really incredible returns from what we call "hack
| sessions" which are like you said, essentially hosted by at
| least one senior engineer. We find something in the moment to
| discuss, or someone shares their screen and we debug together.
| If no one has anything, I personally start quizzing people on
| deep technical details and it usually only takes a single
| question before the topic naturally evolves toward optimum
| teaching. By now people look forward to them as a place to
| bring their friction, so lack of topics is rare.
| bratbag wrote:
| We have voluntarily gone back to the office one day a week now,
| because we find collaboration easier when tech gets out the way
| and you can just talk to someone directly.
|
| Surprisingly, the team has all loved it and we are discussing
| adding an extra day.
| pojzon wrote:
| What about remote teams ?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| You can also just create a slack channel just for questions (eg
| #eng-onboarding), where the sole purpose of the channel is
| those questions. Lowers the barrier a lot. Even better, you'll
| see even senior folk pop in to ask questions about parts of the
| stack or codebase they aren't familiar with.
| pojzon wrote:
| Ugh this sounds like specific reddit spaced and I dont think
| it did end well.
|
| TBH you land in a situation where you have 40 channels in the
| company you have to follow and it drains so much energy just
| to be in the loop.
|
| Super hard to focus on anything if you know you can get
| pinged somewhere and you have to check or reply in timely
| manner.
|
| Add to that emails and PRs and you spend 2/3 of your work day
| just enabling other ppl or answering questions.
|
| Soo tiresome.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| Agreed. This is yet another source of distraction for
| actually getting things done, and turns into side
| discussions of tangential topics far more often than a
| useful source of information. Beats wasting everyone's time
| asking questions in a standup, but should at least be
| understood to be very asynchronous with no need for timely
| replies lest it become an attention hog. Might favor just
| setting aside time for devs to add to a wiki document about
| their area of the system than just being always available
| for individual questions.
| User23 wrote:
| I've yet to find a project management system that's lower
| impedance for developers than index cards for the backlog and
| sticky notes for task progress. PMs hate it because it requires
| them to stay directly involved and do their own data aggregation
| instead of just autogenerating reports that are of absolutely no
| value to the people actually doing the work.
| wpietri wrote:
| I am a huge fan of index cards! For those curious, I wrote up
| an example of I use them:
| https://williampietri.com/writing/2015/the-big-board/
|
| I'm working with a new team and for a while the priorities have
| been murky. But we got everybody in a room and I broke out the
| index cards and sharpies, making everybody write down things
| they care about and put them strict linear order. It was way
| more effective than any online tool I have ever used.
|
| Since we work remotely I'll be putting those cards into an
| electronic tool (KanbanFlow if I get my druthers; Jira if I
| have to). But the level of participation and the speed of
| getting to consensus via index cards is unmatched.
| secondlifeagain wrote:
| Ugh. Why was this posted here?
|
| > All of which brings us back to the human in the machine age. As
| long as collaboration technology is underpinned by collaboration
| management in the next phase of work, the teams that come
| together can get their work done. Whether in-person, in-
| cyberspace or in between.
|
| This is obvious.
|
| Plus it's an ad for their book. Such a poorly written article
| with so much fluff. Can we let this die off and move off the
| front page?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Slightly tangential, but this applies to dating services as well.
| The reason why Tinder put an end to the entire "dating site"
| industry is that it got technology out of people's way. No one
| actually wants to deal with layers of matching algorithms or
| compatability testing. They want a photo, an age, and a name. And
| anything that gets in the way of viewing as many (high quality,
| verified) photos names and ages as possible is just an annoyance.
| It's not clever or revolutionary whatever business logic you come
| up with outside of that to "fix" dating. You're just getting in
| the way of what people want, which is to be directly connected to
| another person as quickly and painlessly as possible. The 2010s
| were littered with the corpses of DOA dating apps that saw Tinder
| as a degeneration to online dating, and failed to see this key
| fact that led to its' popularity.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think one of the big issues that collaboration and productivity
| apps miss is that they're supposed to be tools that help and
| accommodate each individual user according to what is best for
| them.
|
| I have really bad adhd and so I think I end up noticing it more
| because I've had to build all the tools I rely on myself and
| realized how not at all powerful the existing solutions actually
| are at molding themselves to the user's needs rather than vice
| versa.
|
| - I need progressive reminders for deadlines, increasing in
| frequency when the measure of percent completed and time to
| deadline gets worse.
|
| - I need undismissable reminders, if an important message comes
| in and I miss it it's gone forever.
|
| - I need 15, 5, and 1 minute warnings for meetings.
|
| - I need daily reminders of the things I should be working on
| that automatically expire so they don't become noise.
|
| - I need my tools to yell at me if I try to push a commit with a
| not descriptive enough message, don't tag a card, and then auto
| move it to MR once I take it off draft.
|
| - I need when people post messages in the channel looking for
| reviews that it adds to my daily reminder list and goes off it
| once it's merged.
|
| - I need reminders on Friday that I should spend the afternoon
| prepping cards for handoffs instead of working them.
|
| - I need to yeet random messages into different lists so I can
| remember things like "found a big make card for it" or "idea for
| 20% time."
|
| - I need a weekly report of all the commits I made, cards I
| touched, and conversations I had so I can take them to my 1-1.
|
| - I need a thing to pull out emails to specific groups and
| forward them to our group slack otherwise no one will see it.
|
| - I need non critical alerts to also show up on my daily reminder
| list that drop off it once it's ack'd or a card is made for it.
|
| - I need alerts when there's activity on my MRs that are sent as
| messages and go to my list rather than one of my (literally) 50k
| weekly emails.
|
| - I need the group lunch order to ping me when it's actually time
| to order instead of when it's announced.
|
| All the tools in their default states don't actually _do
| anything_ for you. They create more work and mental load than
| take it away.
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