479: Hardly Strictly Remotely In-Person
Episode
33 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Remote Work, Design & UX
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Eager Loading Strategy: Move eager loading from serializers to controllers when using tools like Blueprinter and Bullet, as serializers get reused across multiple contexts, causing over-fetching or under-fetching issues that impact production performance and user experience.
- ✓Pairing Session Framework: Start every pairing session with explicit check-ins about goals, time frames, energy levels, and preferred roles (keyboard versus navigator). This intentionality helps maintain focus and provides natural break points every forty-five minutes for reassessment.
- ✓Meeting Agenda Requirement: Every meeting invitation must include an agenda, even if just one sentence describing the purpose. This allows participants to bring the right mindset, whether engineering or product focused, and reduces miscommunication from unclear expectations.
- ✓Low-Stakes Communication Channels: Create designated Slack channels explicitly for noisy, low-value thoughts about current work to enable serendipitous collaboration. Establish shared understanding that these channels can be ignored for hours, removing pressure while maintaining connection opportunities.
What It Covers
Sally and Adi reflect on working remotely versus in-person at Thoughtbot's Amsterdam Summit, exploring strategies for effective remote collaboration, the challenges of virtual communication, and techniques to recreate in-person connection online.
Key Questions Answered
- •Eager Loading Strategy: Move eager loading from serializers to controllers when using tools like Blueprinter and Bullet, as serializers get reused across multiple contexts, causing over-fetching or under-fetching issues that impact production performance and user experience.
- •Pairing Session Framework: Start every pairing session with explicit check-ins about goals, time frames, energy levels, and preferred roles (keyboard versus navigator). This intentionality helps maintain focus and provides natural break points every forty-five minutes for reassessment.
- •Meeting Agenda Requirement: Every meeting invitation must include an agenda, even if just one sentence describing the purpose. This allows participants to bring the right mindset, whether engineering or product focused, and reduces miscommunication from unclear expectations.
- •Low-Stakes Communication Channels: Create designated Slack channels explicitly for noisy, low-value thoughts about current work to enable serendipitous collaboration. Establish shared understanding that these channels can be ignored for hours, removing pressure while maintaining connection opportunities.
Notable Moment
One developer forgot to update their Slack away status and appeared offline for four consecutive days before realizing the mistake, highlighting how unreliable activity indicators can be for remote team awareness and coordination.
Episode Transcript
Auto scaling is a simple concept. Automatically add resources when needed and automatically shut them down to avoid paying for excess capacity. How hard could that be? If you've set up auto scaling yourself, you know it's not that easy, especially using the native auto scalers on platforms like AWS and Heroku. That's why you need Judo Scale. Judo Scale is auto scaling as a service, and they make auto scaling simple and easy, as it should be. You can use Judo Scale on AWS, Heroku, Render, fly.io, and more. It's free for low traffic apps and unlimited plans start at $25 per month. Autoscale on easy mode at judoscale.com. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at Thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Sally Hall. And I'm Adi Slater. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we learned along the way. So, Adi, what's new in your world? I am rapidly approaching my move to Scotland. Oh, yeah. That is taking up all free brain bandwidth that I have to spare. We have a lot of tasks to tick off. A lot of them related with selling our place here in Chicago. But, also, just as you walk around in the world, you realize, oh, that needs to be handled somehow by someone, and the list just kind of keeps growing. But I'm super excited. I'm really looking forward to the change, the trip, getting to kind of reestablish in a new place and learn how to fit in or not fit in as I do in in that new world. I'm kind of excited to see how the dogs will react Oh, yeah. Because we're bringing our two little fur babies. Do they have to be quarantined at all? They don't have to be quarantined because well, it all starts as many things do that if you have money, the rules don't apply to you. Mhmm. And so private flights don't have to be quarantined and aren't subject to the same sort of regulations. You still have to have, like, rigorous health paperwork and things like that, but there are some things that you don't have to do. And so there are a few companies that have, caught on to this and made flights that are, like, pooling together people to split the cost. So it's an extremely exorbitant amount of money for one flight from New Jersey to London, but worth it because I don't have to put my little babies in cargo or quarantine, especially one of them is an an older fella. I just don't wanna be away from him for potentially up to six months. I'm not sure what it is right now. Yeah. Well, that is gross but convenient. That's a as a side channel that you get to use. I'm glad I'm glad you get to have your your pups with you the whole time. That'll be nice. Yeah. I'm …
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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode
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Tools
“Move eager loading from serializers to controllers when using tools like Blueprinter and Bullet, as serializers get reused across multiple contexts, causing over-fetching or under-fetching issues”
“Create designated Slack channels explicitly for noisy, low-value thoughts about current work to enable serendipitous collaboration”
“Move eager loading from serializers to controllers when using tools like Blueprinter and Bullet, as serializers get reused across multiple contexts, causing over-fetching or under-fetching issues”
company
“Sponsors: Judo Scale”
“Sponsors: Scout Monitoring”
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