Async Work for Web Developers: Revolution or Redundancy?

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Show Notes

Synchronous vs Asynchronous Work

What is Synchronous work? 

• Working together at the same time
• Does not have to be in-person
  • Common availability hours whether in-person, or if everyone must remain online and available 9-5 via Slack or other collaboration software
• Examples:
  • Going into and staying at the office for the same timeframe
  • In-person meetings
  • Video Conferencing
  • Calls (Zoom, Slack, Teams)
• Pros
  • Security-centric conversations are often better said and not written
  • More immediate feedback (email answers, phone calls answered)
  • Predictable work
    • For example, an IT company needs coverage over particular hours. Sync work allow for predictable shift scheduling and ensuring that someone is available for customer support for the duration of their shift.
• Cons
  • Time zone limitations dictate that most workers will be in the same (or very similar) time zone (unless one person is okay working days, another afternoons, and a third working nights in order to sync work) - limits your talent pool for hiring
  • Obligatory hours forces people to show up even if there isn’t work for them to do
    • For example, two workers show up for 9-5. Worker 1’s task takes 6 hours and is blocking Worker 2. Worker 2 receives their work after 6 hours of doing nothing and is due to leave in 3 hours.
  • Creates a culture of “Well I stayed late, why didn’t you? Why do you always leave work first at the end of the day. This is referred to as presenteeism
    • This occurs when employees feel compelled to stay at work longer than necessary, often because they don't want to be the first to leave. This can lead to a culture where everyone ends up working overtime, even when it's not productive or necessary

What is Asynchronous work?

• Working together on the same goal, but the workers do not need to be present at the same time (online or in-person)
  • People set their own hours
  • Complete tasks as their assigned
  • Hours are often not-tracked (deliverable oriented)
• Asynchronous teams have no place to work together (ie office), relying solely on remote tools to collaborate and work together.some text
  • Distributed teams are teams that have an optional cooperative workplace (ie office), but workers can work async if their team and tasks allow (ie working from home, on the road)
• Pros
  • People make their own hours based on their tasks 
  • Hours are often not tracked
    • No pressure to put in 8-hours if you’re only given 6 hours of work
  • Flexibility to work on side hustles, or run errands, see friends, etc. during “work hours” as long as you finish your work
  • Talent pool is any country you’re legally allowed to hire from (time zones mean nothing in async)
  • If notifications are managed well, fewer interruptions means more deep work and more completed deliverables
• Cons
  • Can feel like you’re “on-call” during busy periods (bombarded by messages, emails, calls)
  • Varying expectations (ie some managers may expect team members to answer within 24 hours, others may expect a few hours)
  • Over messaging is common (ie you send an email, wait 12 hours and don’t hear back, so you also send them a text message)
  • Extroverts may find “remote communication” a struggle on a personal level, without in-person interactions

Asynchronous and Synchronous Together

• It’s important to note that no job is completely sync or async
• Async teams still meet for calls, or ensure their availability to each other to cooperatively complete goals that need multiple team members
  • Some async teams will have some loose work hours (ie Monday - Friday work, Saturday and Sunday off) to ensure that collaboration moves forward quickly and burnout is staved off
• Sync teams will often have async messaging after hours, or will work sync with their local team and async with an international team (in large enterprises - due to time zone differences)

Does Async Work for Web Developers?

What sync work would benefit web developers?

• onboarding/mentoring new developers
• Pair programming
• War rooms

What async work would benefit web developers?

• More deep work hours
• Async works great for tickets

Shoutouts!

Michael LaRocca

• Author of the Self-Taught the X Generation blog, at selftaughttxg.com