I was participating in a small workshop this morning on developing internal best practices for hybrid meeting sessions, where there are some people onsite and some people remote. Essentially though, this is the worst of both situations and unless necessary, it is best to go fully onsite or fully remote. The reason is that in order to really give a good experience to both sides, it takes a huge amount of setup work and consideration, as well as at least two meeting facilitators and a additional equipment. For large events, the effort could be warranted, but it really isn't worth it for smaller things like team meetings.
However, this then led into other discussions between the participants where wellbeing in the workplace was talked about, which is quite an important topic to me. Going remote for many is easy and saves time and effort, but from the organizational standpoint, there can be far less engagement between people, meaning that personal relationships don't develop in non-work-related areas and most of the benefits of working for a company are lost, since people are behaving more like freelancers. Freelancers don't need to be committed to a single employer, as long as they get paid for doing their work.
But it is interesting to note how some people have intuitions for their own preferences, yet do not actually reflect on what they actually do and how they act in the real world. It is because of this that often, we listen to advice that might not actually be in our own best interest, but fits our mental model of the world. We want something to be true as it is agreeable, but it doesn't mean that what is sold actually meets our real-world needs.
I heard this term used last night in regards to someone who gives a lot of advice that people agree with, but doesn't necessarily match up with the reality of the situation. Often, there is such a flood of information that people feel the person must know what they are talking about, while the many misalignments and falsehoods go past unnoticed.
In the past, snake oil salesman would move from town to town in regions where locals barely moved, so they could avoid having to be consistent or actually get results. This meant that they never had to face the consequences of their "treatment" not working. The internet is much the same in this regard, except people don't even have to move towns, they just have to move through digital communities from the comfort of their own home, making it very easy to dish out advice, never having to be concerned with whether it works or not.
In my time on Hive, I have seen quite a few "Hive School" operators who give advice on how to Hive properly, whether it be on how to use applications or functions (often rewrites from people who know the system better than they), or how to act in the community itself, which is often just their opinion and is narrowly informed and often heavily subjective to personal ideals. Whether they are well-intentioned or not, it really is best to take the "Do Your Own Research" (DYOR) approach and take all advice with a grain of salt, remembering that people are incentivized to have you believe them.
What is interesting on the internet though, is that "authority" doesn't require experiential knowledge on a topic, a memory to hold information, or even proof of ability - that is what Google is for. Everyone can be an expert on anything, which is also why there can be so many "truth tellers" online, who have zero real-world experience with what they are telling the truth about - all their information is collected online, through the information of others, which comes from the information of others. And then they liberally apply their opinion over the top, assuming that the person up the chain didn't do the same, because they agreed with them.
In my opinion, track-record matters and in the coming world where information is going to be increasingly filtered through a complex and decentralized web of trust, reputation is going to matter. It won't be good enough to be a Google Influencer, a person is going to have to prove themselves and their skills in order to gain attention in the information marketplace. And it is not going to be based on one instance, one post, or one month's worth of information, it is going to consider many aspects over a growing amount of time and tempered across proven skillsets and experience.
What this means is a lot of the web 2.0 influencers are going to find themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant, as the trust in what they have to say drops. Not only this, because Web 3.0 incentivizes information in its many forms from the creator, consumer and investor perspectives, those who consistently deliver trusted information that has proof of concept validation, will increasingly take attention away form those that do not. The future of the content creator is rapidly improving for those who actually hold skills and can present them well, while those who just have the presentation, will fall out of favor.
This has far larger ramifications for the world and flow of information in general too, such as in regards to journalism and scientific reporting, as there will be far more transparency of sources, working and whether the chain of information can be trusted at all. The snakes in the garden are going to find it much harder to hide as each stream of information is filtered through trust metrics, that factor in millions of data points.
This doesn't kill off the average creator though, it actually empowers them, as rather that being reliant on the Google search that anybody can do, perspective on information becomes important, meaning that the individual themselves starts to take focus as a human. Over time, these opinions get battle tested too and if comparing past to future, what many will find is that a lot of the advice that seemed intuitively correct to them in the past, is now obviously incorrect in the present, as the real-world immutable evidence doesn't support the hypothesis.
And this is what opinion is, it is a hypothesis, based on how someone feels about something. And while experience informs this too, a lot of our personal experience actually doesn't register strongly enough or overpower our desires, in order to change our intuitions about the world. We are conditioned to feel we know right from wrong, but we are not conditioned to continually check if reality aligns with our feelings.
I was thinking about this the other day and will likely write another article on it later, but it is going to be interesting for me to look back at all of my content in the past and see how much (if any of it) aligns with the future reality. I know that in many instances I am unlikely to have predicted precisely what the world will look like, but I hope that at least I am consistently in the ballpark, as that would be significant considering how dynamic this tech and world is progressing.
But, I don't mind being wrong, which is also why I don't mind giving my opinions and perspectives openly as just that. However, this doesn't mean that I throw snake oil out in the hope that people will buy, since I don't say anything that I don't do myself - so if someone who follows what I have said over time fails, it means that I have failed in my daily life too. At least when it comes to Hiving, I probably haven't failed that much - but I am consistently told by other people's intuitions that I am wrong and they are right. Interesting, eh? Of course, this also comes down to experience, which like the workshop I was involved in concerning delivery practices, is informed. Googled experience counts for very little in the real world.
But, at the end of the day, we are all free to interact and be influenced by who we choose to be, including the influence that comes through sources that we don't even notice, like the content we surround ourselves with. We don't have to knowingly follow advice to follow it and when we surround ourselves with content, the "we are what we eat" rule comes into play and we end up aligning ourselves to our surroundings.
It is no wonder so many people struggle in this world, as many keep buying snake oil, because it promises to heal all of their ailments, without having to do a thing - While the snakes they buy from shed their digital skin as they move into another community to shill their wears to the next set of customers.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Snakey bastards everywhere.
For sure. Need an annual Snake Whacking Day.
I'm in for sure...But let's make it bi-monthly.
Actual footage of a very jaundiced G-dog doing his snake whacking training.
I wrote about remote working In one of your previous posts. Right, remote working saves times, gives you comfort and maybe you don't get as much tired as when at work. However, in time, you lose the sense of belonging to the company and relationship with co-workers . You create another workplace for yourself at home. Sometimes you are confined indoors.
We can see the snake oil salesman in many aspects of life. I think this kind of behaviour is commonly seen in marketing or trading of a product, which so called is different than ever before.
Yes and there is nothing wrong with this, but it really isn't for everyone, is it? I have worked alone for many years in my own business, but I know that many people hate it. Plus, they lose the sense of what their home is - as it is both work and a place to relax.
On the internet, the new form of snake oil is information, or the disinformation, as the case may be.
Nowadays i have seen Twitter has become best place for snake oil seller .😀 People always advice something which can favour to himself. Your post come to read at same time as how i suffered in today stockmarket. One of News anchor in big Tv channel promote one of indian stock to buy because of some latest news bring the stock up in price .unfortunately i took position in the option trading of same stock as how Tv anchor promoted . My bad ..today i lost 1k in US Dollar .
Always avoide Snake oil Seller.bind with DYOR.
In my opinion, when the TV says buy, the holders are going to dump. :)
Such kind of people is enough to nipped in the bud a project.
It is why you should do your own research.
You re absolutely right. Before doing anything, we must take enough research by ourselves.
Great post, but disagree with the statement that going remote reduces engagement, relationships, interaction, or productivity. I used to think this way, but after having several years experience, learned that this is not due to the working remotely.
Instead, in my experience, it is due to lack of managers and peer skills in utilizing the tools available, and needing to learn how to engage and build relationships in a different fashion. I had a boss that I worked for (remotely) that was one of the best relationships I ever had and we never even met in person for over a year. When we did meet in person it was during all day meetings offsite, and then a dinner. This manager had similar relationship with many others on the team as most were remote and spread across multiple countries.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, also from a previous life, I remember when I had an entire team onsite, but spent the majority of my day/week in my office behind a closed door on calls all day and did not make the effort to engage with the team (mine or larger) and build those relationships. In hindsight, the productivity and engagement suffered. Even though people were 20-50 feet away, they might as well have been continents apart.
In my experience, it's not the scenario of being onsite or being remote, it is the managers skill and the peer to peer efforts in using the tools for engagement and building those relationships that make the difference. Yes, some may need to adjust to working remote and exerting different efforts to build those relationships and engagements, but it's more than possible.
And really if we're being honest, who can't be more productive if they honestly put in the same work effort if they are not having to spend 3 hours extra a day dressing up, driving back and forth, going out to lunch, etc... That's at least 15 hours a week or 2 full days of work more than can be done with the same or less effort.
Really? Yes, I'm biased strongly for remote work. Of course I'm not big on small -talk. I find it mostly a waste of time that people could spend working. I know some like the in-person, on-site and while I do think there is some benefit in the in-person meetings and occasional meets, I really find that a couple / few times a year to be more than enough.
Your post are always exciting and educative to read