Remote Collaboration Tools and Techniques

Show Notes:

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• Bekah: dev.to/bekahhw, Twitter: https://twitter.com/bekahhw, Instagram: bekahhw
• Dan: dtott.com, Twitter: @danieltott

Transcript:

Bekah: 00:03

Hello and welcome to season 10 of the Virtual Coffee podcast. I'm Bekah and I'm here with my cohost, Dan, and we are very excited to bring you a new format this season, which focuses on the heart of what makes Virtual Coffee special, our community discussions. Virtual Coffee is an intimate tech community welcoming developers at all stages of their journey, and we're here to share insights, experiences, and the lessons that we've learned along the way.

Dan: 00:34

This season, we're diving deep into our popular backpocket topics from our Tuesday Virtual Coffees and exploring all things Hacktoberfest in October. Our episodes will be shorter, punchier, and packed with valuable takeaways from our community conversations. We are grateful to be sponsored by Level Up Financial Planning. Level Up Financial Planning helps people in tech take your financial confidence to the next level. It's real financial planning to help you reach your goals and gain clarity on what actions you need to take now to maximize your tech career. Level Up even has a podcast where you can hear about some of the strategies he uses with his clients. Check out levelupfinancialplanning. com and you can get that link in our show notes.

Bekah: 01:12

Alright, now it's time. Grab your favorite drink, settle in, and let's get started with today's virtual coffee podcast episode. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Dan: 01:29

Yo, what up Beck? How's it going?

Bekah: 01:31

Hey, it is going fantastic. Very excited to be doing season 10

Dan: 01:36

I know.

Bekah: 01:37

the podcast.

Dan: 01:37

back. Took a little break. And now we're

Bekah: 01:41

It was a short, very short break, but we are here and we're excited, excited to be playing with a new format this year, too. We've told a lot of stories and now we're just taking it to a broader conversation, and I'm excited about being able to share what we do on Tuesdays and Thursdays and so other folks can get a Taste of what it's like to be at Virtual Coffee.

Dan: 02:04

Yeah, totally. Um, the, the coffees, you know, the discussion parts are always the most fun, you know, times. And we have these, uh, backpocket topics. We don't always, you know, in, in each group, we don't always get to them. Um, but I generally think when we do, they, they can be fun. Uh, good way to kind of talk through some stuff. So that's what we're going to do this season. We're going to try it out.

Bekah: 02:26

Yeah, if you're not familiar with Back Pocket Topics, it's We always want to prioritize the conversations with our members, but we also don't want to sit there in awkward silence if nobody has something that they want to talk about or they want to share. So that's why we call them the back pocket topics. And today we're going to be talking about something that gets brought up a lot in virtual coffee, um, especially since virtual coffee started during the pandemic. Uh, we're talking about remote collaboration, Tools, techniques, the things that we've learned over the, well, our careers, but, um, for me particularly, I really started working remotely with my first job in tech. So, it's five years for me, um, and that's what we'll be talking about today.

Dan: 03:10

Sweet. Um, well, should we get started?

Bekah: 03:16

Yes, we should.

Dan: 03:17

All

Bekah: 03:17

Um, and I would say, like, Dan, you, uh You work in an office, but you still do a lot of remote collaboration. Do you just want to maybe give a sense of what your work structure looks like and how remote plays into that?

Dan: 03:35

Yeah, so I, I work for a company called Sprockets and I, um, freelanced. I contracted with them for, I don't know, 15 years or something like that. And now I'm full time, but regardless of Sprockets began, um, and this was in 2000. Five or something as basically a remote company, uh, the two owners, one lives in Philadelphia and one lives here in Cleveland. And so, uh, kind of built around that idea, uh, to start. And so obviously coming up with good tools, processes, things like that for remote. Collaboration was, uh, very important and that has stayed the case now. Um, and so I work out of their office, uh, and, and Vince France, who is one of the owners works here most days. Um, but lots of times, most of the people we work with are not here at all. Right. Um, so I go to the office to get out of my house mostly. Um, but you know, all the work that we do is, is still online. And the way that that looks has changed little bits over time. Um, a lot of it is still. We are a pretty small company, and so there's, there's some things that we don't have to deal with that, like, very large companies would certainly have to deal with. I'm trying to remember what we use is called, uh, Oh, Campfire. So this is, um, by the company's now called Basecamp. signals back in the day. They created a Basecamp. They created this precursor to Slack called Campfire, which is. It was just basically Slack, right? Um, and that was, you know, Campfire and then Slack were, uh, always our main kind of communication channels. Um, and we do a lot of one off, you know, video talk, video calls, things like that. We used Skype back in the day a lot. Um, And we've messed around with a few different things. We're pretty much settled on zoom these days. Um, but yeah, we, we just, and then, uh, that's for, you know, synchronous communication, I suppose. And then for async stuff, we still rely a lot on GitHub. We use, like I said, Basecamp back in the day. Um, and I mean, I don't know, there's some other tools that like maybe some of the non developers use, some of the designers and stuff, uh, we use, uh, Oh, I can't even think of what it's called right now, because I don't use it. Um, but yeah, it's, there's a lot of stuff that we do, we've done it for a long time, and we try some things, and some things work, and some things don't.

Bekah: 06:01

I, I think one of the, the things that we've learned about remote communication in the last five years, even, uh, I think because of the pandemic, there are a lot more options than there used to be. And I think because out of necessity, and then there was opportunity to do new things, and so I think it's great to try out new tools and see what works for you and your community. And I actually met with another community builder yesterday to talk about like, you know, what What are the tools that you're using and how are you implementing these things and why did you make these choices and I think it's valuable to talk to other people about that because you learn, you know, what it what is working And so if you're joining the podcast, um, You know for the first time or whatever dan and I used to work together uh, my first job out of boot camp was working with dan and so Um, we're in different parts of ohio We definitely were not in the same office So it was a lot of like remote collaboration Through slack and I was fairly new to slack at the time And then using zoom Um, but I've been at a couple of different companies and I have found like, uh, company culture really changes the way remote collaboration happens. And so, you know, if you're at a bigger company, it can be, um, overwhelming, I think, to sometimes go into a Slack. You kind of, like, need onboarding tools into, um, or a company to understand like, okay, where am I supposed to ask questions or where am I supposed to escalate this situation? Because it could be like, I don't know, walking into an office building that has a hundred floors and where do you go? And so at some point there needs to be kind of like this single source of truth for like, how do I, work remotely and do it well. And I think, you know, that's definitely something we've talked a lot at Virtual Coffee, and we definitely don't have it solved, but it is a challenging issue, especially in a remote world, where you can't just ask the person standing next to you, like, Hey, what am I supposed to do or who should I talk to about this? You kind of have to figure out things differently. So, um, Dan, you want to talk a little bit more about that idea of, like, Finding ways to make communication clear and having clear paths of communication in a remote environment.

Dan: 08:22

Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, there's a lot of, like you said, a different kind of different things to different ways to deal with it and different problems that people have when you're trying to do work, you know, when you're, when you, uh, join a company and especially a bigger company, the problems get magnified. Um, it's a little bit different than for instance, if you just join a large community, right. Um, where you probably have a manager if you're an employee, so you can at least talk to them. Um, but as far as onboarding, you know, I, I think, I don't know. I, it's, there, there's kind of like two different focuses with, I think there are some similarities between business stuff and just sort of general communicate or general community stuff like virtual coffee. Right. Um, But the, and one of those is that when you join a community, especially like one like virtual coffee, um, where it's maybe focused on an area and it's, you know, it's supposed to be fun, but also maybe you can try to learn things or try to give back to the community, things like that. Um, there's. It is very, it's very important to kind of try to communicate how, like what to do when you step in. But the problem that we have as maintainers is oftentimes we will write up a whole bunch of stuff. And when you're excited and joining a new community, maybe kind of ignore a lot of it, right. Or look at it once. And then, um, you know, three weeks later, forget about that. You ever even got that. email or that initial slack. So we have in virtual coffee, we have like a little slack bot that, you know, DMs you the first time you join. Um, We have some resources that we've put in different places. We've tried a bunch of different things. Uh, Bekah, do you have any like memories of anything that has like tried, like we've tried and either we just don't have any more or totally failed or anything like that? I, we've, we've tried a bunch of different things with this problem. So, um,

Bekah: 10:25

Yeah, we have tried a lot of different things. I think, you know, one of the things that I wish worked well, um, is, well, number one, preserving resources becomes really hard. So, um, yesterday I was talking to this other community builder, and I was saying, you know, Slack doesn't store all of your conversations on the free plan, but we kind of see that as a feature, or at least I do, um, and we treat it like, hey, this is a conversation between the two of us, and it will go away eventually. And so in ten years, I'm not going to be held to this thing that I said. You know right now and so I I do like that But at the same time there's a lot of like knowledge sharing that happens And so there's not been a really good way to kind of preserve that knowledge and we have said like hey This is a great conversation. Let's put this on github discussions because it will live on github discussions It's a resource that people will want to go back to and then We can make it more permanently part of our website or something like that. But it's really hard to get that adoption to move from one platform to another, to have those conversations, especially because of, I don't know, GitHub notifications, I think makes things a little bit harder to continue that conversation or to have that momentum. So I would say, you know, that's a certainly a challenge and something that We haven't been able to quite solve in one of the things, one of the ways that we did try to solve it.

Dan: 11:55

Yeah, and, you know, part of that, I think, you know, is, is that there's, there's two different, um, I don't know, two different, like, wants out of this, right? Is that the person that is starting the, the question wants to solve some problem that they're probably stuck with right now, you know? And that's what you do is you go ask for help. Like, that makes perfect sense. And that's really good. And then somebody hopefully comes and helps them. And, you know, uh, lots of times there's been just amazing discussions and sometimes they, you know, I mean, it's one of my favorite things is like, somebody asks some help, like something, help about something. And then we get somewhere and then we end up starting to just talk for a long, long time. And maybe it's related to the original question, you know, but tangentially and, um, kind of deep dive into something. This happens a lot, like with me and Kirk and, and like TypeScript stuff, for instance, you know, we, we, we like solve the person's problem. I mean, hopefully I'd like to think that we did before we kind of like go off in our own direction. But, um, But then we started saying, you know, what else is really interesting? And then it's just like a conversation that you would have maybe at a conference or, uh, at work, if you work with people, um, that kind of thing. Um, and then the, and then the other side of that is like, okay, well, we as community maintainers see this and think it's really valuable and would love to share it with other people, right? We want more people to see it and provide, um, knowledge or information or even entertainment, right? To the, to like the rest of the world, you know? Um, and it's, it's hard to imagine that, that like random conversation happening on some more permanent, you know, some more like permanent spot, like even like a chat room or, I mean, not a chat room, but a, um, discussion board, you know, like, um, GitHub discussions or any of that stuff, right? Cause the way that you're communicating changes when you're doing that, right? I mean, you can ask the same question, but the way I think that the conversation evolves, um, can be a lot different, you know? Um, and I don't think there's really a good, like there's not one good solution cause we've thought about this problem a bunch. Um, I think one of the things that I've thought of and popped into my mind again now is, is maybe even having somebody Who, like, with permission of everybody involved, manually archives things, right? Like, manually says, all right, we're gonna, let's copy out this conversation and make this into, like, a weird little blog post or something, you know? Um, like, things like that where it's, it's not on the person asking for help to do the extra work of, you know, they're already stuck, you know what I mean? We don't need to, like, ask them to do things even in, like, a different way or a harder way, because, um That's like, I think one of the most important things you have to think about when you're, when you're developing a community or a, or a business, or even I'm, I'm in, you know, a leader in Cub Scouts for my son's Cub Scout pack. And there's like massive, some of the same similar issues, you know? I mean, we don't have like, it's not so much an online thing, but there's lots of people involved. There's lots of, uh, resources involved. There's all this stuff, right? And one of the things you need to balance is, um, is like ease of use and things that make sense for you as an administrator, um, T for lack of a better word. And also like what's actually helpful for the people and how we're solving their problems. Right. Um, and the, and so, you know, it's, I don't know, it can be tough. Uh, it can be tough to find that balance.

Bekah: 15:40

Yeah, I, I definitely have seen this in the workplace as well. So, um, currently, uh, the company that I'm at, OpenSauced, we were using ClickUp when I joined. But, um, It doesn't really lend itself to the engineering team to use. It seems like a separate tool, right? And

Dan: 16:02

Wait, what is

Bekah: 16:02

a lot of the

Dan: 16:03

Sorry to interrupt. What is ClickUp?

Bekah: 16:05

yes. ClickUp is I don't It's a way to organize information. So, I don't know. I guess you can compare it to Notion. You know, there's lots of different things that you can do with it. You can create project boards or spreadsheets or docs or whatever. So That's a good question. It's in that realm of

Dan: 16:25

That makes sense though. Yeah, I gotcha.

Bekah: 16:28

But engineers aren't going to go in there and create an issue for something on GitHub, right? And so that communication lives on GitHub for sure. But then we have like the marketing and the product team and developer experience which overlaps with both of those areas. And so then it's like a lot of going back and forth and trying to find out. But you also can't expect marketing to spend all their time writing GitHub issues, you know? So

Dan: 16:56

And probably don't want them to. It's been my

Bekah: 16:59

Right. Um, what we've kind of landed on is using, uh, Google Docs and Google Tools because we're there in the workspace anyway, where we're able to preserve knowledge and link that stuff to what we, where we need it to be linked to on the website. Um, GitHub. And so that actually, I think, has been the best workflow that I've seen. Uh, at a previous company we used Confluence, which I think nobody liked, and was, discoverability was really hard. I mean, discoverability can be really hard in Google as well, unless you know what you're looking for and where you're looking for it. So that issue is, is not exactly solved, but it's in a suite of tools that almost everybody uses anyway.

Dan: 17:48

Yeah, I, uh, I don't know. I've always had struggle with Google's tools. Um, But the fact that they are all tied in an organization, you know, everybody's on the same organization, all that stuff. And like most everybody is familiar, at least with the top, like the most common Google, you know, tools like Google docs, I think pretty much, I don't want to say everybody, because I have that assumption, you know, checked all the time, you know what I mean? Uh, especially again, coming with, with the Cub Scout stuff, because, um, there's, there's, you know, there's parents that, there's people that, Don't live online and when we live online like I do and you know you do and you know It's easy to forget about that. I say, oh everybody knows about Google Docs Like everybody can do Google Docs, but it's not true. You know what I mean? And these aren't like The people I'm talking about are not Like, really, really old. You know, I don't want to get into like discussions of how old people are, um, like me, but like, you know what I mean? And, um, But they're still like people and they are important, you know, and they have like things that they need to solve as well. And so, It can be tough. I think though, in a work environment, you know, like this, it's okay to require somebody to, you know, Learn something, you know, and, and yeah, I mean, that gets back to discoverability and, um, ease of use and onboarding and all that stuff. Um, another thing that I thought of, and this is like very similar to all this stuff is, you know, we have Slack and we have, um, we have these different communication methods and well, I guess it's almost exactly the same thing as we were talking about before with virtual coffee, but with, with work, it's the same kind of thing of, we ask a question. I, I just don't know a thing about some piece of infrastructure, right? So I ask somebody who does know and they tell me the answer. I'm like, okay, if I'm, if I'm using my like good brain and I'm all the way awake, I'm like, I should write this down somewhere where we can find it, like in the readme of the thing or something. Um, but lots of times I am in, you know, work mode. I'm in my work zone or whatever. And I don't want to like go check out a different repository and do all that stuff. Right. So like, what do you think? I don't know, I guess this goes back to, you know, we, you and I like lots of times talk about things as from our angle of like maintaining communities, maintaining tools for people, things like that. But like as a member of a community or a workplace or whatever, do you think it's, do you think they have, do you think a member should have some responsibility of trying to do this sort of work as well? I don't know if that question makes sense, but

Bekah: 20:35

Doing, like, what kind, like, going out and finding the answer

Dan: 20:39

well, both, I guess,

Bekah: 20:41

the knowledge

Dan: 20:42

both I'd say trying to find the answer and then if they can't find the answer, but they get it from maybe a chat or, you know, they get it from a person. Like, do you think, um, it should be like their responsibility as well? Not like responsibility, like, Hey, you're out if you don't do this. But, you know, do you think as a member of a community, you should feel some sort of ownership over. Improving that situation for the next person who maybe has that same question.

Bekah: 21:09

Yeah, I, I mean, I do. I actually feel pretty strongly about that. Because if you're not doing it, then you're passing the burden on to someone else. And to have strong communities that continue to thrive, you have to have that. And, you know, this, like, I have seen this, actually, this is going to be a back pocket topic for the future. But, um, one of the things that I've seen is that, um, Um, there, it, this doesn't just happen in communities or in workplaces. Like I see it happening at schools too. You have the same group of people that are volunteering, right? And then they're stuck with all of the volunteer roles. And what I have also noticed is those people get burnt out, right? And they get really upset usually when they're burnt out. And it usually, ends with a bang, right? It's not a good thing. Like, we don't want to burn out our volunteers or our teammates. And so this is why, like, it's important for everyone to recognize, like, you gotta put in the work. And, you know, I wrote a blog post recently, uh, I think it was called, like, Contributors Stop Burning Out Maintainers. And it was all about this from an open source perspective of, like, number one, maintainers set up repositories and they do all of this work ahead of time. So they don't have to answer these questions. They are empowering you to get started by giving you a read me, giving you a contributing guide, giving you a code of conduct. All of these things. And if you choose to skip that, then you're not valuing that person's time and the effort that they've put in. So, like, it's definitely on you to, to be doing that thing and to discover it. Now, it doesn't mean it's perfect all the time. And you might see it and say, like, well, I still have this question. It's That's the opportunity to raise an issue and exactly like what you're talking about here, like, this is also your responsibility to, if you reach out and find the answer to someone, say like, hey, I was missing this piece of knowledge and I know other people are going to have this problem. How can we solve it for the next person? Like, that's what makes teams and communities and organizations thrive. And if you don't do that, then like, I don't know, maybe this is kind of spicy here. Then you're part of the problem.

Dan: 23:18

I mean, I agree. And I think if you are a newer developer, I think you can, Relax a little bit on this. I think if you're more, like, this is like, the more experienced you are, the more I personally would expect you to do this kind of thing Bekah's talking about, right? Um, it can be hard when you're trying to learn a billion things, uh, at the beginning to also learn how to try to do this. But like, but yeah, if you have a problem, but like certainly complaining is The wrong, always the wrong way to go, especially with open source projects, right? Because, because the, the, if you're gonna, if you find yourself wanting to complain, um, the right way to do the next thing is instead of complaining, make the, make the fix. You can even do the fix, or you can, like Bekah said, create an issue, explaining your problem, explaining the problem that you ran into, how you ended up solving it, et cetera, et cetera. Also, if you. Ask a question on an issue, um, or on Stack Overflow and you find the answer in the future, uh, please go back and, and, and, and put the answer in for, for the next person that's Googling around. That's, that's kind of separate. That's more of like a internet

Bekah: 24:30

issue, and then someone's like, I found an answer, nevermind. I'm like, what is the answer?

Dan: 24:36

that's the worst, yeah, it's, if you're going to go back and take the time to do that, you know? Um, and it's like, And I have found like sometimes when you're like really stuck in this crazy bug and I find somebody asked the exact question I was You know, the exact bug that I have on Stack Overflow, and just like no answers, like six months ago, like, dear person in the past, what happened to you? Are you still trying to fix this bug? Did you end up doing something else? You know, even if, right, right, they just quit. Uh, like even, you know, even if your answer was, we stopped using this one thing, we just totally threw it out and use a different thing like that. Let us know, you know, let people know. That's, this is kind of a sidetrack, uh, more, more of just a community, uh, internet, um, citizen, you know, thing as opposed to,

Bekah: 25:28

Be a good internet

Dan: 25:29

but yeah,

Bekah: 25:30

That, that can be its own back

Dan: 25:31

right, right, right. Um,

Bekah: 25:36

I think one of the, the pieces of advice or the things that I've learned from remote collaboration is always ask more questions. You know, it's okay to ask more questions rather than to be silent about things and try You don't want to spend 10 hours trying to figure something out yourself when that question could have been asked and Because there's not that nature of like, oh I ran into you in the hallway and I can ask the question You just have to like be more vocal. So i'm always a fan of over communicating rather than under communicating And I think like You know, we're talking about new people. I think, like, that should be extra true for anybody that's new to the team and then you might find at some point, like, okay, you don't feel like you're asking a million questions all the time because you kind of, like, have those questions answered or you know the right path to find the answers. So, I would say to anybody out there that's worried about asking too many questions, if you're in a remote environment, I think it's a good thing to be there and to be doing that rather than under communicating. Thank you.

Dan: 26:36

Yeah, totally. And, and, and that's another thing that, uh, organizations of all different kinds can provide is like, Where, you know, it's just like very clear guide, uh, guidance for where you ask questions, or, you know, like, And this is again, this is like, it's a little different with community stuff than, um, than workplace stuff, right? But I think for community stuff, like, where can I ask questions? Like, if I have a question just about the community itself, where, where do I go? Do I go on Google? Do I, or I mean on GitHub? Do I go in Slack? Because people are always going to have questions. Um, with work stuff, you know, I think the same thing applies, um, but lots of times I'd find, I find as a manager, um, telling people that are working, you know, on, on stuff that I've asked them to work on, Like being very specific about that as well. You know, if you have a question, like there's sometimes where I'm like, please just DM me anything you want. I mean, that's always true, but there's some things where I'm like, okay, this is like a thing we're working with, you know, these other people as well. So if you run into problems here, like ask them in the main room for this project, you know, for instance, um, and I'll, I'll try to answer too, but it's good and helpful for other people to see it. You know, um, your, your instinct as a person is always I think to, um, to like direct message people, talk to people, you know, as opposed to shouting a question out into a more public area. And that's understandable, right? You're trying to avoid the possibility of embarrassment or asking silly questions, blah, blah, blah. But I think, um, Seeing questions and then, you know, like posting your, uh, your, putting your question, this is for work or communities or anything like that. Um, putting a question in places where people, other people can see it is always a good thing, you know, because other people might have the same question. It's like, it's goes back to, okay, so how do we save this information and stuff, which we don't have a good answer for, but, um, it's why Stack Overflow exists, right? Stack Overflow is, uh, is a really good tool, you know. I mean, it has its bad sides, obviously, but, um, there's all these questions that might seem basic if you have been working for a long time. Um, but that person didn't know the answer. And I guarantee like a bunch of other people also didn't know the answer, you know, and like the next person who's just starting off won't know the answer maybe. And they'll Google it and find your helpful, you know, answer and stuff. So, um, So yeah, uh, another thing real quick that I do with this is more specifically with work situations as a manager is for some problems, I will level set the amount of time that I want somebody to, um, work at a thing while stuck, right? So not like how, how many hours is this task going to take? I mean, like if you hit a wall, so like, Yeah, try, like, don't only only work on it for 10 minutes, uh, you know, only be stuck for 10 minutes before you come talk to me. You know what I mean? Because I don't want, I don't like, this is like a hairy problem and I know there's like a lot of like weird spots and please just come talk to me. And there's some projects where I am like, okay, if you hit a wall, like you crack at it for an hour. 'cause I like, I know you can do this and it's okay after an hour you, you know, no, no problems. But like, like I try to level set that kind of thing. Um, so that, 'cause I've worked with people who. will, uh, like be stuck for days and try to get through it, you know, um, for various reasons. And that's, I am, I personally am the same way, right? I, I hate getting stuck and it will make me mad and competitive at, against, against the issue that is not a person, but I'm still trying to beat it. You know what I mean? And like, I, I do it. Yeah. And so, um, I try to do that with people that are working on like, I'm like, please do like, you're never going to bother me, you know, like try to solve it, but only try for. 10 minutes on this project. Only try for an hour on this project. The, you know, never try for two days. You know what I mean? Like, please talk to me before that happens. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. Um, I think that can be a helpful thing as a, as a, um, as a manager and, you know, that I've found to be valuable.

Bekah: 30:47

I think that's really good and I know like early in my career when I was first working on things afraid to ask questions, you know afraid of like Not looking smart or whatever. I definitely did that. Like I went down the rabbit hole really deep like for way more hours than I should have ever gone down it. Um, and then it turned out like I don't think it was a question that I could have solved on my own because there was knowledge that I did not know about the thing. Um, But you know, there's always that question of like, how much time do you spend on a problem before asking a question? And I really like that idea of level setting because it's, you know, I know some people are like 15 minutes and then ask a question, but you know, like sometimes 15 minutes is hardly touches what the issue is. So you can't really even understand what's happening within 15 minutes because you have to look in these different components or in these different places or whatever. You To understand what's happening. And so Having somebody that's familiar with the code base or you know with the issue Set that for you I think takes a lot of burden off of the new person And also lets them know like it's not going to be the same every time like if It's it will always be different depending on the complexity of the problem And so I think that's also maybe just a good rule of thumb for anybody out there asking that question How long should I take before I ask a question and the answer is you know, it depends

Dan: 32:14

Yeah, well, the answer is always, it depends, right? Uh, but, but yeah, it's, that's, oh, it's Ali. Sorry, that's Ali. I just got up from his nap. Um, the, uh, Ali's my, uh, yeah, my little goofball over there. Um, if the mailman shows up, Oh, no, I think we're still an hour before the mailman usually shows up, so. He usually barks quite energetically at the mailman, but otherwise he's very quiet here at the office. He's my little intern. Um, well I think we've pretty much hit our time. Do you have any final thoughts or anything you'd like to add?

Bekah: 32:54

No, I think that this was a good discussion about some of the challenges, some of the things that you can put in place to make it easier for people, but if you have more questions, please let us know and we will be happy to respond to them in the comments. So, thanks for listening to Season 10, Episode 1.

Dan: 33:11

Alright, thanks everybody. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. This episode was produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel, if you have questions or comments, you can hit us up on Twitter @VirtualCoffeeIO or email us at podcast@virtualcoffee.io. You can find the show notes, sign up for the newsletter, buy some VC merch, and check out all of our other resources on our website, virtualcoffee.io. If you're interested in sponsoring virtual Coffee, you can find out more information on our website at virtualcoffee.io/sponsorship. Please subscribe to our podcast and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.