关于远程工作与写作

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Bartleby -- Of remote work and the writing

巴托比专栏——关于远程工作与写作

The written word will flourish in the post-pandemic workplace

书面文字将在疫情后的职场蓬勃发展

The pandemic has given a big shove to all forms of digital communication.

疫情极大地推动了各种形式的数字通信。

Video-conferencing platforms have become verbs.

视频会议平台已成为动词。

Venture capitalists make their bets after watching virtual pitches.

风投资本家在观看虚拟推介后押下赌注。

Products like Loom and mmhmm help workers send pre-recorded video messages to their colleagues.

像Loom和mmhmm这样的产品可以帮助员工将预先录制的视频信息发送给同事。

More than a third of Slack users each week are now "huddling" -- using the product's new audio feature to talk to each other.

现在，每周都有超过三分之一的Slack用户“聚在一起”——通过该产品的新音频功能互相交谈。

And all this is before the metaverse turns everyone into an avatar.

而这一切都发生在元宇宙将每个人都变成头像图标之前。

A workplace dominated by time on screens may seem bound to favour newer, faster and more visual ways of transmitting information.

一个由屏幕上的时间支配的工作场合似乎注定会青睐更新、更快、更直观的信息传递方式。

But an old form of communication -- writing -- is also flourishing.

但一种古老的交流方式——写作——也在蓬勃发展。

And not just dashed-off emails and entries on virtual whiteboards, but slow, time-intensive writing.

而且不仅仅是匆忙写成的电子邮件和虚拟白板上的事项记录，还有缓慢、耗时的写作。

The strengths of the written word have not been diminished by the pandemic era.

疫情时代并没有削弱书面文字的力量。

In some ways they are ideally suited to it.

在某些方面，写作完美适配疫情时代。

The value of writing is a staple in management thinking.

写作的价值是管理思维的重要组成部分。

"The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen," reckoned Lee Iacocca, a quotable titan of the American car industry.

“把事情写下来是实现它的第一步，”美国汽车行业的值得人们学习的巨头李·艾柯卡说。

Jeff Bezos banned slide decks from meetings of senior Amazon executives back in 2004, in favour of well-structured memos.

早在2004年，杰夫·贝索斯就禁止亚马逊高管在会议上使用幻灯片，而是赞成使用结构性良好的备忘录。

"PowerPoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas," he wrote.

他写道：“幻灯片形式的演示在某种程度上允许人们掩饰自己的想法。”

Some executives write for themselves.

一些高管会自己写点东西。

Andrew Bosworth, a bigwig at Meta (formerly Facebook), has a blog in which he muses interestingly on many topics, including on writing itself: "In my experience, discussion expands the space of possibilities while writing reduces it to its most essential components."

Meta(前身为Facebook)的大人物安德鲁·博斯沃思有一个博客，他在播客中对许多话题进行了有趣的思考，包括写作本身：“根据我的经验，讨论扩大了可能性的空间，而写作则将其缩减至最重要的那些部分。”

Others do so to reach an audience.

还有人用写作来吸引关注。

Shareholder letters from Larry Fink and Warren Buffett are the corporate equivalent of a blockbuster book launch.

拉里·芬克和沃伦·巴菲特写给股东的信相当于一场轰动的新书发布。

But the move to remote working has enhanced the value of writing to the entire organisation, not just the corner office.

但是，转向远程工作提高了写作对整个组织的价值，而不仅仅是对于那些位于公司角落的办公室（指公司高管所在的地方）。

When tasks are being handed off to colleagues in other locations, or people are working on a project "asynchronously", meaning at a time of their choosing, comprehensive documentation is crucial.

当任务被移交给在其他地点办公的同事，或者人们在“异步”处理一个项目时，这意味着在他们选定的时间准备好一份详实的文档是至关重要的。

When new employees start work on something, they want the back story.

当新接手的员工开始做某项工作时，他们需要知道之前的进展。

When veterans depart an organisation, they should leave knowledge behind.

当老员工离开组织时，他们应该将自己所了解的信息留下。

Writing everything down sounds like an almighty pain.

把所有的东西都写下来听起来像是一种巨大的痛苦。

But so is turning up to a meeting and not having the foggiest what was decided last time out.

但在对上次会议作出的决定一无所知的情况下出席会议时也同样痛苦。

Software developers have already worked out the value of the written word.

软件开发人员已经弄清楚了书面文字的价值。

A research programme from Google into the ingredients of successful technology projects found that teams with high-quality documentation deliver software faster and more reliably.

谷歌对成功技术项目要素的研究发现，拥有高质量文档的团队能够更快、更可靠地交付软件。

Gitlab, a code-hosting platform whose workforce is wholly remote, frames the secret of successful asynchronous working thus: "How would I deliver this message, present this work, or move this project forward right now if no one else on my team (or in my company) were awake?"

Gitlab是一个代码托管平台，它的工作人员完全是远程的，它提供了成功地进行异步工作的秘诀：“如果我的团队(或公司)中没有其他人醒着，我该如何传递信息、展示工作，或者就在此刻推进这个项目？”

Gitlab's answer is "textual communication".

Gitlab给出的答案是“文本交流”。

Its gospel is a handbook that is publicly available, stretches to more than 3,000 pages and lays out all of its internal processes.

它的“福音书”是一本3000多页的手册，其中列出了公司的所有内部流程，供公开使用。

The deliberation and discipline required by writing is helpful in other contexts, too.

写作所需要的审慎和自律在其他场景中也很有帮助。

"Brainwriting" is a brainstorming technique, used by Slack among others, in which participants are given time to put down their ideas before discussion begins.

“头脑书写”是一种Slack等公司都在使用的头脑风暴技巧。在讨论开始前，参与者被给予一些时间来把自己的想法写下来。

Lists of corporate values can make greeting cards seem hard-hitting.

企业价值观清单可能会让欢迎新员工的文档看起来十分尖刻。

But thoughtful codification of a firm's culture makes more sense in hybrid and remote workplaces, where new joiners have less chance to meet and observe colleagues.

但在混合型和远程的工作环境中，缜密周到的企业文化文档更有意义，因为新入职者很少有机会能见到和了解同事。

Purists will sniff that none of this counts as writing.

纯粹主义者会嗤之以鼻地表示，这些都算不上写作。

But good prose and useful prose share the same essential qualities: brevity, structure, a clear theme.

但是优秀的散文和有用的文章都具有相同的基本特征：语言简洁、结构完整、主题清晰。

Cormac McCarthy, a prize-winning novelist, copy-edits scientific papers for fun.

获奖小说家科马克·麦卡锡以编辑科学论文为乐。

Ted Chiang says that his science-fiction short stories and his technical writing both draw on a desire to explain an idea clearly.

姜峰楠说，他的科幻短篇小说和他的技术性写作都有同一种渴求，那就是清楚地阐明一个想法。

Writing is not always the best way to communicate in the workplace.

写作并不总是职场沟通的最佳方式。

Video is more memorable; a phone call is quicker; even PowerPoint has its place.

视频更加令人印象深刻；打电话更快捷；就连幻灯片也有它的一席之地。

But for the structured thought it demands, and the ease with which it can be shared and edited, the written word is made for remote work.

但就职场需要的结构化思维，以及分享和编辑的便捷性而言，书面文字就是为远程工作而生。