Ask HN: Remote people: Do you have a constant voice/video call running all day?

No. That sounds incredibly distracting as well as fairly awkward.

Last company I worked for a as "remote worker" had three tools you had to switch on all the time: Flock, Slack and Skype. For actual conference calls etc. more tools were used ad hoc.

All the interruptions and constant onslaught of messages were very distracting and hampering productivity. After a while I had the phantom ringing syndrome where I looked up the tools all the time even when no message arrived.

Companies require remote workers to use those to exert control (to make sure they are online/at work) but it backfires as no high quality creative work is possible when you add so many stressors.

Nope. Being sync, and being so extremely "sync" like that is just detrimental for remote work. You have to go async in order to really leverage the benefits from remote work in your organization.

No. I find that invasive. I would honestly quit if that were to become a requirement.

I used to, but it drove me slowly insane. It wasn't all day every day, it was one day a week for about 4 hours in the afternoon. Everyone is in a conference room, working on laptops, munching on food, discussing things, etc. There's usually a standup round. And then there's a few remote people like me.

I didn't want to be a remote worker (which is why I relocated), and this just reinforces it. This meeting is working with a remote team in our same project but in a different location. It's really hard to communicate over teleconference with meetings/groups. The microphones either pick up some noise or side conversation, if you can hear the other person at all. And the lag can be very tiresome. Whiteboards are also liabilities.

Even just trying to listen in on the background and tune it out when I wasn't being talked with was hard.

I really would advise against it. I find slack to be more useful and less distracting.

I did, it was non-mandatory and most of the (small) company would be on the call each day. I would turn my camera off and opt for just audio, but others would leave theirs on.

I enjoyed it for being able to have a quick back and forth when I had a question for something that was stopping my current task. Alternatively, I would be waiting on an unknown response time to a chat message which lead to a lot more task switching mid progress. But most of all, I just enjoyed the general talk that comes from being on a non-specific all day call - sports, family, news, etc. I learnt a lot more about my work mates that I otherwise wouldn’t have, which made us closer and work more enjoyable, plus working remotely can just get lonely sometimes.

I say all this and must mention that this call would happen daily for 6 months or so, but has slowly lost participants or only happens every other day as the company changes/grows. For me, I would like to see it come back!

I was a remote full-time solo developer for a client (small UK-based medical team) for 6 years. All work done over email; 2 phone calls in all those years.

Could some things be done faster over a phone call? Probably. However, both me and the client preferred the async nature of emails and avoided calls as much as possible.

No. I would never work like that. In all the projects I have been doing remotely we have used email, wiki, and occasional online meeting or phone meeting. It has always worked great, even with people from a completely different timezone (day/night difference).

We communicate by Slack, email and Zoom. I routinely turn mine off for hours at a time and no one complains because they respect that we need to do focused work. I would love to cut down on non-essential meetings, but that's a stretch.

Not all day, but we do have some time (timezone crossover) when people can join a conference to talk about anything. We also do party line conference if we feel like it - basically an invitation for anyone to drop in and pair on something.

Yes. A good portion of our team sits in Mexico and India. They find it easier to collaborate with the US based staff through an always on WebEx. We typically will keep the conference phone muted and the remote folks mute their individual mics. Each US based team has a dedicated webcam that stays on. When a remote person needs someone they can just un-mute their mic and speak to whoever is at the table.This works well for us. Some remote folks leave their cameras on and others turn it off. We also utilize Microsoft Teams. The tools are there and it is up to the individual to determine how they want to use them.

I've tried it and I think it works great for a closenitted team. I'd have some reservations for a company-wide session.

Related: if you need someone for accountability purposes, this is a great service: https://www.focusmate.com

Recently I've been seen more people that are having an always on zoom/slack call that anybody can join to discuss whatever they want.

I find this quite intriguing and don't know if this is a trend or just for some specific use cases... anybody else doing that?

No. We call each other as needed, either on Slack, Jitsi or other similar platforms. Sometimes, I get Loom.com screen casts from colleagues if they have something to show me which that be responded to asynchronously.

No. That would be extremely distracting, and make it harder for me to concentrate on doing my job.

Leaving Slack and an email client open in the background works fine as it is.

Nope, but we have a fairly active Slack channel that we use, so we just put things in text.

Having that on my work PC and IRC on my personal really gets mind-boggling.

No. Sounds terrible.