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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't surprise me. Netflix was always very anti-WFH. When I was there I know of only one team that did it, and that was the OpenConnect team (Netflix's custom CDN). And the main reason that was allowed was because the team was spread all over the world.

The Netflix culture is very strongly built around in-person collaboration.

One interesting way this manifested itself was when the new HQ was built, it had a ton of 2-4 person meeting rooms, more than I've seen at any other big tech company. This was a reflection of the many 2-4 person meetings that were scheduled every day. In the old building, you'd often see a 10 person room being used by two or three people because there were no small rooms left.

Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.

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Had about 30 of these small meetings rooms on each floor at my last company. I find that most people use them to isolate themselves from all the interupts in the office.

There were "phone booths" for isolating oneself from the office, but it was generally frowned upon to use a 2/3 person room for oneself, unless it was just a quick phone call.

The trick is to book them with a couple of like minded people. Nice quiet private office basically and your calendar looks like it’s already full so people don’t book you into useless meetings.

It’s not the same- why try to replicate an inefficient process anyway. Most meetings are a colossal waste of time.

I agree that many meetings of 4+ people can probably be done more efficiently via email or wiki or whatever, but I've found 2-3 person meetings far more effective than any other means for information transfer and decision making.

Can you come to my meetings and tell my CTO how to make decisions faster?

Propose a "memo culture". That was how we managed larger meetings at Netflix (and I'm pretty sure we stole it from Amazon).

Before the meeting, everyone who has a stake in what's being discussed contributes to a memo outlining their thoughts on it. Then everyone reads it ahead of the meeting.

The meeting is then just to hash out what's in the doc and agree on which already proposed solution will be adopted.

I'd caution against memo culture, actually. I only have a sample size of 2, but in two organizations I've been in that tried to adopt something similar, this is what happened:

In the first org, there was a lot of pressure that any such memos had to be highly researched and data driven (also borrowed from Amazon, I imagine). In reality what this meant is that drafting a memo even for the smallest decisions or ideas became a large laborious effort, which nobody wanted to do and/or didn't have time to do it. The result was that everyone procrastinated on decision making, if they even participated in it in the first place, and I knew a fair share of colleagues who didn't even bother to pitch their ideas because of hating the memo system.

In the second org, it was the opposite problem: in an attempt to make memos "painless", there was much less pressure on making the memos "high quality". The result: every "memo" was a hastily scrawled together draft of random notes that didn't make much sense, and we had to spend most time in meetings going over the "memo" to decipher it and have the author explain it anyway.

How does one propose and win a culture change of one isn't in charge?

If you hold a meeting, suggest using a memo? Or just ask your manager if they'd consider it? There are many ways to affect change within an organization.

No one is in charge forever, lead by example and if you’re doing things right eventually people will follow. You are as much a part of the culture as the current “boss”

In my experience, it also depends a lot on the type of information being transferred. There's a lot of information that is much off being expressed in a chat program, where the person can take the time to formulate the best way to express the idea. If the same thing was being discussed in a meeting, it would take the time of everyone there while the person went back and forth coming up with the right wording.

Department wide meetings? Yeah I agree.

2-4 person meetings are great because everyone has a chance to interact and ask questions.

I haven't seen any downsides to having these smaller meetings via zoom though. Sure if someone has kids running around that would be less than ideal, but that's not so much a WFH problem as it is a pandemic problem which will eventually go away.

Big thing I miss with in person meetings is the ability to start sketching on the board. Sure you have virtual whiteboards and stuff but it’s not the same. The bandwidth of idea transmission is just lower online.

I feel like whiteboard cukture died years ago when the "open office" was invented.

That doesn't match my observations over the last few years where every company I worked at was open office. Usually there are either nooks, rooms or just hallways away from the desks with big whiteboards.

Last year I tried a recent digital whiteboard (basically a fast 55" touch screen), and it felt really good. If those things had real-time syncing - connected to meeting software, of course - and were affordable enough, I could see them really taking off.

Can you not just use it with Zoom's whiteboard feature? A quick search online showed a few touch displays in the range of 1500 - 2500 for mid 30" to mid 50" in size. Although not sure how responsive they are.

The display I used (Samsung Flip) is a standalone product with its own OS. I'm not sure a regular OS connected to the display would work so well.

From what I've noticed, the overall pace of zoom is meetings is slower. When in-person, the one talking can pick up subtle indications that other's get the point or that someone else wants to talk. Over zoom I've seen more tendency for people to go on unnecessarily.

I've also personally noticed an interesting subtle difference: in-person there seems to be a tendency to contribute if someone is present in the meeting and hasn't said anything. With zoom the general tendency seems to be the opposite (the longer someone is on mute, the more likely they are to stay on mute).

Anyone else notice things like this?

Meetings where everyone is essential and required, for both input and task assignment are important.

Meetings where people are there just to listen in, or for FYI purposes are utterly useless.

I'll add to that one very important component: meetings where everyone comes prepared. Even when people are essential and/or required, if they don't want to be there then it lowers the bar for the entire meeting. Inefficiency (and laziness) can be contagious. But when everyone arrives with military precision, pen in hand and phone in pocket, you'd be amazed at difference.

Also, the fewer attendees the better, in my experience. 3-5 is a good size. 1-2 "higher ups" and 1-3 with "boots on the ground". More than that and it risks devolving into chit-chat and speculation instead of bullet-pointed queries and actions.

> Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.

I see this as a positive, no need to read body language for most tech company meetings - while troubleshooting a network issue, doing code review or talking through a new feature. It may be different for HR or a law firm, where its about "judging your opponent" or similar double speak but 99% of tech meetings can easily be replicated over zoom and are better of without any of that anyway.

This is a very engineering way to look at things. But it's definitely wrong. Even in a code review it's important to see their body language. How are they receiving your feedback? Are they uncomfortable? Do you need to change they way you address your concerns so they can be heard better?

Not everyone communicates like you do. If you want to be an effective communicator, you have have to tailor your output to the recipient. Body language is an important part of that.

I agree with this counterview. I manage a small dev team, I've found many inexperienced developers are less willing to admit an issue in understanding a tasks requirements (or how to complete a task) during a zoom call, especially when there is an audience (even +1 additional person).

I try to read body language to gauge if I need to explain further without putting people on the spot. I can usually can get by with video-on Zoom calls, but that's still a bit different... I can't make eye contact with a specific person and judge the reaction since they don't know who I'm looking at

I'm guessing we'll have that feature in the near future. iOS already "fixes" your eyes so that it appears you're looking at the camera despite looking at the screen. From there to detecting who you are looking at, and adjusting the image just for that person, seems quite feasible.

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