Having said that, every situation is unique.
Of course, that's just my experience but I do have a feeling that certain type of people feel that there's more innovation around coffee and chance encounter because it's a nice story to tell oneself but it doesn't really happen.
Where as in the office it was just walking around and seeing someone in an elevator, the hall, "hey lets catch up" or "you have a minute" or "lets get lunch"
these types of interactions just don't happen anymore
At my company, we obviously have to chat over zoom or meet, but it doesn't have to be scheduled. The way we do it is we might be chatting on slack, spitballing ideas, doing stuff in lucidchart or some other charting software, then if it seems good we talk about it over zoom. It doesn't have to be so robotic
Pre-scheduling is ONE way of getting people in sync, but not the only way.
For me and my team, there is a LOT of ad-hoc communication, preferrably in public slack channels, which leads to extremely productive conversations.
Furthermore, these are SEARCHABLE, which is a godsend; if an issue comes up once, it's very likely to come up again.
And, of course, there are times when we just jump on a zoom call quickly to review something that may be quicker than a bunch of slack back-and-forth.
There has never been a time where I felt "damn, it would be easier if I were there in person". If anything, in-person communication has always been hampered by the very need for co-location (including arranging meeting rooms or whiteboard, etc), and it's always been difficult to view someone else's screen unless they connect to a projector or large TV, whereas zoom has made pair-and -group programming almost inevitable.
I understand the social side of people wanting to be co-located, but from a pure productivity perspective, my team has been significantly more productive since WFH.
Although you're right, I did go back to the office the other day and spent a good hour talking to a co-worker about their Caribbean vacation. I hadn't had one of those in years. Not sure how that boosted innovation and productivity tho.
I think positive interactions with co workers is a productivity boost, it makes you not hate work so much.
I really don't enjoy talking about my personal life, even benign stuff, with 99.99% of coworkers, and I've found that there are plenty of ways to have positive interactions without getting into anything remotely personal.
I frequently DM people on Slack with a "How was your weekend?", "Did you see <url> on HN?" or just "We haven't chatted in a while, fancy a catchup?" That works just as well, except it's much easier for people to say they're busy when they're busy than it is face to face.
Frankly I do this even when I'm in the same office, because I can keep working while on a call.
Scheduled? Just have a group chat with the participants, if one person misses the call, no big deal. You should be syncing often enough that it shouldn't matter.
As for the informal meet-ups, if there's a need, you go chat then call. If there isn't a need, then there's no value lost.
And that's a good thing! I can't tell you how much of my day was wasted with pointless "lead in" conversation that ended up being just another business meeting. Or "lets get lunch" and it ends up being just talking about work. These are the "hello" slack messages of yesteryear. A frustrating waste of time. If you want my time schedule it, do not come up to my at my desk and ask me anything related to work. SCHEDULE IT. Otherwise once you let people into your work time they consume all of it and you end up working late every single day.
I have absolutely no interest in the personal lives of my co-workers and I strongly believe that if it can't be handled in an email, or a short meeting, then it's a problem that needs to be split up. I've carried this from junior to staff engineer and it's served me well. I zone out during long meetings and regularly work during other "important" meetings. There are very few meetings that matter to me because 99.9% of them are job justification on the part of PMs who want to hear themselves talk.
Remote has been a total life changer for me, and I've done it for the last 4 years. I am far more productive, I have a far tighter reign on my schedule, and the only thing I'm missing is those "little conversations" I couldn't care less about. I want to do my 8, clock out, and go home to do the things I actually enjoy. Remote has enabled me to do this WELL. I was miserable in the office and I enjoy life far more now. I even get the opportunity to pursue continuing education because I'm now rated based on my output rather than ass-in-seat metrics middle managers love.
It seems somewhat uncharitable to assume that there are different people who believe things about how innovation happens to them, but not that there may be differences between how people innovate.
A lot depends on culture and process. Usually companies which had remote on day 1 do better because they get to fine tune and evolve the process over time.
So yeah, YMMV
I wonder if there is confirmation bias in the opinions of people who are voluntarily spending a large amount of time on forums already. They had a preference for written asynchronous communication already.
Maybe you could fire off a slack and hope for the best, but you can't really guage when a good time for a chat can be.
Async communication is good but its not quite the same to try to meet someone over slack, out of the blue, like you might in the break room.
When we worked in the same office, the walk-in frequency was about the same.
The difference between the two is negligible though and not spending the extra 3h per day for commute and office lunch is night and day.
Notice how much people were talking in the first day of the war in Slack. In my experience being in a couple of slack workspaces (one for work, a couple from co-working hubs, 3 professional groups) in some people shared something, in one they created a channel for this, in some other there was one or two threads.
Now think about what was the state of almost all employees: I think the invasion was the main focus of everybody and also I assess the amount of work done these days on average is less than normal.
Now think about what is happening going into an office in that day: Everybody will talk about this. Every conversation will start with this, every chit chat before any meeting will start with that news.
If you remote communication is reflecting this then congrats your organization managed to create a good remote culture.
I am not saying one is good and one is bad. I am saying there is a big difference between them.
I certainly never have except in an explicit innovation job. The rest of the time I am an implementer. So keep me away from connections with the other parts of the business as that just becomes a sideways way to ask for feature requests I have no say in or other info/support requests.
Even supposing FAANG, fortune 100s or whatever top percentile is likely to desire more innovation, the idea spontaneous talks one supposedly only could have in the office significantly impacting the rates of innovation is pretty far-fetched and mostly just an assumption.
This is sadly not universal. I’d wagger there’s a decent number of people who could only barely work in an office.
I’ve memories of people who had issues keeping themselves and/or desk clean, and it wasn’t some cute story to laugh at, it had a direct impact on their performance and if their managers found any good excuse they’d be out pretty quick.
Then all the IRL office harrasment stuff, the one that looms at a level HR doesn’t give a fuck but you still deal with it every fucking day. Going remote makes it weirdly easier on both sides, I guess some people just couldn’t help it and now they have a private space where they can do what they need to calm down.
I’d say there’s a infinite number of circumstances, up until now we’d just think these people are just not fitted to work at any place. Working remote changes a lot of these pre-requisites.
At the office, all I did was put on headphones with white noise and stare at the screen and hope that no one came and train wrecked my chain of thought, which happened all too often. My main form of communication was Slack anyways... and I'm not embarrassed to say, I wasn't the only one. It was this, plus a Seattle commute, which was an hour+ each way because I'm not going to raise my kid in an apartment downtown (personal preference).
Now, I will totally grant you, there were plenty that could juggle chatting and typing and hopping up to meetings and retaining what happened after Scrum and the flying Nerf darts and the smell of coffee and farts and B.O. and overpowering deodorant and cologne and perfume and hairsprays and hair product and people putting fish in the microwave, etc. etc. Bless the people who can super ultra multitask and keep a train of thought like that. I am so envious... I'm not that guy =[