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Comment by fotta | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t that what video calls are for? Whenever I want to talk to someone and not leave a paper trail I get on a call.

Video calls aren't the same as spontaneous in-person communication. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to have a 2 minute "face-to-face" conversation (via video), only to receive a reply by chat: "Sure, try me tomorrow morning." I think: "Oh nevermind. I'll find someone else." Six months later, I have almost no communication with the people who regularly tell me the same.

The issue is though that those 2 minute conversations are actually distractions for the people you talk to and in an office setting they don't have the option to avoid them.

Or they are 2-minute conversations in the hallways between meetings or spontaneously over lunch. Those two categories are even more important and even more precluded by remote work.

Talking of personal experience after a year remote due to covid I went back to office for a single day and I had members of product management team coming to me every 15 mins with questions. I realized they were doing this pre covid and also during remote but the difference in the latter case was that they were using chat and that meant I could prioritise and reply to them asynchronously. Never went back to office after that day. A

If it’s not worth it to someone to articulate their thoughts/questions in writing, that is a huge red flag that said person will probably waste much more than a few minutes of my time if I don’t reset their expectations.

Can you be certain those calls aren’t being saved, whether by a party on the call or the underlying service in use?

In many places, including where I live, its illegal to record calls without the consent of all parties on the call. If they are being illegally saved (certainly possible), nothing in them would be admissible in court.

There is whole range of conversations that would never end up in court but if they are recorded can bring a lot of trouble.

Where I live, you only need consent of one person (ie: ypu self).

But then it changes when you are using company tools. Teams can be configured to automatically record all conversations. The consent is baked into your employment agreement.

those calls are easily recorded on the server, your speech transcribed with reasonable accuracy and searchable. Both Zoom and Microsoft Teams offer the live transcribe.

Whatever it is, it isn't for 'off the books' conversations.

Legit why some co-workers and I have signal. Be like- hey can you hit me up on s? (For non work related conversation, or taking about our Plex/emby/jellyfin/home lab meta conversationa)

Or by the other person. There's a new hire on my team who records all his video chats with what I think is a program meant for streaming games, and Meet/Zoom/etc don't recognize it and so can't notify the other person (he mentioned it once and that he uses it instead of taking notes (the only reason I know he does this), and I was just like ???). It's kinda unnerving.

You might give them a friendly hint that this might be a criminal offense, depending on the state they or the state their conversation partner is in. In California for example, this can be charged either as a misdemeanor or a felony, both with hefty fines and up to multi-year prison sentences.

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