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Comment by lolsal | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions? There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues? There is no value in body-language when communicating? I'm all for fully WFH policies, but I think it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience. I've been working remote for over a decade and will never work from an office again, but there are some things you just cannot replicate online or with video calls.

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Before my time, the company did some kind of retreat of 2 days, with sleeping in,for all 40 of the IT staff. The idea was to get them to know each other,as they where dispatched to 20+ divisions and only spoke by phone. There was no work to be done there, no cringy corporate stuff, just a mountain of food and drinks. It must have been expensive.

We're now 20 years later, and they're still referring to it. But when any noninvited ask anything, they all get very very very vague. Whatever happened on the retreat, stays on the retreat. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anything illegal or untoward happened.

It worked. They became a tight social network. Ask anyone anything, and the right person and info magically appears. Even 20 years later, in a very political corporation, the trust built that weekend still persists.

> a very political corporation

Not saying the retreat was a wholesale bad idea, but it sounds to me like part of the reason it's political could be because there's an in-group and out-group derived from the retreat.

Can't add much detail her, except this group of 50 people is tiny compared to the whole IT team, and political was a problem long before the retreat.

I'm a remote work advocate.

> Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

Of course it's not an exact equivalent, but it doesn't need to be. Anecdotally speaking, the number of whiteboard meetings I had that I wanted to have were about 1 per year. Remote workers use tools like Notion, Miro, Jetbrains Code With me which have many/more of the advantages of a whiteboard.

> There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues?

This one is company specific, but I don't need to be in the office to go to lunch with my colleagues. In my last office job, I had lunch with 2-3 colleagues maybe twice a week. In my current all remote job, I meet my colleagues once every other week for lunch, and I _still_ meet my previous job colleagues for lunch once a week or so.

> There is no value in body-language when communicating?

Honestly in a business setting with "trusted" coworkers, less so. I tend to take what my colleagues say at face value. With remote work, webcams do a reasonable job of picking up the "I'mn really uncomfortable with something you've just said" and "holy crap they've hit it out of the park". Again, in previous office job, a non-trivial amount of communication _in_ meetings happened in private slack groups that were messaging during the meeting - that still happens today. The big advantage now is that people who would have been steamrolled in meetings have a chance to get their thoughts heard, as most remote teams tend to practice async communciation practices (which are not required but are often combined with remote work)

> Honestly in a business setting with "trusted" coworkers, less so. I tend to take what my colleagues say at face value.

That's... not all that body language conveys?

Body language helps with basic things like "Oh, Amy is trying to break in and is struggling to make her point", or "Hmm, Doug looks like he's concerned about something, I should ask him his opinion".

Digital A/V communication tools also bring with them a whole host of other sources of friction, including poor audio and video, latency issues, and so forth. They are, at best a weak by tolerable substitute for face-to-face conversations, and quite frankly, IMO anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is not being honest.

You might feel that the tradeoffs are justifiable, but let's not pretend there aren't tradeoffs.

> The big advantage now is that people who would have been steamrolled in meetings have a chance to get their thoughts heard

And conversely, people who type slower or struggle with written communication for various reasons, are significantly disadvantaged.

And that's ignoring the fact that written communication lacks critical nuance (which ends up being poorly filled in with things like emojis) that can lead to confusion and misunderstandings.

It sounds like your meetings need more structure.

I think this varies significantly from person to person. I learned social skills the hard way and pay very close attention to facial expressions and tone of voice. Both of those carry across clearly for me... if the video is good. This does not degrade gracefully over poor internet connections.

But I find the real loss is hallway conversations and seeing the body language of the people I'm are not talking to.

Going fully-remote requires deliberate changes to the company culture to make implicit things like meeting in the hallway happen remotely. This is not easy and requires more upkeep by everyone than just showing up at the office.

> Body language helps with basic things like "Oh, Amy is trying to break in and is struggling to make her point", or "Hmm, Doug looks like he's concerned about something, I should ask him his opinion".

I'm autistic. My body language conveys things that are interpreted incorrectly by nearly everyone, particularly in management. This leads to me having to explain repeatedly that no, that's not what I'm experiencing at all, please stop.

When people don't get those cues from me, they understand me better, not worse.

To make it more general, non-autistic people also sometimes have trouble with body language. The non-controversial point is most humans fall somewhere on the spectrum where they're able to read others' body language - with a minority being outliers.

> You might feel that the tradeoffs are justifiable, but let's not pretend there aren't tradeoffs.

I dont know where you got the idea that I'm pretending there's not trade offs, that's exactly my point.

> Digital A/V communication tools also bring with them a whole host of other sources of friction, including poor audio and video, latency issues, and so forth.

And those still existed in the office. if I had a nickel for every time someone senior dialled into a call from their car with a kid in the back of it,I could buy a latte. Meanwhile, zoom and meet both have tools to help alleviate those concerns (raising hands, and queues of such).

> They are, at best a weak by tolerable substitute for face-to-face conversations, and quite frankly, IMO anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is not being honest.

Again, it's tradeoffs. The tradeoffs are appropriate for work conversations, but maybe not for having a deep relationship question with my partner.

> And conversely, people who type slower or struggle with written communication for various reasons, are significantly disadvantaged.

I mean, yes? Written communication is pretty much a hard requirement for most office jobs, and anyone who struggles with it will struggle with email and mant other forms of communication.

> written communication lacks critical nuance

Hard disagree here. Good written communication skills can be as nuanced as verbal communication. Besides, nuance is by definition ambiguity. Communicating in a workplace by refusing to say things is a crutch, and is a recipe for disaster.

The value for being in the office for me was in the spontaneous connections with folks that weren't in my immediate work unit. Those connections have lead to every job I have had. The best kinds of jobs are the ones that come to you and you don't have to interview for; and you just aren't going to get anywhere near the numbers of those opportunities without "pressing the flesh".

If that's not a concern for you then have at it. But if you are at the start or mid way through your career, are motivated and still hungry for advancement I'd be VERY careful of spending too much time full time remote.

I understand, but I must say that it doesn't sound very efficient to be working in an office for 8 hours every day in order to have useful spontaneous connections every once in a while. Meetups and other events also provide such interactions without having to be there all the time while coding, writing, etc.

Yeah the discussion is so dishonest on both ends at this point. The complaint that returning to the office will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce is maybe the most absurd attempt yet to destroy RTO plans.

At the end of the day employers want to see what their employees are doing and employees want to avoid insane commutes / high COL rents / not feel like they are being spied on all the time, in part cause they maybe do 4 hours of work a day anyway. That's what's driving this. The rest is noise.

> The complaint that returning to the office will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce is maybe the most absurd attempt yet to destroy RTO plans.

It isn't. If you are disabled, black, female, or older, an open-plan office is not a comfortable place. It's a halfway house for frat boys, but people for whom being unfairly evaluated and unjustly terminated is the kind of thing that happens at least once in a career do not, in general, do well in it.

Your comment is ridiculous. I'm an able-bodied white male but I'm also not neuro-normative, nor do I enjoy open office plans. What people do like open office plans? Hasn't this issue been settled yet?

Then you're included as disabled. You have a neurological makeup that increases the difficulty of securing and succeeding in employment. You have almost certaimly been given fewer opportunities than you would if you were neurotypical and good at politics.

Private-sector politicians and frat boys love open-plan offices; most of us are neutral at best, and with age most people come to loathe them.

> Private-sector politicians and frat boys love open-plan offices

Not sure what a "Private-sector politician" is, nor what your intense hatred of open-plan offices has to do with collocated workplaces in general, but I can assure you that the reasons people split across the remote vs. office spectrum is far more diverse than your generic bucketing of "white male jerks == office love; everyone else hates them".

It's kind of ironic that someone has such polarized, uncompromising views on the topic, supported by the reasoning that "they don't reflect and support a diverse and non-binary workforce"

I think private sector politician is intended to mean someone working for a private company but who embodies the worst of politicians: big on personal visibility, short on doing the work.

I'm white, male, straight, neurotypical -- and I vastly prefer remote work and do not plan to go back into the office. So, how does that fit into your narrative?

There are plenty of more substantive reasons to not want to go back beyond "it's not fair".

Open office is cheaper than cubicles and allows more employees in one space. That's why it caught on with decision makers.

Some people like it because they thrive on attention and being disruptive, and open offices are optimized for that behavior.

> allows more employees in one space

and that's perhaps only technically true... as soon as you start adding quiet spaces, collaboration spaces, conference rooms, etc. necessary for open office layouts to actually work, the plain 3-4 person office plans (which nobody had for years, i was lucky to have them replaced with open office only during the pandemic) are just plain more efficient. open offices, to the surprise of no one actually working in them, force people to the worst of both worlds: have to commute to work to IM with colleagues anyway to not disrupt the whole office. it's madness.

I think it's worth noting that those things are adaptations that occurred after open concept took over. It's sort of a situation where the industry went a direction and never thought to reconsider, backpedal, and take another path entirely. Instead, we kept modifying our response to our poor decision to try and improve it.

But in the era of WFH the cubicles and private offices make even less sense: if I spend most of my day isolated in a cubicle, then why can't I spend that time in my office at home?

Surely they're better for disabled people because there are fewer doors to deal with?

And why on earth would open plan be specifically bad for black, female or older people? Do you think open plan offices are all like The Wolf of Wall Street?

>At the end of the day employers want to see what their employees are doing and employees want to avoid insane commutes / high COL rents / not feel like they are being spied on all the time, in part cause they maybe do 4 hours of work a day anyway. That's what's driving this. The rest is noise.

This is probably the most honest take I've read. Also, it's been proven WFH on a grand scale is effective over the past 2 years, so many arguments against the efficacy of WFH crumbled over Covid. Bottom line is employers who don't want to allow WFH will have a smaller and more expensive pool than they are accustomed to. There are enough WFH opportunities that going to the office is no longer a given. The current debate is employees who want to WFH that are currently employed by companies who don't want employees to WFH. It will iron itself out in a year or two one way or the other.

FWIW, I've gone to the office 100% of the time maybe 1/2 of my 20+ year career, mostly early on. I've managed to negotiate work from home days, both in the 90s, 00s, and 10s. I WFH full time today. I meet the guys for lunch every week. It's nice and it gets me out of the house. We're a small team though.

I think if commuting time was fully paid work hours, then companies would quickly agree that minor optimizations like this aren't worth it.

> I think if commuting time was fully paid work hours, then companies would quickly agree that minor optimizations like this aren't worth it.

I would argue that you have priced in your commute to your market value when you take a job that requires you to commute, especially since knowledge workers tend to be salary, not hourly.

Well then you could consider remote jobs to be worth £2k+ more salary, net.

> Well then you could consider remote jobs to be worth £2k+ more salary, net.

I consider them to be worth a lot more than that!

You are vastly underestimating the value of 3h (Bay Area average) of out of each week if one commutes 5 days a week. 3h*50wk = 150h - assuming $100 (lowball) bill rate that's $15k. A more median bill rate would likely be about $250 meaning it's probably worth $50k.

Maybe you mean monthly?

If you think active, in-person collaboration is a "minor optimization" than it doesn't feel like you're starting from a neutral, open position on this issue.

It seems like someone could start at a neutral, open position and reasonably arrive at that conclusion. Some users commented upthread that IRL whiteboarding is good but infrequent. This matches my experience. I think real productive IRL knowledge transfer or collaboration has been a once-a-month thing for most of my career, and the downsides of doing it in some sort of virtual environment seem smaller than the downsides of spending 1-2 hours per day for everyone.

As an aside, I sort of wonder why the best WoW guilds are fully remote, if in-person collaboration is such an advantage. I spent some time as an IC in one of the best guilds in the world, and being remote didn't seem like such a big deal. Later I spent some time in a leadership position in a much less serious guild (basically as bad as a guild could be and still clear the hardest content in the game) and if you told me I could have everyone in my team spend many hours per week in cars so that we could all hang out together in real life or spend that time learning about how the best players of their classes deal with upcoming encounters, it seems like it would be an easy choice. One might reasonably respond "Well, software is not like world of warcraft! Software is a lot more collaborative!" but in general the level of planning and ad-hoc coordination that goes into boss kills is unrivaled in software outside of companies like Pivotal Labs that spend an entire day on planning each week, communicate liberally throughout the day, and don't seem to end up with substantially more output than other companies as a result. I sort of wonder if this attitude is a cultural accident where much of the discipline of software engineering is made up of people who think that it's bad for people to take time to develop deep expertise in a subject area or people who have allocated so many people to a project that there isn't enough independent-ish work to go around.

As usual, it depends. Imagine a team that sat in one room, communication was terrible. People never had time for questions. Queue the pandemic and everyone working from home and suddenly communication improves tremendously, people who you'd have to pester endlessly for a review or ask about some code they wrote suddenly answer the same day. Your team lead is not on the phone in the room where you're trying to work.

Commuting time may not be officially factored into working hours but companies already pay for it in domains like tech where they must compete against each other for employees.

Given the number of companies that offer fully remote or hybrid work, a comparable company that wants their employees in the office five days a week has to provide higher compensation and/or lower standards to meet their staffing needs.

The important question for companies is not whether they want to be in-person/hybrid/remote in abstract, the question is how much they're willing to pay.

> Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

Of course not. They're an ersatz replacement for the in-person thing. They do the job about 90% as well. Is that a problem? In the corporate world, most things are ersatz, if you're not an executive. Mediocre supplies, mediocre management, mediocre training, mediocre pay... why should we force people to shlep just to pretend their jobs aren't mediocre? A standard-issue corporate job can be done from anywhere.

> There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues?

Again, of course not; but if a company is going to expect or require people to do it, it should foot the bill for the inconveniences caused.

> Again, of course not; but if a company is going to expect or require people to do it, it should foot the bill for the inconveniences caused.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - these lunches have nothing to do with work. I eat lunch sometimes, my colleagues eat lunch sometimes. Sometimes we go out to eat together and socialize. Work doesn't enter into the equation. We lose that benefit when going fully remote.

There is value to me in having lunch with my current colleagues. I also get value out of having lunch with my ex-colleagues who are now just my friends in the same city. We still have lunches together. I am thankful that I used to work in the same city as my colleagues so that this is still possible!

My friends are not my coworkers and my coworkers are not my friends, nor do very many of my coworkers become my friends. It's a job, not a lifestyle. I'll do team and business lunches and hang outs, and they can be fun, but they are nothing but a distraction from what I'm trying to do.

My manager worked entirely remote for our company since it's inception, literally in a separate time zone. I never met him, I don't even know what his face looks like. I still had better interaction, cooperation, and discussion with him than most of my other coworkers, excepting only someone who was already my friend before this job. When we wanted to discuss something, we brought it up in our teams chat, and they could go one for significant time or topics, sharing opinions, plans, work related thoughts and designs, and often personal improvement things including programming ethics and work adjacent learning presentations.

Don't force me to comply to your interaction style just because you don't understand mine.

What a hostile reply to someone who merely stated to be thankful to work in the same city as their colleagues. If anything to me it feels like you are normalizing your personal experience and implicitly trying to force others to comply to your interaction style.

I'm glad I'm not having to work in an office with this person! ;)

Unapologetically, yes, and I'd take it a step further. Often the online version is more fun and more interactive than a bunch of people uncomfortably thrust into the same room. There are things people suddenly become comfortable saying and doing that they wouldn't normally say or do in person. If you've grown up with gamer friends you know exactly what I'm talking about -- seeing someone's silly avatar light up when they talk versus being in the room with them is sometimes just more fun and more open and more preferable. It gives them the ability to express themselves exactly how they want to express themselves, not limited by their appearance which they only have so much control over. I talked with my nephew about this, since I noticed he and his friends never really have sleepovers and such like our generation did, and he cited this very reason. His friends are just more fun to be around in a Discord call than in person. Furthermore, he is able to socialize a LOT more than my peers were able to at that age--they'll do 4-5 hour discord calls every night.

For very extroverted people, the in-person experience might be superior, but I'd be willing to bet they just haven't put effort into connecting in online spaces. Until you've spent thousands of hours doing so, it's hard to knock it legitimately. On the flip side I've seen introverts really open up in these online scenarios in ways they never normally would, and I'm not about to design my entire life around something my team doesn't even want.

This is me. I find it much easier to converse online. I also am content staying in my house for years on end (as COVID has shown) and getting my social interaction from text on a computer screen.

The internet has been my main source of social contact since I was 12 (at which point I just stopped going outside and spent all my time building websites), so I guess I've adapted to this way of living.

> so I guess I've adapted to this way of living.

Humans are almost infinitely adaptable, but if the vast majority of the world doesn't adopt a lifestyle similar to yours I fear you're really going to miss out a big part of what "living" includes. One large component: diversity, both in content and medium.

There's also the real and serious worry about "not going outside". this is terrible for your health and also has a huge corelation with poor diet and lack of exercise. You're so much more than your eyes, hands and brain.

Conversely, If the vast majority of people keep commuting and building skyscrapers just to present some charts and graphs to each other in person because grandpa CEO doesn't know how to use Zoom and HR wants to monitor you at all times, we're going to be wiped out by climate change anyway, so pick your poison I suppose. I, for one, choose survival.

I mean, I was being a little hyperbolic when I said I stopped going outside completely. I actually still played sports throughout High School, but just felt that the majority of my social interaction was through the computer.

During COVID is the first time I really stopped seeing other people (other than my wife and kids) and I actually enjoyed it. I have my own yard and house, so I do go outside on the occasion still, and make sure to get the mail each day. Some days I sit on my porch in the morning, if it feels nice. I do body weight exercises and yoga and I am having a full gym built in my basement.

That said, I still don't see many other people and I don't feel like my social needs are lacking.

I enjoy my life, it is good.

> I talked with my nephew about this, since I noticed he and his friends never really have sleepovers and such like our generation did, and he cited this very reason. His friends are more fun to be around in a Discord call than in person.

To each their own, I suppose, but I find this unhealthy. I would encourage my child to be interactive in person, not to hide behind the computer. I say this as a WFH IT employee who games - the desire to be away from people in person, the desire not to interact with others, the disdain for in-person contact, are all symptoms of a problem in my view.

I don't mean it to say I think less of people who are like this, or that they are worthy of derision. I simply think it is bad for the individual and the community.

That said, I would say my nephew is significantly more social than most people in my generation were, because he is able to get in 5 hour calls with his friends every night, whereas that might happen only once every few weeks in my case, at best. He's learning and socializing way more than even my most social peers were able to growing up.

But that’s unfortunately a rather useless form of socialization, as most of his life interactions will be face to face. Job, romantic life, etc.

there's nothing wrong with online from my perspective, but there is when it's the only form of interaction. If you only spend time online with your close peer group you're never exposed to content far outside of the norm, and you don't get a diversity of communication mediums. You are literally handicapping your ability to communicate.

My experience has taught me this is just untrue. My various jobs have been 100% remote for the last 6 years, so being comfortable with video and voice calls is essential to that.

Going back to when I was a high schooler, I was closeted and in boarding school, which admittedly had a significant built-in social life (that was of little interest to me), but I was also able to have a long distance close friendship for years thanks to Google Talk. I dare say some of my most important and formative social moments in my high school years were over Google Talk with my small group of friends. Sure we had antics in the dorm at my boarding school etc., but these were minor and fleeting interactions versus the deep and meaningful relationships I had over Google Talk, and anyone I actually cared about at boarding school also interacted with me that way, a good bit.

One of the things that's different about modern videogames is that it's better to be at home with your own Xbox or PlayStation or PC if you want to play with your friends.

We have 4 Wii controllers because when the kids were younger they could play with friends and the games didn't take a lot of explaining.

Going further back, you needed an opponent, probably because the systems were doing all they could to keep track of the action and couldn't generate an opponent, too.

A couple of times my son has had a friend bring an Xbox and monitor over to play in the same room at the same time. Given that most Xbox's are connected to big (and fragile) TVs, a "LAN party" would be quite a feat.

on one hand, i think the death of couch coop & splitscreen has had a deeply underappreciated impact on how kids choose to recreate & interact, otoh i remember all the elbows thrown over screen cheating or the crummy madcatz controller and can't help but think that kids today are probably having a far more harmonious bonding experience.

I remember a distinct evening where I got in trouble because I was at a friend's place and playing Super Mario Kart on the SNES for too long instead of coming home. Had we had an opportunity to play online it wouldn't have been a problem.

I don't really know, I am old enough to have experienced this, and LAN parties in the late 90s were indeed fun, but they took a lot of planning, expenses, and parents driving you there. I've been online since I was 15 and when we finally didn't have to pay by the minute everything was a lot better. No more coordinating for a full weekend, etc. That said, I have zero negative memories of splitscreen, except that the person who owned the game/console was always a lot better due to more practice...

Coddling social anxiety is not a good argument for WFH. There's a difference between introversion (needing time away from people to recharge) and social anxiety (not speaking up or interacting differently in person vs online). Unless you're banking on some cyberpunk future where people only ever interact online, social anxiety is a maladaptive disorder to be confronted, not a personality quirk.

And FYI there are plenty of extroverted engineers. Some of us actually enjoy team sports as well as technical problems.

"Coddling?"

Social anxiety is a genuine mental illness, and a protected disability. This kind of arrogant, ableist crap is exactly why we need to destroy the cultural norm that everybody being in the office all the time is the only way to do work.

It sounds like you use "protected" here with the intention of forming part of an argument -- presumably that social anxiety should be protected? Isn't that circular?

In the United States, 'protected" in this context means 'legally protected', in this case by the ADA. Employers are required to give reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities.

I'm using "protected" in the sense that it is a genuine disability, recognized by modern medicine and law, and as such anyone who suffers from it is entitled to the full protection of the ADA in the US.

It also means that anyone disparaging it like that in the workplace is guilty of discrimination against a disabled person, just as if they had called someone with an amputated leg a "worthless cripple", or mocked a hearing-impaired person for not being able to hear them when they whisper in a meeting.

Social anxiety is as much of a mental illness as the fear leaving a bad impression on a date, fear of spiders or fear of doing poorly at an interview and enjoys the same kinds of legal protections. Which is none.

...You do know that social anxiety disorder is a genuine and recognized mental illness, right?

Or are you just one of those people who thinks that all mental illness is just a lack of sufficient gumption?

SAD is not social anxiety, please pay attention to what you’re replying to.

Social anxiety and social anxiety disorder are different like rectangles and squares are different.

I'm inclined to ask what your qualifications for such an opinion are.

> Unless you're banking on some cyberpunk future where people only ever interact online

...you're in one!

You could flip the script right back at the people afraid of interacting with people online.

Have you ever done a white boarding session where more than one person was writing on the board at a time?

The online whiteboard works great when one person is adding to it and it's easier to read (you don't have to deal with people's terrible handwriting) and you can save it.

In most cases I've found that only one person is usually writing on the whiteboard, everyone else is just pointing at it and making suggestions. So the one person with an iPad that is sharing it's screen is usually more than sufficient for online white boarding.

The rest of it you're right, seeing body language is helpful, getting a chance to hang out socially is helpful. But not helpful enough to outweigh working from home given that I already have a social circle.

If work were my social circle, like it was when I was younger, it would be a whole different story.

> Have you ever done a white boarding session where more than one person was writing on the board at a time?

Very often back when I worked in an office.

> The online whiteboard works great when one person is adding to it and it's easier to read (you don't have to deal with people's terrible handwriting) and you can save it.

We took pictures of our whiteboards when we needed to save state, it worked great!

> In most cases I've found that only one person is usually writing on the whiteboard, everyone else is just pointing at it and making suggestions. So the one person with an iPad that is sharing it's screen is usually more than sufficient for online white boarding.

I'm glad you are able to make it work for you!

> But not helpful enough to outweigh working from home

I'm with you on this! I'll never go back to an office full time.

Insisting on a new solution being "exactly the same" to adopt it pretty much ensures you will never leave the status quo.

All changes in complex systems have tradeoffs. In-person whiteboard sessions can be exhilarating. They also tend to produce imprecise (or no) artifacts that rely heavily on the context of the meeting for interpretation.

I noticed that when our team went remote during COVID and ideation was done by async contributions to design docs, the completeness and reliability of our designs went way up. But again, it's never all positive. If there was a design that was underspecified or not fully understood by the team member leading it, the siloing could lead to analysis paralysis.

> Insisting on a new solution being "exactly the same" to adopt it pretty much ensures you will never leave the status quo.

I'm not sure where you got that I said that, if you read what I wrote you'll see that I've been fully remote for over a decade. I don't in any way insist that fully remote work needs to be exactly the same as in-office work.

Sorry if I misinferred. It seemed implied in the first and forth sentence of your comment.

I think that a lot of those things can be replaced with new techniques as time goes on. Just because this is how we did things yesterday doesn't mean there aren't better ways to do this it just requires some thinking and investment, IMO.

The tooling that has been developed during the pandemic has taken this space forward by leaps and bounds and I expect this to continue.

Instead of focusing on the how, I would focus on the outcomes you are looking for and lets investigate paths forward for those outcomes.

My two cents: There is still body language over video calls, Miro and other whiteboarding solutions work pretty well, not every day needs intense whiteboarding sessions so have onsites when those are required, and good riddance to the lunches with colleagues. If we wanna have lunch let's get on a call and/or have some one-on-one time setup instead of thinking that lunch is somehow a team building exercise.

Not to mention the IMMENSE benefits you get from remote work. Having those tradeoffs and changing the way we work: I am all in.

> I think that a lot of those things can be replaced with new techniques as time goes on. Just because this is how we did things yesterday doesn't mean there aren't better ways to do this ...

This is a totally fair point, but multi-cursor online whiteboards are not the same as standing in front of a whiteboard and brainstorming with a colleague. "Zoom happy hour" or whatever cannot replace spontaneous lunches, after-work drinks, pre-work coffees, etc.

> ... it just requires some thinking and investment, IMO.

I agree and understand, but let's not pretend we're not asking everyone to essentially "beta test" WFH and endure the friction of finding these new techniques. There are tradeoffs here and it's not a seamless transition. Remote work is a skill that needs honing, whereas office work is 'the standard'.

> Not to mention the IMMENSE benefits you get from remote work. Having those tradeoffs and changing the way we work: I am all in.

Working remotely has immense benefits, I agree. I agree so whole-heartedly that I will never work in an office again. That being said, despite all its benefits, there are tradeoffs that don't have equivalents in the WFH world. Anyone that dismisses working from an office entirely is either ignorant or being dishonest, in my opinion.

> "Zoom happy hour" or whatever cannot replace spontaneous lunches, after-work drinks, pre-work coffees, etc.

You keep listing the benefits as if they are problems.

I don't think I understand your comment here - zoom happy hours are not a benefit to me, the other things that they try to replace have more benefit to me.

I can't reply to the reply because of comment depth but not being obligated or dragged to work after work hours, when you are not paid to work, to still continue to work, is a benefit to ones work life balance.

After work drinks and pre-work drinks are just your work getting to consume more of your life than it pays you to do so, whether hourly work time not counted or salaried hours getting diluted.

> After work drinks and pre-work drinks are just your work getting to consume more of your life than it pays you to do so, whether hourly work time not counted or salaried hours getting diluted.

I think we're misunderstanding something here. These benefits have nothing to do about progressing the work's agenda. It's about connecting with my colleagues in a way outside of work. Socializing, increasing our networks and bonding. Sometimes work conversations happen, because it's something we have in common, but I'm certainly not 'working' at these outings.

> Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

No. Online whiteboards have benefits that in-person whiteboard sessions do not, obviously.

> There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues?

No, obviously there is value in having lunches together with your colleagues, just as there are downsides.

> There is no value in body language when communicating?

There is value in body language, just as there is probably more value in well-written communication.

> I think it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience

Many people who oppose returning to the office would agree with you. It's a much-improved work experience.

> but there are some things you just cannot replicate online or with video calls.

Exactly, and I agree with you. It is much safer.

A predominantly WFH experience is, in pretty much all your examples, a better experience than working every day from the office. Suggesting it's merely as good as working form the office does it a great disservice.

> No. Online whiteboards have benefits that in-person whiteboard sessions do not, obviously.

Is it obvious though? They're garbage for most of the teams I've worked with. They're tolerable to the rest.

> No, obviously there is value in having lunches together with your colleagues, just as there are downsides.

Ok, but I'm asserting some valuable things being lost by going fully remote only, it doesn't do either side of the argument any good to be so ambiguous and non-committal to a point.

> There is value in body language, just as there is probably more value in well-written communication.

Fair point! I don't know that I have ever, anywhere, read any informal text or technical document that could communicate the nuances of body language effectively and entirely though. I'm jealous that you work with such perfect communicators!

> Many people who oppose returning to the office would agree with you. It's a much-improved work experience.

I totally agree, it is much improved, even if we lost a lot of valuable things in the transition.

> A predominantly WFH experience is, in pretty much all your examples, a better experience than working every day from the office. Suggesting it's merely as good as working form the office does it a great disservice.

I did not do any such thing. I'm saying fully remote work is great, but we're losing a lot, so let's not pretend that we aren't. There are facets to in-person work that are completely lost and not translatable to fully remote work.

> Fair point! I don't know that I have ever, anywhere, read any informal text or technical document that could communicate the nuances of body language effectively and entirely though

If you aren't neurotypical, then read ribbonfarm. Conflict, double meanings, soft and hard power, etc. will be hard to understand without it. Most body language isn't that serious, but conflict is normal and you'll have a much easier time understanding why someone else starts conflict with you. It's long; first two parts are probably enough but it is generally fairly compelling.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

> whiteboards

Digital whiteboards are trivial to share, recover, modify and maintain. They're light-years beyond the limited physical variety. My team leans heavily on Miro, for instance.

> Lunch

Lunch time is a break. Not everyone wants to spend their break with their coworkers; but even for those that do, nothing is preventing you from having a conference call or video call over lunch.

> Body language

Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

> Digital whiteboards are trivial to share, recover, modify and maintain. They're light-years beyond the limited physical variety. My team land heavily on Miro, for instance.

I use Mira too, it's great! But it's not the same as brainstorming on a whiteboard with your colleagues in the same room.

> Lunch time is a break. Not everyone wants to spend their break with their coworkers; but even for those that do, nothing is preventing you from having a conference call or video call over lunch.

That's cool and I fully support your desire to do whatever you want on your break. For a lot of my breaks when I worked in the office I ended up sharing them with colleagues and made several (hopefully) life-long friends out of the habit!

> Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

I understand! However I can understand body language and I find a lot of value in it. It's easier to empathize and relate to my colleagues when I can understand them better through body language when we're talking about life. If we worked in the same office you'd be free to have lunch (or whatever you want to do while I go have lunch) by yourself without judgement from me!

> But it's not the same as brainstorming on a whiteboard with your colleagues in the same room.

It's better! We pair it with a slack call and collaboratively edit it.

> For a lot of my breaks when I worked in the office I ended up sharing them with colleagues and made several (hopefully) life-long friends out of the habit!

And that's an outcome that happens with WFH, too. You don't need to go to lunch together to make friends.

> It's easier to empathize and relate to my colleagues when I can understand them better through body language when we're talking about life.

That's good for you; but again, WFH doesn't prohibit you from seeing people. If you need body language then have a video call.

>Not everyone understands or can engage in body language.

Well you sure as hell aren't going to get better at it by throwing up your hands and declaring it just isn't for you. I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt. I'm very extroverted at work - because it's necessary. Yup, I pay a price - it's exhausting and I need time to recharge. But the benefits of adapting to normal work environments instead of demanding the world adapt to me are immeasurable.

There are tons of things I can do now that I couldn't do before. Many of them are unpleasant. But they are necessary and without many of them I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Good luck with waiting for the world to adapt to you. Let's get back together in 30 years and see how that attitude works for you. I'm sure the universe will have been incredibly unfair to you :p

This whole victim = anything hard/I just don't want to do is getting old. And it devalues people with legitimate issues.

... How are those who are physically incapable of engaging in normal body language, due to any number of permanent physical conditions, going to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do it? They're not.

This isn't the point the OP was trying to make and you know that. Lesson one: don't assume the worst about people and don't make hyperbolic arguments in order to be "right". You might have more in-person success that way.

The point they were making was ignoring one of the groups of people that I mentioned, because in order to make their point they _had_ to ignore that class of individual.

> > I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt.

> > There are tons of things I can do now that I couldn't do before. Many of them are unpleasant. But they are necessary and without many of them I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Good luck with waiting for the world to adapt to you.

Some people _simply cannot adapt_. It is not a possibility.

You can. All the answers are in your childhood, but you may discover things that you won't be able to forget

... No. Many people suffer from partial or full paralysis of facial muscles, neurological conditions that limit expression, and numerous other conditions that will forever and permanently limit their ability to engage in expressive body language.

but these are very rare things. The person you originally responded to did not mean anything against anyone who has these things. I've met many people in my life that were convinced they were unable to do things that they were quite capable of. Stephen Hawking was still quite expressive despite his limitations, although they did come later in life

They ignored that class of individual in their response; individuals who exist and who I've personally worked with and do continue to work with.

> Stephen Hawking was still quite expressive despite his limitations, although they did come later in life

He's a fantastic example of why you don't need to rely on body language to communicate emotion and feeling.

Sure, but have to understand that a limitation of language is that it doesn't convey perfect information. When someone says "anyone can do it", they mean that most people with full-blown "stuck in the house for years" social anxiety, can actually do it, and they meant nothing negative against those who are truly physically disabled. People summarize their thoughts when they speak and try to convey a picture that most people can understand; they are not trying to hurt anyone

When someone says "anyone can do it" I understand that to mean what they said, which is that they believe anyone can do it.

Someone has clarified it twice yet you're still fighting the word "anyone" instead of trying to view it through a reasonable lens. If his point only makes sense because he excluded a very rare group of people, then your point only makes sense because you include a very rare group of people. Have some grace, be excellent to each other.

Their point only makes sense because they excluded a class of individuals that I mentioned in my original response.

I have some grace; I'm willing to include those in my consideration that they have deemed unworthy of consideration.

No they're not. But that is not a reason to make everyone incapable of using body language, by removing offices.

Video calls convey body language. You don't need an office for that.

"Why haven't you just tried not being autistic?"

I agree. I wrote a rant and deleted it, because I don't want to post inflammatory content here.

But I'll say that I had social anxiety, and that sometimes it can be overcome (certainly not always). But it will never be overcome without stress, often painful stress; and the cruel harsh world is actually a very good training ground to force you to improve. I'm glad my shortcomings weren't coddled; I'm glad they were viewed as something I'd have to either fix or cope with.

There are degrees of anxiety and other mental/emotional problems. Many are not going to be fixed, some require medication, some are just too severe. But it's a gradient, and some can get better with exposure, and removing that exposure can be detrimental (even though that exposure is unpleasant).

> Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

I find that people actually give away more with their body language over whatever conferencing software you may use. When you have all the portraits up on your screen, the little micro things are much easier to spot. I hope I didn't give you even more anxiety! We are just trying to see how people feel in order to manage the situation :)

I use a virtual avatar, so that doesn't bother me at all.

One of my coworkers is a slug with a nice hat; another is an alien.

I think the problem is more that even people who are not artistically inclined can manage to draw a diagram of a few servers and connections. Despite having tried it for 20 years everything I draw with a mouse looks like something done by a 3y old with crayons.

So no, without a tablet to draw on I find online whiteboards 100% useless so far.

This is a rift between digital only natives and digital hybrids. The hybrids know the tradeoffs of both. Digital only don't have the lived experience to know what they're missing.

I hadn't thought of this distinction before; thank you for enunciating this point!

I think for completeness, you should have three categories, and include the offline-onlys. They, similarly, don't understand all that they're missing.

(Btw, this took me on a tangent trying to figure out the proper way to pluralize 'only'.)

can anyone honestly say trying to code in a open office is equivalent to being able to actually focus and write code without distraction in your own office?

There's tradeoffs to everything, the market is going to decide whether remote work is viable or not. Maybe the Apple tier companies can force office work, but startups that are remote are going to be able to snag some great talent who refuse to waste hours of their lives commuting

in my experience the people pushing for return to office are 95% managers who are feeling exposed that they don't really do much and potentially aren't needed. Also people who relied on office politics to survive rather than actually being good at their job

Your lunch break should be a break, not time you're forced to spend with your colleagues.

I agree! You're welcome to do whatever you want. But I am a friendly person and find it easy to make friends with my co-workers and we don't even talk about 'work' most of the time. I still have lunches with my colleagues from years ago that live in the same city, even though we don't work together.

Not every perk is about oppressing your freedom or exploiting your time and labor.

You're still welcome to ping people on Slack during lunch and see how they like that. More often than not though, I think you'll find that they're going to respond to you once they're back on the clock. It's fine if you're a friendly person, but I think you underestimate how much social pressure is involved in talking to people during their lunch break. The only reason I really engage in conversation while eating lunch is because the alternative of "I'd rather just enjoy my food and save the work talk for work time" is a faux pas.

I'm pretty pro wfh, but for a lot of people (myself included), the value of a slack conversation is less than a in-person conversation, so as a recipient I'm less likely to make time for it. That doesn't reflect on the worth I put on the person, but rather the type of communication.

For me the main problem is that going out for lunch in person with coworkers (even ones from other departments I've never met) is completely fine and I like to do that (when I was in the office I did that 3-4 days per week) but when I am having lunch at home I don't like it at all. I can't put my finger on it but it always feels like useless smalltalk and not making any connection where in person that works quite well. And I'm neither pro-office or anti-WFH or even someone who doesn't make friends online... but going out for lunch or a beer or just an afternoon coffee break is something that I can't reproduce via video/audio.

Most people are not forced to have lunch with their colleagues, a lot of people enjoy doing so however.

I always went out by myself when I wanted to eat alone, or sat at my desk with headphones in watching Youtube and eating.

You can communicate with people to help them understand you'd like your break to be a solitary one.

I fully agree, though this is highly team-specific. I've been on teams where I'm delighted to socialize with my coworkers for an hour most days, but I've also been on teams where I desperately needed 'me' time.

Yes, however, even if you're not talking shop, you might build relationships at lunch time that pay off later.

We're a social species. Building relationships is something we do. Is it work? Yes. But it's also something we need to do.

I think in-office culture does work better in a lot of ways, but we as a society spent a century building and optimizing that. We've only been WingFH for a couple years, and it seems (to me) blazingly obvious that it won't take long to adapt to and improve the tools and culture of it to the point that the benefits outweigh what we've lost.

Apple choosing the office over WFH in 2022 feels a lot like the US choosing coal over solar in the early 2000s - a manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy that will look short-sighted embarrassingly soon.

Some of us have been teleworking/WFH to varying degrees for decades now. There are pro's and con's, but it's not all a bed of roses. The earlier on in your career - unless you don't care about advancing from where you are today - the more you should probably balance or lean more towards in office engagement. You simply aren't going to make the same impression on people virtually as you will in person. You're fighting millions of years of evolution/how our brains are wired. You can lie to yourself and tell you it doesn't really matter - and I can tell you from personal experience it's BS. In person interactions have far more impact and staying power - period. I've seen it happen and am convinced I have gotten jobs over others because of it.

If that's not important to you - like you are towards the end of your career and pretty much happy with where you are - then that's a trade off that might not have as big an impact. But it IS a trade off and people need to be honest about it and stop hiding behind ridiculous gobbledygook like the crap that was at the start of that employee letter.

> Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

I've worked in software for > 20 years. I've been a tech lead of a few projects that shipped and YOU likely use in your daily everyday life. Outside of interviews, i've had to use a real-life whiteboard ... twice ...

> I've worked in software for > 20 years. I've been a tech lead of a few projects that shipped and YOU likely use in your daily everyday life. Outside of interviews, i've had to use a real-life whiteboard ... twice ...

That's neat! I hope you don't think your anecdotal evidence discredits my own anecdotal evidence about how useful they are. People use different tools and I'm guessing you're not intending to say folks that have been productively using whiteboards for decades are somehow wrong.

Working remotely is better than all of those things, iff you commit to doing things correctly and writing things down.

Doing things correctly would help if you were in the office too, but you can paper over the inefficiencies of doing things incorrectly by wasting more time on the backchannel communication face-to-face.

This sounds a bit like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Having lunch with colleagues has nothing to do with 'backchannel communication'. Sometimes it's nice to hear about where we like to go camping, or what cities are nice to visit in their home countries, or ... nothing to do with work or shipping products.

No matter how 'correctly' you think you're doing things, you still haven't convinced me after over a decade of shipping products that online whiteboards are useful, or refuted any of my other points.

Nothing in all the years I worked offline in offices convinced me that whiteboards were particularly useful.

At least we eventually had high-resolution cameras in our smartphones so we could photograph them when people insisted on doing planning on whiteboards - more than once I've seen software architects lose days of work because the janitors were overzealous with their dusting.

> Nothing in all the years I worked offline in offices convinced me that whiteboards were particularly useful.

Wow! That's pretty extraodinary to me. I wonder how we use them differently?

Companies being paranoid about "losing control of employees" seems overblown. People (at these tech cos anyway) (on average) are very responsible as individuals and motivated to work and grow their careers.

It not obvious what carrot or stick motivates people to deliver. But there has to be a way to achieve what the team|org|company wants even with remote workers. As a company - clearly specify and quantify goals, regularly share metrics of progress, provide better tools for working and focus on the long-term.

Depends on who you are. I cannot really process non-explicit communication all that well nor do I like to whiteboard without access to research, so I prefer a playing field where everything is explicit/where I am researching as we work.

In person I am socially clueless and add next to nothing to the whiteboard.

I hear you and see you. Fully remote sounds like a boon to you!

Not that I think this is a solution for everyone but my personal experience is VR can provide many of these things. It's surprising how much body language comes across just from seeing head tracking in a shared environment and facial expressions are likely shipping this year.

Also, unlike Meet/Zoom, in VR you share everyone's screens at the same time (show a virtual monitor/laptop for each persion, have multiple shared whiteboards, have different people virtually standing in front of different whiteboards, etc....

Is anyone trying to argue it is "exactly the same experience"? Most of the arguments I have heard in favor of remote work is that it is superior experience, on the whole.

> it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience

No one even made that claim. From the open letter:

> We definitely see the benefits of in-person collaboration; the kind of creative process that high bandwidth communication of being in the same room, not limited by technology, enables. But for many of us, this is not something we need every week, often not even every month, definitely not every day.

There is value in working in-office… just not enough for me to give up remote work.

I, personally, get just as much work done working from home. While I do miss the social aspect of the office, it’s just not worth giving up the hours of commute time or dealing with a lot of the in-person bs that work entails.

I realize this is a very privileged position but I’ll keep doing it as long as it’s an option.

Whiteboards can be replaced by digital tools, but as far as I know, companies do not invest to remote work tools enough currently.

There are great tools, which should be available for every worker in home, but that does not happen for some reason?

I don't think anyone is claiming that it's "exactly the same;" I think many people are claiming it's better after considering pros and cons.

"There is no value in body-language when communicating?"

Not for me, no. I'm neurodiverse, and that shit is just lost on me.

You might as well complain that you are missing out on being able to tell racist jokes with your same-race buddies, because you're missing out on the benefits of social bonding.

Sure. single-cis-straight-white-neurotypical-abletypical-male can be super optimized, or the equivalent in what ever is the dominant race (looking at salarymen in Japan).

Feel free to continue to argue that position.

It's despicable that you equate "neuro-normative" with "racist".

> Not for me, no. I'm neurodiverse, and that shit is just lost on me.

I hear you and understand. Lots of people are neuro-normative though, and that stuff is valuable. Let's not assert that remote-only is the Best® though, because for a lot of folks, there is a loss of fidelity in communication going fully remote only.

> You might as well complain that you are missing out on being able to tell racist jokes with your same-race buddies, because you're missing out on the benefits of social bonding.

Believe it or not, some people bond over things they have in common that don't have anything to do with racism. You probably have some prejudices or biases leaking through your comment that you might want to explore privately.

> Sure. single-cis-straight-white-male can be super optimized, or the equivalent in what ever is the dominant race (looking at salarymen in Japan).

When I go to lunch and talk to my colleague about her favorite places to snorkel, my sexuality, gender, relationship status or race never come up in the conversation. Have you tried having conversations with folks without making it about you?

>When I go to lunch and talk to my colleague about her favorite places to snorkel

Yet you take it for granted that she will go to lunch with you, and that she will engage in neurotypical "pleasantries". I'll bet that anyone who doesn't want to go to lunch with you, you will take this as a negative at review time. "They just aren't trustworthy" or "He isn't a team player", despite them being the highest performing person on the team.

>Have you tried having conversations with folks without making it about you?

I very rarely make it about me, because my goals are to solve interesting problems that make money by benefitting our customers. In this conversation, the problem is "how to maximize productivity at Apple given a diverse workforce". You are the one that wants to make it "about someone". You are providing an excellent example of neurotypical privilege.

> Yet you take it for granted that she will go to lunch with you, and that she will engage in neurotypical "pleasantries".

I suppose I do! I'm not coercing anyone to go to lunch with me, so I'm not really sure what your point is here.

> I'll bet that anyone who doesn't want to go to lunch with you, you will take this as a negative at review time. "They just aren't trustworthy" or "He isn't a team player", despite them being the highest performing person on the team.

Not at all. I'm a results-driven professional and to suggest otherwise is offensive, to be honest.

> I very rarely make it about me, because my goals are to solve interesting problems that make money by benefitting our customers. In this conversation, the problem is "how to maximize productivity at Apple given a diverse workforce". You are the one that wants to make it "about someone". You are providing an excellent example of neurotypical privilege.

I'm talking about: socializing with my colleagues is one of the many benefits that is lost when we transition to full remote only work. The disabilities, preferences, or whatever other flavor-of-the-moment persecutions you care about is irrelevant to me. I'm going to invite people I enjoy spending time with to lunch and I don't consider the persons gender, sexuality, mental health, or whatever else you are talking about when I invite them to spend their lunch with me. I expect them to be honest and come under their own free will. I can't control anything beyond that.

If you want to spend your lunch with me, great! Let's go chat and learn about each other. If for some reason you find this offensive, or privileged, then I think we would not enjoy lunch together and that's good to learn, too! I wouldn't want to invite you to lunch the next time.

Good luck out there.

>I'm not coercing anyone to go to lunch with me, so I'm not really sure what your point is here.

If you are in a position to influence a promotion, then an invitation to lunch is not simply an invitation to lunch. I would hope that you would be involved, either as a peer or a manager, since you come across generally as pro diversity.

The thing is, #neurodiverse message boards are full of posts like "My manager has asked me to go to lunch and I am terrified. What do I do?" Their fear is that if they don't go, they will be dismissed as not a team player, but if they do go, they may exhibit behaviors that uneducated NTs find disturbing. Many neurodiverse will just mask up and push through it, and many of us are effective at that. The right thing, of course, is to communicate (I wrote "have a conversation" and deleted it, because Autism) but many NDs don't have access to such support systems to even get the advice. If they are on a #nd channel, then we can help them.

So I'd ask you to consider that, unless you have absolutely no power in your organization, then yes, asking someone to lunch is a non-neutral decision ("coercion" is too strong a word) for an ND person that carries risks and stress.

I'm not asking you to stop having lunch with people. I'm asking you to consider ways to interact with ND people and to get familiar with the challenges ND people face.

> You might as well complain that you are missing out on being able to tell racist jokes with your same-race buddies,

I sympathize with your point, but object strongly to this analogy on the grounds that being racist is a choice, while benefiting from body language is not a choice. It's also very offensive, but that is a secondary issue.

However, expecting (and demanding) that the other person can interpret your body language is also a choice.

Consider you are the only person in the room who can't speak French. Everyone else can speak French and your native language. Would it be appropriate for them to drop into French whenever you ask a question, talk about it, and then answer in your language? No. Not only would you feel excluded, but you'd also be missing out in vital information required to do your job.

This isn't up for debate. You can argue that installing a wheelchair ramp or not is a choice. Fortunately it is the law. Likewise, accommodating neurodiverse people is the law, at least in the USA and Europe.

If you take the position that "I am neurotypical and it is not my choice, so it is reasonable to expect everyone else to be able to interpret my body language", then in any company in the USA with 15 or more people, your statement would be actionable under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

>However, expecting (and demanding) that the other person can interpret your body language is also a choice.

It's not a choice, it's respecting millions of years of social evolution. You are arguing that the way peoples brains are wired should be ignored to accommodate *you*. Good luck with that.

Also not sure where body language rates up there like someone with an actual physical disability or people just being assholes (your language example). Good luck filing some sort of complaint about being "forced" to interpret body language.

This feels a whole hell of a lot like "this is hard and I don't want to learn how to do it so I'll make up some syndrom to excuse it". Bah.

> This feels a whole hell of a lot like "this is hard and I don't want to learn how to do it so I'll make up some syndrom to excuse it". Bah.

I don't think that's a charitable interpretation and is uncalled for.

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