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Comment by turdprincess | Hacker News Reader

Not sure I agree - the hybrid model where some are in office and some on video is unfair to the remote folks. Watching coworkers whiteboard from a zoom call makes it much harder to collaborate as the remote employee. It’s also harder to get a turn to speak when you are a face on the camera vs in the room. For these reasons I’ve insisted that in hybrid meetings, everyone dials in individually and whiteboards on a virtual whiteboard even if they are in the room. This is effectively demanding “all remote” from the in-office crowd and taking away their face to face interaction.

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> This is effectively demanding “all remote” from the in-office crowd and taking away their face to face interaction.

How is this at all a good thing?

It's basically saying: "I've got a limitation because of my choice of working environment, therefore to make life "fair" — which it isn't at all ironically — I'm going to impose my limitation artificially on the rest of the group."

Because I can't play with that toy, no one else can.

To be fair, audio quality and the ability to communicate with remote people goes up much more when everyone dials in. You can still look at each other in the room and whiteboard just fine.

That isn't really the point of OP's comment.

It is my opinion that the extra inconvenience that in-person folks have to do it dial into a meeting and use a virtual whiteboard is worth it to allow remote folks to fully participate. But ultimately it comes down to how strongly a company supports a remote culture. I’ve worked for 100% distributed companies, and I’ve also worked for places where remote was an afterthought. I imagine at some companies it’s harder to get promoted if someone doesn’t physically see you in all 3 dimensions every day.

As a remote employee I will always try to gravitate towards companies that accommodate me best, but I’m not opposed to the idea that some companies want to be in-person and don’t want to deal with remote. I just chose not to work for those companies.

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