Comment by fdye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fdye | Hacker News Reader

The problem with RTO is a fundamental axiom, "If >1 person on a meeting needs zoom, everyone should stay home". Hear me out, that one person can be the CEO in the hamptons, Jenny who just had a kid and is easing back in after matleave, the sales prospect from another company, etc. All it takes is one and it makes everything a giant waste of time. Because for everyone in office, they had to commute, find a conference room, spend money on lunch (usually), then sit on a zoom call in the office. I've tried all the teleconference thingamagigies, cameras on whiteboards, all of it. If > 1 person has to be on zoom, then everyone might as well be at home individually on their laptops showing a powerpoint or using lucidchart(or similar) to whiteboard. Yes if everyone is at the office sharing a conference room, white boarding it out, that can be great. However, at any office of sufficient size that is a RARITY! My last company we had teams all over the world, so it was silly to sit in a special conference room and try to get zoom to show our whiteboard or whatever. End rant.

I don’t completely agree that it is a waste. Yes that one person might be less involved but thats the price. The goal is to move forward, have an interactive session etc. so coming together once a month for example is great. And if someone can’t make it, then so be it.

I'll try to give sort of another analogy. With everyone at home on an individual laptop there is essentially one channel of communication. A single audio and video channel showing the presentation, or someones face talking, or whatever. The entire group is focusing all attention and communication in the same place, sure some may be zoning out, but its consistent. Now take the example of a room of six people, a whiteboard, and two remote. We essentially have two or more communications channel for those in the room together, and a single channel for everyone on zoom. Sure they can see a birds eye of people sitting in chairs around a table, maybe the camera focuses to varying crap degrees on who's talking. The whiteboard may be a camera focused on it, or one of those magic board thingies (again just use lucidchart or something over zoom, its better). There are cross-conversations, or mannerisms, conversations are likely muffled or speaking over each other, its generally very poor for those not in the room.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing, I agree if you can get everyone in a room then cool, its likely better. However, in terms of RTO, if you are a large F500 company you should look at your employees day-to-day and calendars. If the bulk of them are zoom meetings with people in other locations (different buildings, floors, etc) where it is unlikely they will be able to all get in the same physical location, then the axiom holds and you should just let them take it from home.

Yes I think we are saying the same thing. However I thought you said that, „companies with hybrid setup do not work, so all should be on-site“.

I‘d love to find exactly this where people commit let’s say 1x-2x a month where we meet onsite for these discussions where we need physical presence. And the rest of the time is done via async communication, notion, written notes and adhoc meetings (few recurring ones).

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