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Comment by bluefishinit | Hacker News Reader

> “You can interrupt each other without being rude when you’re in person,” said Mr. Medina, whose company, Outreach, is now in the office on a hybrid basis. “In a Zoom conversation, you have to let somebody finish their thought.”

How is this not admitting that WFH is superior? If it puts a damper on people like this who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts, it's only a good thing. This article title may sound pro-WFH but it's basically pro-WFO and has no data other than CEO "feelings" to back it up. It also doesn't even mention all of the companies that started fully remote and will stay that way. Count me among those who would never WFO again, for any reason.

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From my point of view, he's right. Virtual meetings with more than 3 participants make back-and-forth discussions very hard. Interruptions aren't always negative - they're part of a natural conversation. In a situation where I'm talking, often an interruption will be to ask for clarification, or more information, and it'll come just as I start to move on to something else. The latency and awkwardness of video calls makes that hard to do. As a result, people talk more continuously and those little questions/requests for clarification don't ever get said.

Sure, there's people who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts. There's also people who feel it's their right to talk at everyone without stopping. Healthy conversation is a balancing act, and it's hard to get right in a group situation over video.

You can, of course, find ways round this. One on one calls, with shared screens, are often more productive if you're remote. Maybe large meetings are ultimately a bit pointless anyway?

I always found Zoom great for latency and communication. For some reason Google vid hangouts had us unintentionally interrupting each other more frequently - don't know if they've improved that now. I think it's one hidden reason Zoom got more popular so quickly over other vid conf offerings.

Latency is only one of the problems. Most of these services seem to handle audio in a way where they are picking one person as the speaker, and muting or ducking everyone else's audio. Practices like cooperative overlap are technologically inhibited.

Seems like a reasonable feature to more productive meetings in general? In-person meetings can degenerate to unproductive noise if people can't speak in turn. If you don't want the "talking stick" pattern there are other remote spaces where one can all meet online and have multiple conversations simultaneously.

Like what?

https://www.gather.town/ I feel like is one of the more mature, but there are multiple demos where locational audio meeting can happen.

https://www.meetup.com/blog/virtual-gathering-tools-for-your...

I can't recall a WFH article that didn't just boil down to a CEO or adjacent just "vibing" things weren't working.

Yes, but can you actually prove them wrong with real data? Everybody I know advocating WFH (including myself FWIW) tend to use words that amount to their own “vibes” that they are more personally productive but I rarely hear people moving beyond feelings and anecdotes about their personal productivity and into real data that shows benefits to the organization far beyond the individual.

Until WFH advocates can do that, a CEO’s vibe is going to trump their vibes all day long.

I would argue the best indicator is that, after all this time, productivity has not dropped, businesses are not failing, unemployment has not sharply risen, etc. Everyone is making record profits.

(but it would be a hard case to prove, at macro-level, given all the other recent factors which would also impact those metrics.)

... I guess I've not heard of any businesses failing specifically because of WFH.

Productivity has dropped [0], businesses (small ones in particular) are struggling [1], unemployment rose 0.3% between April 2023 and May 2023 [2], and "record profits" are also dropping (why did you think inflation was dropping?) [3].

So uh, any other indicators you'd like to use to measure the impact of WFH?

[0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-productivity-drops-fir...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/business/economy/small-bu...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273909/seasonally-adjust...

[3] https://thehill.com/business/3945727-inflation-eases-as-corp...

> I guess I've not heard of any businesses failing specifically because of WFH

Sure, but that is an argument to a baseline not a benefit. Easily countered by “How many businesses failed pre-pandemic because they were not work from home?”

Without real hard data showing a direct benefit, we cant argue WFH over in office from a position of strength.

Maybe it's my ADHD or cultural norms, but I read it as "finally, a conversation doesn't have to a boring turn-based event". Natural conversations are duplex

Definitely ADHD. My neurotypical coworkers can't stand my constant interruptions. On the flip side their adherence to turn-based conversations drives me crazy.

https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

Management is just saying the quiet part out loud at this point, "we need return to office so we can more freely speak over our subordinates."

Chelsea Troy has a great article describing this exact problem with meetings, and it applies to both remote & in-person meetings:

https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-su...

And then she describes the solution - assign a moderator to your meetings:

https://chelseatroy.com/2018/04/05/how-do-we-make-remote-mee...

Just like we all know that meetings are better with agendas, notes, and action items, having a moderator also important.

This spotlights the difference between managerial time, where things are accomplished in 30-minute meeting blocks, and developer / creative time, where things are accomplished in half-day blocks. Remote work is superior for the latter, office work for the former. So yes, meetings are far better in person. But coding is far better in solitude, and we have tools that let you pair-program for that 30% to 50% of the time you'd spend pair-programming.

There's a reason why nearly every single developer in modern office settings wears headphones. It's not for the synergy.

I very much agree with your response, yet will also say that I’ve still observed plenty of interruptions on Zoom. It may just raise the difficulty barrier, which I don’t regard as bad.

> has no data other than CEO "feelings" to back it up.

I should make a sign I can tap for all the CEO feelings instead of data. For now I'm content adding to my comment chain [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384366

To me that means you can easily flag someone down without having to interrupt them by speaking mid call.

In person also allows for async conversations during demos/presentations and is much easier to read the room for the speaker.

Typical NYT, pro-business pro-plutocracy all day everyday...

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