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Comment by J_Shelby_J | Hacker News Reader

This is a good comment and I had to think about it for a minute. I do agree with you in practicality, but I also think in person works because most people flat out can’t or won’t take the time to communicate effectively in writing. Put them in a room and they’re suddenly forced to do it. But that said, just because most people can’t effectively communicate and instead use async communications like slack zombies is not my problem. If lawyers can handle contract negotiations over email, you can handle managing people with a ticketing systems and well written emails. I mean, by the sounds of it you won’t, and that’s ok, but that’s either a skill issue or a choice and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.

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For the vast majority of human existence the majority of communication was done verbally and in person.

We’ve never communicated this much with text and most of that increase has probably come in the past, what, 20 years?

I think rather than people being lazy/inept it’s more a case of our brains struggling to adapt to a way of communication that is thousands of years newer than speech.

People adapted pretty well to being glued to a screen and reading order of magnitudes more than they were used to... or do most people just spend 12h in front of phones just scrolling pictures and watching videos? I honestly don't know.

I really don’t understand what you’re saying here. Letters have existed for literally thousands of years at this point and people were able to communicate effectively through that. Several countries were founded and destroyed with coordination through written communication.

I know plenty of people that still study the letters that were used to communicate while founding the United States. It seems to me that the last 20 years has led to a massive decrease in the effectiveness of written communication because people don’t have to be clear or concise anymore.

Perhaps they still study those letters due to the ambiguity in understanding of what those people meant?

We also don’t know that they understood each other as effectively as they would have if they communicated verbally in person.

It is far easier to understand someone’s true meaning in person thanks to tone and body language. Communication in person is quicker because typing/writing is slow. That speed allows for faster ideation and iteration.

It’s not impossible to communicate in written form at all but I don’t believe it’s as effective.

To your first point, we write more emails, more DMs, more online comments, more text messages etc than ever before. We clearly communicate more in written form now than at any point in history.

hunter gatherers vs universities. one of these groups is dirt poor the other unimaginably wealthy in comparison

Written communication, and in-person interaction, are force multipliers, and universities have very high levels of both.

Most people struggle to be efficient and effective at written communication. There are a huge number of people with good technical skills whose writing skills don't go much beyond writing a string of one-liners on Slack. And particularly in the younger generations, there is an enormous amount of resistance to anything that looks like detail-oriented long-form writing. In-person interactive discussion is much easier for people without these skills.

It takes years of practice to become proficient at this, even if English is your native language. Everyone wants full-time remote but few people possess the communication skills to effectively work asynchronously and I see very few people intentionally trying to develop these skills or being willing to put in the many hours of work required.

This may be the primary essential gap for remote: people need to dramatically improve their written communication skills. Until they do, they lack the skills to work remotely effectively.

Ironically, we used to do asynchronous highly technical long-form discussions over email and on mailing lists. It is where I developed a lot of my writing skills, and this used to be the norm. It worked pretty well and some older open source projects still work this way. Now everyone hates email because it forces them to write.

You’re correct, you know.

If we’re talking about the IC work, the benefits of WFH are acknowledged even by its detractors.

The people struggling with the “management” problem in remote work are either looking at the wrong place or being oblivious that it’s solution will come from adjacent fields like lawyers or accountants. Perhaps it’s time for them to look beyond their own field?

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