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Comment by foxbarrington | Hacker News Reader

> They typically borrow the form and structure of an in-person conference without considering whether those still make sense online, and whether the goals of an online conference should even be the same as an in-person conference.

Been having a similar debate with a client about their (remote) company all hands. If it’s just going to be a few execs talking at the camera, it shouldn’t be a live group video call.

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A remote all hands should have the form of a twitch live streamer. The ceo in his pyamas on a desk with old coffee mugs reacting to content from their own intranet, chat flying by, tts. I'd watch that.

That's the proven format for a one-to-many conversation on this medium.

His underlings prepared some slides, he reacts to them blindly, live fact checking of chat questions.

This is brilliant.

The CEO must regularly yell at chat to keep with the traditional divorced dad/estranged kid dynamic at play on Twitch, though.

All hands should be followed by Q&A, rare opportunity to have execs together so the right one can answer. And it makes sense to listen live to know what (not) to ask.

What you are describing could be just an email.

Have you ever attended an all hands that couldn’t have been an email?

To be fair, no one would read that mail.

To be fair, no one listened to the all hands either

When it’s all hands, it’s workout time, so I do listen to things in the background.

Yes, a lot gets lost in an email vs. video. I'm not saying it has to be a live meeting, but videos of execs talking about strategy often make their ideas much clearer than a written text.

And live has the big advantage that it cannot be re-recorded, so it's more natural and not as rehearsed as a recorded video.

If a strategy is clearer orally than on paper, something is very wrong. Either you're getting bamboozled by charisma and a bad plan is getting a fake dress up OR they don't know how to write.

…or some people just prefer visual interactions to text only formats.

This is very true in my case because I’m dyslexic so I ingest context more easily when heard vs when read.

For other people, it might just be a personal preference. Just like you have the personal preference to read rather than watch.

Arguing that the GP has some major character flaw because of their own personal preference really says more about your own character than it does theirs.

It's not about interactions. Sure, some people prefer or respond better to talk than to reading, or video, etc. But if the execs can't articulate their plan in writing, and can only explain it over words, it's a good indication they don't understand it themselves and it's probably nonsense - for the same reason your exciting, beautiful solution to a programming problem falls apart when you're three lines into writing it down.

Turns out, people have only so much working memory, but are good at covering for it with emotions.

Sure. But when all hands meetings are done well then they aren’t just about communicating company strategy. They’re about the employees too.

You’ll see demos from colleagues in different departments who you might not normally work with. And individuals praised for specific wins.

A good all hands should be for the staff, not for the execs. And that’s the harder skill execs need to learn: when to stfu and let their staff have screen time.

If all hands is done well, it brings the business closer and motivates employees in ways that an email couldn’t. However this is lost on most execs and so all hands often ends up being an ego trip for themselves, and when that happens the thats when things need to be communicated via email.

I said zero things about the GP.

Also it's not personal preference. If you're an executive you need to know how to write properly. Execs rely on oral communication to use their charisma points on you, when you read the plans many times they have nothing to do with what was said or it's much simpler. Same with politicians.

A good all hands meeting is about much more than just outlining company strategy.

It’s about uniting everyone emotionally as well as academically.

The emotional component is an absolutely a critical part.

And this is one of the tells for a company that cares about staff moral verses those that don’t. One that care make their all hands about the employees too.

It's not about the abstract strategy. It is also about trust. Are they presenting it in a way I trust they believe it? Is it just show?

The video just gives execs more leverage to use the skills they use every day (people skills) to overwhelm the skills you use every day (charitably either the same skills or some sort of knowledge or physical skill). The more they're comfortable, the worse off you are. Their entire position within the company hinges on being able to exploit you for as much as you're willing to let them get away with, which hinges upon how well they're able to convince you you're worth less than they are (after all, you earn less).

Giving them anything is the wrong move. If you think you are getting as much out of the video as they are getting out of you watching them speak, you are wrong. The degree of wrong depends on your affinity with their chosen craft (which is, to be clear, grifting you).

I'm not opposed to video, but if stuff gets lost in the written version that's more a statement on poor exec written communication skills than video being better than text.

People ingest info differently, and being able to communicate the same info in multiple ways should be table stakes at that level.

Yes, definitely. I’m not a text processing machine, I’m a human in a human organization and I want to see and feel the leaders I work for and with.

How large is the company you work for? In mine, I can't imagine wanting to "feel the leaders I work for and with" - the very idea of working with them feels like jumping 5 steps up and 2 steps sideways in the corporate org chart.

It was different before acquisition, back when the 90% of the company fit on one floor of an office building, and the CEO was someone you passed by regularly, and who contributed actual engineering. But company this kind and size, they don't do "all-hands" and "town squares" videocalls...

When I joined my current company, I was the first remote employee, there were less than 200 people total. It's over 4000 now, all over the place.

I have no idea what would I want to ask from leadership. They are so far removed from me.

It’s a small company, yes. But I guess you still get a better sense of leadership even in a big company with a live video compared to a an email.

The email can have a video link.

Unless there's a need to interact (and there rarely is at an all-hands), it would save everyone time to just prerecord it. Any followup questions can be sent via email with reply-to-all (or an internal mailing list).

I couldn't care less about seeing and feeling my ceo, I just want to do my work and get paid with as little pointless interruptions as possible. Though this could be different if I worked for something I really cared about.

The entire satellite office couldn't gather for microwave popcorn in the conference room if the layoff damage control all-hands meeting was an email.

Tell me you don't manage a lot of people without telling me you don't manage a lot of people.

In some roles you have to over-communicate. All people -- me included-- over estimate how carefully they pay attention to communication. So people will say you could have just sent me an email in good faith and sincerity and the reality is that would not have gotten the point across, the discussion started, or coordination happening.

>Have you ever attended an all hands that couldn’t have been an email?

Yes, they are the ones that happen once or twice a year, not the ones that happen weekly or monthly though, and they covered topics that have a broader scope than what I'm personally working on at any given time.

Ultimately the Q&A will become a reading of pre-approved questions though, in which case you could also have just recorded it.

Really depends on the company I’d say.

That's why they said "will become". It just takes longer for some than others, but at some size / leadership personalities it'll the company flip the approach. For some it may start already like this, for some takes thousands of employees to change the vibe, and most will just go bankrupt as usual.

And, until that happens, there's value in doing it live.

This right here is why executive leadership is complete bullshit.

Can’t even handle unfiltered questions they become so fragile

I had the same thought. Ours usually end in a Q&A and I wouldn't want to miss that.

My company does those periodically, but they always ignore the interesting questions or claim to need to 'take it offline' for further research.

On the bright side, at least you can turn off your canera and do something else if its on zoom. Hard to do that without getting fired in person.

The essence of virtual gatherings should prioritize interaction and engagement, which can get lost in a traditional lecture-style setup.

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