I don’t think we’ll ever see a Wikipedia quote saying “the only thing productive employees had in common is that they were hanging out in a Microsuck Teams chat room”.
If the and answer is yes, then what was the rate of such encounters per number of employees?
And finally - honestly answer yourself - does this minuscule probability worth the ~30 full awake days in every years of life, of every employee? (2 hours commute per 250 days in a year, then divide by 16 awake hours per day) For me the answer is obvious - it is not even remotely equal in value to such a gigantic time waste. If that super brainstorming even real at all. Personally I've never observed this.
Home office nudges towards isolation and lack of physical activity, while the office nudges towards interaction, moving at least a little bit and face to face interactions. No matter the outliers, the latter are considered universally good.
I’ve noticed that when I am in the office I usually have nice conversations with colleagues at lunch, that are good for my well-being. Sometimes we discuss interesting news from work, or their projects or other technical topics. We’re not Bell Labs of decades ago so the impact is obviously not large, but it exists.
My commute is 15m by bike. Even so I don’t look forward to going to the office because of various factors, but I do usually enjoy it when I’m there.
You say this as if it's a fact, but with an extra 1-3 hours of my day freed up, it's a lot easier to get into the gym or visit my friends and family. Personally, I was more active and less isolated when I worked from home.
I've never had any trouble having real conversations on online platforms, whether for work or otherwise.
Not completely wrong, but…
I've not heard of any research that shows that it's impossible to have meaningful conversations on these platforms.
And please note the distinction between "it is impossible to have such conversations" and "some people (especially less tech-savvy people) have a harder time having such conversations" on these platforms.
Teams/Slack/Discord/etc is just another communication medium. Once our society has, collectively, had more of a chance to get used to them, and once we're no longer dealing with an entire generation who were bad managers before the personal computer even existed (</hyperbole>), I wager you'll see a lot less complaining about the medium itself.
None of them in any way address the issue at hand, which is the ability to engage in meaningful conversations over online platforms such as Teams and Slack.
I said they weren’t the same as in person.
The reason for zoom fatigue, as the papers call out, is because zoom or similar is fundamentally different than actual in person conversations.
They are missing something important. Several things which are important, actually.
Just like twinkies vs ‘real food’.
> Except you don’t actually talk (as in have a real conversation) with anyone on Teams.
That is the specific argument that I am refuting: that your experience of not being able to "have a real conversation" on Teams, etc, is universal, rather than just being your experience, which cannot be extrapolated from without gathering significant extra data.
"People get Zoom fatigue from having too many video meetings (especially in the first 2 years of regularly using video meetings after never using them before)" is not the same thing, and does not prove that these technologies are impossible to use as a replacement for in-person meetings on a wide scale.
If I have one twinkie, that isn’t a problem - because I have other ‘real food’ to compensate. Same with someone doing zoom periodically.
If all I have is twinkies, that is a real problem, because I don’t have enough real food to compensate. I’m missing some essential vitamins, minerals, and macros that will eventually hurt me a lot. Plus a lot of sugar that causes a lot of load in my body we really don’t handle well.
‘Zoom fatigue’ is exactly because people aren’t having enough real in-person interactions anymore and it’s causing numerous real psychological issues in people because of it.
Because there are actual necessary things in real in person interactions that are not present in video conferencing. And real effects of doing video conferencing our minds don’t handle well.
The insistence on ‘but it’s not impossible!’ is tangential to the fact that it isn’t a good idea to do long term or exclusively.
And depending on the individuals environment or makeup, it could be an immediate major problem, or it could be a slow burn. Everyone will have a different tipping point.
I’m sure there are some 1-in-a-million outliers out there that could stay pretty functional literally eating just twinkies for a decade (somehow).
But either way, having the social interaction equivalent of an all-Twinkie diet is a bad idea.
Near as we can tell.
But ‘this is America!’, with an ongoing obesity crisis, so not like I expect people to just listen.
I've also seen the room be quiet way too much on some teams. This is always bad, but hard to fix.
Regardless of the reasoning, it's toxic to WFH/remote work, even in the short-term. And it's outright sabotage in the long run when it's time for someone who wasn't invited to the "correct" chats to onboard a new hire who ends up needing some context that exists only in someone else's private chat.
And again, it's not like our managers are bad, quite the contrary, they are very good professionally and personally. And we don't have layoffs. But people still won't talk in the presence of even mid level management, it's an instinct of sorts I guess :) .
PS: this is only about informal optional chats. All work chats are never hidden or avoided. We divide them by program, Slack for work and Telegram for fluff.
It looks like literal sabotage in the long run. Of course, the ones that have the info in their head are more valuable in such a system.
That said, I would not trade WFH for anything. Those walking times with co-workers was great but it's not worth being forced to go into an office every day.
As one potential mitigation, I’ve consistently had deep mentorship conversations over the phone. For me, I think voice-only is actually much better than in person.
> For me, I think voice-only is actually much better than in person.
I agree that video calls are a special hell.
I think I am reasonably high functioning in in-person settings, but I suspect I don’t read body language very well. I find eye contact difficult to maintain for reasons I do not know.
On the phone, I feel like conversations can be slower and more deliberate. I feel a freedom in not having to control my expressions and show my interest. I can just focus entirely on their voice, and I feel I have become very adept at this. I love podcasts and audiobooks and such, maybe there is a connection.
My wife describes very differently dynamics. She wants to meet with folks in person to “read” them better. She thinks my preference for phone only makes no sense.
> I find eye contact difficult to maintain for reasons I do not know.
The effort, intent, and practice (for lack of a better term) required to get the same effect in a remote environment is high enough that it just doesn't—and won't—happen for all but an extreme few.
And there's less of a "rising tide lifts all boats" effect on teams, where the growth of one member tends to level up the rest.
It's just way easier and cheaper to get this effect in person than trying to do it remote.
There are famous groups/chats that allowed the creation of stupendously important software.