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Comment by vjulian | Hacker News Reader

What are the implications or recommendations for WFH environments, I wonder?

Personally I try to chat before meetings. Say hi to people I know or have worked with in the past. Recent management told us to not do this during our standup and I expressed that was a bad idea. Got shot down though, so I make sure to go to the office despite it being three hours away at least once a quarter so people recognize my face, like the captain of some far off lord that has sworn fealty to the King making sure to show up and pay tribute every once in awhile.

One thing I’ve noticed is some people are very chatty over text and some people really aren’t. So I make good friends with people who like to make a little small talk on text, tell me about their weekend.

I've been wondering how to move past the "Slack and occasionally Zoom/Google Meet for meetings" phase of remote work we've been stuck in since Covid hit.

Some teams tried to set up optional social hours but they feel forced. The two managers always show up and it becomes really sweaty.

Maybe set up personal office hours once a week? It would be nice if some new pattern emerged that providers like Slack or Google could build into their remote work products.

Something that replicates the vibe of sitting in an area where you can overhear coworkers. Like an always-on proximity chat, but with a way to mask your sweatpants/picking your nose/getting up to flip laundry.

The closest I ever saw this working was a site called OhYay. It really felt like spaces you could move around in. It wasn't the same as IRL, but it was about as close as I think you could get. Sadly, the company shut down before they could become profitable.

Interesting thing was our company paid millions to covert our office into an open office concept - just about a year before COVID hit. People were not fans and some of the horror stories were hard to imagine were real - like the guy who's desk was in front of a good friend. During morning stand-ups, he would raise his desk to the highest point, then while the meeting was going on do a full kettle bell routine AT HIS DESK.

Because of all the negative feedback, they spent millions more during COVID to put up cubes and prepare for a post COVID world. 5 years on and the RTO policy is you have to be in the office 4 days a week. Its like a library now - people come in, work, go home. Very little interaction. People are silent on the elevators. I've heard some groups getting together and having impromptu chats or having more traditional lunch groups, but for the vast majority of people? They're not interested. Its like being in the office is more a formality for some. Rather a place to network, chat other people up and use it as a good way to keep tabs on your own mental health.

I was telling a guy I play hockey with how this new reality is kind of weird. He said he worked in Germany for 8 years and said this is how Germans have done it forever. Would be interesting to hear if this is actually true, or just his experience.

Never underestimate the power of a banter chat room that people just … talk… in. About anything, everything. Random protesting, etc.

One of my previous companies talked so much in the random channel we had a second one made with our name on it (literally).

And I feel like our team had better cohesion and got a whole lot of work done, in part due to it.

Being okay with talking to your coworkers about nothing makes it easier to talk to them about something, at least in my experience, and every company I’ve worked at that had that.

Further, at companies that DIDN’T behave that way (sample size one), talking to coworkers about anything and or nothing was a HUGE, stressful chore that always felt like a problem and like I was stepping on people’s time.

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