this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I think he has a point. So many great ideas at my company were birthed sitting around the table while eating breakfast or drinking coffee.
People ask me stuff they they wouldn't have sent a ticket about because "it's not a big issue" and by looking into some of it we find way better methods of dealing with types of workflows.
It's not the meetings where we find the best ideas. It's during the coffee breaks. But you need you coworkers to have coffee breaks with so you have something to talk about.
That being said. I'm not American and we don't have the American office landscapes or office politics.
My company is complete work from home. The issue is that people can't imagine coworkers talking to each other and being friends while working remotely.
I spend half of most days in spontaneous voice chats with coworkers where we have these exact same moments. Spontaneous discussions leading to ideas that change the way we do things.
It's not exclusive to being in an office. You just need to adapt to a new work style.
3/4 of the team I am on work from home, 2 of us full time, We have weekly scheduled meetings with no agenda other than to catch up and this is where ideas can come up, We haven't all been in an office together since before the lockdown yet we continue to thrive. I also have most of each Friday blocked out to work with one of the team on whatever he happens to be working on that day. We just jump in a meeting and do stuff. And like you we are all open to just spontaneous chats at any time either by text or call. It works perfectly well.
I guess you also have those chats where you pull other people in during the conversation, Oh, Suchandsuch will have input, send them an invite to this meeting etc :)
I love it, I get peace and quite when needed to code, and all the interaction I need to make the job work.
We have a daily SUM which is supposed to last 15 minutes. It is usually over an hour, but work makes up at best 20 minutes. The rest is just us chatting.
We also have regular calls with other teams which follow a similar pattern.
It is easy to have "water-cooler" chats while working remotely.
I've spent 2 years in WFH during COVID and haven't seen this working in any of the teams (even though there were attempts).
One problem is just that remote calls suck a lot, especially if you have latency and audio issues. People talking over each other, then saying "sorry" and waiting 20 seconds, audio too high or low or just poor quality etc. A lot of it could be solved with technology, but weirdly it hasn't happened yet.
I've spent longer than that and I'm not sure where the issue is. It works fine for us. Perhaps it's a US thing with poor internet quality?
I'm in the US and haven't had any issues with being remote and calling a coworker to chat for a bit. It's not any different than using a phone.
Nah I'm in the US. Garbage internet provider. No issues.
It's crazy how people have been talking on the phone for like a hundred years and talking over each other was something that was easy to work out.
But put the same technology on a computer and suddenly people forgot how to talk on the phone.
Phone has usually lower latency than internet. Consequence of circuit vs. packet switching.
But otherwise I hate phone as well. Miserable audio quality.
Group calls weren’t the norm until recently. I fucking despise group zoom calls. I normally will just not contribute at all because it’s impossible to be heard. Someone else will always talk over you. This is the 3rd team I’ve worked remote on, and it hasn’t worked on any of them so far.
Idk, I leverage Slack huddles regularly and have absolutely no issues with multiple people hanging out and having casual conversations while working. We do these spontaneously throughout the day.
How old are your coworkers generally? My company is mostly on the younger side of things. We grew up with team speak, steam voice chat, and now are often in discord. This is not unfamiliar territory and has always worked well outside of the office.
The thing is I spent a LOT of time in voice chats playing games as a kid. It always worked well then. It hasn't changed at all. I don't need to be on a video call. I jump into a voice chat channel and hang out. People come and go, and are quiet for the most part.
Having come from an office environment where everyone worked in cubes, it truly is no different. I don't need to be face to face with coworkers, because I wasn't face to face for most of the conversations we had in the office. We'd stare at our screens and talk over the walls.
When we were looking at each other's faces, it was in the conference room. Those formal meetings are effectively replaced with video calls - and more often are effectively replaced with emails like they should be.
This probably largely depends on your field. But for me, my productivity is higher working from home, because at least at home I can choose when to tune out the noise. In the office, management was personally offended by me listening to music while working alone. I was told to focus on my paycheck if I needed help focusing.
Same here. What I hear from people who can't innovate, collaborate, insert-activity-here, etc. while working remotely is that they have competency issues in their workforce.
Companies building great things creatively and remotely are not exceptional, and antisocial behaviours when working remotely are a problem with the person, not the technology. But it's easier to blame the tech than admit your colleagues or team are dysfunctional so "back to the office!" It is for most. I'll pass though.
But that means the great idea moments are during unproductive times. People at the office must be allowed to be unproductive. If there is strict no talking and no coffee breaks allowed and strict clocking in because time is money there isn't much innovative benefit to being in the office.
Sounds like a small company you work at with tight nit group.
In the states, a good portion of jobs out there are soulless corporate jobs with predefined work. It’s just a grind.
Let’s be honest. If I discovered good ideas at a soulless corp, I wouldn’t be using those ideas at soulless corp.
Bone apple tea!
The same thing happens in IM. It's just a different set of personalities doing it. There are people that actively chat and bring up ideas to teams all the time. The bonus point about IM is that it can be referenced later on.
I have tons of spontaneous calls all day on teams when remote. These moments still happen and don't require an office. These companies that fail to adapt will be left in the dust.
I miss coffee breaks.
But the kind of bad managers who insist on a RTO are also the kind who don't understand it's the break time, stupid.
All the people I'd want to talk with over coffee left before I did.
I only ever had 'coffee breaks' when I was working in a restaurant. Never in the office.
I mean, people shit talk on discord all the time
I agree, but wouldn't underestimate meetings. People say that you're losing productivity, but IME the largest losses of productivity are caused by working on the wrong things, because of too little communication. Sometimes it's things that are not needed anymore, sometimes it's just aspects of the feature which are not important (e.g. overengineering) because of lack of context.
I'm not saying all meetings are always needed, but in larger organizations the sync between people and teams is very important.
Ideas don't come from a coffee break, that's superstitious nonsense.
You're not going to sit there, and tell me what my own experience is at my own place of work. Fuck off.
That said, working from home has so far saved me a lot of both time and money. This is a thing to consider as an employee when considering who to work for (or if your boss takes it away, if you still want to work there after essentially having a benefit revoked unilateraly).
Public transit pass. Actual time for transit which for me was around 90 minutes a day (7.5 hours a week!), more complex lunch logistics (time or money), etc.
A quieter workplace, no need to book rarely available rooms to take calls/meetings. There were upsides.
My first remote job had almost no issues at all. We already knew each other and we still took time to discuss issues via calls. New job not so much. We tend to be pressed for time so only focus on obvious "work" and then works suffers because of a lack of communication/common vision.