4 ms·

I was just going to ask this too because I remember reading an article about how people felt that video calls did much to alleviate the loneliness from remote w

• trgn 10y ago
  My two cents: I'm a remote worker. Video calls make all the difference! It's something about the facial expressions, stuff happening in the background you can comment on, people walking by and joining the conversation. That helps. Dedicated IM channels for small talk and sharing internet-nonsense are pretty good too. Can't really do that on the company-IMs, it just clutters serious discussion, but you get to know co-workers on a different level. That's usually just on all day. Not sure how much chat reduces overall loneliness levels, but it's fun. Phone calls are neither here nor there for me. It's just business. It's hard to have casual conversations over the phone. "so, now that we got these expense reports sorted out, how's Timmy doing, still playing soccer?" I do need to make an effort to step out and do some social things during the work-day (coffee-&-lunch, sports, ...). These people are not colleagues, but we're all full time telecommuters. For me personally, these can't be evening dates, the atmosphere is just wrong, it needs to be somewhat business-like. It took a while to get a routine schedule with that. Took a lot of "cold calling" people, like, `hey, we met at this Meetup about BuzzyMcBuzzword.io, you want to hangout?` (luckily, getting the cold shoulder from some bearded JS-ninja is not as bad as from that cute med-student at happy hour, but dang, it gets old after a while). In my experience so far, remote workers I see doing well seem to fall into two camps. Either very reserved and just not social, and doesn't really mind being alone, but with strong work-ethic, they're often abrasive too. Or pretty easy-going and pleasant company, so the channels of communication are kept open on both sides. If you're sort of in-between, it can be a hard slog. You need to ensure colleagues keep reaching out, which requires you to be pro-active and upbeat, and you can't tire of that either, that energy needs to come from the remote worker first, because at the other end, it's easy for colleagues to just kind of check out on that. Biggest thing about remote work and loneliness in my experience, isn't necessarily about being physically alone for a large part of the day, or about what communication medium is best to substitute for real life interaction. A big factor seems to be how the work is going, and how the team as a whole communicates about it. Sometimes, projects just take a bad turn, and it's much more difficult to not have that be a millstone, when you have other people to commiserate with, through whatever medium. But it takes buy-in from all sides. If colleagues bitch&moan in the break-room, but don't take it to IM, you're missing out on that. So you kind of have to get people in the habit to bitch&moan on chat too. That's the hard part, getting remote-working etiquette (rule 1, there's no such thing as using too many emoticons) be shared by the non-remote workers. Because when challenges arise, you need to be part of how the team is dealing with it. If you're left out, it opens the door for loneliness to creep up on you.