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You can have misunderstandings face to face. This is a matter of communication skills. Having entire conversation in text form also means you can easily make re

You can have misunderstandings face to face. This is a matter of communication skills. Having entire conversation in text form also means you can easily make references and go back to it even weeks later, whereas with face to face conversation you don't have that luxury.

lovich 9y ago
I like remote work, but the benefits of searchable text barely materialized for us. There were a few times we needed to find some piece of information, especially from colleagues who had moved on. However, any moderately discussed topic just generated too much text to be quickly search able. Wed usually get thousands of results for any search term and whoever was looking for the necessary information had to not just look at those results, but the context they were in, to get the info they wanted. One time it took the course of a day
tetromino_ 9y ago
Face to face means seeing the other person's face. You have instantaneous feedback when their face shows signs of confusion, excitement, boredom, maybe unhappiness at your words. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. Searchable conversation history is certainly extremely useful. But today, that's at the cost of needing to regularly go back and redo text discussions from 5 or 15 minutes ago because it becomes clear that we initially hadn't understood each other at all. So I dream of a Black Mirror style future with an indexed video archive of what my eyes had seen.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  > Face to face means seeing the other person's face. You have instantaneous feedback when their face shows signs of confusion, excitement, boredom, maybe unhappiness at your words. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. In theory. But when you are dealing with a lot of "anti-social" people who have a hard time communicating verbally, or integrating socially, it usually has the opposite affect, ime.
- wolco 9y ago
  Remember those requirement we talked about last month? Writing it down or having a log of conversation helps so much. When in person it is harder to take notes and be part of the converdation.
inertiatic 9y ago
This, so much. Just the past 2 weeks I've had multiple face to face meetings to decide on a plan of action for a project. Everyone left the meeting thinking something has been decided. Turns out there were 2 or 3 separate ideas on how we were proceeding with handling things! Can't help but think that if this conversation was held in text, proposed approaches would have been more clear to everyone, and the problem of whether a conclusion was reached or not would be easily solved by revisiting the conversation.
kps 9y ago
Having discussions in writing also means that the next person to join the team has the information available.

lovich 9y ago

I like remote work, but the benefits of searchable text barely materialized for us. There were a few times we needed to find some piece of information, especially from colleagues who had moved on. However, any moderately discussed topic just generated too much text to be quickly search able. Wed usually get thousands of results for any search term and whoever was looking for the necessary information had to not just look at those results, but the context they were in, to get the info they wanted. One time it took the course of a day

tetromino_ 9y ago

Face to face means seeing the other person's face. You have instantaneous feedback when their face shows signs of confusion, excitement, boredom, maybe unhappiness at your words. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. Searchable conversation history is certainly extremely useful. But today, that's at the cost of needing to regularly go back and redo text discussions from 5 or 15 minutes ago because it becomes clear that we initially hadn't understood each other at all. So I dream of a Black Mirror style future with an indexed video archive of what my eyes had seen.

CaptSpify 9y ago
> Face to face means seeing the other person's face. You have instantaneous feedback when their face shows signs of confusion, excitement, boredom, maybe unhappiness at your words. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. In theory. But when you are dealing with a lot of "anti-social" people who have a hard time communicating verbally, or integrating socially, it usually has the opposite affect, ime.
wolco 9y ago
Remember those requirement we talked about last month? Writing it down or having a log of conversation helps so much. When in person it is harder to take notes and be part of the converdation.

inertiatic 9y ago

This, so much. Just the past 2 weeks I've had multiple face to face meetings to decide on a plan of action for a project. Everyone left the meeting thinking something has been decided. Turns out there were 2 or 3 separate ideas on how we were proceeding with handling things! Can't help but think that if this conversation was held in text, proposed approaches would have been more clear to everyone, and the problem of whether a conclusion was reached or not would be easily solved by revisiting the conversation.

kps 9y ago

Having discussions in writing also means that the next person to join the team has the information available.