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Can you expand on the disadvantages then? If you were to write that list, what would it look like?

by cgb223 8y ago

bradford 8y ago
I'm not the parent poster, but I think the document glossed over the biggest perceived disadvantage: Despite technological advances, I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information and come to conclusions on difficult decisions. It's also the least susceptible to misinterpretation.
- buvanshak 8y ago
  > I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information ... Why do people think this. For one thing, and I think it is most important, face to face communication does not give either parties time to think. It ends up with awkward, unproductive pauses. Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought...
  - BallinBige 8y ago
    "Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought..." wat.
    - buvanshak 8y ago
      You know, face to face communication is good if you are repeating stuff you heard from somewhere or stuff like "Hi there, how was your weekend" type of talk. When you want productive communication, you want thought backing content and framing of every one of your sentences...
  - varenc 8y ago
    I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements and, as the parent said, difficult conclusions. I’ve seen things get a bit out of hand over email that then get resolved quite efficiently after a face to face. Live video chat is a good alternative, but I think more natural human empthay comes out in face to face experiences. People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved quickly before they fester. Live video chat gets you much of this but isn’t quite as effective in my experience. To me this observation just means that on remote teams you need to be observant of such issues and spend a little more time to resolve them, which can be a fine trade off for remote teams. (Or ideally avoid overly contentious debates in the first place)
    - BigJono 8y ago
      In my experience face to face communication is great for resolving contentious technical disagreements because whoever is doing the most thinking and the least talking falls behind, thinks "fuck this" and capitulates instantly; usually resulting in the wrong decision being made. If the metric is "time to decision" then face to face will do very well.
    - buvanshak 8y ago
      >I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements... I have observed the same. But 9 out of 10 times, it was because the losing party couldn't spend much time thinking about counter arguments. So again, it cures the symptom, but it benefits only the person with the loudest voice in the room, and not the one with sound reason. >People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved... Don't buy this either. As I said before, the "seem to understand" bit might come from the fact that people often does not express disagreement in face to face communication that often, because they didn't have time to think it through. EDIT: This is assuming that the both parties in the discussion are more or less on the same level of competence. If the communication is going to be mostly one sided, then face to face communication (Like a teacher in a class room) is fine.
Azeralthefallen 8y ago
I worked for a company that was mostly a remote workplace for almost a year, and there were a lot of problems i found while trying to manage a team. Time zones, were a huge issue and pain point when trying to get a large number of people on the same page. I found my self often having to give the same meeting twice, which put more pressure on me. Even worse was when i would have to go over points only for someone who wasn't available for the first meeting, to raise issues that we didn't notice, and so on. After 6 months the team basically felt like it dissolved into the European team, and the North American Team. With me trying to ferry information from one team to another. So many times regardless of how amazing the latest tools we tried were, it still pales in comparison to a whiteboard. The company bought me a high end digital whiteboard, that allowed me to pass control to other people, it was a buggy POS. On top of that since i was the only one unfortunately with the white board, it meant i was the one who was always doing the drawing and trying to extrapolate a diagram from what someone says. Sometimes some team members would spend hours drawing up a digital mock up of what they were going to push for only for it to become completely useless within a very short time. I also found some people no matter how hard i tried, some people seemed to interpret working remote meant, they got to work in their own silo, and would ignore 99% of everything going on around them. This lead to numerous conflicts, and other issues. Also one other thing i found, was that 1 on 1's became super impersonal, and frankly felt extremely uncomfortable.
- Yeroc 8y ago
  The website appears to emphasize communicating via the written word and other asynchronous forms of communication. I'm curious whether you found communicating asynchronously didn't work or wasn't as effective or if it was the team members specifically that were the issue?

Can you expand on the disadvantages then? If you were to write that list, what would it look like?

by cgb223 8y ago

Can you expand on the disadvantages then? If you were to write that list, what would it look like?

I'm not the parent poster, but I think the document glossed over the biggest perceived disadvantage: Despite technological advances, I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information and come to conclusions on difficult decisions. It's also the least susceptible to misinterpretation.

buvanshak 8y ago
> I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information ... Why do people think this. For one thing, and I think it is most important, face to face communication does not give either parties time to think. It ends up with awkward, unproductive pauses. Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought...
- BallinBige 8y ago
  "Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought..." wat.
  - buvanshak 8y ago
    You know, face to face communication is good if you are repeating stuff you heard from somewhere or stuff like "Hi there, how was your weekend" type of talk. When you want productive communication, you want thought backing content and framing of every one of your sentences...
- varenc 8y ago
  I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements and, as the parent said, difficult conclusions. I’ve seen things get a bit out of hand over email that then get resolved quite efficiently after a face to face. Live video chat is a good alternative, but I think more natural human empthay comes out in face to face experiences. People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved quickly before they fester. Live video chat gets you much of this but isn’t quite as effective in my experience. To me this observation just means that on remote teams you need to be observant of such issues and spend a little more time to resolve them, which can be a fine trade off for remote teams. (Or ideally avoid overly contentious debates in the first place)
  - BigJono 8y ago
    In my experience face to face communication is great for resolving contentious technical disagreements because whoever is doing the most thinking and the least talking falls behind, thinks "fuck this" and capitulates instantly; usually resulting in the wrong decision being made. If the metric is "time to decision" then face to face will do very well.
  - buvanshak 8y ago
    >I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements... I have observed the same. But 9 out of 10 times, it was because the losing party couldn't spend much time thinking about counter arguments. So again, it cures the symptom, but it benefits only the person with the loudest voice in the room, and not the one with sound reason. >People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved... Don't buy this either. As I said before, the "seem to understand" bit might come from the fact that people often does not express disagreement in face to face communication that often, because they didn't have time to think it through. EDIT: This is assuming that the both parties in the discussion are more or less on the same level of competence. If the communication is going to be mostly one sided, then face to face communication (Like a teacher in a class room) is fine.

Azeralthefallen 8y ago

I worked for a company that was mostly a remote workplace for almost a year, and there were a lot of problems i found while trying to manage a team. Time zones, were a huge issue and pain point when trying to get a large number of people on the same page. I found my self often having to give the same meeting twice, which put more pressure on me. Even worse was when i would have to go over points only for someone who wasn't available for the first meeting, to raise issues that we didn't notice, and so on. After 6 months the team basically felt like it dissolved into the European team, and the North American Team. With me trying to ferry information from one team to another. So many times regardless of how amazing the latest tools we tried were, it still pales in comparison to a whiteboard. The company bought me a high end digital whiteboard, that allowed me to pass control to other people, it was a buggy POS. On top of that since i was the only one unfortunately with the white board, it meant i was the one who was always doing the drawing and trying to extrapolate a diagram from what someone says. Sometimes some team members would spend hours drawing up a digital mock up of what they were going to push for only for it to become completely useless within a very short time. I also found some people no matter how hard i tried, some people seemed to interpret working remote meant, they got to work in their own silo, and would ignore 99% of everything going on around them. This lead to numerous conflicts, and other issues. Also one other thing i found, was that 1 on 1's became super impersonal, and frankly felt extremely uncomfortable.

Yeroc 8y ago
The website appears to emphasize communicating via the written word and other asynchronous forms of communication. I'm curious whether you found communicating asynchronously didn't work or wasn't as effective or if it was the team members specifically that were the issue?