4 ms·

I couldn't possibly disagree more. Voice comms are _hideously_ inefficient and limited compared to chats and virtually always an inferior option in a group cont

I couldn't possibly disagree more. Voice comms are _hideously_ inefficient and limited compared to chats and virtually always an inferior option in a group context, in a professional context, and especially for a professional team. They always interrupt one person, and every additional person involved is a decision about how much more time and attention to take and how many more interruptions to make balanced against who to leave out of communication. They are slower for groups over around 4 people, they are more likely to produce misunderstandings, more likely to omit details. They make it harder to refer back to things, they leave less of a window for people to gather their thoughts and word things clearly. They are far more likely to be rushed through because the communication is fully synchronous. They cannot divert into simultaneous side conversations. I struggle to think of situations where I'd rather have a voice call than a text conversation. If a potential employer told me they relied on VoIP phones over Slack/Discord I would consider that a _major_ point against them.

xte 8y ago
Try the two with a chess timer aside. I have done that many time and see the result. Doing a thing at a time, so being interrupted, prove to be FAR more productive than doing many thing at a time. Of course if you interact with professional people, if you have to interact with brainless individuals that can't even express themselves in their language well... It's another story, but even in this case it's wasted time.
- matwood 8y ago
  When you time a voice chat, are you also including the time to document what was said and share it with the team?
  - xte 8y ago
    I consider ITIL, Kanban and all other managerial erotic bureaucracy harmful. If I need to document something said by voice I have only to push a button on my deskphone and an mp3 of the conversation with reasonably good audio quality will be created and sent to my mail when I end the call, also I use to have a small portable recorder with a good mic in my pocket, while it's not legally valid it I do not tell others that I'm recording it turn out really useful in few cases. Fortunately I'm in EU (France) so I have still a bit of choice (less and less, unfortunately) to avoid certain bureaucratic companies too much common in modern English world (and I evidence modern because when UK was a real power and USA was a really strong economy they do NOT have such modern mania or at least it was far far far less developed). What I simply measure is how much I can do with single tasking concentrated operation vs how much I can do and how bad the resulting quality is when I multitask. The result are simple: the more I try to be quick the more error and time I waste, the more I go calm the best result I achieve. And while I do not have real consistent data I can see result of a certain kind of work paradigm everyday in any aspect of our society.
- zbentley 8y ago
  > Try the two with a chess timer Of course voice will be faster--eight out of ten times at least one involved party's main goal is just to get off the phone. Optimizing for time is a mistake. Optimize for disruption (I can switch back to other work while waiting for a chat reply--there's context-switching overhead there, but not nearly as much as a phone call), retention (I can refer back to what someone said in chat, rather than "hey, Jane, what was that hostname again?", waiting for an atrocious speech-to-text conversion, or manually seeking around in a call recording), and mutual investment in communication (professional or not, a synchronous call usually has at least one participant that wants to be there less than the other[s]--in chat, people can participate when they're most interested in doing so, meaning that their contributions are less half-assed). There are situations where sync is best (trying to pitch something or persuade colleagues of something is a big one--it's just easier to reject/be reluctant without engaging critically via chat for some reason). But a lot of the time chat is more efficient. I've found that many people I've worked with who strongly dislike chat are not practiced or comfortable writers in general, and, after some training (if such folks are willing, I've had them take documentation, presentation-building, or RFC/RFO writing tasks as practice), they tend to be much, much happier about (and better at!) textual communication.
AJ007 8y ago
As someone who hires and employees remote developers, it’s a massive red flag when a new developer wants to have a voice call.

xte 8y ago

Try the two with a chess timer aside. I have done that many time and see the result. Doing a thing at a time, so being interrupted, prove to be FAR more productive than doing many thing at a time. Of course if you interact with professional people, if you have to interact with brainless individuals that can't even express themselves in their language well... It's another story, but even in this case it's wasted time.

matwood 8y ago
When you time a voice chat, are you also including the time to document what was said and share it with the team?
- xte 8y ago
  I consider ITIL, Kanban and all other managerial erotic bureaucracy harmful. If I need to document something said by voice I have only to push a button on my deskphone and an mp3 of the conversation with reasonably good audio quality will be created and sent to my mail when I end the call, also I use to have a small portable recorder with a good mic in my pocket, while it's not legally valid it I do not tell others that I'm recording it turn out really useful in few cases. Fortunately I'm in EU (France) so I have still a bit of choice (less and less, unfortunately) to avoid certain bureaucratic companies too much common in modern English world (and I evidence modern because when UK was a real power and USA was a really strong economy they do NOT have such modern mania or at least it was far far far less developed). What I simply measure is how much I can do with single tasking concentrated operation vs how much I can do and how bad the resulting quality is when I multitask. The result are simple: the more I try to be quick the more error and time I waste, the more I go calm the best result I achieve. And while I do not have real consistent data I can see result of a certain kind of work paradigm everyday in any aspect of our society.
zbentley 8y ago
> Try the two with a chess timer Of course voice will be faster--eight out of ten times at least one involved party's main goal is just to get off the phone. Optimizing for time is a mistake. Optimize for disruption (I can switch back to other work while waiting for a chat reply--there's context-switching overhead there, but not nearly as much as a phone call), retention (I can refer back to what someone said in chat, rather than "hey, Jane, what was that hostname again?", waiting for an atrocious speech-to-text conversion, or manually seeking around in a call recording), and mutual investment in communication (professional or not, a synchronous call usually has at least one participant that wants to be there less than the other[s]--in chat, people can participate when they're most interested in doing so, meaning that their contributions are less half-assed). There are situations where sync is best (trying to pitch something or persuade colleagues of something is a big one--it's just easier to reject/be reluctant without engaging critically via chat for some reason). But a lot of the time chat is more efficient. I've found that many people I've worked with who strongly dislike chat are not practiced or comfortable writers in general, and, after some training (if such folks are willing, I've had them take documentation, presentation-building, or RFC/RFO writing tasks as practice), they tend to be much, much happier about (and better at!) textual communication.

AJ007 8y ago

As someone who hires and employees remote developers, it’s a massive red flag when a new developer wants to have a voice call.