> but are happy to let people overhear what you think. In my experience, most engineers in offices spend their days with headphones on because they’re trying

> but are happy to let people overhear what you think. In my experience, most engineers in offices spend their days with headphones on because they’re trying to drown out the office noises. They’re not going to overhear anything. Also, again, in my own experience, even if you don’t and are listening to what’s going on around you, you still can only overhear what’s said by those relatively close to you. That is, the probability of overhearing something useful has been, for me, incredibly low to the point that it hasn’t been worth it. > rather than grabbing her for a “Can you look at this?” When I’ve worked remotely, we’ve often sent each other messages asking to explain some code or hopped on a quick screenshare to go over it. Bonus: due to the asynchronous nature of text chat, I don’t accidentally interrupt the other person. Also, the more that is done in text chat, the more of a record of it you have when you inevitably forget. Its much better to be able to do a quick search in your chat logs than to re-interrupt the person to explain the thing again. > But whole-team remote work? No thanks! I’d rather have everyone remote, because it means you can optimise the company around it. If only some people are remote, or people are remote only some of the time, then companies tend to treat them as second-class citizens and optimise for in-person.