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All of which can be done via texts, chats and video conferencing.

by pts_ 7y ago

rat9988 7y ago
Texts maybe. Video conferencing and chats tend to be more tedious than human to human conversations from my experience.
- cliffy 7y ago
  IRC/Slack/etc is great because you can have informal conversations in a channel where your whole team can observe and participate in a more asynchronous nature. Human conversations are fine, but you generally don't get a durable record of them after the fact, and only those present will have a chance to participate.
throwawaymath 7y ago
In theory, sure. In practice, I've never had a Slack conversation or video conference which felt as natural, rich, spontaneous or productive as a focused discussion in person. I say that as someone who worked fully from home for five years on a remote dev team. That's not to say it's not useful. It's better than email, leaves a neat record to come back to and supports asynchronous communication. There are advantages. But strictly speaking, no, you cannot capture everything good and useful about in-person conversation using text and video. I don't think it should be controversial that much of the richness of in-person conversation - tone, nuance, body language, facial expression, spontaneity, speed - can't be meaningfully replicated through remote mediums. You can't get all of these things from a message or video chat. You can get some of them well, and a few others decently, but it isn't the same. I like remote work a lot and wish more companies would support it. That being said, in my experience when people give honest, cogent criticisms of remote work they mostly receive responses which don't speak to the spirit of their point. In this comment thread, for example, the person you responded to is talking about difficulties. You are responding as if the person was talking about impossibilities. It is (emphatically) not impossible to function as a remote team, and very few people will try to make that case. But in the world we live in and with the technology we currently have, there are things about in-person discussion you will not be able to capture on a remote team. If nothing else people have different values. Some developers enjoy being highly social when they're working, others don't. Some don't mind interruptions, others do. Many people feel a sense of comfort and empowerment by using Slack or Zoom which makes it easier for them to have productive discussion, for a variety of reasons. Likewise many developers do not get any of the same enjoyment out of a Slack or Zoom conversation that they do from face to face communication.
closeparen 7y ago
Video conferencing is great for people taking turns presenting, but my experience is that Zoom with high-end integrated conference rooms on 1Gbps fiber cannot support conversation. The latency and audio processing wreck the normal “traffic control” protocol for interactive discussion. Participants don’t perceive and yield to others trying to jump in, like they would in person. Instead you get a sequence of monologues, which requires formal moderation to work decently.
hindsightbias 7y ago
The vast majority of chats seem to take much more linear time than a 1:1 conversation. Multi-tasking them just means 5 people are tapping you on the shoulder within a near-timeframe. So 5X worse than an office? Slack is often the worst part of some email and forum hybrid. I often wonder how many problems used to be resolved because people worked together in the same location vs now it feels like the 10 things I interact with in a week are broken or require finding a work-around. Many of the chats are "how do you get around this?"

All of which can be done via texts, chats and video conferencing.

by pts_ 7y ago

All of which can be done via texts, chats and video conferencing.

rat9988 7y ago

Texts maybe. Video conferencing and chats tend to be more tedious than human to human conversations from my experience.

cliffy 7y ago
IRC/Slack/etc is great because you can have informal conversations in a channel where your whole team can observe and participate in a more asynchronous nature. Human conversations are fine, but you generally don't get a durable record of them after the fact, and only those present will have a chance to participate.

throwawaymath 7y ago

In theory, sure. In practice, I've never had a Slack conversation or video conference which felt as natural, rich, spontaneous or productive as a focused discussion in person. I say that as someone who worked fully from home for five years on a remote dev team. That's not to say it's not useful. It's better than email, leaves a neat record to come back to and supports asynchronous communication. There are advantages. But strictly speaking, no, you cannot capture everything good and useful about in-person conversation using text and video. I don't think it should be controversial that much of the richness of in-person conversation - tone, nuance, body language, facial expression, spontaneity, speed - can't be meaningfully replicated through remote mediums. You can't get all of these things from a message or video chat. You can get some of them well, and a few others decently, but it isn't the same. I like remote work a lot and wish more companies would support it. That being said, in my experience when people give honest, cogent criticisms of remote work they mostly receive responses which don't speak to the spirit of their point. In this comment thread, for example, the person you responded to is talking about difficulties. You are responding as if the person was talking about impossibilities. It is (emphatically) not impossible to function as a remote team, and very few people will try to make that case. But in the world we live in and with the technology we currently have, there are things about in-person discussion you will not be able to capture on a remote team. If nothing else people have different values. Some developers enjoy being highly social when they're working, others don't. Some don't mind interruptions, others do. Many people feel a sense of comfort and empowerment by using Slack or Zoom which makes it easier for them to have productive discussion, for a variety of reasons. Likewise many developers do not get any of the same enjoyment out of a Slack or Zoom conversation that they do from face to face communication.

closeparen 7y ago

Video conferencing is great for people taking turns presenting, but my experience is that Zoom with high-end integrated conference rooms on 1Gbps fiber cannot support conversation. The latency and audio processing wreck the normal “traffic control” protocol for interactive discussion. Participants don’t perceive and yield to others trying to jump in, like they would in person. Instead you get a sequence of monologues, which requires formal moderation to work decently.

hindsightbias 7y ago

The vast majority of chats seem to take much more linear time than a 1:1 conversation. Multi-tasking them just means 5 people are tapping you on the shoulder within a near-timeframe. So 5X worse than an office? Slack is often the worst part of some email and forum hybrid. I often wonder how many problems used to be resolved because people worked together in the same location vs now it feels like the 10 things I interact with in a week are broken or require finding a work-around. Many of the chats are "how do you get around this?"