3 ms·
It seems like a communication issue. Why would you need a video call to ask a question? Problem is that people are used to verbal communication and lack skills
by intricatedetail 6y ago
It seems like a communication issue. Why would you need a video call to ask a question? Problem is that people are used to verbal communication and lack skills to convey a message in writing. When worked in remote first company it was a non issue, rarely had to go on a video call. We had social calls often, but work stuff easily worked out over text. It is also about culture - we had a codebase very well documented and if a starter had questions their task was to improve the documentation together with the dev assigned to onboarding.
- Smaug123 6y agoIt's not quite entirely about culture - I do think that a synchronous call with someone provides better opportunities to detect their unknown unknowns, because you get to see their thought process as they formulate the question. Obviously one can get by without it, but I think this is one of the places where the lack of serendipity actually does hit a little. Once someone has fewer unknown unknowns, though, the act of asking a question by text can often be enough of a rubber duck that they don't need to hit "send" at all.
- intricatedetail 6y agoNow that you mention it, most of the video calls could have been replaced by a rubber duck. We would do calls for junior devs so they could watch a senior working on a problem and ask questions then to learn their thought process. They found it helpful.