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Social etiquette for online spaces. Especially during a pandemic year, I'm surprised that this hasn't been more of a topic of discussion. Mostly, if people do

Social etiquette for online spaces. Especially during a pandemic year, I'm surprised that this hasn't been more of a topic of discussion. Mostly, if people do talk about social etiquette, it's within the context of not explicitly pissing people off, or looking good to your boss. I've never seen anyone talk about actually having good social interactions online. I've had a few friends change jobs during the pandemic, and the thing they immediately tell me is that none of them have made any friends at work since starting virtually. They all just work on their own tickets, and whatever collaboration there is, is pretty transactional. Zoom "happy hours" pretty much get dominated by two or three voices (usually of the most senior people) and everyone else just listens, because you can't have 2 conversations at a time. I've heard a bunch of the most cringeworthy techniques that managements have tried, to enhance socialization among employees. In person, some things are pretty obvious. If someone is new, usually a good team will invite you into the conversation somehow. It would be weird if you got to your office and sat down and for days no one asked you anything about yourself. But it's perfectly fine to log into slack and have no DMs for weeks or even months.

raihansaputra 6y ago
I started a new job since March, this is similar to what I’ve experienced. Fortunately my team has some ways to work around the limitations (team lunch and what not) so it’s definitely not terrible, but I’m missing the spontaneous smoke/coffee breaks from in-office type of work.
daniellarusso 6y ago
I think alot of this are symptoms of bad management or inexperienced management dealing with remote work. I have had to rise to the occasion, and facilitate icebreakers with new hires of other teams (that work with my team). Their managers thought nothing of directing the new hires to slack and email a handful of strangers. The companies or individuals that had successfully implemented remote work prior to the pandemic, I think are dealing with it better. The best tip I read was from the Zapier remote work ‘guide’, to use the Slack giphy add-on, because it is easier to convey emotions via an animated gif versus text. Of course, it was a major setback when we had to ban it for inappropriate use.
- Bukhmanizer 6y ago
  > I think alot of this are symptoms of bad management or inexperienced management dealing with remote work I agree, but I’d say >95% of management is completely unprepared to deal with remote work right now, and it doesn’t seem like they’re getting much better.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    I agree, the effort is just not there.
- sethammons 6y ago
  What constitutes inappropriate use?
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    You search for an animated gif using a particular word and the result is a NSFW image, yet you post it anyway.
    - sethammons 6y ago
      Postings, intentionally, NSFW images isn’t limited to gifs, or even images – one could make an ascii art image that is NSFW. I must still be missing something as I would assume that it should be super easy to have a talk with any employee who is doing anything NSFW at work/on work equipment and institute strict penalties if it is an ongoing issue. Removing everyone’s ability to leverage a (increasingly) common way to express intent/emotion/levity feels like the incorrect solution.
      - daniellarusso 6y ago
        I agree, but it was one of the cofounders. Should they have known better? 100%
wincy 6y ago
Our work did breakout rooms, so we had a “virtual happy hour” with 70+ people, then 10 other rooms with silly names like some animal and the name of some popular song, and you were encouraged to pick whichever you wanted. Resulted in a pretty even spread of maybe 7 people per room. It was pretty cool because after we broke into groups I got to have some lighthearted small talk with the company CEO (I work at a 10000+ people company), which felt really neat to me as just a SWE a few management detached from execs, and I don’t think it would have happened pre-pandemic. Alternatively, we had another “happy hour” organized by a different team that was like you said, 100+ folks with just a few of the most popular (or maybe just gregarious?) people cracking jokes and taking center stage, like a high school dance where a few people are dancing and everyone else awkwardly stands on the sidelines.
gfxgirl 6y ago
I'm sure this is worse because of WFH but I experienced this at FAANG before WFH. The teams are giant, there's a huge list of things to work on, pick one, do it mostly on your own. Loneliest job I ever had. Yea there were co-workers and we'd get lunch and talk but we weren't collaborating, only co-existing.
- yodsanklai 6y ago
  Doesn't seem that bad to me :) I noticed some people like to work on their own, while others like to work as small teams, or do peer programming sessions or whatnot. Maybe you could try to find similarly minded people within your team.
- someperson 6y ago
  Do you mind saying which FAANG you found that environment in? I can understand why some people wouldn't enjoy that environment but a focused workday then a chatty short lunchtime walk sounds like an enjoyable work environment for people like myself.
theanirudh 6y ago
> Zoom "happy hours" pretty much get dominated by two or three voices (usually of the most senior people) and everyone else just listens, because you can't have 2 conversations at a time. This is definitely a problem and my co founder and I wanted to solve it. We tried a bunch of stuff, but one thing that we noticed was that we were playing a lot more casual games with our friends and family since the pandemic. It was pretty enjoyable. We tried the same with our colleagues and it was definitely much better than a Zoom happy hour. The game provides some structure which removes the awkwardness and there is some amount of participation from everyone on the call. We are now working on a product (https://getlounge.app/ https://getlounge.app/) that helps teams organize these game happy hours.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  Jackbox series of games could be really good for this, only one person needs to own the game everyone else logs in on a phone or browser to play. Mixture of trivia/adlibs/assorted minigames
  - tome 6y ago
    https://www.boardgamearena.com/ https://www.boardgamearena.com/ is also good
woutr_be 6y ago
> Zoom "happy hours" pretty much get dominated by two or three voices (usually of the most senior people) and everyone else just listens, because you can't have 2 conversations at a time. They tried to do “zoom happy hours” where I work, and this was exactly what happened. The two people who were usually the loudest in the office, just ended up talking to each other. They would quite often stop and say “it feels like we’re the only one talking here”, and then go on talking. Of course you’re the only one talking, you never stop talking. It’s impossible to get a word in. If you want others to participate, give them a chance, there’s often a small delay, so giving them 2 or 3 seconds to respond would help.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  If I catch myself talking too much I sometimes make a joke or something and make a point out of muting myself until someone asks me something directly. Still I think there's room for more: I'm not that interesting, it just seems that many people want someone to say something.
  - woutr_be 6y ago
    I feel that, especially with video calls, it’s good to have some sort of moderator. If someone is talking too much, they can jump in and just say “xxx, what do you think?”, quite often that’s really all you need. In video calls it’s much harder to pick up signs that someone wants to say something.
tomjen3 6y ago
Zoom has breakout rooms that you can assign people to randomly. Take the number of participants, divide that by 3 or 4 and that is the number of breakout rooms you need.
grsmvg 6y ago
I used this for someone’s birthday drinks yesterday: https://getmibo.com/ https://getmibo.com/ It’s a space were you can walk around freely, have proximity-based audio volume, and your head is your webcam.
- tome 6y ago
  https://spatial.chat/ https://spatial.chat/ is similar but two dimensional. It was used for the social component of the Haskell Love conference this year and I really enjoyed the way that it promoted social engagement.

raihansaputra 6y ago

I started a new job since March, this is similar to what I’ve experienced. Fortunately my team has some ways to work around the limitations (team lunch and what not) so it’s definitely not terrible, but I’m missing the spontaneous smoke/coffee breaks from in-office type of work.

daniellarusso 6y ago

I think alot of this are symptoms of bad management or inexperienced management dealing with remote work. I have had to rise to the occasion, and facilitate icebreakers with new hires of other teams (that work with my team). Their managers thought nothing of directing the new hires to slack and email a handful of strangers. The companies or individuals that had successfully implemented remote work prior to the pandemic, I think are dealing with it better. The best tip I read was from the Zapier remote work ‘guide’, to use the Slack giphy add-on, because it is easier to convey emotions via an animated gif versus text. Of course, it was a major setback when we had to ban it for inappropriate use.

Bukhmanizer 6y ago
> I think alot of this are symptoms of bad management or inexperienced management dealing with remote work I agree, but I’d say >95% of management is completely unprepared to deal with remote work right now, and it doesn’t seem like they’re getting much better.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  I agree, the effort is just not there.
sethammons 6y ago
What constitutes inappropriate use?
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  You search for an animated gif using a particular word and the result is a NSFW image, yet you post it anyway.
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Postings, intentionally, NSFW images isn’t limited to gifs, or even images – one could make an ascii art image that is NSFW. I must still be missing something as I would assume that it should be super easy to have a talk with any employee who is doing anything NSFW at work/on work equipment and institute strict penalties if it is an ongoing issue. Removing everyone’s ability to leverage a (increasingly) common way to express intent/emotion/levity feels like the incorrect solution.
    - daniellarusso 6y ago
      I agree, but it was one of the cofounders. Should they have known better? 100%

wincy 6y ago

Our work did breakout rooms, so we had a “virtual happy hour” with 70+ people, then 10 other rooms with silly names like some animal and the name of some popular song, and you were encouraged to pick whichever you wanted. Resulted in a pretty even spread of maybe 7 people per room. It was pretty cool because after we broke into groups I got to have some lighthearted small talk with the company CEO (I work at a 10000+ people company), which felt really neat to me as just a SWE a few management detached from execs, and I don’t think it would have happened pre-pandemic. Alternatively, we had another “happy hour” organized by a different team that was like you said, 100+ folks with just a few of the most popular (or maybe just gregarious?) people cracking jokes and taking center stage, like a high school dance where a few people are dancing and everyone else awkwardly stands on the sidelines.

gfxgirl 6y ago

I'm sure this is worse because of WFH but I experienced this at FAANG before WFH. The teams are giant, there's a huge list of things to work on, pick one, do it mostly on your own. Loneliest job I ever had. Yea there were co-workers and we'd get lunch and talk but we weren't collaborating, only co-existing.

yodsanklai 6y ago
Doesn't seem that bad to me :) I noticed some people like to work on their own, while others like to work as small teams, or do peer programming sessions or whatnot. Maybe you could try to find similarly minded people within your team.
someperson 6y ago
Do you mind saying which FAANG you found that environment in? I can understand why some people wouldn't enjoy that environment but a focused workday then a chatty short lunchtime walk sounds like an enjoyable work environment for people like myself.

theanirudh 6y ago

> Zoom "happy hours" pretty much get dominated by two or three voices (usually of the most senior people) and everyone else just listens, because you can't have 2 conversations at a time. This is definitely a problem and my co founder and I wanted to solve it. We tried a bunch of stuff, but one thing that we noticed was that we were playing a lot more casual games with our friends and family since the pandemic. It was pretty enjoyable. We tried the same with our colleagues and it was definitely much better than a Zoom happy hour. The game provides some structure which removes the awkwardness and there is some amount of participation from everyone on the call. We are now working on a product (https://getlounge.app/ https://getlounge.app/) that helps teams organize these game happy hours.

thatguy0900 6y ago
Jackbox series of games could be really good for this, only one person needs to own the game everyone else logs in on a phone or browser to play. Mixture of trivia/adlibs/assorted minigames
- tome 6y ago
  https://www.boardgamearena.com/ https://www.boardgamearena.com/ is also good

woutr_be 6y ago

> Zoom "happy hours" pretty much get dominated by two or three voices (usually of the most senior people) and everyone else just listens, because you can't have 2 conversations at a time. They tried to do “zoom happy hours” where I work, and this was exactly what happened. The two people who were usually the loudest in the office, just ended up talking to each other. They would quite often stop and say “it feels like we’re the only one talking here”, and then go on talking. Of course you’re the only one talking, you never stop talking. It’s impossible to get a word in. If you want others to participate, give them a chance, there’s often a small delay, so giving them 2 or 3 seconds to respond would help.

skinkestek 6y ago
If I catch myself talking too much I sometimes make a joke or something and make a point out of muting myself until someone asks me something directly. Still I think there's room for more: I'm not that interesting, it just seems that many people want someone to say something.
- woutr_be 6y ago
  I feel that, especially with video calls, it’s good to have some sort of moderator. If someone is talking too much, they can jump in and just say “xxx, what do you think?”, quite often that’s really all you need. In video calls it’s much harder to pick up signs that someone wants to say something.

tomjen3 6y ago

Zoom has breakout rooms that you can assign people to randomly. Take the number of participants, divide that by 3 or 4 and that is the number of breakout rooms you need.

grsmvg 6y ago

I used this for someone’s birthday drinks yesterday: https://getmibo.com/ https://getmibo.com/ It’s a space were you can walk around freely, have proximity-based audio volume, and your head is your webcam.

tome 6y ago
https://spatial.chat/ https://spatial.chat/ is similar but two dimensional. It was used for the social component of the Haskell Love conference this year and I really enjoyed the way that it promoted social engagement.