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We bought our whole team Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headsets. They cost around $250 each but are well worth the background noise cancellation and have excell

by robjan 6y ago

We bought our whole team Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headsets. They cost around $250 each but are well worth the background noise cancellation and have excellent sound quality.

closeparen 6y ago
I looked around and couldn’t find the latency for these in the manufacturer’s spec sheet. Do you know what it is? Bluetooth does not bode well - usually hundreds of milliseconds, which is enough to interfere with conversation turn-taking.
- heymijo 6y ago
  closeparen, you're majoring in the minors. I watch a group of twenty kindergarten students (5 and 6 year olds) every day who have figured out how to have effective remote meetings (turn taking, mute by default, etc) and most don't use headphones. Bring up the issue with your team. Pick some norms to try, and iterate until it works. You got this.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    That’s the argument. You need something very much like elementary school classroom management norms to make remote meetings sustainable with current technology. These norms are great for lectures but a serious drag on the kind of interactive, spontaneous conversation that is possible in person (or theoretically on higher quality, lower latency links). Remote work partisans are reduced to arguing that this kind of conversation isn’t important to the work we do. Which is certainly possible! But does not match my intuition. Or my CEO’s intuition. Which is why we’re going back to the office. Maybe a remote competitor will beat us anyway. Time will tell. I suspect that the remote dream is correct but early, and better telepresence technology will get us there eventually.
    - askafriend 6y ago
      From your responses, it doesn't seem like your company is putting forth even the bare minimum effort to make it work. I say this is a failure of management more than anything else. Tough pill to swallow if you have company pride, but a lot of people have figured this out many months ago. Doesn't mean it's perfect or a replacement for in-person meetings, but many teams are far ahead of what you guys seem to be doing (which is essentially nothing?).
      - ebrenes 6y ago
        I wouldn't go that far. The feeling I'm getting from their responses are of someone that appreciates the nuance and details of social interactions. As someone who lacks that detailed appreciation, this stood out for me. It was like reading an audiophile describe what I previously thought were a perfectly serviceable set of headphones in less than stellar terms, while realizing they're probably right, but still cognizant that those short-comings did not affect my use of those headphones, in particular.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Except that your conclusion is that those meetings are useless while at all managed to make them useful. Maybe the issue is your unwillingness to change habits and adjust to different situation.

by robjan 6y ago

We bought our whole team Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headsets. They cost around $250 each but are well worth the background noise cancellation and have excellent sound quality.

closeparen 6y ago

I looked around and couldn’t find the latency for these in the manufacturer’s spec sheet. Do you know what it is? Bluetooth does not bode well - usually hundreds of milliseconds, which is enough to interfere with conversation turn-taking.

heymijo 6y ago
closeparen, you're majoring in the minors. I watch a group of twenty kindergarten students (5 and 6 year olds) every day who have figured out how to have effective remote meetings (turn taking, mute by default, etc) and most don't use headphones. Bring up the issue with your team. Pick some norms to try, and iterate until it works. You got this.
- closeparen 6y ago
  That’s the argument. You need something very much like elementary school classroom management norms to make remote meetings sustainable with current technology. These norms are great for lectures but a serious drag on the kind of interactive, spontaneous conversation that is possible in person (or theoretically on higher quality, lower latency links). Remote work partisans are reduced to arguing that this kind of conversation isn’t important to the work we do. Which is certainly possible! But does not match my intuition. Or my CEO’s intuition. Which is why we’re going back to the office. Maybe a remote competitor will beat us anyway. Time will tell. I suspect that the remote dream is correct but early, and better telepresence technology will get us there eventually.
  - askafriend 6y ago
    From your responses, it doesn't seem like your company is putting forth even the bare minimum effort to make it work. I say this is a failure of management more than anything else. Tough pill to swallow if you have company pride, but a lot of people have figured this out many months ago. Doesn't mean it's perfect or a replacement for in-person meetings, but many teams are far ahead of what you guys seem to be doing (which is essentially nothing?).
    - ebrenes 6y ago
      I wouldn't go that far. The feeling I'm getting from their responses are of someone that appreciates the nuance and details of social interactions. As someone who lacks that detailed appreciation, this stood out for me. It was like reading an audiophile describe what I previously thought were a perfectly serviceable set of headphones in less than stellar terms, while realizing they're probably right, but still cognizant that those short-comings did not affect my use of those headphones, in particular.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Except that your conclusion is that those meetings are useless while at all managed to make them useful. Maybe the issue is your unwillingness to change habits and adjust to different situation.