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Our return to the office has been back and forth for various reasons, but the ultimate goal is that everyone work in the office every day. But in an effort to m

Our return to the office has been back and forth for various reasons, but the ultimate goal is that everyone work in the office every day. But in an effort to make commuting easier, we are opening satellite offices in the metropolitan area...which (when all satellites are open) scatters teams between up to four offices. So nearly all of our meetings will be via Zoom, even if team members are "in the office." I don't want to criticize too much, because I work for an otherwise great employer, but this decision just has me shaking my head.

rob74 5y ago
The problem with Zoom calls in the office is that you usually do them at your desk rather than in a meeting room, and when you do that, you are totally destroying the productivity of anyone who happens to be in the room with you. Not to mention what happens if several people in the same room have different calls at the same time...
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  The absolute worst is being in an office with several people who are on the same call as you at their own desks. You can neither listen to the call nor the person near you speaking and you hear everything the say with a 2 second delay.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    I've had that as the standard practice for meetings at a job so we accommodate remote/other employees but the employer had bought us good noise-canceling headsets so there was no issue when a person near to you will be speaking.
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago
      So all the people in the office on calls are wearing noise cancelling headphones so they can take part in meetings with people who may be in the same office. Even with good noise cancelling they have to be permanently muted if not talking to avoid bleed though noise from the environment. All of the other people around then are forced to wear noise cancelling headphones to cancel out the noise of all the people around them talking into their noise cancelling headphones. Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space?
      - Tenoke 5y ago
        This was mostly just for company-wide meetings (standups and the like). For smaller meetings people would move to a conference room. >Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space? I didn't argue against remote, simply that having an online meeting which includes people near you doesn't have to be problematic sound-wise.
        iso1210 5y ago
        It is a massive problem, especially if people don't mute when not speaking, or if people nearby are speaking at the same time (on a different meeting). Nothing to do with noise cancelling headphones
        themadturk 5y ago
        Conference rooms are a great idea. Unfortunately, while we have multiple conference rooms set up for video meetings, we don't have nearly enough of them.
  - watwut 5y ago
    In our office, this created in-group out-group dynamic within the meeting each time. The in-person people were making jokes to each other and commenting stuff while online people had no idea. So, result is that the same meeting have one group coordinating with muted microphones and other oblivious. Perfect. It did not created some kind of real split (yet), but the potential is super clear and it is pretty much guaranteed to happen.
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago
      Ah yes. This is horrible when a big chunk of the meeting are in the same room with several others joining online. Honestly, given the choice an all face to face meeting is the best. However, with any kind of cross location collaboration this quickly becomes impossible (even before WFH). An all online (ideally in their own workspace) meeting is far better than any other mixed mode alternative.
- lbriner 5y ago
  Not just that but if it is a private meeting and you are not on a laptop, then you have a problem unless all parties are in the office. Management meetings where you might be discussing problems in the team need to be made in private.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  You can use the Zoom chat and just share your screen to use as a whiteboard. No need for audio.
  - loup-vaillant 5y ago
    Unless you're steno-typing, good luck matching speech speed with your typing. And I'm not even talking about audio & visual cues. There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting. It's better reserved to either deliberate asynchronous communication, or very short, often purely factual, conversations.
    - sammalloy 5y ago
      > There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting. I think it can come close, provided everyone involved are experienced, fast typists, but it’s definitely a different dynamic if someone is slower. I’ve had incredibly fast chats in typing that were close to real time, face to face discussions. And when you reach a certain speed, the illusion of actual speech and listening is created, which is a fascinating phenomenon in and of itself. There’s a certain level where you reach peak verbal acuity and everything you type transcends the medium itself. At that point, you can seemingly intuit little tics, idiosyncrasies, sarcasm, humor, emotion—almost everything you get in a real time, face to face meeting.
- prmoustache 5y ago
  I now would have to take a plane to go to the office so I am now 100% remote but in my previous company they implemented hybrid for those who wanted and the idea was that the conference rooms were to be used for those being on site and the rest of the team would be remote. All rooms had been equipped with decent audio and camera that made the process seamless. People who wanted to be there 3 days a week or more could have a fixed office and leave belongings, other would have to reserve a shared one and work in a clean desk method. No company can expect having an hybrid system work without a little bit of investment and some decent guidelines. With so many space gained in the offices there is a lot of space to liberate to build more small conference rooms and some storage area for those who don't have a fixed desk but may wish to keep things on site.
- MivLives 5y ago
  We have "Phone booths" that essentially are sound isolated single person meeting rooms for calls both video and phone. Of course, they are incredibly hard to find empty. From where I'm sitting I can see 3 of them, and this is in an area that has probably 80-100 desks in it. How am I ever supposed to use these? The one thing I think they did right is keep the surface high enough it's hard to type on. Now people can't camp them all day.
- asdff 5y ago
  Its even worse when you have a zoom call with some people in a meeting room on one line, and other people connecting on another line. The people in the meeting room basically have their own discussions since the people on zoom can't get too many words in due to being talked over. Then usually the audio or video is terrible in the meeting room and if you are on the zoom call you can only hear who is standing closest to the AV equipment.
nerdponx 5y ago
In one of my previous jobs, I worked at a company where this was what things were like even before the pandemic. I worked in one office, but members of my team were scattered across two other offices. I had a 90 minute commute only to sit in an office where none of my immediate colleagues worked, and most meetings were done over WebEx. Here and there, people would travel to my office for some big marathon meeting/conference session. And to add insult to injury, if my manager happened to show up at my office that day and I wasn't there, I was given a hard time about my absence. It was horrible and demoralizing. I got to a point where I basically didn't show up to the office at all except for the occasional scheduled meetings, which were about once a month at most. I got three hours of my time back every day and actually increased my productivity, because I was able to stay home and deal with some health issues that I had at the time. That said, lots of people at that company sporadically worked from home, and even in the offices with my colleagues, there were days where as much as 1/3 of the team wasn't present. There seems to be a kind of critical mass number of working in the office: below that amount, and the office starts to feel like a ghost town, and it's benefits shrink past the point of being worth the commute. So I think companies are wrong to force people to come in every day every week, but it's clear that the benefits of working in an office on the manifest when there are enough people in the office.

rob74 5y ago

The problem with Zoom calls in the office is that you usually do them at your desk rather than in a meeting room, and when you do that, you are totally destroying the productivity of anyone who happens to be in the room with you. Not to mention what happens if several people in the same room have different calls at the same time...

VBprogrammer 5y ago
The absolute worst is being in an office with several people who are on the same call as you at their own desks. You can neither listen to the call nor the person near you speaking and you hear everything the say with a 2 second delay.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  I've had that as the standard practice for meetings at a job so we accommodate remote/other employees but the employer had bought us good noise-canceling headsets so there was no issue when a person near to you will be speaking.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    So all the people in the office on calls are wearing noise cancelling headphones so they can take part in meetings with people who may be in the same office. Even with good noise cancelling they have to be permanently muted if not talking to avoid bleed though noise from the environment. All of the other people around then are forced to wear noise cancelling headphones to cancel out the noise of all the people around them talking into their noise cancelling headphones. Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space?
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      This was mostly just for company-wide meetings (standups and the like). For smaller meetings people would move to a conference room. >Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space? I didn't argue against remote, simply that having an online meeting which includes people near you doesn't have to be problematic sound-wise.
      - iso1210 5y ago
        It is a massive problem, especially if people don't mute when not speaking, or if people nearby are speaking at the same time (on a different meeting). Nothing to do with noise cancelling headphones
      - themadturk 5y ago
        Conference rooms are a great idea. Unfortunately, while we have multiple conference rooms set up for video meetings, we don't have nearly enough of them.
- watwut 5y ago
  In our office, this created in-group out-group dynamic within the meeting each time. The in-person people were making jokes to each other and commenting stuff while online people had no idea. So, result is that the same meeting have one group coordinating with muted microphones and other oblivious. Perfect. It did not created some kind of real split (yet), but the potential is super clear and it is pretty much guaranteed to happen.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    Ah yes. This is horrible when a big chunk of the meeting are in the same room with several others joining online. Honestly, given the choice an all face to face meeting is the best. However, with any kind of cross location collaboration this quickly becomes impossible (even before WFH). An all online (ideally in their own workspace) meeting is far better than any other mixed mode alternative.
lbriner 5y ago
Not just that but if it is a private meeting and you are not on a laptop, then you have a problem unless all parties are in the office. Management meetings where you might be discussing problems in the team need to be made in private.
zozbot234 5y ago
You can use the Zoom chat and just share your screen to use as a whiteboard. No need for audio.
- loup-vaillant 5y ago
  Unless you're steno-typing, good luck matching speech speed with your typing. And I'm not even talking about audio & visual cues. There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting. It's better reserved to either deliberate asynchronous communication, or very short, often purely factual, conversations.
  - sammalloy 5y ago
    > There's no way typing can replace speech in an actual meeting. I think it can come close, provided everyone involved are experienced, fast typists, but it’s definitely a different dynamic if someone is slower. I’ve had incredibly fast chats in typing that were close to real time, face to face discussions. And when you reach a certain speed, the illusion of actual speech and listening is created, which is a fascinating phenomenon in and of itself. There’s a certain level where you reach peak verbal acuity and everything you type transcends the medium itself. At that point, you can seemingly intuit little tics, idiosyncrasies, sarcasm, humor, emotion—almost everything you get in a real time, face to face meeting.
prmoustache 5y ago
I now would have to take a plane to go to the office so I am now 100% remote but in my previous company they implemented hybrid for those who wanted and the idea was that the conference rooms were to be used for those being on site and the rest of the team would be remote. All rooms had been equipped with decent audio and camera that made the process seamless. People who wanted to be there 3 days a week or more could have a fixed office and leave belongings, other would have to reserve a shared one and work in a clean desk method. No company can expect having an hybrid system work without a little bit of investment and some decent guidelines. With so many space gained in the offices there is a lot of space to liberate to build more small conference rooms and some storage area for those who don't have a fixed desk but may wish to keep things on site.
MivLives 5y ago
We have "Phone booths" that essentially are sound isolated single person meeting rooms for calls both video and phone. Of course, they are incredibly hard to find empty. From where I'm sitting I can see 3 of them, and this is in an area that has probably 80-100 desks in it. How am I ever supposed to use these? The one thing I think they did right is keep the surface high enough it's hard to type on. Now people can't camp them all day.
asdff 5y ago
Its even worse when you have a zoom call with some people in a meeting room on one line, and other people connecting on another line. The people in the meeting room basically have their own discussions since the people on zoom can't get too many words in due to being talked over. Then usually the audio or video is terrible in the meeting room and if you are on the zoom call you can only hear who is standing closest to the AV equipment.

nerdponx 5y ago

In one of my previous jobs, I worked at a company where this was what things were like even before the pandemic. I worked in one office, but members of my team were scattered across two other offices. I had a 90 minute commute only to sit in an office where none of my immediate colleagues worked, and most meetings were done over WebEx. Here and there, people would travel to my office for some big marathon meeting/conference session. And to add insult to injury, if my manager happened to show up at my office that day and I wasn't there, I was given a hard time about my absence. It was horrible and demoralizing. I got to a point where I basically didn't show up to the office at all except for the occasional scheduled meetings, which were about once a month at most. I got three hours of my time back every day and actually increased my productivity, because I was able to stay home and deal with some health issues that I had at the time. That said, lots of people at that company sporadically worked from home, and even in the offices with my colleagues, there were days where as much as 1/3 of the team wasn't present. There seems to be a kind of critical mass number of working in the office: below that amount, and the office starts to feel like a ghost town, and it's benefits shrink past the point of being worth the commute. So I think companies are wrong to force people to come in every day every week, but it's clear that the benefits of working in an office on the manifest when there are enough people in the office.