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Some problems are solved faster by multiple people getting together in front of a whiteboard and drawing. For those kinds of problems it’s useful to have people

Some problems are solved faster by multiple people getting together in front of a whiteboard and drawing. For those kinds of problems it’s useful to have people in the same room until we have AR solutions that can fill that need. Also for some people, not leaving their home caused significant issues in their performance. People aren’t solitary creatures, so for some - the office fills that role. For others, home office works perfectly well. There isn’t a yes/no answer here. I should perhaps add, that coming to the office was always voluntary in my company, way before Covid.

dudul 4y ago
Ha the good old tale of people gathering around the whiteboard to solve hard problem. IME, it's usually 30/60 minutes during which the Architect listens to himself, draws some nice boxes and arrows, overlooks all the edge cases and nuances and then everyone goes back to their open space desk. And the next day you realize that the solution doesn't work and you start a Jira comment thread.
- j-bos 4y ago
  Are you in my office?
- senderista 4y ago
  If you’ve ever watched academics at work, this is one of the most common ways the sausage gets made. Source: worked in various CS labs for a few years
amf12 4y ago
> Some problems are solved faster by multiple people getting together in front of a whiteboard and drawing. I hear this often, and it makes sense, but I am not sure how frequently do people solve problems with whiteboarding? Is it such a frequent problem that we need to be in the office every day?
- bawolff 4y ago
  I'm not sure i have ever solved a problem at a white board in my entire career.
- eerikkivistik 4y ago
  Well, I do this every other day. The days where I need to focus on deep work and just grind things out, I stay home. The days where I need to be creative, I go to the office and get in front of a whiteboard.
iknownothow 4y ago
Sorry but in my opinion you can't beat free styling with Excalidraw and a bunch of nerds leaning back in their own basements and home offices thinking deeply and being critical of ideas. The overhead of having such meetings is next to nothing in remote compared to the office. No one has to get up to go to a meeting or book a meeting room. Did you just have a eureka moment 5 minutes after a meeting ended? No problem! Ping the group chat and get on a call in less than 15 seconds while the idea is still hot in memory. Oh you want to pick up where you last left off? No problem, upload last meetings Excalidraw file and start editing.
- eerikkivistik 4y ago
  A lot of communication between people is non-verbal. Also, the interaction with drawing software is not the natural way for people to convey their ideas, we tend to use our fingers to point, to draw etc. For some types of problems, I stand by my point, that first person interaction speeds up problem solving. But obviously there are many kinds of problems that do not benefit from this. So the way we usually structure this, is we set a date/time when X people from a team work together in the same room, if it makes sense to grind through things together. And at other times, people choose their own schedules / workplaces.

dudul 4y ago

Ha the good old tale of people gathering around the whiteboard to solve hard problem. IME, it's usually 30/60 minutes during which the Architect listens to himself, draws some nice boxes and arrows, overlooks all the edge cases and nuances and then everyone goes back to their open space desk. And the next day you realize that the solution doesn't work and you start a Jira comment thread.

j-bos 4y ago
Are you in my office?
senderista 4y ago
If you’ve ever watched academics at work, this is one of the most common ways the sausage gets made. Source: worked in various CS labs for a few years

amf12 4y ago

> Some problems are solved faster by multiple people getting together in front of a whiteboard and drawing. I hear this often, and it makes sense, but I am not sure how frequently do people solve problems with whiteboarding? Is it such a frequent problem that we need to be in the office every day?

bawolff 4y ago
I'm not sure i have ever solved a problem at a white board in my entire career.
eerikkivistik 4y ago
Well, I do this every other day. The days where I need to focus on deep work and just grind things out, I stay home. The days where I need to be creative, I go to the office and get in front of a whiteboard.

iknownothow 4y ago

Sorry but in my opinion you can't beat free styling with Excalidraw and a bunch of nerds leaning back in their own basements and home offices thinking deeply and being critical of ideas. The overhead of having such meetings is next to nothing in remote compared to the office. No one has to get up to go to a meeting or book a meeting room. Did you just have a eureka moment 5 minutes after a meeting ended? No problem! Ping the group chat and get on a call in less than 15 seconds while the idea is still hot in memory. Oh you want to pick up where you last left off? No problem, upload last meetings Excalidraw file and start editing.

eerikkivistik 4y ago
A lot of communication between people is non-verbal. Also, the interaction with drawing software is not the natural way for people to convey their ideas, we tend to use our fingers to point, to draw etc. For some types of problems, I stand by my point, that first person interaction speeds up problem solving. But obviously there are many kinds of problems that do not benefit from this. So the way we usually structure this, is we set a date/time when X people from a team work together in the same room, if it makes sense to grind through things together. And at other times, people choose their own schedules / workplaces.