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I totally understand the point you're making about team cohesion. This is the thing about the HN crowd and the remote only dogma that is constantly thrown arou

I totally understand the point you're making about team cohesion. This is the thing about the HN crowd and the remote only dogma that is constantly thrown around that is perplexing. The HN demo loudly proclaims that the workplace is not the place for you to build friendships and personal relationships and to go do it on your own time. The natural effect of this is ambitious employees are going to min-max their career trajectory for their benefit and maybe the company's. Why would anyone truly care about faceless Zoom rectangle team members that they're never going to see after x months/years? In this case, they're not fighting a war, so the stakes are drastically low and payoff substantially better. And yet HN looks down on this as bad behavior. This is just the emergent property of the current tech culture that we've established.

cudgy 4y ago
So replacing “Zoom rectangle team members” with retinal image team members makes that much of a difference? Magically they become actual people once you see them with your own eyes, resulting in increased effectiveness and no resentment from wasted time commuting and forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying.
- harshalizee 4y ago
  > So replacing “Zoom rectangle team members” with retinal image team members makes that much of a difference? Are you actually unironically asking this? If so, we have live in very different social spectrum and there's absolutely nothing I can tell you that will convince you otherwise. You should, however, try interacting with everyone in your life (loved ones, family, friends, etc.) via zoom, since it's all the same anyway. Probably saves a lot on commute and travel expenses! > Magically they become actual people once you see them with your own eyes, resulting in increased effectiveness and no resentment from wasted time commuting and forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying. Commuting, daycare, housing, etc. are side effects of a larger systemic problem that isn't the scope of what is discussed here. Calling it a “forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying” is such an immature take. This is just literally interacting with people in a society. Most people learn how to deal with others in school. The ones who don’t end up socially clueless and wonder why everyone else keeps getting promoted instead of them, the “10x” engineer who totally isn’t the annoying one. The issue has nothing to do with seeing people as actual people or not. Without a common ground for camaraderie and fellowship, there’s no need to pretend it exists besides being generally a cordial person. Using the OP’s analogy of War, employees are no longer soldier’s fighting for a cause, just mercenaries making sure they’re getting their dues.

cudgy 4y ago

So replacing “Zoom rectangle team members” with retinal image team members makes that much of a difference? Magically they become actual people once you see them with your own eyes, resulting in increased effectiveness and no resentment from wasted time commuting and forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying.

harshalizee 4y ago
> So replacing “Zoom rectangle team members” with retinal image team members makes that much of a difference? Are you actually unironically asking this? If so, we have live in very different social spectrum and there's absolutely nothing I can tell you that will convince you otherwise. You should, however, try interacting with everyone in your life (loved ones, family, friends, etc.) via zoom, since it's all the same anyway. Probably saves a lot on commute and travel expenses! > Magically they become actual people once you see them with your own eyes, resulting in increased effectiveness and no resentment from wasted time commuting and forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying. Commuting, daycare, housing, etc. are side effects of a larger systemic problem that isn't the scope of what is discussed here. Calling it a “forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying” is such an immature take. This is just literally interacting with people in a society. Most people learn how to deal with others in school. The ones who don’t end up socially clueless and wonder why everyone else keeps getting promoted instead of them, the “10x” engineer who totally isn’t the annoying one. The issue has nothing to do with seeing people as actual people or not. Without a common ground for camaraderie and fellowship, there’s no need to pretend it exists besides being generally a cordial person. Using the OP’s analogy of War, employees are no longer soldier’s fighting for a cause, just mercenaries making sure they’re getting their dues.