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The other side is: - watercooler conversation is not searchable and is ephemeral, so team members that have valuable input may not even know the conversation o

The other side is: - watercooler conversation is not searchable and is ephemeral, so team members that have valuable input may not even know the conversation occurred. Had the conversation taken place on slack or some other chat system, others with valuable input would see it and chime in. And somebody looking for context can search for the conversation years from now. - the office is full of distractions, from unrelated teams in the same space doing some kind of team building to co-workers phone calls, to random irrelevant conversations between coworkers that I have to tune out. So pretty soon I put on noise-canceling headphones and tune out ALL conversations, which negates most of the purported benefits of in-office conversations. - Commutes suck

rcme 4y ago
Would water cooler conversations even happen if the participants felt they were being recorded for later reference?
- tacotime 4y ago
  Strictly work related ones probably still would, but maybe at a reduced rate. What if there was the promise of a friendly AI used to filter out all non-work related discussions? Then a chatGPT model fine tuned based on previous team discussions, that automatically replies in the team chat any time it has some especially high confidence that it's generated a good answer to a new question. On my team, there is a lot of "tribal knowledge" that is known to part of the team, and buried in Microsoft Team's chat history somewhere, but having to use Team's search for anything is always the last resort. Maybe add a process where you have to wait for a team member to "like" the AI generated post before the person who posed the question uses the AI answer.
Popeyes 4y ago
Yep. I get less work done on an in office day because I am catching up with colleagues or being interrupted by colleagues because I can't put a busy status on my chair.
rez9x 4y ago
Mostly just to 'poke fun' at Amazon, but I'm sure all their employees watercooler conversations are well indexed and searchable.
aNoob7000 4y ago
I personally don't mind being in the office a couple of days a week. As many distractions people complain about being in the office, I think people have the same at home. I can't agree with you more regarding the commute. It really does suck.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Regarding the commute, to me it feels like the employer saying "You're going to dedicate at least 5 more hours a week to work where you won't be compensated and won't be productive".
  - eyko 4y ago
    Half an hour commute? You're lucky! I would be giving up about 9 hours a week (55 min commute if I time things right) -- 9 uncomfortable rush hour hours.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Yeah, I was best casing that - so that's an extra 25% of your life dedicated to work. I'm sure you found that very time spent rewarding and worth the energy.
      - eyko 4y ago
        Funnily enough I still plan that extra hour around my work day as the "commute" time, so I could highlight all the things I can do whilst I'm just standing in public transit going from A to B. It's changed over the past two years but, currently, my 1 hour morning routine involves: a herbal tea brew, brief exercise, some food prep for later in the day, 15 minutes of study, then I take a shower and get ready. Of course, I've also gained some extra sleep time since I shower and get dressed during my commute. My evening "commute" hour generally is another 15 minutes of studying, writing (and reviewing) and depending on the day I spend the rest of the hour either on a short walk, or practicing the guitar. Going back to the office 2 or 3 out of 5 days is still better than 5 out of 5, but the amount healthy personal things that I get to "miss" don't sell it for me. I probably prefer an entire week offsite with my team once a quarter where the commute is literally a 5 minute walk from my hotel room to whatever conference / workspace we've reserved. Bonus points if the offsite is in a place that has wellness facilities so I can still spend that extra "hour" on health.
rhaway84773 4y ago
Shouldn’t we focus more on fixing commutes then? As a bonus, all the rest of our traveling also improves.
- michaelt 4y ago
  "Keep working from home, just like we're doing right now" is within every company's power. Fixing the statewide housing shortage, or replacing the suburbs with something dense and walkable enough to allow good public transport, is not. If you think we can do the latter, please do so! I'd be happy to return to the office after it's been done.
dspillett 4y ago
> watercooler conversation is not searchable and is ephemeral This is why you document key conversations (though obviously this requires more discipline than searching for the information after the fact). Another counter is that search often sucks (caveat: my opinion here is perhaps coloured by the fun and games sometimes had trying to find anything in Outlook or Teams, YMMV if you have different tools). > the office is full of distractions You should encounter my home! > Commutes suck Agreed. I have the luxury of living very close to the office which helps my preference for working here. My main reason for preferring to be mainly in the office (I do work from home occasionally, more so temporarily ATM as I have a terminally ill pet to spoil until the time soon when the bad outweighs the good in terms of QoL) is that I don't have a room to designate a work room (well, I do, but I'd rather designate it for my hobby work & such) and I find switching on/off as needed is more difficult when work and home life don't have a good solid door between them. I also hate the phone (OK, there are video options, but I find they help little and anyway the proponents of them usually have their cameras off so a phone is what we effectively have) as it combines the bad points of in-person communication with the bad points of written comms. Having said that, while I'm definitely an office worker by choice, rather than a home worker, some do genuinely both work better remote and get a better life out of it, so we need some flexibility (with the caveat that I do wish people who want the remote work flexibility show me some flexibility in return and consider answering messages/mails by message/mail instead of trying to arrange a call which they know is by far not my preferred option!).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- linkjuice4all 4y ago
  It's a shame that you don't have the perfect working environment at home but the answer isn't "make everyone else leave their house cause mine sucks". Go into the office, rent your own, find a coffee shop, etc because now you have the freedom to choose your work place and let everyone else do the same. If your company has more than one office or your customers aren't coming in for service then at some point you'll be working with someone not-in-person.
theshrike79 4y ago
"Water cooler" is something that can only happen at an office. You can have two devs talking about something, but then a person from legal/marketing/art chimes in with their view. Or even a dev from a completely different team overhears and has some insight you don't. It'd never happen in a random chat service, people don't start water cooler stuff on public channels, they either use more limited team chats or private messages.
notyourwork 4y ago
Not everything requires posterity. Things can go unindexed and the company and your teams software will be fine.
ricardobayes 4y ago
Oh man I just remembered sitting in a stop and go traffic for an hour each day. Damn what a pain in the ass that was.

rcme 4y ago

Would water cooler conversations even happen if the participants felt they were being recorded for later reference?

tacotime 4y ago
Strictly work related ones probably still would, but maybe at a reduced rate. What if there was the promise of a friendly AI used to filter out all non-work related discussions? Then a chatGPT model fine tuned based on previous team discussions, that automatically replies in the team chat any time it has some especially high confidence that it's generated a good answer to a new question. On my team, there is a lot of "tribal knowledge" that is known to part of the team, and buried in Microsoft Team's chat history somewhere, but having to use Team's search for anything is always the last resort. Maybe add a process where you have to wait for a team member to "like" the AI generated post before the person who posed the question uses the AI answer.

Popeyes 4y ago

Yep. I get less work done on an in office day because I am catching up with colleagues or being interrupted by colleagues because I can't put a busy status on my chair.

rez9x 4y ago

Mostly just to 'poke fun' at Amazon, but I'm sure all their employees watercooler conversations are well indexed and searchable.

aNoob7000 4y ago

I personally don't mind being in the office a couple of days a week. As many distractions people complain about being in the office, I think people have the same at home. I can't agree with you more regarding the commute. It really does suck.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Regarding the commute, to me it feels like the employer saying "You're going to dedicate at least 5 more hours a week to work where you won't be compensated and won't be productive".
- eyko 4y ago
  Half an hour commute? You're lucky! I would be giving up about 9 hours a week (55 min commute if I time things right) -- 9 uncomfortable rush hour hours.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Yeah, I was best casing that - so that's an extra 25% of your life dedicated to work. I'm sure you found that very time spent rewarding and worth the energy.
    - eyko 4y ago
      Funnily enough I still plan that extra hour around my work day as the "commute" time, so I could highlight all the things I can do whilst I'm just standing in public transit going from A to B. It's changed over the past two years but, currently, my 1 hour morning routine involves: a herbal tea brew, brief exercise, some food prep for later in the day, 15 minutes of study, then I take a shower and get ready. Of course, I've also gained some extra sleep time since I shower and get dressed during my commute. My evening "commute" hour generally is another 15 minutes of studying, writing (and reviewing) and depending on the day I spend the rest of the hour either on a short walk, or practicing the guitar. Going back to the office 2 or 3 out of 5 days is still better than 5 out of 5, but the amount healthy personal things that I get to "miss" don't sell it for me. I probably prefer an entire week offsite with my team once a quarter where the commute is literally a 5 minute walk from my hotel room to whatever conference / workspace we've reserved. Bonus points if the offsite is in a place that has wellness facilities so I can still spend that extra "hour" on health.

rhaway84773 4y ago

Shouldn’t we focus more on fixing commutes then? As a bonus, all the rest of our traveling also improves.

michaelt 4y ago
"Keep working from home, just like we're doing right now" is within every company's power. Fixing the statewide housing shortage, or replacing the suburbs with something dense and walkable enough to allow good public transport, is not. If you think we can do the latter, please do so! I'd be happy to return to the office after it's been done.

dspillett 4y ago

> watercooler conversation is not searchable and is ephemeral This is why you document key conversations (though obviously this requires more discipline than searching for the information after the fact). Another counter is that search often sucks (caveat: my opinion here is perhaps coloured by the fun and games sometimes had trying to find anything in Outlook or Teams, YMMV if you have different tools). > the office is full of distractions You should encounter my home! > Commutes suck Agreed. I have the luxury of living very close to the office which helps my preference for working here. My main reason for preferring to be mainly in the office (I do work from home occasionally, more so temporarily ATM as I have a terminally ill pet to spoil until the time soon when the bad outweighs the good in terms of QoL) is that I don't have a room to designate a work room (well, I do, but I'd rather designate it for my hobby work & such) and I find switching on/off as needed is more difficult when work and home life don't have a good solid door between them. I also hate the phone (OK, there are video options, but I find they help little and anyway the proponents of them usually have their cameras off so a phone is what we effectively have) as it combines the bad points of in-person communication with the bad points of written comms. Having said that, while I'm definitely an office worker by choice, rather than a home worker, some do genuinely both work better remote and get a better life out of it, so we need some flexibility (with the caveat that I do wish people who want the remote work flexibility show me some flexibility in return and consider answering messages/mails by message/mail instead of trying to arrange a call which they know is by far not my preferred option!).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
linkjuice4all 4y ago
It's a shame that you don't have the perfect working environment at home but the answer isn't "make everyone else leave their house cause mine sucks". Go into the office, rent your own, find a coffee shop, etc because now you have the freedom to choose your work place and let everyone else do the same. If your company has more than one office or your customers aren't coming in for service then at some point you'll be working with someone not-in-person.

theshrike79 4y ago

"Water cooler" is something that can only happen at an office. You can have two devs talking about something, but then a person from legal/marketing/art chimes in with their view. Or even a dev from a completely different team overhears and has some insight you don't. It'd never happen in a random chat service, people don't start water cooler stuff on public channels, they either use more limited team chats or private messages.

notyourwork 4y ago

Not everything requires posterity. Things can go unindexed and the company and your teams software will be fine.

ricardobayes 4y ago

Oh man I just remembered sitting in a stop and go traffic for an hour each day. Damn what a pain in the ass that was.