9 ms·

Water cooler chat used to be the big thing when I worked in an office.

nox101 3y ago
I've chatted with a co-worker about all kinds of interesting topics related to our with the last few days. We both work on GPU related stuff, he's been optimizing compute shaders and finding out new and interesting things. The conversations are not conversations I've never seen in chat. He could make a formal presentation but that's not really the point. The point is, as I sat down into the seat next to him, it was obvious to say "Good morning, what's up" and have him tell me. This has happen the last 3 days, each day I learned something I would unlikely have learned any other way. I had stuff to share with him too. This is what I don't personally get from "work from home". I'm in no way suggest you should therefore work from office. I'm only relating my experience. This type of experience has been common in my career but maybe I'm an outlier.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  This is just the truth. And the responses I get when pointing this out are either along the lines of “I don’t want to talk to my coworkers ever if I can avoid it” and “technically you can have those same conversations in the slack #random if you wanted.” Working remote has sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo.
  - Snow_Falls 3y ago
    Perhaps its a matter of workplace? I don't think many people would describe their jobs as having personality or humanity.
  - lloeki 3y ago
    > Working remote has sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo. A platoon of conventionally acceptably dressed drones sat at generic desks furiously typing in a nondescript openspace where soundproofing creates cathedral silence causing the slightest noise to be annoying so every single one is glued to their screen with headphones on is what sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo. I find it much more personal and humane to have a Zoom call with a child-lapped coworker dressed with a tacky Hawaiian shirt, getting to say hi to their passing SO (should they find me comfortable to do so), or talking about the guitar visibly sitting in the background (should they elect to share). > “I don’t want to talk to my coworkers ever if I can avoid it” This is highly demeaning to an underestimated portion of the population. I can understand that some people thrive in the physical company of others, while others find it enjoyable but mentally draining. While the former feel distress when forced to work remotely, the latter feel equal distress when forced to come to the office, suffer random smalltalk - because not all watercooler talk is That Next Big Breakthrough - that is not socially acceptable to walk away from, and end up feeling miserably inefficient the rest of the day. Historically, the "watercooler kind" had the higher ground, and during lockdown they got to get a taste of what the second kind feels like when required to come to the office, yet now that the table has turned again the improbable opportunity for balance and understanding that COVID inadvertently created is lost as most fail to acknowledge the other side's suffering. Mutual understanding is the only way out of this conflict. I would respectfully beg for people emitting such quips as the quoted one to openly reach out and genuinely try to understand why it looks like some people seem to act in such ways.
    - uxcolumbo 3y ago
      Great response. Also not everyone is working on exciting GPU related projects. Many are working on enterprise CRUD apps where I'd argue you don't have to come to the office on the off chance that some watercooler chats will bring some innovation. Have some proper planned 'innovation' workshops either on or offsite or a mix of both.
    - helboi4 3y ago
      Bro what sort of dystopiian offices have you been working in. I've never had that experience. People are always somewhat intersting and like to actually talk. There are some off days but it's never like that. And never ever have I had a colleague spontaneously try to have casual zoom conversation with me while remotely working. I've had people never turn their cameras on. And meanwhile, I'm here, a childless 20-sth, not having spoken to a human in days, wanting to hang myself with my headphone cable. The pro-wfh people just don't care that young people are still growing up in this time I swear.
      - mlrtime 3y ago
        For every positive that I can possibly read about in office work. Not one can combat my horrible situation of working next to a colleague with post nasal drip. Imagine every 60s hearing the sound of phlegm being sucked through a throat. I have sympathy for this person, but I can't work in this environment. Headphones can't be worn 8 hours a day.
        helboi4 3y ago
        That's an insanely specific situation that could be remedied by getting your seat moved. Loads of offices have hot desks these days anyway. What I'm talking about - young people having no chance to build a network of peers because the end of their university years were ruined by COVID and now they are expected to work from home without interacting with humans ever, leading to severely negative mental health outcomes - is ubiquitous to all remote working situations. the only solution to it is some level of compulsory office attendance. it is only since i move to an office with 3 days semi-compulsory that I have started to talk to people regularly again and regained the ability to work efficiently and not want to die.
  - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    > Working remote has sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo. Then mark me in the “I don’t want to talk to my coworkers ever if I can avoid it” column. My social life is already full. Don't make me commute for the benefit of those who are not so lucky.
- lloeki 3y ago
  Our Ruby guild is ~6 ppl and counting. We are all remote, and not a single one is in the same geo. We throw "BTW this or that..." several times a day, it's obvious that we can, sometimes via DM, sometimes on specific or generic channels, depending on who we think might be interested in it. Knowledge propagates, discussions ensue, sometimes the original topic devolves into something else and ideas are born. That's on top of a ~1h tech sync meeting every other week, where anything goes, questions get asked, ideas get challenged, notes get taken. It works. In my experience it works better than watercooler because it's non-interruptive, scales across TZ, and everyone gets a chance to jump in or catch up later.
  - nox101 3y ago
    That doesn't work for me. I want a conversation, not an announcement. My experience in chat is I post something "BTW ... " and it's crickets. Quite often no response. I feel unappreciated and like I wasted everyone's time. (maybe I did? but my experience at all previous work-from-office companies was I was well liked) Even if there is a response it may be hours later which is not what I'm looking for. It's the conversation that sparks ideas and understanding for me. My experience in the sync up meeting is it's too formal. When I meet in real life people have conversations, 2-3 people per. In the sync meetup, 12 people wait for one person. So at least for me, it doesn't work.
sangnoir 3y ago
90-minute lunches, extended ping-pong table visits, "attending" meetings one doesn't contribute to are various ways to waste time at the office, but no one is eager to banish those. It appears it's only a problem when people slack at home; on the flip-side, no one is offering bonuses for those when they work until 7 or 8 pm because WFH can blur division between work and not-work life.
- 331c8c71 3y ago
  There are many companies where long lunches are frowned upon (unofficially). People eating at their desks etc...
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    "Productivity" is just the flimsy fig leaf for RTO, a bunch of people have openly admitted that it's all about the "energy" they get from being around many people at the office, even of those people are slacking. It's not surprisingly that such personalities are overrepresented in leadership roles.
dboreham 3y ago
Yes, but even 20+ years ago when I worked for a large Silicon Valley company: most of the people I interacted with were in different buildings so it was easier to email them than to go find them. Then we acquired a team in another country. When I went remote in 1999 one of the reasons I could justify that was that when I drove to the office every day I usually spent each day communicating by email and phone with colleagues.
bediger4000 3y ago
Bah, thing of the past! Now it's mostly organic breakthrough moments of creativity. At a few places it's serendipitious collaboration, of course.
irrational 3y ago
I’ve worked in an office for over 25 years. I’ve never chatted with anyone at the water cooler (those, these days it is a water dispenser machine that can dispense cold or hot still water or sparkling water). I assume this water cooler chat thing must be from farther back in time.
- jdlshore 3y ago
  Water cooler chat doesn’t need to involve a literal water cooler. It’s an expression for the casual chit-chat that occurs when you encounter someone in the hallway.

I've chatted with a co-worker about all kinds of interesting topics related to our with the last few days. We both work on GPU related stuff, he's been optimizing compute shaders and finding out new and interesting things. The conversations are not conversations I've never seen in chat. He could make a formal presentation but that's not really the point. The point is, as I sat down into the seat next to him, it was obvious to say "Good morning, what's up" and have him tell me. This has happen the last 3 days, each day I learned something I would unlikely have learned any other way. I had stuff to share with him too. This is what I don't personally get from "work from home". I'm in no way suggest you should therefore work from office. I'm only relating my experience. This type of experience has been common in my career but maybe I'm an outlier.

Gigachad 3y ago
This is just the truth. And the responses I get when pointing this out are either along the lines of “I don’t want to talk to my coworkers ever if I can avoid it” and “technically you can have those same conversations in the slack #random if you wanted.” Working remote has sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo.
- Snow_Falls 3y ago
  Perhaps its a matter of workplace? I don't think many people would describe their jobs as having personality or humanity.
- lloeki 3y ago
  > Working remote has sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo. A platoon of conventionally acceptably dressed drones sat at generic desks furiously typing in a nondescript openspace where soundproofing creates cathedral silence causing the slightest noise to be annoying so every single one is glued to their screen with headphones on is what sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo. I find it much more personal and humane to have a Zoom call with a child-lapped coworker dressed with a tacky Hawaiian shirt, getting to say hi to their passing SO (should they find me comfortable to do so), or talking about the guitar visibly sitting in the background (should they elect to share). > “I don’t want to talk to my coworkers ever if I can avoid it” This is highly demeaning to an underestimated portion of the population. I can understand that some people thrive in the physical company of others, while others find it enjoyable but mentally draining. While the former feel distress when forced to work remotely, the latter feel equal distress when forced to come to the office, suffer random smalltalk - because not all watercooler talk is That Next Big Breakthrough - that is not socially acceptable to walk away from, and end up feeling miserably inefficient the rest of the day. Historically, the "watercooler kind" had the higher ground, and during lockdown they got to get a taste of what the second kind feels like when required to come to the office, yet now that the table has turned again the improbable opportunity for balance and understanding that COVID inadvertently created is lost as most fail to acknowledge the other side's suffering. Mutual understanding is the only way out of this conflict. I would respectfully beg for people emitting such quips as the quoted one to openly reach out and genuinely try to understand why it looks like some people seem to act in such ways.
  - uxcolumbo 3y ago
    Great response. Also not everyone is working on exciting GPU related projects. Many are working on enterprise CRUD apps where I'd argue you don't have to come to the office on the off chance that some watercooler chats will bring some innovation. Have some proper planned 'innovation' workshops either on or offsite or a mix of both.
  - helboi4 3y ago
    Bro what sort of dystopiian offices have you been working in. I've never had that experience. People are always somewhat intersting and like to actually talk. There are some off days but it's never like that. And never ever have I had a colleague spontaneously try to have casual zoom conversation with me while remotely working. I've had people never turn their cameras on. And meanwhile, I'm here, a childless 20-sth, not having spoken to a human in days, wanting to hang myself with my headphone cable. The pro-wfh people just don't care that young people are still growing up in this time I swear.
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      For every positive that I can possibly read about in office work. Not one can combat my horrible situation of working next to a colleague with post nasal drip. Imagine every 60s hearing the sound of phlegm being sucked through a throat. I have sympathy for this person, but I can't work in this environment. Headphones can't be worn 8 hours a day.
      - helboi4 3y ago
        That's an insanely specific situation that could be remedied by getting your seat moved. Loads of offices have hot desks these days anyway. What I'm talking about - young people having no chance to build a network of peers because the end of their university years were ruined by COVID and now they are expected to work from home without interacting with humans ever, leading to severely negative mental health outcomes - is ubiquitous to all remote working situations. the only solution to it is some level of compulsory office attendance. it is only since i move to an office with 3 days semi-compulsory that I have started to talk to people regularly again and regained the ability to work efficiently and not want to die.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  > Working remote has sucked all the personality and humanity from work imo. Then mark me in the “I don’t want to talk to my coworkers ever if I can avoid it” column. My social life is already full. Don't make me commute for the benefit of those who are not so lucky.
lloeki 3y ago
Our Ruby guild is ~6 ppl and counting. We are all remote, and not a single one is in the same geo. We throw "BTW this or that..." several times a day, it's obvious that we can, sometimes via DM, sometimes on specific or generic channels, depending on who we think might be interested in it. Knowledge propagates, discussions ensue, sometimes the original topic devolves into something else and ideas are born. That's on top of a ~1h tech sync meeting every other week, where anything goes, questions get asked, ideas get challenged, notes get taken. It works. In my experience it works better than watercooler because it's non-interruptive, scales across TZ, and everyone gets a chance to jump in or catch up later.
- nox101 3y ago
  That doesn't work for me. I want a conversation, not an announcement. My experience in chat is I post something "BTW ... " and it's crickets. Quite often no response. I feel unappreciated and like I wasted everyone's time. (maybe I did? but my experience at all previous work-from-office companies was I was well liked) Even if there is a response it may be hours later which is not what I'm looking for. It's the conversation that sparks ideas and understanding for me. My experience in the sync up meeting is it's too formal. When I meet in real life people have conversations, 2-3 people per. In the sync meetup, 12 people wait for one person. So at least for me, it doesn't work.

sangnoir 3y ago

90-minute lunches, extended ping-pong table visits, "attending" meetings one doesn't contribute to are various ways to waste time at the office, but no one is eager to banish those. It appears it's only a problem when people slack at home; on the flip-side, no one is offering bonuses for those when they work until 7 or 8 pm because WFH can blur division between work and not-work life.

331c8c71 3y ago
There are many companies where long lunches are frowned upon (unofficially). People eating at their desks etc...
- sangnoir 3y ago
  "Productivity" is just the flimsy fig leaf for RTO, a bunch of people have openly admitted that it's all about the "energy" they get from being around many people at the office, even of those people are slacking. It's not surprisingly that such personalities are overrepresented in leadership roles.

dboreham 3y ago

Yes, but even 20+ years ago when I worked for a large Silicon Valley company: most of the people I interacted with were in different buildings so it was easier to email them than to go find them. Then we acquired a team in another country. When I went remote in 1999 one of the reasons I could justify that was that when I drove to the office every day I usually spent each day communicating by email and phone with colleagues.

bediger4000 3y ago

Bah, thing of the past! Now it's mostly organic breakthrough moments of creativity. At a few places it's serendipitious collaboration, of course.

irrational 3y ago

I’ve worked in an office for over 25 years. I’ve never chatted with anyone at the water cooler (those, these days it is a water dispenser machine that can dispense cold or hot still water or sparkling water). I assume this water cooler chat thing must be from farther back in time.

jdlshore 3y ago
Water cooler chat doesn’t need to involve a literal water cooler. It’s an expression for the casual chit-chat that occurs when you encounter someone in the hallway.