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You'll be surprised what google hangouts on a wired connection on both ends can do, especially when on-ramping people. Why wired? Packet loss from wifi serious

by mahyarm 13y ago

You'll be surprised what google hangouts on a wired connection on both ends can do, especially when on-ramping people. Why wired? Packet loss from wifi seriously degrades the conversation. Wired on both ends and packet loss is practically non-existant. There are downsides to not being distributed too. Being distributed for example lets engineers control their interruptions and environment far more. If companies really really cared about building the best teams, they wouldn't do the nearly industry standard open office layouts. Open office layouts make for easy management and harder development.

nostrademons 13y ago
I use Hangouts extensively; I work for Google, we eat our own dogfood as far as videoconference software goes. That's one of the main reasons I'm pessimistic about distributed teams. Despite having probably the fastest fiber backbone in the world, and despite having an inside track to the VC software we use, it still turns out that being physically present with the people you work with is pretty important. Enough that I'm moving offices this week, 3 cubes down, so that I can be 30 ft. closer to the rest of my teammates. There seems to be something intangible that is lost when you move out of shouting distance, and even though we have the technology to shout over 3000 miles, it doesn't seem to be the same.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  If distributed working was a no-brained with no downsides we would all be doing it. However I do believe the upsides are several factors greater than the down, so the cost benefit does win out - if the effort is put in. I have got most out of distributed working within weeks of physical meetups for sprints, so my view is meetup every quarter for a weeks sprint (somewhere nice of course!) The benefits of easier to control working environments, focus on deliverables, honesty, greater team choice and flexibility, easier professionalism, all make winning easier
- vidarh 13y ago
  One thing (of many) that simply must be handled better for video conferencing to even getting close to be a viable replacement is the "eye contact" problem. People need to be able to look in someones eyes on screen, and see them looking back at them. For the occasional call for e.g. an interview, I make it a point to look into the camera, rather than on screen, and it makes a big difference in how I get perceived, but that turns the video aspect into a one-way thing - like looking into a TV camera. While looking at the screen means you loose a lot of the signals you'd get face to face just from having a harder time reading facial expressions, and from the way peoples interaction change when they don't get eye contact with you. There's lots of other bits and pieces that impact its usefulness too, but to me solutions to the eye contact issue needs to be there before there's much point. E.g. in my experience with teams seated close together, eye contact is often the primary indicator that you've gotten someones attention and can start asking a question and know you're not interrupting something important. Without that, you're either back to the keyboard, or "polluting" the environment with distracting speech - often I see team members using IM even to someone at the next desk over when failing to get eye contact, exactly to avoid disturbing everyone else by speaking, so that's a non-starter. It's an incredibly important part of communication that most current video conferencing seriously hampers.
- mahyarm 13y ago
  Moving out of 'shouting' distance for me in my office actually helped me considerably. That little bit of extra distance filtered out many trivial interruptions. Maybe your teammates and managers are good about it, but I feel like many are not. That combined with the noise machines open offices can be it can get pretty bad. Also some people can get bad with the shoulder surfing. To create that 'we're in the same room' experience, you need to leave G+ hangouts on the entire time. You can't just initiate calls and then end them and do it several times a day.
driverdan 13y ago
You must be on a bad connection. I use Hangouts over WiFi daily and rarely have problems with degraded video or audio quality. Hangouts has plenty of other bugs but quality isn't one of them.
tocomment 13y ago
I don't get the wifi thing. Maybe you just have a bad setup? (Are you referring to voice conversations?)
- mahyarm 13y ago
  If your in a busy wifi environment, such as a hotel, apartment/townhouse complex or similar, all of the other wifi traffic can significantly degrade the connection. Not everyone lives in a suburban house with only 3 wifi networks on their laptop and an ability to completely control their environment. Video conferencing is really sensitive to congestion, latency and packet loss, not so much throughput. Missing a word here and there can make it fairly frustrating, and with wifi you are bound to have that happen a few times an hour even with good wifi connections on both sides.

by mahyarm 13y ago

nostrademons 13y ago

I use Hangouts extensively; I work for Google, we eat our own dogfood as far as videoconference software goes. That's one of the main reasons I'm pessimistic about distributed teams. Despite having probably the fastest fiber backbone in the world, and despite having an inside track to the VC software we use, it still turns out that being physically present with the people you work with is pretty important. Enough that I'm moving offices this week, 3 cubes down, so that I can be 30 ft. closer to the rest of my teammates. There seems to be something intangible that is lost when you move out of shouting distance, and even though we have the technology to shout over 3000 miles, it doesn't seem to be the same.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
If distributed working was a no-brained with no downsides we would all be doing it. However I do believe the upsides are several factors greater than the down, so the cost benefit does win out - if the effort is put in. I have got most out of distributed working within weeks of physical meetups for sprints, so my view is meetup every quarter for a weeks sprint (somewhere nice of course!) The benefits of easier to control working environments, focus on deliverables, honesty, greater team choice and flexibility, easier professionalism, all make winning easier
vidarh 13y ago
One thing (of many) that simply must be handled better for video conferencing to even getting close to be a viable replacement is the "eye contact" problem. People need to be able to look in someones eyes on screen, and see them looking back at them. For the occasional call for e.g. an interview, I make it a point to look into the camera, rather than on screen, and it makes a big difference in how I get perceived, but that turns the video aspect into a one-way thing - like looking into a TV camera. While looking at the screen means you loose a lot of the signals you'd get face to face just from having a harder time reading facial expressions, and from the way peoples interaction change when they don't get eye contact with you. There's lots of other bits and pieces that impact its usefulness too, but to me solutions to the eye contact issue needs to be there before there's much point. E.g. in my experience with teams seated close together, eye contact is often the primary indicator that you've gotten someones attention and can start asking a question and know you're not interrupting something important. Without that, you're either back to the keyboard, or "polluting" the environment with distracting speech - often I see team members using IM even to someone at the next desk over when failing to get eye contact, exactly to avoid disturbing everyone else by speaking, so that's a non-starter. It's an incredibly important part of communication that most current video conferencing seriously hampers.
mahyarm 13y ago
Moving out of 'shouting' distance for me in my office actually helped me considerably. That little bit of extra distance filtered out many trivial interruptions. Maybe your teammates and managers are good about it, but I feel like many are not. That combined with the noise machines open offices can be it can get pretty bad. Also some people can get bad with the shoulder surfing. To create that 'we're in the same room' experience, you need to leave G+ hangouts on the entire time. You can't just initiate calls and then end them and do it several times a day.

driverdan 13y ago

You must be on a bad connection. I use Hangouts over WiFi daily and rarely have problems with degraded video or audio quality. Hangouts has plenty of other bugs but quality isn't one of them.

tocomment 13y ago

I don't get the wifi thing. Maybe you just have a bad setup? (Are you referring to voice conversations?)

mahyarm 13y ago
If your in a busy wifi environment, such as a hotel, apartment/townhouse complex or similar, all of the other wifi traffic can significantly degrade the connection. Not everyone lives in a suburban house with only 3 wifi networks on their laptop and an ability to completely control their environment. Video conferencing is really sensitive to congestion, latency and packet loss, not so much throughput. Missing a word here and there can make it fairly frustrating, and with wifi you are bound to have that happen a few times an hour even with good wifi connections on both sides.