Yes. A lot. this is one of the things that really hit me hard when we closed our office and went fully remote
Ad hoc random conversations about mechanical keyboards, good beers and tech opinions (React vs Vue, iOS vs Android)
A lot of people will dismiss them as superficial (which it is to a great extent) but I still think it made us much more of a tight knit team
Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#32I show up to meetings 15 minutes early if I can. Sometimes I catch other earlybirds doing this and we take the time to chat. Doesn't quite scratch the itch, but it's a good way to meet people.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#33I do just for the social aspect. I don't miss other stuff like sitting in rows and never talking to the rows behind me because we're not on the same team and never overlap on anything. That's always just struck me as strange.
I also miss blowing off some steam with colleagues. I find noone really complains or blows off steam on Zoom or in MS Teams Chat.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#34for me, I've yet to have an online hangout experience that I actually enjoyed. I have a lot of trouble focusing on a screen, and with only one person able to talk at a time, I just can't get into conversations. They feel so unnatural. Some people at work meet up on zoom rooms to hang out but the idea gives me weird anxiety. I'd give anything to go back to the office, but yet another meetup app wouldn't do anything fo…
Thanks for sharing, I totally agree the inability to have a side conversation on video call makes group conversations so unnatural & zoom fatigue is a big issue! Just out of curiosity, would your perspective about talking to someone change if this interaction was just a 2 person conversation? And if you could not look at a screen (ie audio or more low-tech phone call)?
Honestly, I have a cell phone with video calling capabilities and thanks to work I have zoom and slack installed on it. Also WhatsApp for communicating with family in other countries, and my work computer has FaceTime. I can't imagine what your app would bring that isn't covered by one of these.
Which is not to say that you shouldn't just build it anyway. Much like slack and zoom, your real customers probably aren't people like me, but companies that want to adopt the technology to fill the office-culture-sized whole in all our hearts. And much like those apps, even if people like me don't like the experience, it's startups start adopting it, people use it
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#35The biggest thing I miss were the daily walks with close coworkers, whether to grab coffee, lunch or just to get outside and enjoy the fresh air. I'm blessed in that I have two roommates I'm also best friends with, so that definitely helps, but I do agree with you that there is a certain privilege, if you will, to the spontaneity that comes with office talk.
Now this makes me curious. Where did you grab coffee? At a nearby coffee shop?
Even just walking to the better coffee machine on the office floor below ours together used to be a nice time-out for me and usually made me feel more refreshed/productive when returning back to work.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#36yep, i'm ready go back to the office. This WFH stuff isn't all that it was hyped up to be and from talking to my co-workers, I'm not alone.
I don't think I'd ever work for a company that doesn't have significant in person/office presence.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#37Absolutely unequivocally no.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else miss spontaneous conversations at work?
#38I don't miss it, but I've been working remotely for a long time. I recommend scheduling meetings a bit long on either end to facilitate chit-chat. An always-on voice channel is kind of nice sometimes as well (something like Mumble or Discord). Also, scheduling regular social hours with coworkers is pretty nice -- it can be as simple as playing a video game or a virtual happy hour.
I’ve never felt so close to hanging out with people online as when I frequented voice chat channels. In high school, my friends and I had one that we’d spend time in, doing homework, video games, w/e. If you needed to go heads-down on something, you just went into the AFK channel where everyone was force-muted.
I’d love to try it out at work, but I feel like there’s a lack of understanding culturally how voice chat is supposed to work and what a good setup looks like. People I’ve talked to about using it at work are (rightly) worried about interruptions to flow.