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Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#61

Post by foxbarrington »

austinjp wrote: post #37

I've not been having these conversations since covid, and yes I miss them a lot. I prefer to flesh out ideas by kicking them around with others, and this is has suffered significantly. I've noticed a real lack of engagement in online communication at work, by others and by me. Personally, I'm bored of online communication having used email since the 90s and seeing it degrade into an ad-hoc workflow mismanagement tool…

You might like https://rambly.app - it’s voice only and spatial; so it’s optimized for natural (concurrent) conversations. The only downside is that it pretty much requires headphones.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#62

Post by 3guk »

Honestly with remote work I don't find it all that important, we've tried at various stages in the last few months to set aside time to virtually chat - but it just feels like enforced fun and whats worse is that group video/audio calls always end up with 2 colleagues being able to chat at once.

We have however done a few remote team building challenges, which I was prepared to hate - but actually they've been really enjoyable and have certainly lead to some better friendships being formed ! If you office or workplace offers them out then I would highly recommend them, even if it seems like your personal idea of hell !

Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#63

Post by indecisive_user »

3guk wrote: post #62

Honestly with remote work I don't find it all that important, we've tried at various stages in the last few months to set aside time to virtually chat - but it just feels like enforced fun and whats worse is that group video/audio calls always end up with 2 colleagues being able to chat at once. We have however done a few remote team building challenges, which I was prepared to hate - but actually they've been really…

What were the team building events? I'd love to try some with my team but I'm worried if the first one sucks then no one will be onboard for a second try.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#64

Post by da39a3ee »

I think you're starting from a false premise. I've rarely found in-person conversations to be as helpful as asynchronous conversations over a chat medium (or PR comments, etc). I think the main reason is that during in-person conversations, people don't leave lengthy gaps to think before speaking. So for technical subjects, asynchronous communication is much better suited.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#67

Post by da39a3ee »

greggman3 wrote: post #9
nottorp wrote: post #5

Get used to async chatting in the general channel... in text . That will solve your problem.

No, it won't ... maybe you meant this as a joke?

Yes, it will. In asynchronous conversations, there is time to think. But with in-person conversations, people feel an imperative to fill gaps with talking. The result is either that (a) you are talking without having the benefit of pre-thought, or (b) someone else is, which makes it impossible for you to think.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#68

Post by OJFord »

mcny wrote: post #29

> 1. Do you miss these conversations? I worked as a contractor in the office and never really thought about it. Like I had conversations with people in the break roomwhere they know me maybe because they see me talking to my boss but I don't know who they are or what they do. Or I overhear people talking about their work and I got to catch a glimpse of what they do (I wrote internal web applications they used so this…

What do you do to need a symmetric 1Gbps connection?

I have 150/150Mbps which seems more than sufficient - I upgraded from 30/1Mbps because the uplink could be a bit painful pushing databases or container images around, not because I needed 150 (symmetric 30 not an option).

Re: Ask HN: Do you have inspiring spontaneous conversations while remote working?

#70

Post by grumple »

I have far more spontaneous conversations since I’ve been working remotely. We use Pragli and anybody can start a conversation with a click (we are strongly discouraged from marking ourselves as unavailable, or turning off the feature that shows recent activity).

It’s very distracting, actually. In an office, it’s easier to say come back later and you’re less likely to be interrupted.

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