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Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

pragli.com

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Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#31

Post by phonebanshee »

reificator wrote: post #15
whalesalad wrote: post #3

This is an even more egregious violation of someone’s attention than IM. We tried to use mumble on one team with push-to-talk and it only lasted a few hours.

I grew up with IM and distributed teams online, and am very comfortable with it. It's my platonic ideal for remote/distributed communication... until expectations around response times are put into place. If I can receive a message, respond to it four hours or a day later, and receive a phone call for anything more urgent than that, I'm happy to use IM platforms for collaboration.

You just described email.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#32

Post by nautilus12 »

Its good until it becomes aware that you can use it to silently judge how productive you think other people are being, which then changes the way you work totally. Major benefiet of remote work is that you can work at a reasonable pace without being monitored constantly, and end up producing more because you are working at a pace thats more natural for creative work.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#34

Post by leetrout »

LeonB wrote: post #13

I have a friend who uses an always on audio for his entirely remote team and swears by it. I think it might depend on personality types. I’m willing to admit it does work for some teams even if my own initial reaction is “no way!”

I LOVE having always on push to talk audio like mumble or discord. If you want to focus just log off. If you want to chat with the group jump in. Want to have a side convo without screen share? Pop to another channel.

Mumble (speex codec) is great quality and low latency. Just has a poor UI / UX.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#35

Post by katzgrau »

ironmagma wrote: post #18
p_l wrote: post #2

So it removes one of the biggest benefits of remote work, ability to concentrate?

It’s definitely possible to concentrate in an open office, it’s just an acquired/cultivated skill. Besides that, if someone on your team interrupts you and they’re not just being inconsiderate, they are actually enabling you to concentrate on the thing you need to be, which is this other person’s question.

But there's no way for the interruptor to know the priority of their issue relative to the your priorities.

This creates a major time management issue. If you have time blocked off for important, high value tasks, you can be easily distracted by someone else's lower level tasks.

Task switching, especially to focus on low level tasks, is highly inefficient in both the short and long term and should be avoided at most costs.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#37

Post by ollifi »

I've worked remote with a small team by having image of me on a monitor. I heard what was talked around the monitor and could push-to-talk comment back.

It didn't feel distracting the way receiving a phone call while being remote felt. It's clunky enough that people didn't come up unless they had to and I still could keep up with the verbal information that was passed along with the office gossip.

Some people get really bothered about this idea and probably if you are working on independent tasks you don't need to be so connected. For tight teamwork I found it to be the least bad option.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#38

Post by ironmagma »

katzgrau wrote: post #35
ironmagma wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely possible to concentrate in an open office, it’s just an acquired/cultivated skill. Besides that, if someone on your team interrupts you and they’re not just being inconsiderate, they are actually enabling you to concentrate on the thing you need to be, which is this other person’s question.

But there's no way for the interruptor to know the priority of their issue relative to the your priorities. This creates a major time management issue. If you have time blocked off for important, high value tasks, you can be easily distracted by someone else's lower level tasks. Task switching, especially to focus on low level tasks, is highly inefficient in both the short and long term and should be avoided at most…

Sure, but isn’t that true in the remote world as well? I can’t imagine it’s very good form to just reject a call or ignore it when you’re busy doing something else, you have to provide a reply to the person about why you can’t talk, and then that’s just as good as having done the same thing to a person physically in your office.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#39

Post by granshaw »

nautilus12 wrote: post #32

Its good until it becomes aware that you can use it to silently judge how productive you think other people are being, which then changes the way you work totally. Major benefiet of remote work is that you can work at a reasonable pace without being monitored constantly, and end up producing more because you are working at a pace thats more natural for creative work.

Yeah slack statuses are already bad enough for micromanaging bosses

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#40

Post by drmpeg »

p_l wrote: post #2

So it removes one of the biggest benefits of remote work, ability to concentrate?

Before I retired, I avoided getting a cell phone because of this. Where I was working, I could see that my co-workers were using their cell phones as a company intercom. I didn't want any part of that.
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