Building a walkie-talkie for remote work • Hacker News Board

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#81

Post by RandyRanderson » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

tommoor wrote: post #21

I have worked remotely for 10 years and raised VC funding for an idea very similar to this in the past – we failed to build a sustainable business, although the product did have a couple of hundred teams that swore by the product. In hindsight I believe it's because we were following the startup mythology of "building a solution for the problem that you have" a little too closely. We failed to realize that this is re…

It's almost like you and the other founders needed a better way to communicate...

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#82

Post by pastage » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 6:58 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #78

On the face of it, it looks like Voice IM, with that I'm trying to figure out who needs this product or why its better than other options? I don't understand where this fits in the hierarchy of human bandwidth (From Lowest to Highest): Text Message IRC/IM/Teams/et al E-Mail Phone Call/Conference Call Video Conference Face to Face meetings

From experience it's between irc and having an office mate. I've only done it with an always on videolink which is different from this.

The problem I see is that this seems to mean you need to learn radio dicipline which is hard, compared to having a video link constantly broadcasting.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#83

Post by steve1977 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:12 AM UTC

andyfleming wrote: post #54

p_l wrote: post #2

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

We use Pragli, and I feel like it's the opposite. Rather than a Slack back and forth to see if someone is available, setting up a video conference, connecting, etc, you can pop in and say "hey, you have a minute?". They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?". It's like stopping by someone's desk. If they really wanted to be heads down they can be in do not disturb mode. They can still show as online (so their pre…

>They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?"

By then, the damage to concentration has already been made. Yes, you can set your status to "do not disturb". But you have to remember to do that.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#84

Post by steve1977 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

Meh... synchronous communication is almost always worse than async communication in terms of efficiency, for example as the burden of thinking time of both sides has to get carried by both sides of the communication.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#85

Post by steve1977 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

donpark wrote: post #30

While I don't think Walkie-Talkie metaphor works for remote teams in general due to becoming an open invite to interruption, it may work for teams that need to work in tight collaboration , like in rapid emergency response and battle management even when everyone is in the same building.

Why not just set up a conf bridge for something like that?

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#86

Post by kstenerud » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to not have voice conversations unless absolutely necessary. A service like this would be stressful, because I'd probably be the only one to stick to his guns and keep do not disturb mode on at all times.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#87

Post by ragona » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:20 AM UTC

tommoor wrote: post #21

I have worked remotely for 10 years and raised VC funding for an idea very similar to this in the past – we failed to build a sustainable business, although the product did have a couple of hundred teams that swore by the product. In hindsight I believe it's because we were following the startup mythology of "building a solution for the problem that you have" a little too closely. We failed to realize that this is re…

I’m not sure that’s true regarding it being limited to small startups and founders.

I manage a team of over a dozen people at a large tech company with a few of them remote, and a pretty flexible work from home policy. We find that our standups can run long because it’s such an easy opportunity to chat face to face with remote people, but really you want a couple of conversations and doing them one at a time is kinda slow. It’d be nice to be able to just have a super quick multi party conversation without having to do a call. We’re even considering Mumble or Ventrilo.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#88

Post by ikeyany » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:30 AM UTC

xfalcox wrote: post #45

leetrout wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm trying to convince my team to adopt a opt-in, voice only watercooler like that for some time, without success so far. I makes a lot of sense to me, who have been doing this for over a decade with my friends. Are you busy, don't join / mute yourself / go to the afk channel. Are you waiting for a long build, just reading HN, between tasks? Join the channel and people can bond and talk about work/life.

So essentially a conference call that lasts all day, every day? I can see why your team did not approve.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#89

Post by tom_mellior » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:47 AM UTC

dsaffy wrote: post #29

mr_justin wrote: post #22

I love the idea of taking well understood analog concepts and applying them to the digital remote workplace, but man, forced sync calls coming in on a whim without my control to ignore them sounds like my absolute worst nightmare.

If you haven't already, take a look at the section "Solving Distraction: Presence + Statuses + Calendar" in the article - I dive into our attempt to solve this problem. Do you think our solution is insufficient? If so, any ideas on how we could further solve it?

I think having to clutter my work calendar with "I'm working" entries is a pretty clumsy way of signaling that I don't want people to randomly speak over Beethoven in my headphones. I my company introduced this, I would invariably "forget" to start the software at all, or would leave it on DND status permanently.

Personally I just don't see the benefit over a chat message saying "time for a quick call about ? ".

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#90

Post by andyfleming » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:54 AM UTC

steve1977 wrote: post #83

andyfleming wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Pragli, and I feel like it's the opposite. Rather than a Slack back and forth to see if someone is available, setting up a video conference, connecting, etc, you can pop in and say "hey, you have a minute?". They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?". It's like stopping by someone's desk. If they really wanted to be heads down they can be in do not disturb mode. They can still show as online (so their pre…

>They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?" By then, the damage to concentration has already been made. Yes, you can set your status to "do not disturb". But you have to remember to do that.

Sure, it's still an interruption, but I don't think it's completely derailing. That's why I compared it to stopping by someone's desk. It still requires both parties to be responsible and aware.