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I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…
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Video conferencing is pretty bad IME. I think that all too many companies view Slack as an acceptable option for communication most of the time, and I think that's an extremely inhibiting factor for most remote work. I think some innovation around the tools we use for remote work would be great, fwiw.
For example Teams and Outlook have terrible search. Documents basically go into a black hole to never be seen again. We need the same search quality we have for web searches.
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I think there is still a lack of things like white boarding tools. I haven’t seen anything that could replace a big whiteboard. Also webcam images generally look horrible. I am sure something could be done about that. Better microphones and speakers in laptops would help. Better suppression of background noises like kids would help. I think there are a lot of little things that could improve tools a lot.
If you plan on working from home full time then invest in a decent camera/microphone. I already had focusrite audio interface for guitar, an XLR mic gives amazing sound, decent interface and will probably get a usb camera (is there an action cam like GoPro that can double as a webcam ?)
How are you using the xlr mic? I have one but am using the USB output because I don't have a xlr port on my laptop.
It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…
Collaboration tools are already pretty solid. What else do you really need other than a remote desktop + video conferencing? I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler.
Not everyone wants to be remote, where I work they asked for volunteers for the first wave and had to turn people down for some groups. For these the separation of work and home is line they don't like to cross.
I just don't think we have the communication tools to support productive collaboration between people who hardly ever meet.
(I think what I may be saying is that while yes, there are Open Source projects that overcome these same sorts of problems, I don't think it's tools or process that are the reason they work. I suspect the psychology of volunteer work - performed and received - lets people overlook some pain points that they don't in a more mercenary setting)
The thing I miss the most while WFH is the whiteboard conversations. It's nice to be able to drag your colleagues for quick tech discussion and go back to work. Pen is much faster than drawing diagrams online.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Video conferencing is pretty bad IME. I think that all too many companies view Slack as an acceptable option for communication most of the time, and I think that's an extremely inhibiting factor for most remote work. I think some innovation around the tools we use for remote work would be great, fwiw.
For example Teams and Outlook have terrible search. Documents basically go into a black hole to never be seen again. We need the same search quality we have for web searches.