61–70 of 99 posts
I would have no problem having an open channel on discord for example for the team to pop in and out but doing so forces my Bluetooth headphones into 'microphone' profile and dramatically lowers the audio quality.
Give me an option that allows me to have my music playing on full quality or an audiobook etc, then id happily leave a call open and muted.
One related technique that I think works well is to hold "Office Hours" at least once a week. Just schedule a regular meeting, and attend it - then advertise widely that you are available at that time and that anyone is welcome. It's a great way to foster skip-level interactions, give help to someone who needs it, and just chat. It's really fun when a few people come in at once. Sometimes nobody shows up, and that's…
I’ve had lackluster results with hosting weekly office hours. A grand total of 2 engineers showed up, both on my direct team, out of 100+ ICs in my org over the course of 2 months. But your mileage will vary depending on workplace culture I suppose.
Video conferencing forces me to look at a person’s face. I never really do that in real life. My best chats usually happen while walking in the nearby park, where we are both facing forward almost the entire time. There’s also a physical warmth you get when being near someone. Being physically close to a fellow primate who is part of your clan and who you trust not to kill you must trigger something that video calls…
I agree with you, having a common 'thing' to focus on together is great. I absolutely HATE video calls as well, but I can sit in a discord call for hours if there is something to focus on. Playing a game with someone, or people watching a video together, etc.
The thing that remote “pop in” doesn’t do is let me assess how interruptible someone is. When I pop in on someone in an office, I do it when I’m not interrupting their deep work — it’s extremely easy to tell when this is. Remotely, it’s much harder.
"When you are online and able to be disturbed, you join your office, alone."
I think to solve this properly you first need to fix Bluetooth audio. I would have no problem having an open channel on discord for example for the team to pop in and out but doing so forces my Bluetooth headphones into 'microphone' profile and dramatically lowers the audio quality. Give me an option that allows me to have my music playing on full quality or an audiobook etc, then id happily leave a call open and mut…
I’m hoping that Bluetooth 5.2 and BLE audio fix this issue. It’s hard to find info on how the updated headset profile works in terms of bandwidth and latency of input and output.
Particularly, we had our morning standup using the URL and when we stayed around working together on something. Other people in the company would just be able to pop in and talk to use. It was super nice!
I did see two issues with this, though:
- Bluetooth headphones have worse audio when mic is on.
- I felt it used some cognitive overhead being in a video call.
The thing that remote “pop in” doesn’t do is let me assess how interruptible someone is. When I pop in on someone in an office, I do it when I’m not interrupting their deep work — it’s extremely easy to tell when this is. Remotely, it’s much harder.
Looks like in this setup, people only join their office room when they're open to being interrupted: "When you are online and able to be disturbed, you join your office, alone."
In the office scenario, I as the interruptor take on the burden of finding out when someone is open to being interrupted (and it's not that hard). For example I can just say "I'll ask him the next time I see him" and wait until I see him go to the coffee machine or the bathroom. Or, if it's more urgent, I can take a peek in his office and see if he seems to be engrossed in thought or more relaxed.
Ok, I realize there's a context for it. Still can't help, but laugh at how low is a "high" mark for physical effort when in office.
My friend and I were working on a tool for this when the pandemic started and our jobs went remote. It was a fun exercise and we learned a lot about webrtc and audio/video APIs. But we noticed there was a new startup every other week raising some funds to do the same thing and working much harder than us on the problem. Finally, Slack announced “huddles” and we gave in to the fatigue we had with some peer negotiation…
Sorry to hear you stopped working on your tool. My cofounder and I are working on a similar product (teraphone.app). We're focusing specifically on making a discord-like product for microsoft shops. I agree it's partly a culture thing. There's also an awareness issue. A lot of people don't know that pop-in style communication tools exist, especially outside the tech industry.
Regardless how crappy Teams is at certain things, the people that decide "we're using Teams" often barely use it themselves.