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Zoom fatigue unpacked

leadership.garden

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Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#91

Post by esafak »

tiffanyh wrote: post #86
esafak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must stop constantly lowering the bar. Let them learn to write, or don't hire them in the first place. Communication skill is a good hiring criterion.

That’s much easier said if you work for a startup. But if you work for either a large organization or a company that’s been around for decades, you influencing that kind of change (across departments you don’t own) is virtually impossible unless you’re the CEO. And even then, extremely difficult.

If a company as big as Amazon can pull off mandating writing standards so can yours. I understand that many companies just don't care. They tend to be run by steward CEOs and mercenary managers. I simply avoid them.

https://rahulramchandani.com/writing-culture-at-amazon/

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#92

Post by [deleted] »

noman-land wrote: post #16
ehnto wrote: post #9

I turn my camera off on big calls and it helps a bunch, there's a process running in the back of my mind when it's on that is constantly screening what I am doing just incase it looks stupid on camera. It feels like being in a panopticon. You never know if someone is looking. It's very tiring. I don't have the same issue in person because you know when people are looking at you in person and there's heaps of context…

I want you and everyone else to know that sometimes on large zoom calls I will "pin" one person in the call and stare at them for multiple minutes in a row on fullscreen. I do this all the time.

[deleted]

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#93

Post by shrimpx »

Fuck Zoom and the never-ending array of torture devices the executive class uses to keep people loathing and afraid. Your Slack indicator must be green 24/7. You must be living permanently in the Zoom uncanny valley. And it turns out that's not enough, so back to the office!

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#94

Post by luckman212 »

baxtr wrote: post #76
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed it is the weirdest thing ever to me that people don't email anymore. Just send an email. In an email it's written down and I can search for it. In an email I can think at my own pace and respond without worrying about trampling others. In an email people can't ramble on and on and if they do you can just not read the email. And if it's work to be done, just make a ticket. The amount of meeting time waste baffl…

Agree. I'm shocked by how much some people despise email. "You still use email?" Yes, I do, and I believe it is really effective...

Same as the "you still use a desktop computer?" people. Yes, my dual 4k screens, ergonomic desk, wired Ethernet connection and powerful CPU do in fact make my life easier and my work faster than hunching over a butterfly keyboard and squinting at a 13" screen in a noisy coffee house.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#96

Post by shrimpx »

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

Less meetings / more async isn’t always the best answer. Most people are terrible at written communication, and much better at spoken (which makes sense since most speak more than write). So even though it’s terribly unfortunate, for the masses, more times than not - meetings have a total net-gain effect vs async written.

By the way, since the beginning of time, open source was happening asynchronously on email and IRC. Linux, one of the most complex and most useful pieces of software that exists, was done over asynchronous text. There are innumerable examples of builder success when working async. The synchronization obsession comes from managers and execs.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#97

Post by tiffanyh »

esafak wrote: post #91
tiffanyh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s much easier said if you work for a startup. But if you work for either a large organization or a company that’s been around for decades, you influencing that kind of change (across departments you don’t own) is virtually impossible unless you’re the CEO. And even then, extremely difficult.

If a company as big as Amazon can pull off mandating writing standards so can yours. I understand that many companies just don't care. They tend to be run by steward CEOs and mercenary managers. I simply avoid them. https://rahulramchandani.com/writing-culture-at-amazon/

Bezos pulled it off by starting that practice from immediate onset of founding his company (hence my startup comment).

It’s not like 20-years into Amazon, he then decide to implement that practice.

Also, people misconstrue Amazon as being an async culture.

That’s incorrect.

Amazon is actually an anti-PowerPoint culture. So when meetings need to happen, you need to convey your info in long form writing since PPT isn’t allowed. That doesn’t mean the culture is async.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#98

Post by atq2119 »

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #53
codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

Agreed it is the weirdest thing ever to me that people don't email anymore. Just send an email. In an email it's written down and I can search for it. In an email I can think at my own pace and respond without worrying about trampling others. In an email people can't ramble on and on and if they do you can just not read the email. And if it's work to be done, just make a ticket. The amount of meeting time waste baffl…

Lots of people are incredibly bad at written communication.

My theory is that people who worked remotely pre-Covid were selected one way or another to have above-average written communication skills.

Covid suddenly brought everybody remote, and naturally the average communication skills for remote work dropped.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#99

Post by adam_arthur »

I don't get fatigue at all, but always keep my video off and do other things if the content of the meeting isn't directly relevant to me.

The idea that we shouldn't differentiate based on appearances doesn't jive with a world where we need video calling on. Either people produce or they don't. Nobody needs to be staring at the screen and considering their appearance for the duration of a meeting.

And yes the majority of meetings tend not to be relevant for the majority of attendees most of the time. Responsible people know how to differentiate the two

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#100

Post by chongli »

codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me.

My pet theory (that in all likelihood isn’t unique to me, but derived from things I’ve read in many other places) is that this is due to an existential crisis among the management class. Many managers who were previously used to managing people very directly, by looking over shoulders and such, realized that their jobs are unnecessary when they saw how productive people became during the pandemic’s forced remote work regime.

As a way of coping with the cognitive dissonance they began to schedule huge numbers of online meetings so that they could continue to feel engaged and “useful.” This has turned into a very large “emperor’s new clothes” situation, played out across thousands of companies. Hence the desperate moves by many companies to try to force workers to come back into the office.

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