Live data from Hacker News

Zoom fatigue unpacked

leadership.garden

131–140 of 166 posts

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#131
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Some people use Slack for things that should be an email. 50+ line messages, unnecessary notifications, scheduled messages.

Email is for stuff on the record, slack and teams not so much. Especially in client service.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#132
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.

I'm in a regular large zoom call and I'm pretty sure a few participants get pinned more than the rest combined. The day Zoom accidentally reveals they've been building these stats should be entertaining.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#133
As a consultant paid hourly rates now, meeting invites had a significant drop when I moved from daily to hourly.

I noted that customers were paying me to hang around for 8 hours being on demand for messages or meetings to pop up like a reserved instance.

I guess that long repetitive meeting culture will exist until the systems change to a flipped office.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#134
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slightly off-topic but using coworking spaces pre-Covid was also a different experience. They seem to have turned into call centres nowadays. I find it pretty hard to find a silent spot to work without having someone borderline scream at their screen next to me.

I'm hesitant to work out of anywhere other than my home because I may be called into a pointless Zoom meeting, interrupting everyone else...

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#135

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…

> and if they do you can just not read the email

you've identified part of the problem.

Some of the people who want constant meetings are poor communicators whose messages won't be read (or won't communicate effectively) without a captive audience.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?" OK, which pipeline, what errors are you receiving, when did it last work, any changes since then, etc.? A lot of people aren't good at communication, period. It's like pulling teeth sometimes.

>"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?" Even that is better than someone pinging you "hi." It's such an immediate red flag in communication skills.

Hey! Do you have a few minutes?

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#137
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?" OK, which pipeline, what errors are you receiving, when did it last work, any changes since then, etc.? A lot of people aren't good at communication, period. It's like pulling teeth sometimes.

Hey, I did X and I got an error.

Do you have screenshots? No. Console error logs? No. Time that it happened? No. Network logs? No. Can you reproduce the bug? No.

Great, that was 10 minutes wasted.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#138
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?" Even that is better than someone pinging you "hi." It's such an immediate red flag in communication skills.

Hey! Do you have a few minutes?

Sure! What's going on?

Can we jump on a Zoom?

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people use Slack for things that should be an email. 50+ line messages, unnecessary notifications, scheduled messages.

Email is for stuff on the record, slack and teams not so much. Especially in client service.

Except it doesn't work like that. There is the expectation that you wake up and go and read all the messages in a Slack channel from when you stopped working yesterday until this morning.

And because it's Slack it's not organized in any way shape or form. You don't know what's important and what not.

Post reply on HN