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Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

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Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#151

Post by onion2k »

ryanSrich wrote: post #139
paxys wrote: post #50

This is exactly the case for my company. Since the pandemic started the majority of our engineering hiring has been remote, because why pay Bay Area salaries when you have perfectly great developers willing to work out of Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Portland or really anywhere else in the same-ish timezones. Now that our HQ has fully opened up and local employees are being asked to come back, how do you deal wi…

> What would have been a 1:1 over coffee or a corridor huddle now needs a meeting room reservation, and there aren't nearly enough of them to go around. Genuinely curious because I’ve yet to encounter this myself - but why would you need a meeting for something like this? Can you not just ask your colleague via slack, teams, etc? Or better yet, can either of you write up a proposal and put out a RFC on it? That way t…

Slack is slower. You can cover far more in a face to face meeting (or a video call) in less time.

This is easily provable too. Have a 30 minute call with someone, and then have a 30 minute Slack chat with them. It becomes very clear that Slack doesn't work as well for that sort of comms.

Slack is brilliant for asynchronous stuff, or very short chats, but it doesn't work for longer things.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#152

Post by onion2k »

darinf wrote: post #81

I love having lunch with co-workers. It’s a great way to connect. Even though at my office only about 30% of folks are back, it’s roughly the same group each day. So I’m happy being back even if all meetings involve Zoom. At least getting a conference room for all the zoom calls is not too hard :)

Even though at my office only about 30% of folks are back, it’s roughly the same group each day.

This an area where companies will see problems with reopening offices - the people who aren't there (eg remote hires who work hundreds of miles away, people who choose not to return, people who still need to isolate, etc) will feel far less included, will see that their prospects at the company are worse, and ultimately are much more likely to leave because the social aspect of Slack will die off. Maintaining inclusion in a partially remote company is incredibly hard.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#153

Post by ryanSrich »

onion2k wrote: post #151
ryanSrich wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would have been a 1:1 over coffee or a corridor huddle now needs a meeting room reservation, and there aren't nearly enough of them to go around. Genuinely curious because I’ve yet to encounter this myself - but why would you need a meeting for something like this? Can you not just ask your colleague via slack, teams, etc? Or better yet, can either of you write up a proposal and put out a RFC on it? That way t…

Slack is slower. You can cover far more in a face to face meeting (or a video call) in less time. This is easily provable too. Have a 30 minute call with someone, and then have a 30 minute Slack chat with them. It becomes very clear that Slack doesn't work as well for that sort of comms. Slack is brilliant for asynchronous stuff, or very short chats, but it doesn't work for longer things.

Slack was just an example though. It could be a google doc. It could be anything written down.

In what instance is talking about something better (I guess we’d have to define better but just assume better = retention) than reading about something? If I’m reading about it I can always read it again. In a meeting I’m going to forget 90% of it the moment I walk out the door (or end the zoom meeting).

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#154

Post by lozenge »

WWLink wrote: post #136
spideymans wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I did have previous jobs where we worked on hard technical problems, and spending face-to-face time with a couple colleagues hashing out solutions at a whiteboard was invaluable. But that is not my FAANG job, where the whiteboards are rarely used for anything other than interview questions I hope that I get to work on some actually hard problems at some point in my career. Sounds fun :)

Grass can be greener on the other side. Usually hard problems are expensive to solve, and the business end wants nigh endless amounts of justification and planning for those solutions lol. You think you'll be designing cool architecture (and you will!) but you'll also spend a lot of your time making powerpoints and sitting in meetings to "touch base" and "tag up" and whatever lol.

It's odd isn't it? Git went from an idea to being benchmarked in about a month. But tell anybody at work you can rewrite something to fix a fundamental design decision causing issues and they will usually say that will be impossible, take forever etc. While they assign you much longer lengths of time just working around something that was poorly designed.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#155

Post by dzhiurgis »

tuckerman wrote: post #138
freyr wrote: post #40

This is the most frustrating part of being forced back to the Bay Area. Even before the pandemic, we always had distributed meetings, with people calling in from various buildings, conference rooms, phone booths, etc. So nothing changes between last month and this month, except that managers get peace-of-mind knowing I’m calling in from somewhere on the premises, and I’m back living in a place where I can’t afford a…

I had plenty of interactions at Google over lunch, in the hallway, while taking a break, etc that we brought to a whiteboard and either ended up with a potentially interesting project or saved us time by finding out something didn’t make sense. These often came from a series of multiple, low stakes conversations that were much more difficult to have remotely. I don’t contend they are impossible, but for me they were…

Ultimate question is - was it with it?

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#156

Post by _y5hn »

ebrewste wrote: post #118
simongray wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I drive to work, communicate with no one except on the computer, then drive home. You don't talk to people aside from at the meetings?

Not the person you were asking, but I had next to no conversations about work aside from video calls, even before Covid. Between national and international distributed teams (and people working weird hours to avoid sf bay commute hours), and packed meeting schedules, it basically didn’t happen. It’s making me sad to write this and it’s making me think.

Have children learn by Zoom from kindergarten, so they adjust early. /s

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#157

Post by mikelward »

I want to come into the office. It's nice to get to know coworkers better. And I like the commute and the routine.

But it sucks.

There aren't enough meeting rooms for all the meetings. When I do get a meeting room, I have to wait for the last meeting to wrap up. Or I find out that the camera doesn't work. Or the lighting is off. And it's harder to tell who's talking. And messages in the meeting are truncated on the meeting room screen, so there's kinda a private side channel where only remote workers can participate effectively.

Our office is open plan, so I can hear people on other teams talking and I can't focus as well.

Sometimes the badge readers break and aren't fixed until the next day.

Sometimes there are evacuations.

The mail room is only open 11am-1pm, so if I have lots of meetings I have to wait another 24 hours to get my important parcel.

If they want me to come into the office, they really should make it more productive than working from home.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#158

Post by AitchEmArsey »

closeparen wrote: post #127
elisbce wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There are people who are more sociable and more likely to thrive working with other people in person, while some other type of people are more introverted, sensitive and dislike human interactions. 2. There are companies/work environments/jobs/teams where coworkers are mostly nice, smart and a pleasure to work with. There are also companies/work environments/jobs/teams that suck and filled with political, disgrunt…

There’s introverted and then there’s reclusive. People who don’t like big groups or find social situations draining may nevertheless find a lifestyle with 95% of their time spent alone (assuming 8 hours of social plans in a 168 hour week) to be too isolating.

I am introverted, but the pandemic has taught me that I'm not actually suited to a reclusive life. I get far more done when working from home, but need a day in the office every month or so as a "reset", to remind myself that the company is bigger than just me and my projects, and that my colleagues are people rather than Slack bots.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#159

Post by [deleted] »

tuckerman wrote: post #138
freyr wrote: post #40

This is the most frustrating part of being forced back to the Bay Area. Even before the pandemic, we always had distributed meetings, with people calling in from various buildings, conference rooms, phone booths, etc. So nothing changes between last month and this month, except that managers get peace-of-mind knowing I’m calling in from somewhere on the premises, and I’m back living in a place where I can’t afford a…

I had plenty of interactions at Google over lunch, in the hallway, while taking a break, etc that we brought to a whiteboard and either ended up with a potentially interesting project or saved us time by finding out something didn’t make sense. These often came from a series of multiple, low stakes conversations that were much more difficult to have remotely. I don’t contend they are impossible, but for me they were…

[deleted]

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#160

Post by dr_dshiv »

dSebastien wrote: post #119

Same here. Everyone was "happy" and "proud" about our remote performance and now they force us back to the office 50% of the time. Many people seem to see it as a great leap forward, but I don't. One of the company value is supposed to be "independent"... This week I was supposed to go, not see my kids in the morning, waste 2 hours in the train, expose myself to Covid, just to sit alone in an office and discuss throu…

Really enjoyed this read!

“My morning routine is well-oiled. I drink a big glass of water, do some exercise, hit the shower, meditate for a few minutes, read a few pages, take some notes, and write a few more paragraphs of my next book.“

What is it for you now? Morning routines are a dream of the past for me.

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