Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office • Hacker News Board

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#21

Post by lefrenchy » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

“the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” - David Graeber

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#22

Post by dmos62 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:15 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #19

dmos62 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker. We've all seen what they can do. Make huge structures appear out of thin air. Change the way space is. It's magic. And all the gadgets. Gigantic hydraulic arms, cranes, tractors of all sizes. Instead we're paid heaps for programming. Which kind of makes sense. In my mind, programming is about making sense of a mess. Untangling all the seemingly c…

Because it's not as fun as a kid using building blocks. You'd just be doing a single job over and over again into monotony and it's filled with permits, inspections, waiting, etc so projects get dragged out and you don't get thr same gratification as you would if it were done faster and all parts done by you.

> Because it's not as fun as a kid using building blocks.

But is that the fault of the occupation or the occupee?

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#23

Post by siva7 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:28 AM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #12

haliskerbas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning this. I would get incredibly tense in a situation like this. Did I pick my nose? Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out? Does my bed look wrinkled? Did I smell myself? etc. etc. etc.

So every other human do this ? I’m not alone ? :)

except that you're basically being recorded while doing this

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#24

Post by square_usual » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

I've been using gather for months now. The free 25 user plan is more than enough for the small side project I'm working on with a few friends, and even normies absolutely fall in love with Gather once they get into it. The art style is low-quality enough to not feel uncanny, and the maps are beautiful with great effects.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#25

Post by Jommi » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

Setting Alexey's personal working style and focus aside, what are people's thoughts on virtual co-working in general?

Seems like there is a huge portion of people that have long since discovered that cities are not for them, but still yearn for some kind of group form of working.

There's been attempts as far as 2008 in Second Life[1], but also others in platforms such as discord, slack, minecraft. One popular zoom-based community for this is called Weekend Club [2]

Is this the future?

[1] https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/worki... [2] http://weekendclub.co/

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#26

Post by Jommi » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

square_usual wrote: post #24

I've been using gather for months now. The free 25 user plan is more than enough for the small side project I'm working on with a few friends, and even normies absolutely fall in love with Gather once they get into it. The art style is low-quality enough to not feel uncanny, and the maps are beautiful with great effects.

Can we visit your space?

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#27

Post by KronisLV » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

chris_engel wrote: post #11

Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I p…

> And walking into the private space of a desk and talking to a person working there is as invasive and interuptive as it was before in the office.

Hmm, do most people think that? Do they like or dislike it? In my experience, some of the less technical people seem miserable when they can't organically engage in conversations.

Personally i prefer remote work on my own for similar reasons, yet in my experience any sort of privacy or deep focus are impossible in an open office setting from the get go. And there's little difference between someone waving their hand at you from across the room and wanting to converse and them just actually coming into your private space, since the end result is the same.

That's the very same reason why i kind of dislike that Skype/Slack just lets you call people without asking them first whether they're available for a call at that time, same with phone calls. Now, as technical workers we might be spoilt in that regard, but somehow i feel like one's attention should be requested first, not just stolen like calls/ad hoc conversations do.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#28

Post by phemartin » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:53 AM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

There's beauty and craft in these things too!

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#29

Post by vineyardmike » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

jsnk wrote: post #7

I hate these solutions that drive people towards having more and more meetings and working in committees. If this is how you want to work with some people who prefer this mode of working, good for you. Go ahead and do that with that group of people, but just please leave me alone. I want to work alone in a solitary and quiet setting with focus. [Edit] I read a bit more, and it's even worse than I thought. You want me…

The purpose seemed aimed at people that procrastinate a lot and have small-ish tasks. If you have to account for your efforts, then you might work more efficiently ?

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#30

Post by ikornaselur » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #27

chris_engel wrote: post #11

Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I p…

> And walking into the private space of a desk and talking to a person working there is as invasive and interuptive as it was before in the office. Hmm, do most people think that? Do they like or dislike it? In my experience, some of the less technical people seem miserable when they can't organically engage in conversations. Personally i prefer remote work on my own for similar reasons, yet in my experience any sort…

> That's the very same reason why i kind of dislike that Skype/Slack just lets you call people without asking them first whether they're available for a call at that time, same with phone calls

Whenever someone would do that to me, I would always reject the call and say that I'll be available in 5-10 minutes. I would then tell them I would like to discuss having a call in text before actually having it, because it's an interruption. It seemed to cause people to stop just outright calling, which I hate.