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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 14th, 2023

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  • But is not nearly as easy. Conversations move faster than can type out complex thoughts most of the time. They might not even see it till minutes after. The experience is simply not the same. It leads to a very different social experience, that imo, leads to less strong relationships, especially for people joining a new company and for people on the lower end of the career ladder. I’d hate to have to seek mentorship virtually if I was a grad or junior atm.

    And this is totally ignoring the fact that for a lot of people they connect over things in person. Walking by the bar on the way to the station and spotting colleagues, stopping in for a pint that turns into dinner. The walk to get lunch at the market. Sharing a homemade tiramisu. My deskmate asking about my coding problem as I swear under my breath. All things that happened this week and I only go in for 2 days, voluntarily, the rest of my team is entirely in other countries.

    At the end of the day, do what you want, but the studies do show a drop in productivity for WFH. I think that stems at least partly from the social interaction elements. My counterpart is 10 years my senior in terms of ability and about as virtually social as a software developer gets, but because I’m well known in the office I get a load more of the random software questions. Which is good for me in the longer term. That’s my $0.02



  • In my experience most people are really bad at jumping out of their team and silo remotely, especially software developers. Some people might make it work, but that’s not my experience with the majority of coders. Also as good as zoom/teams/slack is, it really doesn’t compare to an in person conversation. It’s a more formal and often friction filled experience. Conversations remotely are mostly done with purpose, you call someone for a reason. This makes relationships really transactional. The in person aspect drives a lot more potential for organic conversation. Remotely I might see two of my colleagues in a huddle on slack, if I happen to be looking at their profiles at the right time, but I would never join them. Conversely however I’ve commented and jumped in on conversations between the ML engineers sitting behind me all the time, and vice versa when I’m discussing python programming.