Interesting. Having worked remotely for 17 years, I haven't found the value in phone calls. They seem time consuming and lossy. Being able to ask a directed question, without the cumbersome setting of context that a call requires, and getting a directed response back – one that can be reviewed again later – seems far more productive to me.

I think one point is that it's not always about maximizing efficiency. Being on a team really requires some communication that isn't strictly about completing a task.

There’s definitely value in relationship building. Chit chat you naturally do on breaks in person can also be done over video chat if it’s encouraged by leadership. This helps people bond, so when things get tough, it’s easier to band together towards the solution because of the stronger relationships.

Bingo. Context helps, a lot in some cases. It's hard to gauge what's happening, on your project, a different project, the company, the team, etc. without a little metaphorical-water-cooler discussion.

I will second the slack factor.

Semi-synchronous communications are a trap for distributed workers. It makes it feel you are more accessible (actually true of course), but it drives the discourse to the trivial and makes raises decision thresholds. I feel that if a decision needs consensus, either circulate an appropriate email, or do a skype/hangouts/whatever real-time conference.

But this doesn't work well for junior team members who need more handholding. I'd say that's the one area where distributed teams don't work well.

We underestimate the bandwidth of a phone call. We can speak faster than we can type. We can listen to a big block of text more comfortably than we can read it. And that doesn't take into account the annotations about the rhythm, pitch, tone, etc. Face-to-face bandwidth is even higher, but not that much higher. Phone calls convey 80% of the information with 2% the effort.

Still, text messages (SMS or Slack or what have you) are even more convenient. So I would say it depends on the question. A question like, "What is wrong with the syntax in this line of code," is far better by text. But a question like, "How do you suggest we reconcile these two contradictory requests from our customers," might take less time over phone.

The rule I'm trying follow is this: If a reply to one of my emails suggests disagreement or misunderstanding, I usually try to catch them on the phone, rather than trying to clear things up with another reply. My experience is that these emails take several replies to clear things up, and sometimes there is a damage to rapport. A friendly phone call keeps rapport at the same level or even adds health points.

> We can listen to a big block of text more comfortably than we can read it.

I think this is true for some people, but not others. I find it easier to read through a block of text and break it down so that I can ask follow-up questions on things I may not fully understand. If I listen to it instead, I may miss some important detail and just not remember it after 30 minutes unless I take notes (in which case, it might as well be written down in the first place).

Agree. Text, Slack, email etc are convenient since they are asynchronous and document things, but carry other problems (for example, since they document things). Keep them to a minimum, use face to face or phone whenever possible.

A remote organization may even have an advantage here, if there is a well thought out internal communication strategy aiming at keeping everyone in the loop and up to speed.

I've done pair programming through skype, with screen sharing. And I've found it extremely effective. It really feels you're side by side with your colleague and is very effective. Synchronous communication with voice (and possibly video) can be very beneficial to work, unless your company is built from the get-go to be completely asynchronous (and use issues, proj mgmt tools for communication)

Do you see the new VSCode features as being a threat to this? (Notwithstanding they are both MS offerings)

What features? (I use vscode and feel curious :- ))

I'm not somebody who likes or needs phone calls. They disrupt any flow I've got and require time coordination. So I definitely don't appreciate it when a manager forces me into them when that is something that suits his personality and management philosophy.

Since I'm not forcing him to meet my emotional neediness, why should he force me?

I've worked remotely for a little over 10 years. The approach I like is: start with IM (or sometimes email) and then move to voice if your real-time chat takes longer than a few minutes or a handful of back-and-forth volleys. At some point someone just sends: voice? (which is usually video/screen call). Depending on the problem worked on it means the person in the office (cubicle farm) may need to get up and grab a meeting room to avoid bugging their coworkers with the call. They might respond with a link to the video conference line/room, or with a better time in the future: 2pm?

That way you're not bugging people with a voice call for what turns out to be easily answered questions. But the culture allows for quick transition to voice and you don't get sucked into long IM conversations spinning your wheels due to miscommunication.

Not responding to IM until later with a 'sorry, was heads-down/afk/whatever' needs to be acceptable too, otherwise you get the problems of people expecting everyone's instant response all the time.

That said, I miss the old MSN messenger feature of 'buzzing' someone, which would animate/vibrate their IM window and play a soft buzz sound. I sometimes use the slack call feature for this (just ring and hang up), but that doesn't quite relay what I'm looking for - something less urgent than an immediate voice call, but lets the person know I'm likely blocked waiting for their answer. There's always that game that plays in your head - if I get an answer in < 1 minute, I'll stay on this task; if it takes longer, I'll spin up a different task I'm not blocked on...

I'm a fan of form follows function. So every project is different, and every set of coworkers are different. For the type of work I do, with high autonomy groups, I wouldn't make the same choices as you.

I've found phone calls disrupt my flow, but instant messaging disrupts it a lot more. People are less likely to make a call than to send an IM. As a result, I would get a lot more IM's than calls.

In my last job I had a rule: People who are with me on the site have to come to me physically (or email if not urgent). Remote people can use Skype, but they must call me - not IM. Of course, they can still email if it's not urgent.

People still called, but the volume went down quite a bit.

How is this different from saying “my chair feels good so any manager who makes me get out of my chair is a bad manager”?

Flow feels good, that doesn’t mean it is good, or that interrupting it for collaborative work isn’t overall more beneficial.

Well, some people believe people's opinions matter. And some people believe that intrinsic motivation is important. And some people believe that autonomy is something worth striving for. Of course, there are plenty who disagree, and you should feel free to associate with those who hold your values.

Does Slack not disrupt your flow? Or putting an email together?

Personally I find that they can, but they don't have to. I can put off Slack/email until I hit a stopping point, or I can wedge it into the middle of a long-running process (start a build/test-cycle/deployment, then go answer Slack). At the very least I can finish the chunk of code/whatever I was working on. Phone calls and in-person talking are a hard interrupt, drop all my context on the floor and get nothing else done.

Those feel more comfortable and they count has hours worked, so it doesn't matter that they are far less time-efficient.

1) I don't enjoy talking on the phone, and yet

2) I've also found that talking on the phone makes remote work much better for me.

Same here. When I was working remotely we talked over Skype all the time. I felt more connected to my coworkers than I feel now with everyone a few cubes away.

I was working remotely for a year in my last job, and setup a morning call with 1 or 2 of my colleges every day,even if to talk about movies, games anything, just so we kept that connection going. Then we tried to meet up once a month in person for lunch (we where all working in the same city). I felt it made it more like being in the office then sending a "good morning" chat message.

> No real work gets done on slack. Call each other.

I just spent the last two hours helping a dev on my team write some code in an area of the project he was unfamiliar with. We did it all over Slack, with liberal use of code snippets. I can't imagine how a phone call would have helped.

Less typing and more talking. I imagine you would have been more productive on a call. I couldn't imaging doing pair programming without being able to talk with the person I'm pairing with.

Also to be clear, when I say "phone call" I mean audio + video. So Zoom, Hangouts, Skype, etc.

Big OSS projects seem to do fine being organized by mailing lists etc.

They make progress, but they also have no deadlines, commitments, oe bankruptcy-threatening budget pressure, and not in the same league from a perspective of personal return on investment . It's a different model that can't be adopted by all.

Although in the case of most big OSS projects, a lot of the work is done by teams, many of which are co-located and/or have communication channels outside of IRC and email. In addition, in-person get-togethers are fairly common with many of the big projects.

we require the use of webcams when on a conference calls, not everyone likes it but it does help to feel more engaged.