Also, I don't know if this is in my head or just speaker or mic quality, or on phone/network noise cancellation, or what, but I've found landline calls to be much more clear and easy to converse than zoom or cell phone calls. I think that may be where some of the fatigue comes from.
This is my (and my team's) main problem right now. We like working from home but it broke down any kind of interactive process/exercise, every meeting for a workshop becomes this choreography of: how to ask for a spot to speak, how to leave space for others to take that spot, who will facilitate that. It kills any spontaneous take or realisation that you could bring up in a meeting room. It feels like everyone has to stay in a queue to have time to speak. A lot of times it's happened that people forgot what they wanted to say or the conversation went way past that point and people don't feel like backtracking the discussion.
I can say that people feel like they should only speak up and state *really important things™" but often the small unsaid things are really valuable.
It really sucks, I thrive in environments where I can pick up bits and pieces of information and glue them together into something meaningful to my team, I can't really do that remotely (not without pestering people or trying to have scheduled coffee breaks to just chat).
Or maybe I'm just a luddite that likes landlines and IRC....
Makes me wish I could have work meetings there, honestly.
An old POTS landline would be nice too, but my understanding is a lot of landlines now are basically VoIP anyway.
Yeah I think you're right. VOIP and landline and probably one and the same these days, and as long as whatever voice application you use doesn't use excessive compression or any added complexity, or route you halfway around the world, you've prob got landline quality.
When I was using self-hosted Ventrilo playing with friends we didn't have this problem. It was like being in the same room. The ping was like 5ms and sound latency not noticeable.
I care a lot about video when doing calls to keep in touch with family and friends, but I find it's really not pertinent or useful at work.
My favorite part is how low-effort the video calls themselves are. It makes me far more likely to end the conversation instead of waffling around looking for other things to shove into a meeting
Disclaimer: we dogfood our own product.
One day in the far future, we'll have to learn to deal with the light lag. Why not start now?
Harder to do that over zoom because of an org policy that include the words “camera on”
With a wireless headset connected to my computer I have much more freedom, and at least I can continue some low-key work during meetings which aren't all that interesting or have a lull
> ... With a wireless headset connected to my computer
?
* Not a customer, investor, or the janitor. Just looks like a good solution to a wall of meetings.
Reading stuff is so much quicker.
One college asks me if i have time to do a short video chat for the update i need; The coordination take sprobably a higher effort then just writing it down.
Otherwise you can just use whatever you have used already anyway.
Having something like this as main feature, means thats the default. In my opinion therefore not a good tool.
That it is intentional does not really help, because you still have to deal with the inherent awkwardness of not knowing if your tone and message come across correctly in a one-way conversation without feedback.
Too much overhead or something with asynchronous communications, or having to “spin” up your thoughts regarding the issue every time feels taxing. As opposed to a quick back and forth chit chat that addresses any concerns that come to mind and then closing that task out.
Putting in some effort on the sending side to express your thoughts as text makes things a lot more flexible for the receiver, and pays off big when you want more than one person to consume it.
It's the second heading, right at the top when you click the link - "Cut down on meetings & calls with voice messages, searchable transcriptions & async screen sharing"
Over communicating at times of my preference has been helpful
The amount of useless emails has gone through the roof, with a lot of the content being managers reminding people they are still there.
Everyone cc's everyone now. If someone wrote an email to the ALL distribution group back in the day and there were more than 2 replies to that email, someone would immediately lose their shit and tell everyone to stop replying-all. Now those reply-all email chains happen weekly, with junior VPs laying hot takes all over the place.
The key then is to make sure your inbox only contains items directly to you or from specific mailing lists.
You only have to @mention the people who really have to see. All the other's who would have previously have been cc:ed can simply review the messages if they are interested at their leisure, withou being pinged.
Most of these people where literally ruling by authority and not having physical presence is a huge problem for these people.
It also kind of sends across the message that things can run well without them.
We really are in a place where an operating system takes more resources to run than the programs it runs.
And don't get me wrong but when your solution is to disable/block communication ways instead of communication with others on how you want/need to communicate, then the issue is on both sides.
There is a larger problem you're touching on that in most knowledge-workcompanies there is little to no attention paid to the production line process of how that work is 'produced' with the inevitable miasma of low-value busywork ('quick question, where are we with X','thoughts on X??' etc)
The addition of the constant, unrelenting background stress of a global goddamn pandemic?
With so many people acclimated to putting on themselves, and translating, office friendly body mechanics, working at home may indeed cause subtle anxiety from loss of habit.
At the web app layer, software is a simpler world to design and ship at any scale versus a decade ago. All the logistical nonsense needed to manage office life could very well be bullshit from a GTD standpoint. Satisfying last generations memes on corporate structure versus more atomized social networking abilities.
> I've disabled my IM client which made them shift to phone calls, and the next step is turning off call forwarding.
Imagine being this socially awkward where you just can’t say “I’m busy.” or actually enjoying interacting with and helping others.
My personal theory is the ~60% of useless middle managers have nothing left to do without an office. They now split their days into asking for constant status updates on every conceivable detail, and "breaking down walls" which is pestering whoever is holding up a project by a couple hours because they are focused elsewhere.
I've disabled my IM client which made them shift to phone calls, and the next step is turning off call forwarding.