I agree.

Discussion in meetings has felt mostly useless to me over the years for the exact reasons that the parent pointed out. On the other hand, some of the best work I've done was at a job where the person I worked with most had the same train ride home as me, so we'd just chat for half an hour 2-3x a week. It allowed both of us to work through ideas, and come to much stronger conclusions.

> for complex topics I’ve found that a face-to-face conversation is often much more effective because it allows both parties to have a rapid back and forth to resolve misunderstandings or gaps in the conversation.

Face-to-Face conversation can also happen remote synchronous.

To me, it sucks. (Video) calls are exhausting and less flexible, and nothing beats having a huge, real whiteboard and three people taking turns refining a diagram or flowchart while discussing it.

It can be. It's also very expensive when people are scattered across multiple states and even multiple countries. Basically no meeting with more than 2 or 3 people I'd likely be in would involve people only in one of my nearby offices.

In addition, while whiteboards can still be nice for certain things, over the past few years I've also come to realize that collaborative docs (e.g. Google Docs) are actually as good or better for a lot of purposes.

I don’t really know why, but now I’ve found this to be less effective than IRL for some reason. Like I have to make more of an effort to be properly understood, and come away less certain that we’re on the same page (and that we have to follow up more often because there were indeed misunderstandings). At least I experience this with some people, less so with others.

Not sure if this is due to something I lack, or if (some) people are less attentive/perceptive/focused in phone/video calls.

I've encountered this and I thought of some reason:

- it's easier to be distracted - it's harder to read gestures and expressions, worse with group meeting - with normal keyboard and mouch / touchpad even touchscreen, it's harder to sketch - while small, there is latency and it can be distracting enough

IMO it's easier if the communication is one way at a time, not both at the same time.

The bandwidth, latency, and resolution of an analog whiteboard beats the pants off anything digital.

Yep, especially the latency.

For me it’s the resolution. No 6k monitor can compare.

Absolutely agreed. I've often found myself seeing that someone has misunderstood something, and wanting to write "if the source of your misunderstanding is (a) then [several paragraphs] whereas if it's (b) then [several different paragraphs]. Asking them whether it's (a) or (b) by email adds another cycle and often isn't understood anyway. It's just far more effective to communicate synchronously (face to face or by phone).

Yes, it is like flying a toy drone in your room vs. flying a drone on the Mars. In the first case if you see it heading into the wall you can correct it immediately. On the Mars it may be already too late when you find out it is heading into some boulder.