> Digital whiteboards are trivial to share, recover, modify and maintain. They're light-years beyond the limited physical variety. My team land heavily on Miro, for instance.

I use Mira too, it's great! But it's not the same as brainstorming on a whiteboard with your colleagues in the same room.

> Lunch time is a break. Not everyone wants to spend their break with their coworkers; but even for those that do, nothing is preventing you from having a conference call or video call over lunch.

That's cool and I fully support your desire to do whatever you want on your break. For a lot of my breaks when I worked in the office I ended up sharing them with colleagues and made several (hopefully) life-long friends out of the habit!

> Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

I understand! However I can understand body language and I find a lot of value in it. It's easier to empathize and relate to my colleagues when I can understand them better through body language when we're talking about life. If we worked in the same office you'd be free to have lunch (or whatever you want to do while I go have lunch) by yourself without judgement from me!

> But it's not the same as brainstorming on a whiteboard with your colleagues in the same room.

It's better! We pair it with a slack call and collaboratively edit it.

> For a lot of my breaks when I worked in the office I ended up sharing them with colleagues and made several (hopefully) life-long friends out of the habit!

And that's an outcome that happens with WFH, too. You don't need to go to lunch together to make friends.

> It's easier to empathize and relate to my colleagues when I can understand them better through body language when we're talking about life.

That's good for you; but again, WFH doesn't prohibit you from seeing people. If you need body language then have a video call.

>Not everyone understands or can engage in body language.

Well you sure as hell aren't going to get better at it by throwing up your hands and declaring it just isn't for you. I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt. I'm very extroverted at work - because it's necessary. Yup, I pay a price - it's exhausting and I need time to recharge. But the benefits of adapting to normal work environments instead of demanding the world adapt to me are immeasurable.

There are tons of things I can do now that I couldn't do before. Many of them are unpleasant. But they are necessary and without many of them I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Good luck with waiting for the world to adapt to you. Let's get back together in 30 years and see how that attitude works for you. I'm sure the universe will have been incredibly unfair to you :p

This whole victim = anything hard/I just don't want to do is getting old. And it devalues people with legitimate issues.

I agree. I wrote a rant and deleted it, because I don't want to post inflammatory content here.

But I'll say that I had social anxiety, and that sometimes it can be overcome (certainly not always). But it will never be overcome without stress, often painful stress; and the cruel harsh world is actually a very good training ground to force you to improve. I'm glad my shortcomings weren't coddled; I'm glad they were viewed as something I'd have to either fix or cope with.

There are degrees of anxiety and other mental/emotional problems. Many are not going to be fixed, some require medication, some are just too severe. But it's a gradient, and some can get better with exposure, and removing that exposure can be detrimental (even though that exposure is unpleasant).

... How are those who are physically incapable of engaging in normal body language, due to any number of permanent physical conditions, going to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do it? They're not.

This isn't the point the OP was trying to make and you know that. Lesson one: don't assume the worst about people and don't make hyperbolic arguments in order to be "right". You might have more in-person success that way.

The point they were making was ignoring one of the groups of people that I mentioned, because in order to make their point they _had_ to ignore that class of individual.

> > I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt.

> > There are tons of things I can do now that I couldn't do before. Many of them are unpleasant. But they are necessary and without many of them I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Good luck with waiting for the world to adapt to you.

Some people _simply cannot adapt_. It is not a possibility.

You can. All the answers are in your childhood, but you may discover things that you won't be able to forget

... No. Many people suffer from partial or full paralysis of facial muscles, neurological conditions that limit expression, and numerous other conditions that will forever and permanently limit their ability to engage in expressive body language.

but these are very rare things. The person you originally responded to did not mean anything against anyone who has these things. I've met many people in my life that were convinced they were unable to do things that they were quite capable of. Stephen Hawking was still quite expressive despite his limitations, although they did come later in life

They ignored that class of individual in their response; individuals who exist and who I've personally worked with and do continue to work with.

> Stephen Hawking was still quite expressive despite his limitations, although they did come later in life

He's a fantastic example of why you don't need to rely on body language to communicate emotion and feeling.

Sure, but have to understand that a limitation of language is that it doesn't convey perfect information. When someone says "anyone can do it", they mean that most people with full-blown "stuck in the house for years" social anxiety, can actually do it, and they meant nothing negative against those who are truly physically disabled. People summarize their thoughts when they speak and try to convey a picture that most people can understand; they are not trying to hurt anyone

When someone says "anyone can do it" I understand that to mean what they said, which is that they believe anyone can do it.

Someone has clarified it twice yet you're still fighting the word "anyone" instead of trying to view it through a reasonable lens. If his point only makes sense because he excluded a very rare group of people, then your point only makes sense because you include a very rare group of people. Have some grace, be excellent to each other.

Their point only makes sense because they excluded a class of individuals that I mentioned in my original response.

I have some grace; I'm willing to include those in my consideration that they have deemed unworthy of consideration.

No they're not. But that is not a reason to make everyone incapable of using body language, by removing offices.

Video calls convey body language. You don't need an office for that.

"Why haven't you just tried not being autistic?"

> Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

I find that people actually give away more with their body language over whatever conferencing software you may use. When you have all the portraits up on your screen, the little micro things are much easier to spot. I hope I didn't give you even more anxiety! We are just trying to see how people feel in order to manage the situation :)

I use a virtual avatar, so that doesn't bother me at all.

One of my coworkers is a slug with a nice hat; another is an alien.

I think the problem is more that even people who are not artistically inclined can manage to draw a diagram of a few servers and connections. Despite having tried it for 20 years everything I draw with a mouse looks like something done by a 3y old with crayons.

So no, without a tablet to draw on I find online whiteboards 100% useless so far.