+1 every time we have these in-person sprints they are dominated by the managerial types trying to make the engineers and designers engage in trite 'activities' they read about online or in some book. And even when the result of the sprint is one poorly thought out doomed to fail concept, the managerial types parade around their ability to run a sprint, the outcome of the thing not really relevant at that point.

I'm pro work from anywhere so long as shit gets done but...

Picking up on social cues. Bouncing ideas around using a whiteboard. Speaking quickly without that ever so slight lag on Zoom which means you struggle to get a word in without potentially talking over somebody. Having food or drinks before or afterwards to unwind and build relationships and kick things around informally.

There's lots more.

Maybe it's just me but I don't really want to think about work outside of working hours, much less hang out or 'unwind' with my coworkers before or after work.

Nobody said it was outside of working hours.

you just said food or drinks before or afterwards. people don't have food in the middle of the day after a meeting.

The differences with in person are that conversations have a much higher fidelity. There can be spontaneous multiple conversations going in the same room which is impossible virtually without spinning up another videoconf session, people leaving, people re-joining, etc. So it really is much better for brainstorming and doing the “figure things out” mode of software engineering. Once you’ve figured things out, the implementation can be dome remotely.

Sharing meals during this time together also helps build relationships and trust within a team. I mean as you work, or even offsite at a restaurant - go out to breakfast or lunch during the work day.

> Having food or drinks before or afterwards

That's not work. That should NEVER be part of work, even.

You sound joyful to work with.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

Also, please don't cross into personal attack on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

It's not a requirement, but it helps a lot. The biggest factor might be latency, which makes it much harder to informally coordinate multiple people talking without speaking over each other.

Gee, I wonder how people worked before we had Zoom calls and we were all working in different locations across the country. Either people were really smart before, or we have become really dumb now.