Is it perhaps that there are specific people, who are doing the ideation, or are particularly good at helping you think? Or is it anyone and everyone? If it’s anyone, then is it a social / biological quirk? Is it something else?
For everyone reading, this is worth reflecting upon, if only to move our regular WFH / RTO discussions on HN forward.
We are a social species. Body language, eye contact and facial expressions are more important than the spoken word during a conversation. They're also extremely subtle. You don't think about someone leaning in or mimicking your position (that's a thing!) when you're saying something interesting, but we instinctively pick up on these cues and use them to steer conversations (or, in this case, know to double-down on whatever we're talking about).
None of these transmit well over VC.
Consider eye contact, for example. Maintaining eye contact with someone means that you're staring almost directly at your webcam's lens, which is at best unideal (if you're use to being on camera) and, at worst, impossible (since you're, naturally, staring at the facsimile of a person in the box on the lower-left-hand corner of your Zoom window). Webcams are AWKWARD.
Furthermore, a Zoom meeting has to compete with the billions of other things that you're doing on your computer. A face-to-face meeting competes with your calendar and your inner thoughts. This matters a lot for key conversations.
There’s definitely roles which have to be in person, and those people should come to office.
Everyone else - they don’t need to in the same way sales people would.
Not all conversations lead to insights, what’s going on then?
There’s some specific things happening to lead to the productivity benefit. Because this is what it is in the end, it’s productivity we care about, not socializing.
For Eng Mangers to do their job effectively, they need engineers in office too. I discussed that in detail in a sibling comment to your parent one.
For that matter, post-it notes on a wall are better than JIRA.
At one workplace everyone had glass table so they could draw on with markers. People could literally come up to your desk and you could work through problems together on one end of the table.
The best online tools are garbage compared to physicality.
I'll never understand this. All my whiteboard diagrams look like shit. My drawing skills suck, my writing is nearly illegible.
Most online tools have excellent diagram shapes, nice and customizable arrows, good templates, etc.
I can make nice diagrams much faster on any of those than in a real whiteboard. A lot less messy as well.
I also worked in a place where we could draw on desks. I fucking hated it, it was the worst possible place to brainstorm anything, and made the place very noisy because people were invited to have those discussions on desks, and it was an open office plan where others were trying to work.
It is small wonder that I became extremely more productive at home. I don't need to wear headphones all day long, meetings tend to be more focused (since people don't like sitting on online meetings as long), online tooling for communication ia top notch these days.
I can't think of a single upside of being in the office.
Also I've been to plenty of meetings where engineers split off into multiple sub groups and diagramed different ideas on parts of the board and then everyone joined back up to discuss. Can zoom technically do that? Sure but it sucks.
I submit that this isn’t my reality.I never spontaneously break out a whiteboard., the same way I dont spontaneously break out into a dance routine.
I do hope I’m in the majority, otherwise I’m really unsure of what to make of all the work places I’ve been at.
Countless times I've walked up to someone and asked "hey can I work through this problem on a whiteboard with you."
And while I haven't done so myself, I have had coworkers spontaneously break into dance routines before. (Ok that has only happened once...)
Post-it notes are not something I've seen used except for random sessions usually run by a consultant. JIRA sucks except for support issues, but most everyone just uses a google doc or spreadsheet and moves on with life.
Beyond that, we are just getting started with remote work, the tools will improve, not so with physical space tools.
I have. Here is why in person interaction works better for me. I learn a lot from someone's body language and multiple subtle cues - eye contact, fidgeting, arms and hands, direction in which toes are pointing etc.
They tell me if someone is not telling the truth, or under stress, or is uncomfortable. Then I can coax further details out of them using appropriate means. And most of the times, people want to share a lot of uncomfortable details but have a big mental block preventing them. As a manager, I can also observe the body language of my team members when they interact with each other and identify the dynamics. Whether they are getting along well or whether they have issues with each other.
None of this is available on Zoom. "Hey how is it going?" "Good" is not going to tell me really if you are struggling with something and are not able to share your problems. "What do you think about the new guy on our team?" "He is good" doesn't tell me what you really think of the new guy.
After talking about this to dozens of people, whose job it is to deal with other people, I have realized that this is a widely shared problem. Luckily, the decision makers about RTO are also the ones whose job involves dealing with people.
