[snegu]

I really feel this. I've been working remotely for a few years, and will probably continue doing so for the foreseeable future, but there is no such thing as informal conversation in that setting.

My company encourages everybody to set up "salon" meetings with random people to just chat, but these conversations end up being awkward and forced (though that could just be me).

The result of this is that I feel completely disconnected from my co-workers and my company. I have plenty of other things going on in my life, so that doesn't bother me too much, but it's certainly not ideal.

[epidemian]

That's exactly the feeling that has most weighed down on me doing fully remote work: lack of connection.

And i mean with people. Doing software, i find it easy to feel somewhat "connected" to the work i'm doing because of the sort of immediate "it works / solves the problem" quality software usually has.

But with people, even though we're all on the same situation and we make our best effort to have some casual hangout time via zoom, i still feel it's too "formal" in a way, compared to the in-person experience of going to grab something to eat together, or just talking about semi-work-related stuff. And the resulting disconnection is not a great feeling really.

The other reply comment to yours sort of dismisses this as a generational thing or something. I don't think that's really the case. Even though i fall in the millennial generation, i've had my fair share talking on the phone with friends and family. In those cases, you don't need any further excuse to do so than just "wanting to talk". With coworkers, of course, firing up a zoom call just to talk about nothing in particular would feel completely awkward. The thing about sharing an actual physical space, i think, is that it creates opportunities for those informal conversations to happen naturally.

This is not to say remote work doesn't have its upsides; it definitely does. But we should not dismiss its downsides so readily.

[pracer]

Being myself a big advocate of remote work (and being working remote for the last 3 years, before pandemic) I agree that usually people underestimate the downsides. The thing is, in my opinion, that the key should be, does it really works having remote workers compared to in person offices? I think it does, once the dynamic changes to the new environment. And in the medium to long term makes people happier as they can improve their personal lifes with the time they can recover (as well as being able to organize the time by themselves).

The main problem I saw people had with the remote work is how to make friends outside of work. Most of us are used to "find friends" from our schools, then universities and then from work, so many people got the feeling that they were isolated. But that's because they didn't know how to find "pools" of people to find new friends from.

[dcolkitt]

This is something I don’t understand. People have been having informal conversations with their friends, family and even colleagues over the phone for a hundred years.

I almost feel like it’s a generational thing. People who came of age before widespread text messaging spent countless hours chit-chatting with their friends on the phone. It might be that late Millenials and Gen Z are less suited to remote work compared to Xennials and Gen X.

[zubspace]

Could also be a combination of missing social queues, lag and low quality audio. If there's a teams session with multiple people, it happens quite often, that two or more people start talking at the same time, which feels very awkward.

This is something which happens in real life, too. But it's a lot easier to alleviate without lag and strong eye contact and other body queues.

The result is, that virtual discussions are moderated by a single participant and natural conversations are simply not possible that way.

[kongin]

My friends who are over 50 think nothing of having a 1 hour phone chat on a rainy Sunday afternoon, my friends around 20 sound like I've put them in front of a firing squad if I do a 5 minute call without organizing it by text with a specific time.

[only_as_i_fall]

Do older people just call their coworkers for no particular reason or to ask something that could have been an email?

I think you're right about the generational difference but I'm not sure if I see it significantly affecting how people interact at work.

[hinkley]

Even if it really is only you, that's a lot of edges in a fully connected graph. And odds are good a couple other people also feel the same way, raising that problem substantially.