[throwawaycopter]

> Face to face collaboration is a lot more efficient.

That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth. Perhaps depends on your role?

Honestly, for all the companies I worked in the past decade, the ones where I had better quality communication were the ones where I worked remotely.

Then again, I'm a software developer. Developers tend to be good at communicating through pull requests, documentation, screen sharing and text-based chat where you can send snippets.

[slotrans]

> That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth.

Because it's obviously true.

Communicating through pull requests is shockingly inefficient. It can take days or even weeks to accomplish what face-to-face communication would accomplish in SECONDS.

[dudul]

Please explain with a case study or an example.

IME face to face communication gives the impression that communication happened. The impression that a problem was discussed and solved. When talking people barely listen and just wait for their turn to speak and feel like they are contributing.

Written communication can be re-read, it can be looked at your own pace when you're focused. It can be challenged with comments and it's much harder to hand wave the questions away.

[ipaddr]

Why would a face to face conversation help? A smile is going to suddenly explain why you using a 7 character variable is jeopardizing the project? People are so afraid to confront others in person so if you talk to them they will just accept your changes so they don't have to deal with the person breathing on them anymore? I can see that..

[throwawaycopter]

As I said, this makes me very confused. Face to face communication tend to be absolutely inefficient in my experience.

They are a hindrance more often than not.