I WFH, every year one of the goals that the rest of the team decides is that it’s “so great” to see each other in person. The past few years haven’t worked out but one did. I spent hours in a couple of airports, the huge expense for the company, I spent days away from my family, and for what? So you could look me in my same face you would see if we turned cameras on every once in a while? My husband says I’m being weird, but I legitimately want to know, what is the benefit? I hate being there and have to play nice so you can…look me even closer in the face?
I find that a lot of getting to know your coworkers as individuals, and not simply “the person in charge of that account” depends on face to face communication.
When I’m working remotely, the moment a meeting ends, I’m outta there.
Pretty much the only IMs I send are strictly work related - there’s not much water cooler talk, not much griping, because it’s all recorded (or can be) when working remotely.
I’ve worked 2 jobs for 22 years, my side-gig being the 22-year one while my day-job moves about.
Working remotely has allowed me to change addresses, cities, regions, coasts, countries, and time zones many times in those 22 years. Had there been enough work in the side gig, I would have been happy to make it my primary job; but I say that as I know the day job has taught me techniques and tools I would maybe never have been able to bring to the side gig without that incentive.
Seeing people in the flesh is neat and keen and fetch, or whatever. But I’ll reserve that for my friends.
When it comes down to it, I have the power to require that a job pay me for every moment I do things on their behalf; and that includes commuting. I don’t want to do it, and they don’t want to pay me to do it, so I don’t.
I’m actually shocked to find how many people agree with the OPs sentiment, but maybe there’s something about the demographics of who’s using a FOSS Reddit alternative or something. I’m not saying everyone is wrong or has something wrong with them or whatever, but I entirely agree with people finding this valuable, so maybe I can answer the OPs question here.
I’ve been working remotely long since before the pandemic. I’ve worked remotely for multiple companies and in different environments. I am extremely introverted and arguably anti social. I tend to want to hang out with many of my friends online over in person. But that doesn’t mean I think there’s no advantage at all. To be honest, when I first started remote work, I thought the in person thing was total bullshit. After a few meetings my opinions drastically changed.
I’ve pushed (with other employees, of course) to get remote employees flown in at least a few times a year at multiple companies. There are vastly different social dynamics in person than over video. Honestly, I don’t understand how people feel otherwise, especially if they’ve experienced it. I’ve worked with many remote employees over the years and asked about this, and most people have agreed with me. Many of these people are also introverted.
I think one of the big things here is people harping on the “face” thing. Humans communicate in large part through body language - it’s not just faces. There’s also a lot of communication in microexpressions that aren’t always captured by compressed, badly lit video. So much of communication just isn’t captured in video.
Secondly, in my experience, online meetings are extremely transactional. You meet at the scheduled time, you talk about the thing, then you close the meeting and move on. In person, people slowly mosy over to meetings. And after the meeting ends, they tend to hang around a bit and chat. When you’re working in an office, you tend to grab lunch with people. Or bump into them by the kitchen. There’s a TON more socializing happening in person where you actually bump into other people and talk them as people and not just cogs in the machine to get your work done.
I find in person interactions drastically change my relationships with people. Some people come off entirely different online and it’s not until meeting them in person that I really feel like I know them. And then I understand their issues and blockers or miscommunications better and feel more understanding of their experiences.
Maybe things are different if you work jobs with less interdepencies or are more solo. I’ve always worked jobs that take a lot of cooperation between multiple different people in different roles. And those relationships are just way more functional with people I’ve met and have a real relationship with. And that comes from things that just don’t happen online.
Im honestly really curious how anyone could feel differently. The other comments just seem mad at being required to and stating the same stuff happens online, but it just doesn’t. I do wonder if maybe it has to do with being younger and entering the workplace more online or something. But I’ve worked with hundreds of remote employees and never heard a single one say the in person stuff to be useless. And I’ve heard many say exactly the opposite.
I think you’re missing the point a wee bit. No one (introverted or otherwise) is arguing against in-person socialising in general. They are arguing against forced in-person socialising with co-workers.
online meetings are extremely transactional
Exactly. You know what else is transactional? Jobs. The employer and employee exchange work for currency. Employees don’t owe their employer any meaningful relationships with their co-workers. I’m sure that means less efficient business. I also don’t give a flying fuck.
I felt like this a couple of years ago, then I went and changed both job and career. Suddenly I find myself actually enjoying what I do, as well as my colleagues.
A job is definitely transactional, but seeing as most of us spend 8h a day on them. I’d urge ya’ll to - if possible - try and find one where you can find some pride and value in what you do, other than the paycheck you receive.
It has improved all parts of my life in all honesty.
Are you a manager by any chance?
Totally agree. I’m on restricted duties at the moment so meet all of my clients on teams. I hate it. The audio is terrible so one or both of us is always mishearing, my desk is in front of a window so I have to keep my curtains closed for them to see me. I don’t get to build the same rapport with them and their responses to my questions are more stilted because of it. A large part of my job is judging body language and reading non-verbal cues, which is next to impossible on teams.
And on monday, my computer decided to do a mandatory, 3 hour update, so I missed an appointment and couldn’t access the client’s number to apologise or explain. So I had to text a colleague to run over to the client’s office let them know I wasn’t going to make it
Further to that, I have found that in-person training sessions are much more effective than training over Teams/Zoom/Skype.
Not specifically because you are in the room with the instructor, but rather because you are in the room with the other students.
The opportunity to chat casually with the others during breaks is often where much of the learning and deepening of understanding happens. You can learn about their different approaches to the same problems you have. You can discover that you share confusion about something the instructor had briefly touched on , which can lead to a deeper discussion in class.(far too often during online training nobody asks what they assume is not a common question)
In your intro paragraph you say meetings. I think people who still think of meetings as being a worthwhile way to spend company time probably are demographically preoccupied with the alleged value of “in person”.
You’re correct in that it’s a higher quality of getting to know people in person.
However, I don’t want to get to know anyone at my work because I hate the place and I can’t create a honest relationship with my coworkers because of that, if I’d be honest I’d likely be reported or whatever.
I want to spend more time with people I do care about, not more time with people I don’t care at all about.
Sliding off topic here, but I would seriously suggest you change jobs. Spending half of your waking time in an environment you hate is one way to die early. Life’s way too short for that!
I hate every job I’ve had so far and I don’t think that is going to change. Thanks for trying though.
have you had a job with a strong union or even outright as a co-operative? i figure the fundamental problem is that normal jobs are inherently exploitative and if you don’t have that bit it might become actually enjoyable
In the end, every job that is not a co-op is inherently exploitative, since if it doesn’t return profit to employ someone, employment will not happen.
But really the problem is that I have a very low resiliency, I’m mentally weak and can’t work as much as many other people or in the usual way with semi-fixed hours etc. So I can only get bad jobs, because the good jobs are very competitive and I lose to other applicants.
Why wouldn’t you be able to create relationships with your colleagues just because you hate your workplace? The worst places I’ve worked at, have had the absolute strongest relationships between the people working there. Because it’s basically been a necessity to survive the workday.
Your colleagues might hate it as much as you do. That can be something to find comfort in. And you’ll obviously never care about someone you don’t know. Perhaps you might actually start caring about a colleague or two, if you do get to know them.
I’m in the same boat as you. It’s a waste of time for me, but others seem to need it.
It’s worth noting I have autism though. So social interactions don’t do much for me.
The extraverts had the tables turned on them in 2020 and have been itchy for a captive audience ever since. It’s a drug fix for these people, nothing more. I’ve skipped every cross country in-person team building gibberish since 2020 and will continue to do so.
I like how indulging extrovertism is a drug fix, but indulging introvertism is just normal. Even though we’re scientifically social animals…
American work culture has always heavily favored extraverts to begin with. I feel really resentful because extraverts finally got a small taste of what it means to be forced to adjust to a workplace they’re uncomfortable with, and now they act like we all need to go into the office again to keep their needs met.
There’s never been any real consideration of introverts when it comes to office culture, other than to ridicule or minimize us when we express our needs. And btw I work a highly social job and interact with people all day long. I’m expected to adjust but extraverts aren’t.
Introverts: I don’t mind RTO as long as it’s on an “at will” basis
Extroverts: I want everyone to RTO
See how indulging one or the other isn’t the same?
The problem is that some extroverts try to push their desire for face-to-face engagement onto others while trying to make introverts feel bad or ostracized for not wanting to. Obviously there are sane, reasonable people on both sides. Unfortunately, those that make the rules in the USA are typically neither sane nor reasonable.
I love seeing my team in person, it’s happened twice since starting this job over a year ago, we get along well and always have a good time together. If they were in the same office as me I’d go in for team days if I could.
My life is lonely enough at home to want to isolate myself even more.
Over the past 4 years I’ve spent months at a time without seeing a single person. That’s not healthy and I hate being alone. The biggest joy in my work life was always getting to hang out with other people because generally I’m very lonely.
Now I go to the office maybe once a week because I don’t want to wake up more than 5min before stand up.
Some people need to be around others, some people hate it, some people are indifferent. Everyone is different.
I find social interactions very draining. While others find being isolated draining.
I think we are likely in the minority but that doesn’t make us weird. No one is normal.
Social interactions are totally draining for me, but I cannot understand a person until I had a face to face communication with them.
Thanks for posting that. I find social interactions pretty draining as well, and default to email or chat whenever possible, but your post made it click in my head that even a quick video call with a new (or old!) colleague makes later communications feel so much easier.
Same here. I am introverted and I hate social interactions. It drains me. BUT for me, after talking and meeting a person face-to-face a few times, all the rest of the online communication becomes a lot more smooth-sailing.
It’s hard to trust someone I’ve never met. I don’t want to travel either but I want to understand the people I work with in a way that’s only possible when we share space.
It’s work. It’s not always fun but that’s too be expected.
We do this sometimes but just people who live near the city lol! I can’t imagine doing a meet up where you had to fly somewhere and my company sure as hell would never pay for it!
Seeing everyone in person can be kind of fun because we can have a real conversation that’s not being monitored… We mostly talk shit the whole time lol
You sound like a Solarian
In The Naked Sun Isaac Asimov portrays a world focused on avoiding physical contact with other people. The Solarians interact with each other largely through technology. They live far from each other, spread out across a sparsely populated planet. People are taught from birth to avoid physical contact, and live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Face-to-face interaction (referred to in the book as “seeing”) is seen as a repugnant chore. Communication takes place through technology unknown of off their world: holography, 3-D television. Communicating with each other in this fashion is referred to as “viewing”, in contrast to “seeing”, which is face-to-face. Communication is frequent, but it is “viewing” of a transmitted image. 1
Airports? Days? I live 30 mins walking distance from my office and I’m still not bothered to go there.
I share the same opinion as you. My job is mostly remote, but I am required to come to the office (2 hour drive away) once every month or two (which has mostly come down to company meetings once every 2 months).
On the bright side, they book me a hotel room and compensate me for gas and wear-and-tear on my car, but pretty much when I get there, it’s a normal day with a scrum meeting almost first thing, which we do virtually almost always anyways, and then the same work I’d be doing at home, just at a cubicle. We sometimes go out for a group lunch, but most of the time we’re on our own (I don’t really eat lunch so I just grab a coffee), and then we have the company meeting which could 100% just be done virtually. My only real interaction with anyone in the office is greetings when people walk in and that’s pretty much it.
I’m with you, I really don’t see the benefit, and I know I can’t complain much because it’s not very frequent, but it’s still 4 hours of driving (which btw, I think I’m expected to not count as “work time”) and it doesn’t benefit me or anyone else I see anyways.
I think everyone just pretends to be honest. They’re a few fucking weirdos who enjoy waiting 5 extra hours for their delayed flight and having to rent a car to drive to some conference that could have been conducted virtually and all that other bullshit, but I’m fairly confident that most people would prefer NOT to do that and to simply wfh. Webcams are fine with me. I have friends. I have a wife. I have a family. I don’t need to see work people in real life. It literally adds zero benefit to my life. Also a lot of people suffer from chronic pain like back problems. Commutting and flying and sitting 8 hours a day in some piece of shit ergo chair from 1988 is literally torture for them. Work culture has no sympathy for disabled people. They can go get fucked. Work from home for life all you motherfuckers.
I’m the same way. I’m not anti-social, just picky with how I spend my time and with whom. I guess it’s more of a reflection on my job, but work people ain’t it – meaning I wouldn’t be friends with most of them outside of work. As I get older, I find that I increasingly put myself first and have less tolerance for bullshit lol.
Not to say that being in an office is better for everyone, and I think people should be able to freely choose a working style that fits them best. There are a few benefits of in person meetings and gathering, here are some I thought of.
A: To make sure You didn’t outsource work assigned to you to someone in a foreign country for a fraction of your salary.
B: To bring up the whole team in one place to look at something, and/or socialize in a way you just can’t over a virtual call.
C: To cross-communicate between departments more, and proactively avoid silos of information on multidisciplinary projects.
D: Meetings and calls can feel more transactional when done virtually than in person, there’s less ability to talk about other stuff besides a brief bit of small talk at the beginning or end.
E: Extroverted people feel lonely with prolonged work from home just as much as introverted people get tired out from being around others for long.
F: A manager needs to get more than just a verbal answer on something. Someone can easily just say “yeah yeah everything’s fine”, but there’s stuff with unspoken body language that can be gauged much better in an in-person conversation.
You’re not being weird. Some people like face to face, some don’t. Not everybody’s the same and to claim that would be naive. Unfortunately, there are more people who enjoy face to face than not, and most of them work in management: management is interacting with people --> you have to like interacting with people to be at least a passable manager --> the chances are much higher you enjoy doing that face to face --> management makes decisions --> face to face is valued.
Same goes for salary: management is there to delegate work --> they are disconnected with the day to day of workers because they don’t do their work --> management sees workers as less qualified than themselves --> logically never would pay those “less qualified” same or more than themselves. Management makes decisions so guess who gets paid more…
It’s just how things shake out. If workers become management, they too forget how things are and slip into the same pattern observed above. It’s just unfortunate how the human brain works.
