Today I had my first full in-person work meeting in over a year. It was great!
17 thoughts on “f2f is better”
When I weight the pros and cons I’m still heavily in favor of full-time remote (for my job anyway). I hate commuting and I love having lunch with my wife everyday and playing with my dog and cat for a bit every couple hours. I also feel more productive and engaged with my work.
It is nice to grab lunch or dinner with my teammates once in a while, but voice calls with screen sharing has been enough to collaborate effectively.
It helps that my commute is a pleasant 5 minutes (or a boring 10 minutes if I walk). And I’ve had lots of productive remote meetings. So I see what you’re saying. But this in-person meeting (it was three people in my office, discussing a problem I’d never seen before) was much more effective than I think things would’ve gone remotely.
F2F and whiteboard (or blackboard if you insist) for the win. Remote meetings can be ok and productive but there’s no proper online replacement for a large surface, set of pens and a wiper.
When I worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory everyone else had a whiteboard, but I got a chalkboard. I think chalkboards are better than whiteboards in several important ways, and worse in only one way. How chalkboards are worse: chalk dust. How they’re better: (1) the thickness and visibility and shading is easily made continuous rather than pretty much discrete. Turn the chalk on its side to draw a thick line, use very little pressure to make a thin faint line, use more pressure to make a thin dark line, etc. (2) no smell. (3) No matter how long you leave something up, you can erase it without a trace (using a little water if needed).
There may be some principles (e.g. whether the use of a whiteboard is important) that impact on this. But I think it’s going to boil down to personal preferences in most situations where remote work is possible. FWIW, I started working mostly remotely in 2008, and have never looked back. In my case, it saved me between 2 and 3 hours per day of commuting time. And since I am most productive when I first get up in the morning, it converted the first couple of hours of my day from wasted time commuting to productive time getting work done. In fact, my work output skyrocketed with the change, as did my job and life satisfaction.
The pandemic changed little in my work life (except that I took on some extra projects specifically related to covid-19.) Of course, my frequency of trips to the office for in-person meeting dropped from very low to zero. I’m not aware of any adverse impact this has had on my work, or on my relationships with my collaborators. Since most of my work collaborations are extramural anyway, in-person meetings tend to be just once or twice a year anyway. The more frequent intra-departmental meetings are mostly a waste of time, so being able to “hide behind a screen” actually enables me to get more real work done. If it has, it’s far too little to outweigh the benefits of remote work for me.
So, I don’t think I’ll be going back to much in-person work anytime soon. Of course, if my chairman would like to see my productivity reduced by, I don’t know, 25%, he can order me to do that and I’ll have to consider whether to quit.
But I know many other people who have found working from home undesirable or counterproductive for various reasons. It’s going to be very idiosyncratic.
Andrew – do you think companies (mostly tech) that are currently moving to full remote work will reverse course in the future? Is there some value that they won’t be able to capture with their workforce without to face?
Am the founder of a tech. company. This is what our data shows. Those in very different departments, such as accounting and optimization, have stopped talking to each other. That is, they don’t do it virtually. They did do it in person. Why? Because of meetings and other gatherings in which we seated them next to each other.
Why did we do this? Because if they weren’t forced to sit next to each other, they wouldn’t talk to each other. And talking to each other is important, primarily, to talk about problems and methodologies that they jointly work on but may not have the need to directly talk to one another.
For this reason, when safe (enough), we’re going to disallow remote work.
Could you just make them schedule a meeting with each other once a week or whatever? Whoever was attending those “meetings and other gatherings” that you mentioned could be required to sit in.
I think in-person meetings can be valuable and productive but — as with Garrett and Clyde, above — I’ve come to believe that they’re overrated, or at least that I used to over-rate them. They’re good but they aren’t all that, and I think are often not worth the extra time and hassles of getting everyone together. For me the most valuable in-person meetings are the brainstorming ones — a few people around a blackboard, as Andrew is talking about in this post — and the least valuable are the ones where everyone on the team gets together and goes around the table talking about what they’ve done, what they’re doing, and what they’re about to do. The latter type can work just fine online, or even better really.
We’ve tried. The dynamic of virtually communicating is different. In any case, we’re going to try many different options. What’s clear is that the pandemic has changed our work culture. 90% want to continue working remotely.
Well, if 90% want to continue working remotely, you’re going to have a pretty disgruntled workforce on your hands if you force them back to in-person work. All the more so, I imagine, if the stated reason is to force them to talk to people they don’t seem interested in talking to. Since you’re a tech company, I would guess that most of your employees could find other employment. So, be careful!
Why would you not go hybrid instead of disallowing remote work altogether? Do you want to lose half your workers?
I should have stated, this was only an hypothesis. We’ve started the process of testing all of our hypothesis.
In any case, why? The demand for mathematical coders/ML engineers/applied mathematicians is so high (also, most of my employees fit into one of these categories), it’s a type of infinite recursion trying to get them to stay at the company, while satisfying their demands.
The average employee stays at my company for 16 months (the distribution is not normal; those younger than 35 stay for a lot shorter period and those over 45 stay for a lot longer).
Another:
Personally, I think I’m much more effective in person. But in-person meetings are harder to schedule and involve lots of extra time, whether it be commuting, flying to conferences, or just the challenges of scheduling. So it’s a tradeoff. To the extent the costs are borne by the employees, I guess that employers will be motivated to shift back to in-person work.
I will say, just to modify my above post, that I don’t like to fly, and so for several years (long before covid) I’ve been giving remote talks at conferences, and they usually go just fine. A conference talk is already minimal interaction so it seems like one of the best venues for a remote talk.
I teach a college class one night a week, and it’s only been a couple classes so far this semester but being together in the classroom has been nice. On the other hand, I’ve already had two students out of 14 who have had COVID exposures and had to go for testing.
My day job has been perfectly nice to do from home and I would happily do it, say 80-90% remote from here on out. The only downside is that we need to collect data from people on specialized equipment at some point and we haven’t been able to get those people in for testing for quite a while now.
A Robot’s probably right, that the white/blackboard is integral here. Tough to judge so soon, Andrew, when you may be experiencing some sort of Rejuvenation Effect–as you say, it’s your first F2F meeting in over a year, so it will carry some novelty. May want to hold off on saying it’s better until some time passes. :)
I use the blackboard all the time in both of my classes. To me, the three biggest advantages of in-person teaching are:
1. The blackboard.
2. I can tell that the students are focusing on class and not reading email or whatever.
3. The students can work in pairs and I can walk around the room and see what they’re doing.
When I weight the pros and cons I’m still heavily in favor of full-time remote (for my job anyway). I hate commuting and I love having lunch with my wife everyday and playing with my dog and cat for a bit every couple hours. I also feel more productive and engaged with my work.
It is nice to grab lunch or dinner with my teammates once in a while, but voice calls with screen sharing has been enough to collaborate effectively.
Garrett:
It helps that my commute is a pleasant 5 minutes (or a boring 10 minutes if I walk). And I’ve had lots of productive remote meetings. So I see what you’re saying. But this in-person meeting (it was three people in my office, discussing a problem I’d never seen before) was much more effective than I think things would’ve gone remotely.
F2F and whiteboard (or blackboard if you insist) for the win. Remote meetings can be ok and productive but there’s no proper online replacement for a large surface, set of pens and a wiper.
A:
Indeed, the blackboard was key to making progress at the meeting. Also everyone staying focused, no hiding behind screens.
When I worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory everyone else had a whiteboard, but I got a chalkboard. I think chalkboards are better than whiteboards in several important ways, and worse in only one way. How chalkboards are worse: chalk dust. How they’re better: (1) the thickness and visibility and shading is easily made continuous rather than pretty much discrete. Turn the chalk on its side to draw a thick line, use very little pressure to make a thin faint line, use more pressure to make a thin dark line, etc. (2) no smell. (3) No matter how long you leave something up, you can erase it without a trace (using a little water if needed).
There may be some principles (e.g. whether the use of a whiteboard is important) that impact on this. But I think it’s going to boil down to personal preferences in most situations where remote work is possible. FWIW, I started working mostly remotely in 2008, and have never looked back. In my case, it saved me between 2 and 3 hours per day of commuting time. And since I am most productive when I first get up in the morning, it converted the first couple of hours of my day from wasted time commuting to productive time getting work done. In fact, my work output skyrocketed with the change, as did my job and life satisfaction.
The pandemic changed little in my work life (except that I took on some extra projects specifically related to covid-19.) Of course, my frequency of trips to the office for in-person meeting dropped from very low to zero. I’m not aware of any adverse impact this has had on my work, or on my relationships with my collaborators. Since most of my work collaborations are extramural anyway, in-person meetings tend to be just once or twice a year anyway. The more frequent intra-departmental meetings are mostly a waste of time, so being able to “hide behind a screen” actually enables me to get more real work done. If it has, it’s far too little to outweigh the benefits of remote work for me.
So, I don’t think I’ll be going back to much in-person work anytime soon. Of course, if my chairman would like to see my productivity reduced by, I don’t know, 25%, he can order me to do that and I’ll have to consider whether to quit.
But I know many other people who have found working from home undesirable or counterproductive for various reasons. It’s going to be very idiosyncratic.
Andrew – do you think companies (mostly tech) that are currently moving to full remote work will reverse course in the future? Is there some value that they won’t be able to capture with their workforce without to face?
Am the founder of a tech. company. This is what our data shows. Those in very different departments, such as accounting and optimization, have stopped talking to each other. That is, they don’t do it virtually. They did do it in person. Why? Because of meetings and other gatherings in which we seated them next to each other.
Why did we do this? Because if they weren’t forced to sit next to each other, they wouldn’t talk to each other. And talking to each other is important, primarily, to talk about problems and methodologies that they jointly work on but may not have the need to directly talk to one another.
For this reason, when safe (enough), we’re going to disallow remote work.
Could you just make them schedule a meeting with each other once a week or whatever? Whoever was attending those “meetings and other gatherings” that you mentioned could be required to sit in.
I think in-person meetings can be valuable and productive but — as with Garrett and Clyde, above — I’ve come to believe that they’re overrated, or at least that I used to over-rate them. They’re good but they aren’t all that, and I think are often not worth the extra time and hassles of getting everyone together. For me the most valuable in-person meetings are the brainstorming ones — a few people around a blackboard, as Andrew is talking about in this post — and the least valuable are the ones where everyone on the team gets together and goes around the table talking about what they’ve done, what they’re doing, and what they’re about to do. The latter type can work just fine online, or even better really.
We’ve tried. The dynamic of virtually communicating is different. In any case, we’re going to try many different options. What’s clear is that the pandemic has changed our work culture. 90% want to continue working remotely.
Well, if 90% want to continue working remotely, you’re going to have a pretty disgruntled workforce on your hands if you force them back to in-person work. All the more so, I imagine, if the stated reason is to force them to talk to people they don’t seem interested in talking to. Since you’re a tech company, I would guess that most of your employees could find other employment. So, be careful!
Why would you not go hybrid instead of disallowing remote work altogether? Do you want to lose half your workers?
I should have stated, this was only an hypothesis. We’ve started the process of testing all of our hypothesis.
In any case, why? The demand for mathematical coders/ML engineers/applied mathematicians is so high (also, most of my employees fit into one of these categories), it’s a type of infinite recursion trying to get them to stay at the company, while satisfying their demands.
The average employee stays at my company for 16 months (the distribution is not normal; those younger than 35 stay for a lot shorter period and those over 45 stay for a lot longer).
Another:
Personally, I think I’m much more effective in person. But in-person meetings are harder to schedule and involve lots of extra time, whether it be commuting, flying to conferences, or just the challenges of scheduling. So it’s a tradeoff. To the extent the costs are borne by the employees, I guess that employers will be motivated to shift back to in-person work.
I will say, just to modify my above post, that I don’t like to fly, and so for several years (long before covid) I’ve been giving remote talks at conferences, and they usually go just fine. A conference talk is already minimal interaction so it seems like one of the best venues for a remote talk.
I teach a college class one night a week, and it’s only been a couple classes so far this semester but being together in the classroom has been nice. On the other hand, I’ve already had two students out of 14 who have had COVID exposures and had to go for testing.
My day job has been perfectly nice to do from home and I would happily do it, say 80-90% remote from here on out. The only downside is that we need to collect data from people on specialized equipment at some point and we haven’t been able to get those people in for testing for quite a while now.
A Robot’s probably right, that the white/blackboard is integral here. Tough to judge so soon, Andrew, when you may be experiencing some sort of Rejuvenation Effect–as you say, it’s your first F2F meeting in over a year, so it will carry some novelty. May want to hold off on saying it’s better until some time passes. :)
Tarmangani:
I use the blackboard all the time in both of my classes. To me, the three biggest advantages of in-person teaching are:
1. The blackboard.
2. I can tell that the students are focusing on class and not reading email or whatever.
3. The students can work in pairs and I can walk around the room and see what they’re doing.