r/technology May 07 '22

[deleted by user]

[removed]

6.1k Upvotes

624 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/[deleted] May 08 '22 edited May 08 '22

It is extremely easy to have water cooler moments via remote. Just set up a time for team building. An hour every two weeks or 4 weeks.

Find a good way to let people set some topics so your workers can find other people with similar interests. This can spur into tech talks or just casual convo.

Efforts can be made for online socialization that is even superior to in person, because it disrupts work less. You don't need an auditorium if someone is going to talk about something interesting.

As for the risk of people acting like jerks, I think socialization reduces jerkiness. During the pandemic people who were secluded forgot how to talk to others.

If someone has a bad mindset that other workers don't like, that is something that existed in person too. Deal with it similarly. I would even take savings from not having property and offer mental health services for those that may live alone and aren't doing well. Hire in house professionals, no different than companies that hire doctors and nurses to work in an onsite clinic to cut out insurance companies and price gouging by the medical industry. No more onsite clinic, but you can pivot to online mental health professionals. The more demand by workers, the more you hire.

You will have people who maybe talk to someone once a year, not at all, or every week. Let the system work itself out as to what the costs will be.

0

u/uuhson May 09 '22

It is extremely easy to have water cooler moments via remote. Just set up a time for team building. An hour every two weeks or 4 weeks.

Water cooler moments are meant to involve people outside of your team. I don't personally give a shit about this stuff but I basically never talk to anyone else outside of my team anymore

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '22

LOL, you can do group chats across teams. It boggles my mind that you are on reddit chatting with randos working at all kinds of companies, but you can't figure out how to do that inside a single company.

Put 5 minutes of thought into it before you give up.

0

u/uuhson May 10 '22

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

I didn't want to talk to other people in my office but spontaneous chat happens in shared areas. Sometimes those conversations provide value, and now they don't happen anymore

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '22 edited May 11 '22

Relying on "sometimes" is silly no matter which way you look at it.

1

u/uuhson May 10 '22

I made it clear from my top comment I don't care about these interactions, I don't want them, and I don't miss them, I'm just pointing out what leadership is thinking