>Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start.

Yes, but I've never once had a "can we hop on a quick call?" turn into that. Almost every single one of those that I've encountered could've been settled in a handful of chat messages. The things you describe happen to me during unplanned asides in meetings, long-term general chat channels, or impromptu in-person chatting.

My impression has been that the people who want a quick 1-on-1 call just don't like typing.

> My impression has been that the people who want a quick 1-on-1 call just don't like typing.

Yes, similar to my ex (can't get rid of her completely, shared custody of the kids) who always insist on sending voice messages. She just don't want to type and keep sending voice message after I told her several times I hated that because it made looking for past information super difficult.

By the way, wasn't there a slack like app that was working kind of a walkie-talkie kind of system within a team?

You're right that it happens much less with calls vs in the office where there is the important signal of physical presence. Personally I only get very few "can we have a quick call" at all. But I feel like it's a culture thing, people shouldn't worry about making a quick call proactively, once in a while. And maybe acceptance will change that remote workers should e.g. have a remote camera always-on. I'm not entirely decided but tend to think it would be a good thing. Maybe it would be more accepted if a person that is being looked at would get an instant signal about it.

> Below a certain threshold, "quick calls" are the best thing to do.

Sure, but give the person you asking for a quick call the context to decide if they also think it is a quick call. All the article basically is asking for is to provide enough context when contacting people.

Pray tell, why can't you do this discussion async in writing?

If you do text, you only help once. The problem is solved for everyone else, and you leave a trace for people searching for similar problems.

On the other hand, in secret 1:1 calls with no trace, that only help one and only one person, you can appear busy and productive while also helping people in secret, and doing so multiple times for the same or similar problem. You reap the rewards multiple times.

And since people never put any initial effort at all (they just say "hi do you have a minute?" instead of describing their issue), if multiple people have the same problem right now, then you have plausible deniability for your multiple calls because you didn't know that they had the same issue, so that's why all calls were separate instead of solving them all at once.

Don't even mention the fact that others can explain their initial problem with screenshots, or with a Slack recording (literally 2 clicks, and then doing exactly the same as they would do during the first minute of the call anyway), to get quick context and then either solve the problem instantly or jump to a call. Nono, while those things get points for not being searchable, they still leave some useful information in the history (mainly some context and the moment in time when you had that conversation), and we can't risk having that.

Also, if they send the video, Slack might even include a searchable transcription (I don't know if that's a feature yet though), and if that wasn't bad enough, if you end up not knowing the answer, the video can even be shared with others on a shared channel to save time finding the person who knows how to fix the problem.

Hopefully you understand now the problems with async text communication.

You're being cynical and it seems you take a quite extremist stance. My impression is you're blind to the value of ephemeral, low-ceremony discussion. Just bounce an idea of someone else and see what comes back. Sharing fews, helping each other learn, etc.

Not everything needs to be recorded, in fact I'm very happy that most discussions aren't. Spare me the crap. I've seen many company wikis full of stuff that nobody ever looks up, because it's mostly irrelevant, outdated, or plain wrong content.

The value of discussions mostly isn't in the things that can be recorded or searched later, but in the effort the participants put into it.

As stated before, this is up to a certain threshold. One or a few low-friction discussions per day can be very fine. It shouldn't take up the biggest part of your day's focus time.

He does have a point though. Easily "recordable" communication is bad for office politics.

Remember that old advice to email the boss with a summary of what he told you to do verbally - asking for confirmation that you understood it right as a cover - to cover your ass?

Agree, actually. Mostly.

I tend to favor calls with people who prefer calls, and text with people who prefer text. But if it starts getting abused, the situation becomes different.

I don't mind agreeing to a bare zero-effort "hi, can we go on a call?" from time to time. And I give a lot of leeway to juniors and new hires, bending over backwards more than I probably should. But if it becomes a habit you can bet I'll start delaying my responses until the other party starts putting some upfront effort.

I usually expect mutual respect. Helping each other as fellow professionals working towards the same (company) goal, is one thing. Asking for hand-holding, or expecting zero-effort to be repaid with non-zero effort, is a completely different thing.

If someone asks another to go out of their way to ignore their other responsibilities and give you their undivided attention right now in a way that's uncomfortable to them, then it's only fair for this to be a two-way street. At some point, maybe not now, maybe not soon, but at some point, some sort of reciprocation is expected if this trend continues.

My previous comment was mostly just me ranting of places where that reciprocation wasn't the case because people only ever expect things to be done in the way that's comfortable for them specifically; which in my bubble, it has been mostly with the "only-calls" people, unable to hold any semblance of conversation over text. (EDIT: The actual topic might not be the same, but the mood definitely came from there.)

A pair programming session where we're both doing something, bouncing ideas, you check stuff on your end while I also check stuff here on my end, okay, that's a good thing.

But if it's just me remote-controlling that other person with my voice, I can't call that productive, and I'd rather play that pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game while also working on my current task.

In my bubble, when people preferred only-calls it was usually also the case that they put almost zero effort when asking for help and just didn't want to bother spending literally 2 additional seconds to take a screenshot.

I can rant for even longer, for example how those same people (again, in my experience so far) prefer to go to the office to use a whiteboard in the name of efficiency, and somehow aren't bothered by the fact that you can't Ctrl+Z, that you can't move stuff around, that you can't rotate stuff, that you block the view while modifying, etc. And if you say that a few 90 EUR digital tablets would actually be more efficient, they say they can't afford it, but at the same time the managers travel (flights+hotels+transportation) to several countries in person to introduce themselves to their teams in person because this is actually more efficient.

And the people who prefer calls, and know that will be requesting calls frequently, and sharing screen frequently, and talking about stuff in their screen frequently, don't even purchase a cheap drawing tablet to make it easier for them to explain stuff graphically.

So yeah, take that as additional context for my rant.

TL;DR: If you prefer calls, I will tend to use calls with you until you abuse this, and this abuse usually happens eventually if I stay in a company long enough (fortunately not always).

Oh funny one. I have atm a part time contract where I go to the office twice per week.

I decided with a coworker today that we'll go to the office an extra day tomorrow because we'd rather do that than sit for a couple hours with headphones in our ears.

On our own, no management involved.

When it makes sense to talk, I can talk. Most of the time, it doesn't.

Sometimes it is easier and much faster to express what you're asking over a zoom.

Not engaging enough. I write a couple lines, expect a couple lines some 1 to 180 minutes later that might miss half the point, etc. Totally different dynamic.

Having to cache in the previous state of the discussion whenever I receive a reply is exhausting. So some things are just not brought up.

And whenever it's actually an interactive synchronous live-chat, why not just hop on a call then?

Are you implying that 1) everything from the chat is immediately present in the brain when taking up the discussion at a later point, as well as 2) Last time you left the chat, all the the relevant context was well encoded as chat text in the first place?

I thought writing things down, even in a chat, helps a lot with both points?

All this time I've been writing wrong...

It's certainly better to have chat text than to not have it, but whether it can make up for the huge cost of asynchronicity is another question (each delay breaks your flow, requiring you to cache-out, cache-in...)