[dpenguin]

First there were cubicles. Engineers could concentrate and get work done. They took a break by choice. The open office destroyed the productivity. One person speaks/gets up/chats with neighbor and everyone is distracted. You have to actively ignore your visual and aural inputs(maybe even smells). Remote work fixed it. You could now focus on your stuff and not worry about constant interrupts to your senses. Along comes water cooler to destroy that. You could say “don’t go the always on room if you don’t want to”. But the fact that it’s there, is distraction. “What is everyone talking about that I might be missing?”

[brutusborn]

I see it as the opposite. Currently the random conversations in remote work occur in back channels, so using a tool like Water Cooler just makes it easier for these conversations to be public, without the hassle of formal invites. Fear of missing out is the same as when some of your team is talking in the break room and you are at your desk, you have to judge for yourself whether the conversation will be valuable enough for you to justify leaving your desk.

[dpenguin]

That’s a similar argument I heard when slack cane around. “You don’t have to open the app if you don’t want to” or “You only reply when you want to” etc. But the expectation is that it’s way more synchronous than email for example, which was fine for tech communications because people actually thought for a bit before asking others for help. Slack killed it. And “engagement” is high At the cost of lost productivity. Water cooler is way more synchronous than slack. So it’ll make things worse, IMO. What do you think the water cooler growth guy will come up with next to increase engagement? Always on 1:1 rooms? Always on team rooms? How do you get anything done? What will you think of the team mate who is always missing from those rooms? Not a team-player?

[rpg3]

On the subject of synchronous communication, the plan is to add the ability to send video/screen sharing messages to teammates that can be watched later. I eventually want it to be able to handle both sides of that issue you’re talking about, but for the moment, I think you have a lot of teams moving to longer term WFH and they’re trying to replace the office with Zoom. Water Cooler gives them a way to talk without needing to feel like they have to fill an entire meeting block. Additionally, with most recent people using video on Zoom, there’s a huge draw to stare at it all day. We leave video off by default and offer the ability to create voice only rooms, so you can stick it in the background while talking to someone without feeling weird about it.

Overall though, I think the amount of satisfaction (or frustration) you get out of any work place communication app is largely dependent on your management and work environment. If they’re that concerned about you needing to stay logged into an app all day (be it Slack, Water Cooler, etc.) and not about your work output, then it might be time to reconsider your options.

[dpenguin]

The argument here is again “if it doesn’t work for you, just move on”. Unfortunately, tech world is full of examples that do something slightly evil in order to provide some kind of instant gratification and once it catches on, no one can really opt out without coming across to the rest of the world as a weirdo or a Luddite or an oldie. Don’t have an Instagram account because you don’t want to keep scrolling through pics? You are a Boomer (FYI I am not - see what happened there? I felt the need to clarify). Don’t have a Smartphone? What age do you live in? Etc etc.

It’s not like making Nukes kind of tech where the harm is very obvious and people restrain themselves from making it in general.

It’s like farming/industrial revolution/social media kind of irreversible change where people actually welcome it and realize the evils a few (or a few hundred) years later.

That said, power to you if it catches on because If this succeeds and you make a ton of money, you will not be needing to be part of any room while you will be enjoying the money you earned by making the few productive office workers’ day less productive and more annoying while making countless believe-anything office workers‘ “feel” they are more productive.