[disposedtrolley]

> Close connections at work have stayed relatively strong, perhaps even strengthening as we shore them up with recurring 1:1s and social team meetings. Peripheral connections have gone down the toilet. Team and role homophily run rampant.

This absolutely mirrors my experience. Casual conversations with people outside of my team and friends, which would've happened by just being in close proximity to them have disappeared.

While I believe we're still working very well as a team, opportunities to form connections outside of our domain have dwindled. We used to have this Slack app called Donut [1] which periodically matches colleagues together for a 1:1, but these days people are sick of Zoom meetings so you really do need a sound excuse to set one up. In-person 1:1s were a chance to escape the office for some coffee and a snack; Zoom meetings are much less tantalising.

[1] https://www.donut.com/

[vyrotek]

I think more video conferencing apps needs to have simple games available like https://team.video does. Basically there's a new Scrabble game available for each meeting which you can play whenever. We have found ourselves using it as a nice social moment before and after meetings even if it's just for a minute.

[disposedtrolley]

Yes that would be awesome! We try and play games during our team happy hours, but the friction of finding a site, getting everybody to sign up, and dealing with "this doesn't work on my machine" issues is often off-putting. Having a collection of games we can start instantly mitigates many of these issues.

[api]

I'm wondering if remote-first and work from home will end up being reverse-ageist. Developers and others with deep existing networks and a lot of experience may do just fine or even thrive, while the young may struggle to develop those networks in the first place.

[disposedtrolley]

I think there's still plenty of opportunity to develop a professional network through structured events like 1:1s and mentoring sessions, but you definitely need to be intentional with this since you can't just strike up a conversation in the hallways anymore.

Where juniors will struggle with is not being able to swivel their chair and ask someone next to them for help. I've witnessed situations where people hold back "stupid" questions which end up blocking their work because the effort of crafting a Slack message or asking to set up a Zoom was too high. For anyone with juniors on their team, make sure to check up on them every now and then!