[gregmac]

Curious:

Do you do regular video calls? Do you ever discuss anything aside from work? Even during a "work" discussion, do people make jokes, laugh, etc?

Do you have chat (slack) channels, and are they active? Does anyone ever spontaneously post something like "hey, anyone feel like talking about x that I'm trying to sort out?" Is chat pure business or do people ever discuss anything else?

These are all kind of leading questions, but the things that I think are key to making it work.

[thelean12]

Sure, we have all that. And maybe I'm just wired differently. I haven't made any real connections or friendships with my virtual coworkers over the past year. In the past when I joined a new IRL team, I'd have some budding friendships after a few team lunches.

Maybe it's because there are hardly any actual real personal bonding moments. For example, lunch with 10 talking heads on a VC is insane to me since you can't have more than one conversation at once, and any conversation you have has to be with the entire group. You can't pick up on something someone said, realize someone else has the same interest as you and go sit next to them and talk it out. You have to have the 1:1 conversation in front of the whole group, or leave the group.

That's just one example of why it seems so difficult to make real, genuine friendships at work now.