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by marcinzm 1820 days ago
I don't see remote work necessarily helping introverts since communication and online social connection is even more important when it doesn't happen by simply being in the same physical space. There is also even less social context to draw upon which is a problem for people who struggle in understanding social nuance. Introverts can very easily not make the extra effort to stay connected with co-workers which will put them at a disadvantage in terms of promotions and so on.

I can see it helping those who have things like social anxiety with in person communication but that's very different from being an introvert.

1 comments

> There is also even less social context to draw upon which is a problem for people who struggle in understanding social nuance.

I find that very beneficial though as people know that written situations lack context (so they add more info) and are more accepting of misinterpretations (so there is a lower penalty).

I don't agree with this. I oftentimes see colleagues from "distant" teams who have a tendency to use their own, opaque acronyms even when they specifically look for me to help them with something. My first response is always, basically, "what's XYZ?".

I think people have a tendency to assume that their context is shared by the other people.

Also, on a wider level, I think that the infamous "twitter wars" are due to people taking short sentences out of context. Of course, this is likely not the only reason, but it's probably a contributor.

My experience in the past has been the opposite. People who communicated face to face were less likely to scream at each other than people who communicated by text.

Video helps with that in remote work, but it's still not everything, and introverts tend to shy away from that as well.

During Covid, I think a lot of people are also feeling stressed in weird new ways, and so there's a lot of empathy for whatever people are going through right now. Without it, I think tempers would flare quicker.