[nazca]

This seems like the fundamentally don't understand the challenges of working remote & not being collocated with colleagues.

I don't need to see a 3D avatar of colleagues. I don't need to see that avatar stand up and walk around.

Mainly what I'm missing is being able to better see those subtle emotional cues & the ability to build deeper relationships. Both of which I think our brains & office norms are catching up to after 18 months of zoom meetings.

[notacoward]

There are some problems it addresses and some it doesn't. Arranging people in a space, with audio to match, gives you some extra cues about who's looking where or interacting with whom. If the avatars reflect actual facial expressions that could be useful too (though also intrusive). Seems no worse than the "Brady Bunch" gallery view we're all used to, and quite possibly better.

OTOH, it doesn't address bad remote-meeting etiquette like side conversations or eating next to the microphone. It doesn't address latency (might even make it worse), so a single remote might still find it impossible to break in when majority-site participants are interrupting and talking over each other so there are no gaps. These are limitations, but they don't totally negate the benefits of increasing visual/spatial awareness.

[JshWright]

> OTOH, it doesn't address bad remote-meeting etiquette like side conversations

Interestingly, my team has found that side conversations taking place in the meeting chat are extremely helpful (to the point that as some members of the team have been resuming in-person meetings, they have been bringing laptops and having a Slack thread running for the meeting).

It's great for questions/comments that may not be worth interrupting the flow of the conversation for, but are important enough that they shouldn't get lost entirely.

[notacoward]

Side comments via chat are fantastic, for exactly the reason you mention. Vocal side comments, OTOH, tend to make the main conversation unintelligible for anyone already trying to follow without being able to direct their ears in a particular direction.

[shafyy]

I would expect latency to be better because you don't need to send video data around, just some data to synchronize the 3D scene which is run locally on everyone's headset.

Edit: Not necessarily latency since latency is not related to data size, but I mean the general performance should be better.

[JshWright]

Latency can definitely be related to data size (even when not technically throughput constrained, thanks to "buffer bloat").

[shafyy]

Ok, thanks, good to know. Not a networking expert :)

[weego]

It addresses no problems, other than the problem of them realising that gamers are a bad audience for data and ad capture.

[js8]

> Mainly what I'm missing is being able to better see those subtle emotional cues & the ability to build deeper relationships.

I don't understand what do you need these for. In the 21st century, we have succeeded in creating a perfectly emotionless office worker. I just had my unconscious bias training, and I can assure you, my thoughts are now completely rational, without any hint of emotional judgment. Frankly, "having deeper relationships" sounds like a recipe for a potential conflict of interests. As Salaried Professionals, we find Other emotional Cues of any Kind to be deeply distracting from our mission.

[beecafe]

OTOH, one could argue that reducing the amount of emotional energy spent at work leaves you with more to give to your loved ones/spend as you please. I agree that all you mentioned doesn't actually achieve this though

[baby]

I don't think they don't understand it, they understand incremental improvements. Whatever you're talking about is coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XcQtoja_Y

[jdavis703]

How can you see subtle emotional cues when your colleagues are masked?

Heck, I just realized but I have a much harder time understanding accents when speakers are masked (before masking I considered myself great at understanding even the strongest accents.)

[okokwhatever]

Then your problem isn't the medium. Your problem is a lack of trust and to rely too much on facial signal that, in other scale of things, are a very bad way to measure your collaborators

[Bjartr]

Facial and body language is a HUGE part of in person communication. For better or for worse, that is just how the vast majority of humans are wired. If you willfully ignore these signals you WILL be misunderstood and you WILL misunderstand others. I hate that things are this way because of how much effort it takes for me to decipher these cues when a neurotypical person gets it from intuition, but it absolutely does exist and isn't going away any time soon.

[notacoward]

That's perhaps phrased a bit less charitably than necessary, but gets at an important truth. People who rely too much[1] on these non-verbal cues are, more often than not, doing so because they're not adept verbally. It's kind of like a fortune teller, who of course does not know you or your future but can put up a pretty convincing front by observing responses to their initial probes. I see it a lot among people for whom English is not their first language, just as I see the same people make just about any excuse to get out of writing anything down permanently. Since effective remote work also has to be asynchronous work as much as possible, I'd say these people need to work on their own language skills instead of complaining about how the online experience doesn't perfectly support their coping strategies.

[1] How much is "too much"? There's plenty of room for debate, but a decade of alone-remote and a year of all-remote made it pretty clear that it's a threshold many of my colleagues at multiple companies exceed.

[throwaways885]

Last time I checked, I'm a human being who is hardwired to understand these social cues. They're essential for having a conversation in any way that isn't just exhausting for me. It's not a lack of trust. My monkey brain just struggles to parse remotely held conversations.

[notacoward]

Yes, they're useful, but I challenge the claim that they're essential. People have been communicating effectively over both time and distance for centuries, using media where these cues are absent. They're nice to have, they can make things easier and improve comfort/trust levels, but whether you rely on them is up to you. Lots of people at all levels of language competency and introversion etc. manage to collaborate just fine, even without any form of video at all.