[dcolkitt]

This is something I don’t understand. People have been having informal conversations with their friends, family and even colleagues over the phone for a hundred years.

I almost feel like it’s a generational thing. People who came of age before widespread text messaging spent countless hours chit-chatting with their friends on the phone. It might be that late Millenials and Gen Z are less suited to remote work compared to Xennials and Gen X.

[zubspace]

Could also be a combination of missing social queues, lag and low quality audio. If there's a teams session with multiple people, it happens quite often, that two or more people start talking at the same time, which feels very awkward.

This is something which happens in real life, too. But it's a lot easier to alleviate without lag and strong eye contact and other body queues.

The result is, that virtual discussions are moderated by a single participant and natural conversations are simply not possible that way.

[kongin]

My friends who are over 50 think nothing of having a 1 hour phone chat on a rainy Sunday afternoon, my friends around 20 sound like I've put them in front of a firing squad if I do a 5 minute call without organizing it by text with a specific time.

[only_as_i_fall]

Do older people just call their coworkers for no particular reason or to ask something that could have been an email?

I think you're right about the generational difference but I'm not sure if I see it significantly affecting how people interact at work.