[maleldil]

I think some of that is a lot harder to when remotely, though. You can't do team dinners, and the alternatives feel forced to me. It's also a lot harder to socialise with people that you only interact with a few times a day (if you're asynchronous) because they don't feel like a part of your life like in-personal colleagues would. So it ends up being a very I'm impersonal relationship.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I agree but have found turning on the camera and keeping it on for most meeting does help.

[mrtranscendence]

During the time of COVID I've had two jobs, one where the culture is (usually) to keep the cameras on at all times, and one where the culture was to keep the cameras off even when speaking.

There are benefits to the latter approach ... I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings. But keeping the cameras on does make connections feel more personal and overall I prefer it, particularly for small meetings.

Plus, everyone gets to see my dogs roughhousing in the background.

[lostcolony]

>> I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings.

The fact those meetings are occurring is a failure of the culture, and especially the move to WFH. It's been the key differentiator for me post-COVID; companies that are begrudgingly remote try to keep the office norms in place, just now remote, vs the companies embracing remote finding new workflows, which means leaning on async communication, collaborative documents, etc, instead of meetings, and synchronous meetings only when absolutely necessary.

And it's been eye opening; in those former cases, no one wanted "social" Zoom meetings, myself included. But in those latter, people asked about it, championed it happening, etc.

People only have so much time they want to be in meetings online, and making sure it's used to build team bonds, instead of squandered on business problems that could be solved other ways, seems like a huge part of making remote be successful.

[maleldil]

I mostly agree, but I have some resistance to those "social" meetings. I'd rather spend that time working, and I'd never take a social call like that outside of work hours, like I see it happen in other companies.

A significant component of that is that my only work experience is in a fully remote team of varying time zones. I imagine that changes the perspective of how these things should go compared to someone who's used to the social interactions of the office.