[ceddiexd]

Perspective from someone who entered the workforce during COVID, I found being onboarded remotely was just fine. My team lead is 27, and the rest of us are under 25. We bond and engage socially in our Slack channels just fine. We meet once a week, but banter less than over text.

I don’t mean this in a flippant way - for better or worse, social media has transformed the way this generation communicates. Online slang is an adaptation that evolved as a means to capture the full range of human expression in character limited unicode strings. Group chats are the atomic unit of social networks in the digital age.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a generational divide when it comes to how efficient remote work and learning is, and the success will vary from team to team depending on its composition. The latter is self evident enough, but still useful to keep in mind.

Personally, I find there’s an argument to be made that water cooler experiences are forced, since it’s synchronous communication that makes it less possible for a party to politely disengage midway through if that’s what they wish.