[surgical_fire]

> Don't overcomplicate things. Whiteboards are way better than even the best of online tools and drawing with a mouse.

I'll never understand this. All my whiteboard diagrams look like shit. My drawing skills suck, my writing is nearly illegible.

Most online tools have excellent diagram shapes, nice and customizable arrows, good templates, etc.

I can make nice diagrams much faster on any of those than in a real whiteboard. A lot less messy as well.

I also worked in a place where we could draw on desks. I fucking hated it, it was the worst possible place to brainstorm anything, and made the place very noisy because people were invited to have those discussions on desks, and it was an open office plan where others were trying to work.

It is small wonder that I became extremely more productive at home. I don't need to wear headphones all day long, meetings tend to be more focused (since people don't like sitting on online meetings as long), online tooling for communication ia top notch these days.

I can't think of a single upside of being in the office.

[com2kid]

My whiteboard diagrams are also ugly, but I can draw ugly diagrams on a real whiteboard without cognitive overhead. Meanwhile diagraming tools have friction that a pen doesn't.

Also I've been to plenty of meetings where engineers split off into multiple sub groups and diagramed different ideas on parts of the board and then everyone joined back up to discuss. Can zoom technically do that? Sure but it sucks.

[wink]

I'll go one further - whiteboards rock and post-its on a wall can go die in a fire. Unless they actually stick (they won't) and don't curl up (they won't) and you have coworker with a perfectly legible handwritign (you won't) and a good pen (you won't) and standing close ot it (you won't) - you won't see anything.