[nasalgoat]

I worked at a large fully remote company and it had dedicated topic channels you could join. I thought that was an excellent solution since people could discuss their interests with other employees without it seeming like a corporately mandated chat break.

I now work for a much smaller company and I miss the chat channels.

[larrydag]

I agree. Group channels on relevant topics is very helpful. Especially on technical details relevant to getting work done.

Yet here goes my rant. Nothing can replace a good in-person interaction. Perhaps I'm the old guy in the room. When teams are trying to build something there is nothing like water-cooler talk and banter about the work that helps relate shared challenges. Granted this is going to very specific to organizational needs.

I don't work in software development so perhaps my needs are different than most on Hackernews. I've managed teams in person and remotely. I've found that managing in person is a much more productive way to work.

[JustExAWS]

I’m also an old guy at 51. I have been in cloud consulting for the last five+ years and I’m perfectly capable of leading large projects remotely.

I can do it in person. But I find diagramming with collaborative tools, shared Google docs, etc to be much better than in person drawing on a whiteboard. There are remote collaborative tools for everything.

With the tools available now, you can record all of the meetings and don’t have to take notes, have transcripts automatically generated and summarized with AI. I can then take all of the transcripts and other artifacts, throw them in Google’s NotebookLM and ask questions and get answers about the project (with citations).

I do the same for transcripts of meetings I am not in - mostly pre-sales.

Yes these are all approved tools.

[nasalgoat]

The channels I'm talking about weren't about work, they were about hobbies - biking, cars, cats. I found that interaction quite fun and actually much better than in-person chats because I could choose to interact at my pace and comfort level.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

Can you not just create those channels? I did at my 10 person company and at my 100k company, no body seems to mind

[nasalgoat]

Yes but they get very lonely all by yourself.