by fraqed on 6/30/20, 1:11 PM with 95 comments
by havelhovel on 6/30/20, 2:55 PM
The only research cited show that face-to-face contact is more effective at soliciting donations than email [1], that non-verbal cues are important for feeling trust [2], something about sunglasses affecting theory of mind, and (ironically) that credibility assessments are stronger without visual cues [3]. The only sentence that actually applies to video chat is Frances Westley's complaint that "the quality...and satisfaction of the interaction...is diminished."
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...
2: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761244879...
by tzs on 6/30/20, 2:46 PM
Sources of many counterexamples: EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Rift.
In all of these games numerous groups of people who have never interacted with each other in person have formed long term successful trusting teams.
EverQuest in particular in its first several years required a lot of teamwork to reach the highest level content, with each team member having to put in effort equivalent to a full time job. EverQuest had a huge "death penalty" compared to pretty much every MMORPG since, with a death sometimes wiping out days or even weeks of advancement and preparation. It was designed so that you could do very little solo or even in small groups at the high end so you had to rely upon and trust your teammates.
Later MMORPGs toned it down a bit compared to EverQuest [1], but they still all had things that greatly benefited from successful trusting teams, and those teams formed in all of them.
[1] As did EverQuest itself. In fact, EQ today is actually a quite fun and interesting game to play solo. On a free play account you can reasonably get a character up to around level 50 solo, which was the limit in original EQ, and that solo character will be able to do a large fraction of what had been the high end content back in the day. On a paid account, which opens up access to more abilities, you can easily solo into at least the 80s or maybe 90s (115 is the current max level).
by kevincox on 6/30/20, 1:44 PM
But then I burn a ton of fossil fuels to fly over and spend a couple of days with them in person and the discussion changes dramatically. It feels so silly that you need to damage the environment and spend so much money for something that logically seems the same. I am looking at someone's face and talking. But it works, it is so unreasonably effective that from time to time I need to fly just to see a colleague in person.
by leonardteo on 6/30/20, 1:44 PM
by KallDrexx on 6/30/20, 2:33 PM
by czbond on 6/30/20, 3:05 PM
A few years back, I worked at a big4 consulting firm. I would often fly into some 'what city is it today?' to meet with a company's team and often up to CxO in F500. Usually brought in because first few efforts internally failed hard. You can imagine meetings with engineering teams, with me starting out at 'below trust' bc it was top down. This means that even though I am CompSci by nature, our success hinged on personal interactions.
Here is what I highly suggest, and has worked wonders for me.
- Learn to talk. Get on calls early, do research on the attendants to try to find some common interests quickly. Think like a salesperson, trying to close the 'people' by being human, friendly. Edit: A good add on to this, is to find their 'pivot person' - a person on the call the team trusts (often a few people down the 'food chain').
- Make self-deprecating fun of yourself. I try to poke fun at myself very quickly to show humbling comedy - and I do it loudly. People like when you make them laugh. By making them laugh at me, no one's feelings are hurt. It gives their team a feeling of superiority, so you must be able to back it up with real firepower later to control.
- Try to take 'their team' side as often as possible. Assume every decision they've made is intelligent, and in good faith. You'd ask for the same.
- See how you can foster individual relationships. For their lead developer, "Hey I saw this about your stack/what we're doing/etc - and thought of you".
- Only 'do other things' on your computer during that meeting immediately related, and very short in duration.
- Don't argue with 'that argumentative, defensive engineer' around the other groups. "That's a really great point - can I call you after this?"
Hope it helps.
by tomrod on 6/30/20, 1:38 PM
1. In my experience, I worked with a group that was adversarial until we began to use video conferencing and could see each other. The relationship became better after that (it was an internal validation group that was in another location). We could see each other and no quality of work was impacted. We ceased to be each other's boogeyman.
2. Many folks experienced video conferencing the first time at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which is not representative of normal times.
I reckon that this singular view isn't capturing a lot of things.
by capnahab on 6/30/20, 1:40 PM
by jacknews on 6/30/20, 2:26 PM
But where is the evidence that video-only (or audio, or text) is bad for the workplace? It could actually be a 'leveler', and in fact better, if it reduces cliques, collusion, physical intimidation, etc, and therefore fosters more open and widespread collaboration.
by wickerman on 6/30/20, 2:46 PM
But on the other side, I've also worked with people on the autism spectrum and noticed that interactions became a lot easier through video conference than in person. On my side at least, I tend to get thrown off a lot by out of place mannerisms so it was easier for me to communicate with them.
And as some other people have pointed out, there might be working environments where home working actually helps to avoid/reduce tension/intimidation/toxic relationships etc.
Edit: also worth mentioning that my husband and I met and fell in love after skyping for many years (we lived in different continents) and I'm certainly not the only one...
by wcoenen on 6/30/20, 1:41 PM
by tchock23 on 6/30/20, 2:45 PM
Also, the email vs. in-person donation research didn’t make sense to me. Of course someone that asks you for a donation in-person will get a higher response. However, the reason would be social pressures, reciprocity and/or conformity rather than anything inherent to physical presence.
by vorpalhex on 6/30/20, 2:27 PM
In a default video app you struggle to see everyone, only one speaker can be heard clearly and usually there's audio/video sync issues. Add a sprinkle of bad hardware and suddenly it's more like talking to a robot over dialup than any semblance of a conversation.
On the other hand, have the participants use good hardware, high quality connections and fix the audio issues and the problems greatly get reduced.
Anecdotally, comparing my work meetings to my video-chat social calls seems to reinforce this. Work folks typically use just their laptop and have questionable wireless, and we use Google Meet which seems to get worse with every update especially on the audio front. Meanwhile the social group is primarily streamers with high end cameras and microphones and better networking, which when combined with Discords significantly improved audio muxing dramatically improves call quality and reduces "Zoom fatigue".
by tompagenet2 on 6/30/20, 2:24 PM
by JoeAltmaier on 6/30/20, 1:54 PM
Why is this? I think we're wired to interact in-person. When we try to talk to a person we can't sense directly, we have to build a brain model of them. That takes quite a bit more effort.
As an experiment I tried putting my hand up to block my passenger from view as I drove. Immediately I could tell I was paying less attention to the road, vividly. Just having them out of view, even peripherally, made for a different experience.
by caseysoftware on 6/30/20, 4:44 PM
My response: "I learned how tall everyone is! On Zoom, everyone is the same height!"
Unfortunately, it didn't make the highlight video. :)
But the serious side of it is that if 100% of our interactions are from the chest up, we lose a ton of body language context and physical expressions. With everyone muted, you miss out on verbal cues too. We're missing layers/nuance of communication but it's hard to tell if those are 1%, 25%, 50%, or 95% of the interaction.
by logie17 on 6/30/20, 5:31 PM
Full disclosure, I work for https://team.video and we're trying to make meetings more enjoyable. Just simple things like having built in agendas, games, and non-verbal feedback I think can go a long way to making a remote meeting way less painful and help build trust among your colleagues.
by oblib on 6/30/20, 5:21 PM
I think it may be easier to be dismissive in a video chat, but I'd suspect those who are would tend to be so anyway, just behind your back, not face to face in the meeting.
by Grustaf on 6/30/20, 2:41 PM
by motohagiography on 6/30/20, 2:14 PM
Orthogonaly, I worked in an environment some years ago that had zoom sessions in %90 of all meetings, and the trust level between teams on zoom was low. There were company culture reasons for it, as arguably internecine conflict is necessarily a leadership gap, but the zoom medium itself advantaged misrepresentation in a way that email, slack and even conference calls did not. The difference between video and audio calls was that with just audio, someone cannot use their counterparty's isolation to lie because they can't be sure there is nobody else there. On ephemeral video, someone in an empty room is already atomized, and the power dynamic changes. I remember reading a bunch of critical theory about art from the 80's and 90's about the effect of framing, the gaze of the camera, the relationship between subjects and observers, and how people relate to images.
When you are on camera and seeing yourself reflected in a screen without a lot of fidelity, it creates a feeling of uncannyness, and you are made self-conscious, which has consequences to the power dynamic of the conversation. It can set up perfect storm conditions for people whose personalities are given to reflexive or defensive lies.
We behave differently when they are being observed or recorded. I used to always use the camera, but since the lockdown, I have been dialing in to conferences because the uncertainty of the audio connection is leveling. For personal acquaintences, I use the camera, but if there is a power difference, I use audio.
The uncanny effect of video causing self consciousness that brings out defensive traits, which cause mistrust in relationships could just be an "uncanny valley," effect, hence my initial question of whether stereoscopic cameras might change the effect, or maybe exacerbate it. It's also possible that offsetting your camera angle so that you both are being seen to view the same thing from different angles, as though you are discussing some third party object, might improve comfort levels instead of the dead-on positioning of laptop cameras. If I stared at my dog the way people look into their cameras, he'd eventually attack me or someone else, it's possible the camera positioning we use for video conferencing creates the same kind of confrontational/defensive frame.
A portrait photographer could have some insight into this I'm sure.
by Animats on 6/30/20, 9:14 PM
by xwdv on 6/30/20, 2:31 PM
by okasaki on 6/30/20, 2:19 PM