I’ve worked in many projects where I met people only over phone and WebEx or similar. It was always pretty “dry” and tensions rose quickly whenever shit on one end hit the fan. Typically after just one personal meeting (kick-off, war-room, whatever) that changed completely. You start to joke together, you let your guard down more easily. You talk differently, even on the phone and in virtual meetings then.
I also often enough witnessed people removed at each other over some formulation in a pull request or a comment in a chat room. In person they completely behaved differently and were able to talk it through.
Not everyone ticks the same, but in a large team you can be sure to have at least some people who have an easier time reading body language than hearing nuances in a voice filtered through a microphone. And for these people it’s then less stressful to work stuff out in person.
So from this I hear “stress out the introverts to bully them into silence and it’s so much easier for the extroverts scheduling the meetings to figure out where they can claim credit having only scheduled meetings”.
Well, welcome to society, which consists of different types of personalities all mixed together. You want to stress-out everyone else too. That isn’t better. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
As others said: the solution is to have individual exemptions, not preventing everyone from get-togethers in the first place.
Edit: btw. not even “introvert” is a good-enough category. I am also introvert and am completely depleted of energy after a day in the office or a team event. But I still enjoy it. You need to force me to attend, but afterwards I am typically glad I did.
I’ve worked in many projects where I met people only over phone and WebEx or similar. It was always pretty “dry” and tensions rose quickly whenever shit on one end hit the fan. Typically after just one personal meeting (kick-off, war-room, whatever) that changed completely. You start to joke together, you let your guard down more easily. You talk differently, even on the phone and in virtual meetings then.
I also often enough witnessed people removed at each other over some formulation in a pull request or a comment in a chat room. In person they completely behaved differently and were able to talk it through.
Not everyone ticks the same, but in a large team you can be sure to have at least some people who have an easier time reading body language than hearing nuances in a voice filtered through a microphone. And for these people it’s then less stressful to work stuff out in person.
So from this I hear “stress out the introverts to bully them into silence and it’s so much easier for the extroverts scheduling the meetings to figure out where they can claim credit having only scheduled meetings”.
Gotcha.
Well, welcome to society, which consists of different types of personalities all mixed together. You want to stress-out everyone else too. That isn’t better. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. As others said: the solution is to have individual exemptions, not preventing everyone from get-togethers in the first place.
Edit: btw. not even “introvert” is a good-enough category. I am also introvert and am completely depleted of energy after a day in the office or a team event. But I still enjoy it. You need to force me to attend, but afterwards I am typically glad I did.
I have said nowhere to prohibit social people from being social outside of work.
This entire thread is about forcing everyone to socialize with their coworkers for 10 percent of their time on the clock.
Stop goal post moving.