No Substitute for Face to Face

Posted on May 10, 2009 at 3:27 pm

One thing that deeply troubles me in virtually all aspects of my current place at work, and one of the places where my own personality and the corporate culture clash is on the emphasis on working remotely. Sometimes it’s under the guise of “thinking globally” and working with people in another geography and sometimes it’s called “work/life balance” by allowing people to work from home. The ability to work from home is a fantastic benefit, but it has to be done in moderation. To me, there is no substitute for face time.

I’m currently working on a team in a small software lab where the vast majority of people work from home regularly. I’m often one of maybe five people (out of 15, I think, but I don’t know for sure) who actually show up to work every day. Our lab may be small, but that’s at least 2/3 of my coworkers and teammates that I almost never see. Taking into account the support representatives and customer service people, who are my liaisons in debugging client problems, and the QE team and developers in India, I realized that I haven’t even physically met half of my coworkers.

Ignore for a moment the overhead of using collaboration tools versus working in a co-located environment, or the problems inherent in time zone differences, because those are other points that, though important, are not the one that concerns me most. Instead, think about the social, psychological human consequences of working remotely from coworkers whom you’ve never met — and possibly may never meet. Establishing a relationship with these people of the same calibre that one could establish with a co-located physical human being is simply impossible. Our brains are wired to notice and process various minutiae of human-to-human interaction including but not limited to: body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, hand gestures and eye contact. These aren’t simply additives to the human-to-human communication experience, but they are key factors in how we, as human beings, communicate. They aide us in building a mental perception of the people that we meet, and this enables us to communicate infinitely more effectively with that person than we would ever be able to had we never met them.

The consequence of not having face-time is that we are unable to build accurate mental models of the people we are communicating with. We don’t know their quirks or their personality. In effect, we don’t know what makes them them. Communicating with them over SameTime, E-Mail or even the telephone will leave us with a gap in our understanding of them. The information that our brains would normally be processing in a physical environment is missing. We have to work that much harder at clarifying our ideas and explaining ourselves clearly, when a simple whiteboard drawing coupled with some hand gestures might have done the same job in a fraction of the time. We must make every effort to remove irony and humour from our speech in order to avoid possible misunderstanding, which has the unfortunate side effect of making us sound altogether like very boring people. We act less like humans, and more like robots.

When I saw Fred Brooks, Jr. give a presentation at ooPSLA in 2007, there was one point in particular that made a deep impression. (You can download an mp3 of the talk here).

“Face-time is crucial. Telecollaboration really works among people who already have spent a lot of face time together. And it really works quite well in those cases. Absent that, travel to get the face time is worth what it takes. And people instinctively know that and so the airplanes stay full.

I don’t believe that “telecollaboration” is impossible, but I do believe that it’s impossible to build any sort of meaningful relationship with someone whom you never physically see, or whom you physically encounter infrequently. Face-time is most crucial in the early stages of getting to know someone. This is when we build our mental models of that person and develop a context in which to understand them. That context is what enables us to communicate effectively with that person even if we’re not in the same physical space. In other words, once we have established a context for a relationship with another person, the overhead of remote communication drops dramatically. I would even make the comparison to a long-distance relationship with a significant other: once a relationship is already established, being physically distant even for extended periods of time is challenging but not insurmountable. Eventually you will still need to meet face-to-face.

I often feel like I expend more energy trying to compensate for the lack of real human contact than focusing on my primary job role. One of the biggest factors that attracted me to IBM was my experience as Extreme Blue intern, where every day would be spent working closely with each of my 3 other team members. Asking a question meant wheeling my chair into an adjacent cubicle. That’s about as direct and as quick as one can get. My teammates were more to me than just coworkers, they were my colleagues and friends. Coming to work every day was a pleasure because it had as much to do with social interaction as getting things done. Contrast with my experience as a full timer, where asking a question today means getting an e-mail response tomorrow, and the only time people talk to one another is to assign them work.

A cubicle is a very lonely and quiet place when you have no one physically next to you.

http://gangles.ca/ Matthew Gallant

I completely agree, the biggest mistake my group made in our SOEN390 project last semester was only getting together briefly to delegate work, then completing it individually.

Rands also wrote a great post on the subject: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/04/15/the_pond.html
Danger

I know right?

I signed up since february for a project where i would have a lot of teammates in China. There were some hiccups, but i got my butt over to beijing and shanghai for a month, and have successfully met 95% of my teammates in both the US and China.

It’s been amazing actually eating and talking with people I only saw as icons, or screennames before.
http://asalim.net Abdullah Salim

I was told by someone that meeting someone face to face results in them feeling bad if they don’t deliver something on time or without much effort. At least in comparison to those you converse with through chat, phone and video meetings.

I tested this out as Co-Chair in 2008 and it seemed to work. The people who I didn’t meet face to face were a little more difficult to get results out of. Those that I had meet face to face delivered exceptional work.

Even at work now with clients, those that I’ve met personally are a lot more responsive than those I’ve met through conference calls only.
http://asalim.net Abdullah Salim

Forgot to mention you don’t get the free treats that people bring in when they return from holidays :p
http://www.lowtek.ca/roo Roo

Skrud, nice posting – and some insightful comments being made here as well. When I initially read this I got the impression that you were painting the picture that the workplace environment you are in MUST be this way – and that for some reason it is flawed due to corporate culture setting the standard. So my comment here is in that light – forgive me if I’m off base a little.

When I finished school the one goal I had was to make software that mattered. To meet a lofty goal like that you’ve got to be able to think (and act) big. Far too many of the flashy Web2.0 efforts we see out there are the result of a small team (~5) of people with a big idea – and of the small number of projects that succeed, there is a vast number that fail. Sure, building the next Yahoo, Google, Facebook or Twitter will be software that matters and its something you can accomplish with a small team – but your chance of success is pretty low (feeling lucky?). Being able to effectively leverage (and influence) a large team to deliver a big project is hard – but a lot less risk of failure if you persist.

So what am I saying? Well, there is no argument that face to face is key to a strong relationship. However, you need to avoid categorizing any job that puts you into the situation where you are working remotely as a “bad environment”. If you do this – I’m certain it will put a ceiling on the impact of what you are able to accomplish.

I think the other message I’d like to share is that a single individual can make a huge change in any environment. People are lazy by nature, so they’ll observe the status quo and happily follow along. It is clear from what you’ve said that you don’t feel comfortable being part of the flock – but have you got your brain into the space that says: “Ok, so this sucks – how do I fix it?”

I’d be surprised if others you work don’t share your feelings about the remoteness – but none of them have the spark that makes them want to fix it. Have you got what it takes?
Mike M

Being in a similar as you I will offer a counterpoint.

Now that I can work from home more often I can get more done. The days when I am in the office I often find myself drawn in to a mix of technical and frivolous discussions. These help in getting to know your coworkers and sometimes I learn new things or come to useful conclusions about what to do next. But, I am also often interrupted by the conversations of others and people asking my opinions and advice about technical matters. And, I will also interrupt others in their tasks as well. Ultimately, the days I work from home I am far more productive than the days I spend in the office because I have far fewer interruptions. Also, when someone does interrupt me they make more of an effort to be concise and get to the point because we are no longer communicating face to face.

Ideally I think a decent balance can be maintained, but it requires good leadership and coordination to get the right people together at the right time in order to make the time spent together useful.
Andrew

I agree with you 100%. The problem with Microsoft is that everything happens in Redmond. It’s a wonderful company to work for but you really have to move to Redmond if you want to work there. That’s also one of the major benefits of the job because the centrality really promotes the face time you mention. Not only am I conveniently close to everyone I work with on a regular basis, but I’m also close to all of the luminaries, managers and technical evangelists associated with the project who all live just down the hall from me. I get to chat with them in the coffee room. I overhear their hallway conversations. I get to hear their authentic opinions about stuff. This gives me an invaluable perspective on things.
http://www.geekflex.com/2009/07/09/the-5-most-important-criteria-for-career-happiness-according-to-skrud/ The 5 Most Important Criteria For Career Happiness According To Skrud | Geekflex

[...] take hours to explain over the phone, instant messaging or e-mail can take mere minutes to explain in person. You can save all this time and extra frustration by just pulling up a chair next to someone [...]
http://gangles.ca/2009/10/11/postmortem-norwegian-wood/ Postmortem: Norwegian Wood – The Quixotic Engineer

[...] came at a cost to communication and motivation. For Norwegian Wood we decided that there is really no substitute for face-to-face time and met up in person every day. This was extremely effective, both for making consistent measurable [...]
http://www.geekflex.com/2009/11/26/the-importance-of-where-you-live/ Lessons Learned: The Importance of Where You Live | Geekflex

[...] while working remotely out of Montreal, I declined because I didn’t like the idea of being isolated from my teammates. Instead I switched teams to the only software team that operates in Montreal, which is a very [...]

Geekflex

Adventures in post-college life