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Comment by varenc | Hacker News Reader

I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements and, as the parent said, difficult conclusions. I’ve seen things get a bit out of hand over email that then get resolved quite efficiently after a face to face.

Live video chat is a good alternative, but I think more natural human empthay comes out in face to face experiences. People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved quickly before they fester. Live video chat gets you much of this but isn’t quite as effective in my experience.

To me this observation just means that on remote teams you need to be observant of such issues and spend a little more time to resolve them, which can be a fine trade off for remote teams. (Or ideally avoid overly contentious debates in the first place)

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In my experience face to face communication is great for resolving contentious technical disagreements because whoever is doing the most thinking and the least talking falls behind, thinks "fuck this" and capitulates instantly; usually resulting in the wrong decision being made.

If the metric is "time to decision" then face to face will do very well.

>I’ve found face to face communication effective for resolving contentious disagreements...

I have observed the same. But 9 out of 10 times, it was because the losing party couldn't spend much time thinking about counter arguments.

So again, it cures the symptom, but it benefits only the person with the loudest voice in the room, and not the one with sound reason.

>People seem to understand the other side’s perspective more fully and confusions that can show up in email from things like poor word choice can be resolved...

Don't buy this either. As I said before, the "seem to understand" bit might come from the fact that people often does not express disagreement in face to face communication that often, because they didn't have time to think it through.

EDIT: This is assuming that the both parties in the discussion are more or less on the same level of competence. If the communication is going to be mostly one sided, then face to face communication (Like a teacher in a class room) is fine.

> So again, it cures the symptom, but it benefits only the person with the loudest voice in the room, and not the one with sound reason.

..or even just the facts. I have, on (fortunately rare) occasions, refused to heed a manager's encouragement to speak with someone directly, because my disagreement isn't even about reasoning, but about facts.

It can be remarkably frustrating to have to repeat the same thing to someone who believes in something that is demonstrably false. At least over e-mail one can copy-and-paste.

It's as if (some) people can't tell the difference between matters of fact and matters of opinion (or judgment).

It may be true that face-to-face is best at resolving contentious disagreements on matters of opinion. However, I'd think it could only be true if those disagreements are based on everyone reaching their opinions from the same facts, and even determining if that's the case could easily be short-circuited by a premature opinion (e.g. loudest voice in the room).

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