I have a friend who uses an always on audio for his entirely remote team and swears by it. I think it might depend on personality types. I’m willing to admit it does work for some teams even if my own initial reaction is “no way!”
Mumble (speex codec) is great quality and low latency. Just has a poor UI / UX.
I makes a lot of sense to me, who have been doing this for over a decade with my friends.
Are you busy, don't join / mute yourself / go to the afk channel.
Are you waiting for a long build, just reading HN, between tasks? Join the channel and people can bond and talk about work/life.
If you happen to check your replies I’m genuinely interested:
- do you work remote?
- if so, do you choose remote for solitude?
- if not- do you consider face to face interactions with your colleagues not as good a use of your time?
Again, genuinely interested because the full remote teams I’ve worked with that have voice comms at the ready have a lot less misunderstandings and the barrier to conversation is much lower than having to make a zoom / slack call.
We use Hangouts and WhereBy (formerly appear.in) for some projects, but when you're in the "about to join" screen, the list of other people in the room isn't updated past initial load.