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The problem with this is it doesn’t scale unless you have voice mail transcription.

If you get one call a day, it’s fine.

Getting one slack message a day is also fine.

Getting 50 a day makes it impossible, because unless the messages are transcribed, you have to listen to each one to decide if you want to return the call.

…and if they are transcribed, well… now you’re using slack.

There’s definitely something to be said for a call that you can’t do over chat (for whatever reason; some people just don’t “text” they only talk).

…but, calling arbitrarily when you want something flat out doesn’t work.

Personal experience: people call for trivial reasons, you don’t answer and they don’t leave a message.

3 missed calls from your boss, no message left.

Just leave it because they didn’t leave a message? Probably not.

…but, the reality is, most people cbf leaving a message saying what they wanted. They want to talk now, or not at all. …and, I don’t think it’s ok to just ignore your missed calls.

So then the pressure is on you to track down each of those people and see what they wanted.

It’s a nightmare. (My solution: choose a different place to work. /shrug. Can’t change the culture in some places)

> This is inferior to the pop-in for the interrupter, but superior for the interruptee

I don't see how either of those are true for phone calls.

1. It's ideal for the interrupter: they get to decide when they want your time. They want it now.

2. It's annoying for the interruptee, because you only have two options. Either you can pick up the phone now and force a hard context switch away what you were doing, or you can reject the call and spend more time later listening through voicemails. And unless you have voicemail transcriptions, you're at the complete mercy of the interrupter again.

Compare that to asynchronous text-based communication, where the interrupter can't forcefully take your time from you. They can only message you, and you can decide when to read it. Reading the message doesn't cede control of your time to them, and you can adjust the actual time of the call to accommodate whatever you're working on.

I found it helps to set boundaries and in one instance make it clear that I do not appreciate being called out of the blue. I feel almost everyone understands that a texting before a call is polite these days. Clarification was only required once for a colleague who tried dialling me into a meeting I wasn’t party to, just to ask me some questions that could have been an IM. They were actually a little younger, and so I think it was more a case of realising your impact on other people (who may be in or trying to achieve flow) if you interrupt them because it seems urgent to you. Like the article notes, the open plan office engendered interruptions too easily because it was convenient rather than urgent.

As a millennial I suppose I fall in between the two camps. When I was younger, social anxiety about taking up people’s valuable time with my silly questions made a phone call seem like a terrible burden to subject someone to, but with age and (remote work) experience, I’ve realised that conversations are indeed much higher bandwidth and often appreciated more than a letter or thread of back-and-forth clarifications. If I _had_ to stereotype by generation (sorry GP) I could say voice and video seem easier than reading and writing for boomers and Gen-Zs, but even that doesn’t sound right. It’s probably just a communication style thing. There’s a reason many of us struggle to read a book when we can watch some TV instead. As humans we communicate with our voice, face, and body. The main benefit of text is asynchronicity. The challenge is how to thread the needle of asynchronicity in an increasingly post-literate world.

>There’s a reason many of us struggle to read a book when we can watch some TV instead.

Most people don't watch TV to obtain information, yet at the same time, videos can convey information better than a book would thanks to audio and video. Quality audio and video material far surpass books when they augment the original text-only format. Shoddy video material is still preferred over shoddy writing for reasons beyond conveying information.

And that's the real issue. People are using bad writing and asynchronous communication skills as a cop-out to push more, not realizing their other communication skills are just as poor. Sure, the guy waving his warms during a presentation feels more humane, but how much does it really add one week after? You're stuck only with the notes he left, the notes you made (probably none) and your own memory probably muddied along the way. It's the same for meetings or any kind of call. Taking notes takes far longer if you ask the one conveying information to slow down so you can keep up. Most people are awful at communication in any form, and half of the problem comes from them trying to blame the medium or believing they are better using a different medium or it's flat-out the medium's fault. Newsflash: it's probably you, not the medium.

It's most astounding this has to be told to developers of all people. The field moves fast, new information is thrown out at rapid pace, the work is mostly mentally straining and you're expected to know a lot. Surely, that alone would make enough people question whether fast-paced, transient communication is a great fit. Writing is easier to point at people and say "this doesn't make sense" without the answer being another call.

Voicemail is the worst possible form of communication.

Consider a plot of fidelity vs latency. You want to talk to somebody - high-fidelity back-and-forth communications instantly. It's up in one corner of our plot.

Now consider voicemail. One-way, lots of "um, uh" wasted time, tedious menus to fetch and wade thru it, maybe tomorrow. It's down in the other corner of our plot.

Literally any other form of communication beats that. Text. Email. Hell, send a letter. But you try to leave me a voicemail, you're saying "Here, you type this email".

I never even set up my voicemail.

I don’t get this at all. The UI on voicemail is easy on every phone I’ve used for a decade. Room for one fact “I called about X, it is this important” or “This is the simple piece of information I wanted to cover”

How is this different or more convenient than a chat message?

Hey! I’m working on X and I was wondering if you’d have time today to help me out.

Agreed. Transcribe-to-SMS is the only way.

In my work circle a protocol has naturally established itself. If you call me, I assume you want something. Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered calling me. So you don’t need to leave a message: I will see your missed call, and I will call you back.

Those quick replies you can send from your phone help. Customise them. I use two:

“Can’t pick up, call you back in 5.”

“I’m in a meeting, call you back as soon as it’s over.”

Why would you ever leave a voicemail when you can leave a text message?

I think I disagree with all the advice in your comment, but this part has me particularly baffled.

I was hoping people would use it to explain what they wanted to talk about, since with Slack and SMS people just go "hey" and don't explain what they want, and speaking is easier than typing. But I guess I forgot that people on voicemail just say "hey it's X, call me back when you get this".

It would be nice if Slack had an away message that was sent back to the user when they message you, rather than a status that nobody ever reads.

> since with Slack and SMS people just go "hey" and don't explain what they want,

So you reply to that with a link to https://no-hello.com/ every time, and they eventually catch on.

Because I can convey more complex information with less effort with my voice than a phone keyboard.

Assuming the other person hears you clearly and assuming the other person listens to it at all.

Phone tag really doesn't sound much better than email. The culture of a quick callback is not inherent.

Voice mail is terrible, but I do think Google Chat/Meet is missing a "call" button. All you can do is send a regular chat message with a link to an impromptu meet. Sometimes I would like a button that politely asks for more immediate attention.

Given the described situation (company already using Discord), your suggestion is obviously silly. The solution proposed is simple and uses an existing tool that they are already using.