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Comment by zo1 | Hacker News Reader

Such a remote scenario also heavily favors "extroverts" and other such people that are happy to "hop on a meeting" with someone. The key is that it's not "hop on a meeting", that's easy for an extrovert, it's that you're interrupting someone and taking time out of their day, and you don't want to disturb etc etc. Introverts, "shy" and other such non-people people, will struggle with that and they'll have t re-learn working in a work environment.

You get people that are "selfish" in that regard (yes you get introverts like that too) and don't mind taking up someone else's time or interrupting them. WFH heavily favors those people, and no one is speaking up about this.

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In-person work is way worse for this. Extroverts are constantly bugging everyone with small talk, talking loudly on the phone, in the kitchen, the hall, the bathroom...

Extroverts walk around and bug random people to get their "fix". Things should be async when you're remote. If someone pings you to meet, just ignore it until you are ready to deal with it. That's impossible in the office.

I agree that's what extroverts do - and it's definitely an interruption! But this scenario specifically is when the "introvert" needs to initiate a talk to someone. I'd argue that that is much easier in the office when the perceived amount of "interruption" they would cause to the other person is low, and when the natural flow of the conversation can bring up an entry point for them. It also makes it more likely for their manager/senior/mentor to notice they are having an issue without them having to initiate.

Thing is, the extroverts will now do the same, they'll just do it remotely and schedule incessant '1 on 1's with their reports, who are more likely to be introverts.

Overall, it's not an easy problem to solve and optimize. But the preference then should be to do what we've always done and slowly "peek" into potential different ways of doing it, instead of dropping the bomb and saying full WFH or full Y and here is why X or Y is correct.

Honestly, I don't see how it could be easier for introverts in the scenario you mention. If an introvert needs something when they're WFH, they just send a slack message. I probably doesn't even require a face to face interaction.

For reference, I manage a fully remote team and we do one real-time video meeting a week, the rest is pure text and async. We are a very high performing team that consists of people new to the industry as well as veterans.

Introvert and extrovert are pretty blunt terms, there are people who find it easy to talk to others and those who find it difficult even when necessary, these might but do not need to correspond to wanting to talk to others (among other nuances). Introvert usually groups those who have difficulty and those who dislike talking to others, but with work from home that grouping doesn’t necessarily make sense.

If it’s harder for you to initiate conversations, bumping into people and common office occurrences can make it easier to start talking. But if you don’t like talking to others than bumping into people can feel intrusive.

This is a completely stereotypical and offensive view of extraverted people. You conflated them with loud and inconsiderate individuals. I suggest you read up on what extraversion is, because it's not pestering random people with small talk.

As an introvert with Asperger and an adamant pro-office guy I can't relate, what you describe sounds more like social anxiety or sociophobia, and require proper treatment (also facing (semi)professional conversations is a good treatment of its own since you know the topic and the people)

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