The opposite for me. I used to be able to turn around on my chair and have a chat with my supervisor who sat just behind me. If other people were needed, we could just be like "Philip, can you come over a second, we have a question". Now we have to ask people if they're busy and setup a zoom meeting.
I understand this inertia, but I have also worked in remote teams where you can just jump on a call instantly without any friction and equally end that conversation in under 30 seconds.
Zoom is a little clunky for that - if you have something like whereby.com you can have a named room for yourself so you don't even have any friction to find a virtual place to talk because it is preestablished which really makes the talk feel serendipidous.
With push notifications on rooms, team members can pile on a team room if they are free and watch to listen in in case it's interesting to them. Equally with push notifications people can come to your room if they're looking for you.
But it's also a lot less intrusive than a phone ringing. If you know the room people are in a call in, you can interrupt them (because sometimes you do need to get hold of people right this second).
It can really feel like the low friction parts of an office with the right mindset and buy in. Obviously there are pros and cons to having that low activation barrier but I find them a net positive overall.
It really can be as simple as "hey can we chat" or "@team - quick call?" and then drop all the formality of a meeting and approach the call like as if you walked up to their desk to say hi.
I just get poked on slack. Question answered. Life carries on.
The advantage there is I can choose when to respond which is never the case in shoulder tapping office environments and meeting schedule negotiations both of which are disruptive.
Email is even better than meetings and disruptions!
At Automattic, p2 is even better than email. For example, I’m subscribed to projects that I am interested in or have some expertise in. I’m also subscribed to a few keywords that I get notified if anyone in the company mentions publicly. You get the benefits of everything you mentioned without the exclusivity of email.
This is why I like Remotion [1], it has the best affordances I've seen that replicate turning around your chair and having a quick chat. You can set your status to Away (can't connect), Available (request to connect), and Open (auto connect). Rather than take up your whole screen, its just a few circles of faces, so you can continue your work or collaborate while chatting.
I think Remotion works best for small teams that have a certain operating rhythm and informality to them. The clunkiness of Zoom et al reflects the formality required of cross-organization collaboration, where things must be scheduled, everyone's expected to give their undivided fullscreen attention, politics dictates relevant parties all have a chance to speak, etc.
