HomeOffice

Audio and Video Quality in Online Meetings DOES matter

We’ve all been there – endless online meetings, squinting at grainy screens, wondering if our colleagues are even awake. Seriously, how many online meeting does it take to realize that audio and video quality matter more than we want to admit?

HomeOffice- vs Office-Discussion gone Wrong

I just read an article on t3n about reasons to be in the office and reasons to stay in the HomeOffice. It’s an interesting read, just at one point I could have screamed (maybe I even did)! 🤦‍♂️

An advantage of remote interviews

There have been plenty of articles and comments about the (dis)advantages of home office vs in-office scenarios over the past two years. One critical aspect of home-office is definitely about creating a personal relationship with people that you never meet in person.

One situation where a personal relationship is quite important is an interview with candidates (be it internal or external). Besides the technical expertise you also want to know whether or not the candidate is a fit for the team. In the past 2+ years, we interviewed dozens of people for positions in the team. I say “we” because we usually are 2-3 internals holding different positions in the team (dev, ops, product owner, …) interviewing the new candidate. And in the past 2+ years we did all those interviews remotely via video-conferencing.

The real challenge of HomeOffice for companies

Many companies and executives thought COVID-19 and 100% HomeOffice would be a real challenge. Phew seems a lot of companies survived the Home-Office challenge! Companies have learnt that the business can continue. Employees have learnt that HomeOffice can work.

This was challenge 1: the technical challenge.

But now as companies slowly do not have to do HomeOffice anymore … now we will see what our bosses, executives and companies really think. How much they have really learned. How much trust there really is.

Now comes challenge 2: the people challenge.

The challenge might now be to keep people when a leader (or worse: a company culture) values presence (a.k.a counting sheep) over results – but employees don’t …

I’ll just stay at home and stay productive.