> If you work from the office, you mostly have to: 1. walk around the office and ask someone. Interrupt whatever they're doing to ask anything you want anytime.
In the office one person at a time can DOS attack my attention and everyone else can see I'm busy helping them. Slack is far worse, multiple coworkers are DDOS attacking me and 10 more unread messages pop up before I finish helping the first guy.
See this is exactly what I mean. People don't want to learn how to wfh.
There are easy solutions to these problems. Put up an away message and silence notifications. Set office hours when you will respond to messages. Time box. Give estimated response times. Provide an escalation method for emergencies. Keep a weekly rotation for support requests.
All of this is well established in fully remote companies. But you can't expect to completely change the dynamic and expect it to work perfect with no changes.
> walk around the office and ... Interrupt whatever they're doing to ask anything you want anytime.
Without sarcasm, I think a lot of people think this is what "important hallway conversations" and "collaboration and innovation" are. I also find it hugely disruptive, and it caters to people can mostly only communicate verbally.
I check my slack when I have some slack. If it's super urgent and important, page me. If it is important and not urgent, set up a meeting. If it's urgent but not important, stop doing it. If you let slack pop dialogs or notifications, then you're going to get a lot of urgent-but-not-important shit.
This same thing happens in an office if it's not small/one big shared workspace. Literally no difference. Also if you have other offices/remote works this can happen even with WFO.
People message me while I'm on zoom, I tell them I'm busy but I'll get to them in the order they reached out. It works just fine. I have a note on my computer I add their name to and once I get off zoom I check if I still need to reach out to anyone.
In the office one person at a time can DOS attack my attention and everyone else can see I'm busy helping them. Slack is far worse, multiple coworkers are DDOS attacking me and 10 more unread messages pop up before I finish helping the first guy.