Communication in remote environments

Even when the noise-to-ratio is not great, over-communicating seems a good default when working remotely. My hypothesis is that a lot of communication problems are mitigated when working in offices. It’s common for people to get out of their desk and go to talk with a teammate. Even at the cost of breaking their flow, information is shared more often. Deficiencies in communication are minimised because there are more opportunities for information to go around. Not just during working hours, but also when going for lunch, or for a coffee break. It’s a brute force approach that has advantages. In a remote environment, this doesn’t exist. Information is derived from other sources (e.g. Linear, Github). These of course still exist in an office environment, but because we are just a few feet away from someone with the information we need, we use that as a crutch. Remote work can sometimes feel quite lonely. It’s not uncommon for people to be stuck on a task for several hours, until they ask for help. Or to be in the zone for a couple of days, until they are brought back to reality - this is accentuated by no-meeting-day policies. During these few days, how much information have they missed? I believe that oversharing information, even if it’s available elsewhere, is a good principle. A lot of serendipity is lost remotely, so we need to spark it somehow.