You can catch a spare minute by the coffee machine but you have to schedule zoom.

Maybe you could fire off a slack and hope for the best, but you can't really guage when a good time for a chat can be.

Async communication is good but its not quite the same to try to meet someone over slack, out of the blue, like you might in the break room.

If you want to see how the communication differs do this small study:

Notice how much people were talking in the first day of the war in Slack. In my experience being in a couple of slack workspaces (one for work, a couple from co-working hubs, 3 professional groups) in some people shared something, in one they created a channel for this, in some other there was one or two threads.

Now think about what was the state of almost all employees: I think the invasion was the main focus of everybody and also I assess the amount of work done these days on average is less than normal.

Now think about what is happening going into an office in that day: Everybody will talk about this. Every conversation will start with this, every chit chat before any meeting will start with that news.

If you remote communication is reflecting this then congrats your organization managed to create a good remote culture.

I am not saying one is good and one is bad. I am saying there is a big difference between them.

Less mental overhead and friction in terms of setting it up. 1000s of years of evolution. The experience of people who post on HN and their comfort with digital interaction may not reflect how a majority of people feel.

I wonder if there is confirmation bias in the opinions of people who are voluntarily spending a large amount of time on forums already. They had a preference for written asynchronous communication already.