New remote-first employees, do you show anger/disappointment more often?

Question

I'm not sure if this is a cause of more people moving to remote-first and difficulty showing emotions over slack/messaging as the main communication, or just people stressed out over covid in general. Since we went remote-first company-wide, emotions spike way more easily on the negative when something goes wrong.I haven't experienced this myself since I've been at the company fairly long and had been remote for about three years prior to Covid hitting. I'm not sure if I just learned how to conduct myself in a virtual setting or if this is the norm. But I've seen coworkers lash out on others over what could be an easy fix or mundane item fairly often.Just wondering if others are dealing with similar issues and how you handle a confrontation over video where one is talking over the other, or over Slack, where neither reads the other's responses and continue to cherry-pick pieces of a response escalating an argument.

DiggyJohnson · Accepted Answer

I got angry when I was onboarding entirely remote once when I couldn&rsquo;t get a question answered because the individuals that could answer the question kept assuming I was asking a different question and then explaining something I already knew.This was a weird situation because I feel somewhat justified. All attempts on my part to be more clear, slow down, ask in a different setting, email, etc. failed. It&rsquo;s like the remote thing gave everyone leave to not think with their whole brain. I don&rsquo;t usually get upset like this at work, but it was extremely demotivating to realize that a question with any nuance or complexity is going to be ignored or worse.

codingdave · Answer

I've only seen this a few times, but every time I have seen it, someone stepped in to de-escalate, asking them to please take it off Slack, and call each other to resolve the concern.