Channel surfing — the remote work alternative to water cooler conversation

Is remote work a fad or is it going to be the future of work ? This question has been debated extensively in the past couple of years. Of course there is always the option of hybrid work culture which is a mix and match of both and that is likely to be the future. Having said that, there are companies which are successfully operating in a fully remote mode. I happen to work in one of them.
Based on my experience working there I can answer one of the most common factors mentioned as a disadvantage of remote work — water cooler conversations. The argument goes like this — in traditional in office workplaces, people bump into each other and have conversations. These conversations act as sparks for great ideas later. Detractors say that remote work misses this element.
That’s quite true. I do miss walking by a colleague’s desk and taking a peek at what they are working on and having a chat. But I have observed another mechanism at play in remote work, which has a similar effect — slack channel surfing. Most companies have a lot of open slack channels where anyone can join. In fully remote companies, almost all the conversation takes place on Slack (or Microsoft teams ). A channel surfer can just drop in on any slack channel and read the conversations there to get a general drift of what’s happening with a particular team, what different people are working on etc. While it misses the interactivity of water cooler conversations, slack channel surfing has an advantage via its asynchronous nature. It is possible to do the surfing any time we are free, long after the participants of that conversation have wrapped it up. This also has an effect of seeding ideas. With the knowledge gained via channel surfing, we can reach out to different people in the org to try our hands at new initiatives.

So to sum up, fully remote orgs also have their own version of serendipity — via this channel surfing.