The Exquisite Hell of "Can You Hear Me Okay?"

I swear, you guys just don't get it. I’m tired of all the whining about legacy code. It's not a problem—it’s a treasure hunt.

I love meetings. I really, truly do. But more than that, I love the absolute masterpiece of technical failure that is the modern video call. It is the perfect, beautiful storm of wasted compute cycles and human misery, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The Audition

Every call starts with the ritual: the Audio Audition. We spend the first 7 minutes in a glorious, chaotic opera of "Can you hear me?" "I hear you, but you're cutting out." "My mic is muted, sorry!" Followed by the person who has clearly joined the call from a wind tunnel while chewing loudly into their headset.

Why is it that the only person who never has audio issues is the one who is absolutely convinced they do? "Hello? Hello? Am I on mute? Is my mic working? I think my audio is broken." YES, GARY, WE CAN ALL HEAR YOUR FRANTIC WHISPERING. WE ALL WISH WE COULDN'T.

The Performance

Once the audio is settled (read: tolerable), we move to the main show: Screen Share Roulette.

"Okay, I'm sharing my screen now. Can everyone see my screen?"

(Pause. Complete silence. The host assumes yes.)

"Great! So as you can see, on line 47, we have a clear..."

"Wait, I just see a black box."

"I see your Slack notifications."

"I can see your inbox full of unread emails about the next mandatory team-building exercise."

The host stops, re-shares, then asks again, "How about now?"

And half the team replies: "Yes!" The other half replies: "No!" The team member with 10-year-old hardware says: "It's lagging. The screen is frozen on the first line."

This isn't a meeting. It's a highly competitive, international game of Digital Telephone, where the goal is to make sure absolutely no critical information is successfully transmitted.

The Grand Finale

And finally, the best part: the Meeting Exit Strategy.

Someone finishes their point and declares: "Okay, I think that's it!"

Cue the 5 minutes of awkward, simultaneous sign-offs. Everyone rushes to say "Thanks, bye!" at the exact same moment, creating a glorious, stuttering cacophony that sounds like a dial-up modem screaming into the void. Then, someone inevitably gets stuck alone in the room because they were trying to find the end meeting button, only to discover the host (who already left) had set it to "End Meeting for All" to ensure maximum social friction.

You people complain about merge conflicts. You complain about APIs. I say you don't appreciate the beautiful, broken genius of a video call! It's the only place where you can spend an hour doing absolutely nothing and feel completely justified because, hey, at least your mic was muted when your dog started barking at the mailman.

++ this if you've ever had a meeting where the best part was clicking the 'Leave' button.