About
People in companies are talking to each other less. AI has removed the need to ask for help with tasks that used to prompt a quick conversation: getting an email checked, a translation, help with a specific tool or workflow. At the same time, remote work has reduced the incidental, in-person contact that surfaced what colleagues were working on or how they were doing.
These small exchanges do more than get a task done. They are also how people find out whether someone else is tackling the same problem or notice that a colleague seems off. As that kind of contact disappears, concerns and friction no longer surface on their own. They stay invisible until they've grown into a bigger problem: disengagement, conflict, or someone leaving.
We're two mechanical engineering students at EPFL. Working on technical teams, we noticed engineers are quick to ask for help with a hard technical problem, but rarely extend the same instinct to problems with their team or their own leadership, as if those aren't something worth talking through either. We started Dixy because we think that instinct is wrong, and because there's decades of research on team dynamics and leadership that most technical teams never touch.