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Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#81

Post by yesiamyourdad »

chrsig wrote: post #6
binarymax wrote: post #2

IMO slack is a poor medium for in depth questions and answers. It’s a chat application made for short text. A better tool would be something like an internal stackoverflow…which would have more durability and findability.

Unfortunately, I've seen an internal stackoverflow fail right out the gate because of clout chasing. For example, people asking questions only to answer it themselves immediately.

So remove clout. SO did it because they wanted network effects from a collection of people that needed incentive to contribute.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#82

Post by yesiamyourdad »

e9 wrote: post #68
chrsig wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, largely unnecessary. I can't divine someone's intent, but I can surmise based on having worked with them for multiple years. Measuring reach? certainly not. It was just setup as a confluence plugin by the corpit team and left as a free-for-all with no direction. > I really fail to see how this is a negative thing It discouraged engagement. You can argue until you're blue in the face if it should have or…

Even if question seems unnecessary at the time, more often than not some junior dev will find it helpful once your company grows. It’s about preserving knowledge and no question is dumb at that point.

I don't question their premise, I believe that it happens. So remove clout, it's a feature to create network incentives for people who need an incentive.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#83

Post by taeric »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #9

In previous teams I've worked hard to make sure slack isn't the place for decisions to be made that are any greater than where to go for lunch. Same with bigger questions as well. Slack is great for small insignificant chatter but developers need long uninterrupted periods of quiet to work. That doesn't go well with an IM system that people expect to get big questions answered or key decisions made with. If the team…

I don't fully disagree, but I do disagree that I want all decisions done in a long format. Especially when I'm specifically trying to get my team to be way more agile and willing to make decisions while they are working.

Throwing up a quick discussion point on a slack room while you are acting on the idea is perfectly fine. Just as it could be perfectly fine to toss the code if the idea doesn't pan out.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#84

Post by hombre_fatal »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #50

Email is the best method of communication for anything complex. It's asynchronous, long-form, has a historical record, allows threading, you can seamlessly include anyone in the world in the conversation, have shared mailboxes and mailing lists, attach files. But people are afraid of e-mail. Will anyone ever read my e-mail? When will I get a response? What if I mess up my message? It is unknown, immutable, does not p…

You're robbing yourself of understanding other people if you just paper over everyone's issues with email as being some sort of fear that prevents them from seeing the obvious superiority of email.

It's a red flag when you're attributing a negative quality to people as the reason why they use or even prefer something. The cure is simple: talk to people and ask them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#85

Post by tintor »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #50

Email is the best method of communication for anything complex. It's asynchronous, long-form, has a historical record, allows threading, you can seamlessly include anyone in the world in the conversation, have shared mailboxes and mailing lists, attach files. But people are afraid of e-mail. Will anyone ever read my e-mail? When will I get a response? What if I mess up my message? It is unknown, immutable, does not p…

There is nothing inherently more long-from in email compared to Slack. Slack is not limiting the length of your text messages.

Similarly for asynchronous, historical record, threading, and inclusion.

You can add emoji to email as easily.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#87

Post by onion2k »

the answers team members provide seldom respect the depth, severity, or nature of the queries which are posted

This is a hiring problem. In short, the people you work with lack the ability to understand why it's important to respect their colleagues and to write better answers. Teach them to communicate better.

Also, the importance of good communication needs to come from the top. Seniors need to spend the time and effort writing good answers, and making sure replies from others are appropriate, adding a "Could you expand on this?" where they aren't.

If that fails, tell people to schedule more meetings. Face to face and video calls solve the lack of depth incredibly easily. You can't give a shallow answer if someone is literally asking you for a deeper one.

And if people push back on that, the answer is to replace them. People who aren't good communicators ruin team dynamics quickly. Hire for comms.

In a business, building good software is 50% about writing simple, understandable code and 50% communicating with other people so they can write simple, understandable code too.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#88

Post by vishnugupta »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #50

Email is the best method of communication for anything complex. It's asynchronous, long-form, has a historical record, allows threading, you can seamlessly include anyone in the world in the conversation, have shared mailboxes and mailing lists, attach files. But people are afraid of e-mail. Will anyone ever read my e-mail? When will I get a response? What if I mess up my message? It is unknown, immutable, does not p…

> Email is the best method of communication for anything complex.

In my experience email is best when audience is less than 5 and have a tightly shared context. I've seen innocuous looking proposals getting out of hand just 'coz people jumped in to respond; multiple threads forming and so on. It gets nightmarish very fast.

I've found a combination of shared docs + meeting to arrive at consensus to work well. A small group of people propose a design/solution in a doc. Share it with wider stake holders get their first round of feedback, incorporate it in the doc and then have one or two in-person meeting(s) to get them all sign-off. Slack could be used to have short conversations but not ideal from what I've experienced.

This is with respect to a a for-profit organisation. Can't speak about open source as I don't have any experience collaborating there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#89

Post by fendy3002 »

taeric wrote: post #83
bluehatbrit wrote: post #9

In previous teams I've worked hard to make sure slack isn't the place for decisions to be made that are any greater than where to go for lunch. Same with bigger questions as well. Slack is great for small insignificant chatter but developers need long uninterrupted periods of quiet to work. That doesn't go well with an IM system that people expect to get big questions answered or key decisions made with. If the team…

I don't fully disagree, but I do disagree that I want all decisions done in a long format. Especially when I'm specifically trying to get my team to be way more agile and willing to make decisions while they are working. Throwing up a quick discussion point on a slack room while you are acting on the idea is perfectly fine. Just as it could be perfectly fine to toss the code if the idea doesn't pan out.

My current supervisor do it right, a big decision is stared in slack. It usually attracts 3-6 people in that discussion. A huddle or teams meeting is arranged if needed.

Then another slack discussion is posted with a v1 proposal in it, and link to previous discussion. This time, more people can give dissenting opinion. If nothing conflicting, a short sharing session will be held presenting this, and see whether there's dissenting opinion again.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ensure everyone on the team is heard on Slack?

#90

Post by shafyy »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #63
bluehatbrit wrote: post #9

In previous teams I've worked hard to make sure slack isn't the place for decisions to be made that are any greater than where to go for lunch. Same with bigger questions as well. Slack is great for small insignificant chatter but developers need long uninterrupted periods of quiet to work. That doesn't go well with an IM system that people expect to get big questions answered or key decisions made with. If the team…

> Slack prioritises whoever is first to reply and no one wants to read a 50+ message thread to figure out if they have relevant input. But they want to read a long e-mail thread?

I think Basecamp nails the compromise between email and Slack (I’m sure there are other tools similar to Basecamp that also do a good job)
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