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High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

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Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#51

Post by capableweb »

c54 wrote: post #47
ebiester wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest introducing two things. First, introduce The Diataxis framework ( https://diataxis.fr/ ) for documentation. It makes people think about documentation in a more structured way, and allows you to be more specific in the types of missing documentation. (High documentation cultures are often good with explanation but not tutorials, for example.) Second, I would introduct the idea of a Documentation Portfo…

Diataxis looks interesting thanks for the link

Wow yeah, it puts into much better words than what I've been trying to get software engineers to do for a decade or more. Really awesome resource, thanks again kind parent :)

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#52

Post by Eleison23 »

My job is sweet.

The management really doesn't go in for meetings, especially not all-hands, nor 1:1s for us at the lowest level. We have onboardings and special messages and all those are recorded in case someone misses, it's no big deal.

Documentation: we have a master SOP document that's about a dozen pages, you can read it in an hour and understand it. There's a living spreadsheet that's updated so you have to check it on the regular. I've also helped build an aid for one particular investigative side, but it's optional. There's other documentation but it's all ancillary and optional, the biggest thing to know is SOP.

There's an #important-links channel on Slack and I do try to look through it on the regular, but all you really need to know is a small field.

We're all 100% remote, WFH team. We stretch from San Francisco, to NYC, to South Africa and coworkers in Australia too.

We're starting to branch out in non-English languages, so I'm sharpening my Spanish for the road ahead.

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#53

Post by fragmede »

I was recently introduced to www.Loom.com which is this fremium screen recording app and website (no affiliation). Being able to have a certain type of meeting asynchronously has been a boon to productivity. The async nature of texting is great and adding the same thing for audio and video/screen recording has been similarly great.

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#54

Post by layer8 »

tqi wrote: post #29
seltzerboys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hiring is probably the main thing. giving some kind of documentation exercise to all prospective devs seems to alleviate concerns about communication

Agree that hiring is sure important, but I think as long as hiring is competitive, and most candidates are bad at writing, then compromises are almost inevitable?

If FAANGs started putting more weight on technical-writing skills in their hiring, we would get Leetwriting and technical-writing bootcamps. Meaning, it’s just an education issue to some extent, and there’s currently too little motivation to train writing as a skill.

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#55

Post by MikeMaven »

erichocean wrote: post #18
cateblanchett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't Amazon have a similar structure, tho? i don't know what it's actually like to work there (anyone who does feel free to chime in) but i've interviewed and from what I can tell they put a heavy emphasis on documentation. it's tough to find a bigger and more siloed company than Amazon, and it seems to work for them.

As someone who has to use Amazon's external documentation: it's absolutely terrible. Worst docs of any company we have to interact with at the API level.

No post body was provided.

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#56

Post by nopenopenopeno »

futureproofd wrote: post #28
canucklady wrote: post #20

My current employer was sold to me as a "high documentation" place. What it means in practice is that if you're trying to do something there are 5 outdated documents describing the decision making process for how the project was run, and no documents about how to actually use the resulting software. Occasionally if you ask how to actually do a task in Slack someone will yell at you that you should have searched for a…

Do we work for the same company? :P Confluence has been the bane of my attempts in finding any relevant docs. Which one is the source of truth? Which one was a draft written by an overly eager to make a first impression, new employee (who is no longer with the company)? Don't even get me started on saving meeting notes to confluence. These days, I maintain my own knowledge base on Obsidian. If there's ever any confus…

Do you have any tips on how to maintain a developer's own knowledge base in Obsidian? I also use Obsidian but I currently use as more of a dumping ground.

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#58

Post by DenisM »

thenerdhead wrote: post #40

I wish more people adopted Andy Grove's thoughts on meetings. https://jondouglas.dev/lets-not-meet/ This company seems to "get it" though. We ought to protect our attention more often. I'd take documentation over no documentation any day. Even if it's 4 years old and was last updated by a person who left for a competitor.

I read through your link and it rang hollow to me. Care to share your insight?

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#59

Post by rqtwteye »

bluetomcat wrote: post #17

"High-documentation" isn't the cure, either. Just write quality software with well-defined interfaces, minimal dependencies and smooth building processes. I want to be able to build the thing without frustration, to start playing with it in order to learn its internals and debug it. Only then can I be comfortable enough to start implementing features and changes.

It's devastating to learn after more than 20 years in the industry that the secret is "Just write quality software with well-defined interfaces, minimal dependencies and smooth building processes". If I and my colleagues had known only sooner about this straightforward and actionable advice...

Re: High-documentation, low-meeting work culture

#60

Post by triceratops »

canucklady wrote: post #20

My current employer was sold to me as a "high documentation" place. What it means in practice is that if you're trying to do something there are 5 outdated documents describing the decision making process for how the project was run, and no documents about how to actually use the resulting software. Occasionally if you ask how to actually do a task in Slack someone will yell at you that you should have searched for a…

> Confluence

There's your problem. The only use case for Confluence is when you want to hide information, but credibly claim that it's documented.

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