We had this, but they were called journal channels. It worked great cause I always have something to say but it's not worth putting in a shared channel.
If you're remote, ramble
281–290 of 479 posts
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#282This is just rubberducking into a private channel. It's really not that new.
I actually do this, but into a personal google doc.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#283This used to be the #random channel on Slack iirc
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ref: Office Space (Movie) Flare at the restaurant (I believe it's a spoof on TGI Fridays / Chillis etc) If you have not seen Office Space ... It has a couple raunchy things and it's general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000 USA so go in with about that level of culture expectations. Having said that, it's a GREAT movie which is practically a comedic documentary of US office politics and tropes. Though…
> The movie showcases culture and human nature more than any particular era. Most of my middle management experiences has been between Office Space and Better off Ted. One with "Don't care" as an answer and the other says "Care more" as its. Those are the two extremes of the genre.
Fun fact: I was a key player in actualizing the plan for Project Jabberwocky.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have an organic channel like this that's just called "Study Hall". People constantly ask technical questions and they know it's a judgement free zone. Probably one of the most productive chat channels in our org.
>and they know it's a judgement free zone. that's the thing that's so inorganic about this whole thing : it's not a judgement free zone, it's a zone that tricks people into presuming that. If some underling somewhere says something that exposes their ignorance or naivety to either a policy problem or a technical problem you'd better realize that it's going to trigger a 'review mechanism' somewhere down the road withi…
This is going to depend a lot on culture.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#286I fail to see how this is different from a general off-topic chat channel which you're not expected to follow (but can peek at on downtime or while waiting for Claude Code). While that doesn't scale for large companies, for 2-10 (mentioned in the article) it's better than 2-10 such channels you need to keep track of.
In practice 2-10 individual channels with 1-3 posts per week has less overhead than one off-topic channel with 30 posts because there's less mystery meat. It reduces the "am I missing something important?" feeling. We do also have an off-topic channel but on our team the individual rambling channels get more posts. Maybe because it's less likely to derail an existing conversation and allows more continuity with each…
> Maybe because it's less likely to derail an existing conversation and allows more continuity with each person's thoughts.
That's a good point.
I think threads would help here (always reply to a thread), but enforcing this consistently can be a chore (on all parties).
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#287There is a kind of leader that's threatened when they don't control communication. In these cases, random thought bombs on slack feel like chaos. Like people are going in random directions not rowing together. I don't think this is true of course -- people are just sharing inspiration and ideas. But in some places / cultures just rambling on slack can be dangerous and put a target on your back. You can be labeled as…
This is true because it has happened to me. I was at a place where there was a very ingrained hierarchy in the culture where people were afraid to ask questions in public (slack), to discuss problems and solutions, because the "leaders" were so thin-skinned, doing anything outside of being ticket-solving machines was seen as wholly objectionable. I got tired of the abject fear that some of those idiots were stoking s…
Most people, myself included, cannot thrive in a culture of fear and control. I think what you did is the best way to handle it. Do the right thing and surrender to the outcome. Like you, I was happier that way.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ref: Office Space (Movie) Flare at the restaurant (I believe it's a spoof on TGI Fridays / Chillis etc) If you have not seen Office Space ... It has a couple raunchy things and it's general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000 USA so go in with about that level of culture expectations. Having said that, it's a GREAT movie which is practically a comedic documentary of US office politics and tropes. Though…
I think that was the first R rated movie I saw as a child (and probably the first movie I pirated, on pre-P2P networks). The grand wisdom of the Geto Boys (sic) has stuck with me ever since. "The type of chicks that'd double up on a dude like me do [care about money]" I've gotten way off topic
The first movie I can remember pirating was the original Fast and Furious movie using Napster (or KaZaA).
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#289I like having an #offtopic and #thoughts channel for not worrying about burying important info in. If something meaningful happens it'll get captured, otherwise it serves to connect and relate.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#290One of these is not like the others:
ideas related to current projects musings about blog posts, articles, user feedback “what if” suggestions photos from recent trips or hobbies rubber ducking a problem
it seems like the goal is to split #random into #work-random and #not-work-random. but #ramblings seems like a weird naming convention. Why is an idea related to a current project a "rambling"?