yeah my coworkers deal with this in our "banter" channel, my raw thoughts.
If you're remote, ramble
361–370 of 479 posts
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#362I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post. Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me. In my experience, "rambling" channels build up organically... as you have a thought, you share it with someone relevant, not just drop it into a channel and see who reads it. Over time, small group chats evolve naturally, and as…
Overlooked in this recap is a telling line from later in the article: > We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent of water cooler talk. We want as much deep focus time as possible, so ramblings help us stay connected while minimizing interruptions. Emphasis in the quote is mine, to call attention specifically to the fact that this is what Obsidian is doing instead of standups. Taken in that vein,…
Or they're just async standups, except less accessible since OP uses separate, exclusive channels instead of threads within a single shared channel.
The fully remote org I work at does async standup threads, they're great, they work just like they're described here except they're vastly easier to track and search, and nobody has any allusions of them being anything more than just remote asynchronous standups.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#363Re: If you're remote, ramble
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Metaverse and VR Chat? They mix on the client because also you get to hear where each speaker is in the space next to you. Without it in zoom it's just one garble if more than one person talks
I feel like we could probably just distribute everyone in a virtual circle - as if they are sitting around a big conference table - and skip the VR headset part of this (don't get me wrong, I like a VR headset, but it's not something I've managed to work into my coding and docs writing setup just yet).
Felt like a few dozen toys and a handful of startups all came up with this same solution during 2020-21 as next-big-things and Zoom still came out on top for so many other reasons
EDIT: Even MS Teams implemented it!
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#365Re: If you're remote, ramble
#366I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post. Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me. In my experience, "rambling" channels build up organically... as you have a thought, you share it with someone relevant, not just drop it into a channel and see who reads it. Over time, small group chats evolve naturally, and as…
Agreed, it’s one of those things that works well if it happens organically but not as a policy. I’ve got a personal wiki at work where I dump a bunch of useful stuff, it has helped people and attracted attention which is nice. I think the easiest solution is to have longer-form team meetings once a week.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#367I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post. Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me. In my experience, "rambling" channels build up organically... as you have a thought, you share it with someone relevant, not just drop it into a channel and see who reads it. Over time, small group chats evolve naturally, and as…
I think the pos tog having a designated spot is to remove friction. Otherwise you can gummed up trying to decide where to post: “is this worth bothering the team? Maybe I should just message my friend? Or should I just bring it up in the next standup? Or maybe the retro…”
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#368Huh, just realised my team did this organically without realising it. People were often hesitant to ask questions they perceived as 'dumb' in the group chat, and definitely unwilling to post anything seen as complaining/moaning about problems. We created a second chat without any managers in it, with a description clarifying it was a dumping ground for questions and comments that didn't fit in other chats. It sees a…
I always ask the "dumb" questions, even when I already know the answer, because there are always people too intimidated to speak up, and it sometimes facilitates a deeper discussion.
I always respected leaders who did this, preprogramming the dumb questions in a presentation for the benefit of the timid ones
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#369This speaks to me!
I've worked on 3 different projects / workplaces in the last year where I've been the only talker on a Slack with 10s of people on it. Sometimes I'll write 5-6 detailed messages in a day, talking about particular problems or updates on things I'm working on, and almost nothing from anyone else.
These are in subject-specific channels (#network-engineering or #programmers or the like) where colleagues are subscribed.
But the real business of each company seemed to happen in private group chats or video meetings, with no long-term records.
I'm like to state a problem before I've solved it, for the rubber ducking. Very occasionally someone would reply to help, and occasionally I reply with a :facepalm: if I realise I've just been hasty or sloppy. But even if nobody replies, I am very happy to have a public log of my work, the problems I've solved (or not), and the people I might tag for particular input.
If someone DMs me for help with something that is possibly of interest to >1 person, I tend to re-state the issue (without identifying who asked me), then answer in public, and thank them for asking.
If I have a question for a colleague, I will tend to ask it in a channel, as it becomes something searchable.
I ask work questions on Stack Overflow for the same reason, and often self-answer because the place is dead as a community, but the search works well. After a few years I find my own answers as a complete surprise.
But I have colleagues who've not said a line in public basically forever. I've not been a manager for years, always an IC lately. I've not had any objections, but it seems like nobody wants to join me to make "work in public" the default.
Apparently I'm happy to be the exhibitionist little freak?
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
yep, also doscoverability is not an issue with Slack. You can find most things with a search, people typically don't go scrolling through a channel to find something.
What a Poe's Law of a comment. Slack's search is … okay … but there are any number of times when I have issues finding a thread I was looking at prior. For all the AI hype that is the current time, search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant" when "sorting by relevance" or b.) … find the thread when I use a synonym of an exact word in the thread. Or the other da…
Yes - not only is Slack search underpowered, but also records management folks are likely to configure pruning of Slack content older than a couple years or so. This is IME less likely to be a problem with wiki pages.