Why would I? It is boring and adds no value. Much better to work instead. If I need something, I ask. If people need something from me, they ask. I think the biggest increas in productivity for me was when we banned chatting and moved all communication to email. The amount of distractions was reduced significantly!
If you're remote, ramble
441–450 of 479 posts
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#442Re: If you're remote, ramble
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep this. Just make a "random" channel, where most people keep notifications off, and use it for everything random, from lunch invitations to "i'm selling olive oil", etc.
Do you grow the olives as well
Not me, a coworkers parents live in the coastal areas of our country and they grow olives and make homemade oliveoil (traditional processes), so yeah, when they make a batch, it's worth buying :)
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#444Let me share a personal story. Back in 2014 when I was working at Cloudflare on DDoS mitigation I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". I quickly realised that these conversations had value outside the two of us - pretty much everyone else…
I understand the point you were making, but from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid. Having a place to have people ask questions is great and encouraged, but doing anything that starts gravitating the knowledge toward a person instead of a topic creates problems for discoverability, searchability, and risks creating the impression (for new employees) that certain specific people are…
This is a terrible suggestion, please ignore it.
If people have found an effective way to communicate information, leave them the hell alone. I have too often seen people like Auronis decide to come in and manage something to be proper, and then destroy the communication.
The appropriate thing to do is to find a way to augment, without interfering, the channel to shore up any weaknesses.
Formal channels are often too formal - people don't want to look dumb, or get chastised for asking something incorrectly. Formal channels are intimidating, not welcoming.
The point is knowledge sharing, not "appropriate" knowledge sharing.
I love how the OP was like, "hey, we created this informal channel and communicated valuable info to the whole company", and then Auronis is like, "yeah, don't do that!"
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great comment. Thanks. In my case - indeed the name is a historical baggage, I'm not arguing for or against it. Indeed we had regularly situations that we had to pull in experts from other rooms, to discuss specific topics (like TCP), so we should have forwarded the conversation at the start. But I don't think this should be categorical. There is value in non-experts responding faster (the channel had good…
> I know that concentrating knowledge / ownership at a person is not always good, but perhaps a better way to manage this is to... hire someone else who is competent or make other people more vocal. > And yes, I don't like managers trying to shape communication patterns. I'm a manager who shaped communication patterns (e.g. default conversations to a public channel) because we're solving different problems. By moving…
A slightly different viewpoint is that sharing in public or larger private channels allows for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Sometimes the key person is wrong because they aren't the only one working on something. I know that ego might get in people's way sometimes but other people in the team and in the organization also have valid perspectives. As a manager, its important to try and get to a best solution and that means collaboration, not a specific person's approach all the time.
The redundancy also helps the key person be able to disconnect when on vacation. If you are the sole knowledge base for some critical part of the company, might as well drag the work laptop with you every where you go.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Always funny to see these sort of missed connections on HN. > internal blogs In my personal experience the problem is the total lack of writing culture at non-premiere companies. Put differently: unless you’re working on a great team at a great organization roughly 90% of people cannot be expected to write/read well as a component of technical collaboration. Any thoughts on that? I may just be too cynical
From my personal experience, internal Wikis are 90+% written by about 5% of the workforce. The vast majority of internal Wiki users are "read-only". That is fine. Really: Read that twice. It is OK that the vast majority of docs are written by the few who are highly motivated to do it. When I write for an internal Wiki, I am trying to reduce the number of future questions that people will ask me. If they do come with…
Appreciate the answer, I do think that is a good perspective.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#447yup
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
More performative “I’m cynicaler than thou” comments as if there aren’t enough on HN anyway.
My comment isn't performative, I really mean it :)
"My scrum update is: I spent all day in meetings" can be both true and performative. We don't care what your meetings were about, so you're performing the "meetings are a waste of my time" geek trope. For comparison you wouldn't say "I spent all day at a desk" you'd say "I fixed a race condition" or "I designed the Foo service". You might say "I spent all day driving" and not "I drove 50 miles on I40 and waited 20 minutes at junctions", because the details of driving are unimportant. But presumably the people asking for your update do care about the work being discussed in meetings and want to know things about them.
There's a choice there, and the choice to wrap meetings into "I spent all day in meetings" is to communicate that meetings are as much of a timewaste as driving is, and not as respectable as real work. Which is a tired geek trope. Why wouldn't you say what the meetings were about? What was decided? What couldn't be decided? How it influenced the team? How you spread what the team were doing to the other meeting participants? How you shielded the team from bullshit during the meetings? How the projects are looking after the meetings? because you're performing weaponised incompetence "I hate meetings so I'm going to be a stroppy teenager and if you're going to force me into meetings, I'm going to make it painful for you to get information from me about them. Harumph". and hoping HN will upvote it because "Does Anyone Else think meetings are bad? right guys??"
You know what "spent all day in meetings" communicates on HN or in tech circles, that's why you chose to say that, and why you chose to phrase it that curtly.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get migraines that can disappear as fast as they hit me. Can’t see, can’t feel my face and sometimes a limb, can’t focus or form sentences. I could pretend to be available that day, maybe, but it’s mutually beneficial for me to just take a day off. The next day I’m usually just fine, and I don’t always give more explanation than “taking a sick day”.
Same here, I'll be fine, then bang I start getting like shiney sharp lines in my vision that spread from the outside to the center. When this happens I absolutely can't work, I can barely see anything (last time my vision was so messed up I couldn't read the pamthlet on my new migraine pills to know if I was to take 1 or 2). SOmetimes it can knock me out for a day, but sometimes after half an hour or so I'm good to g…
I have always had a hard time convincing people that I don’t have a headache, I have a migraine. The pain is not guaranteed, but I am still useless.
One of my worst examples was that I made it to work on the bus, and immediately had to take off. I was pretty nauseous by the time I made it home, and should I have been found throwing up in a bush, nobody would have believed “I have a migraine”. To the drunk tank with me, at 930am.
Re: If you're remote, ramble
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
My comment isn't performative, I really mean it :)
"My scrum update is: I spent all day in meetings" can be both true and performative. We don't care what your meetings were about, so you're performing the "meetings are a waste of my time" geek trope. For comparison you wouldn't say "I spent all day at a desk" you'd say "I fixed a race condition" or "I designed the Foo service". You might say "I spent all day driving" and not "I drove 50 miles on I40 and waited 20 mi…
> Why wouldn't you say what the meetings were about?
In a scrum update? Usually because the meetings in question have no bearing on tasks in the sprint, and daily scrum isn't a generic rambling all-topics team chat session it is a very short timeboxed focused update on sprint tasks and the only reason to mention meetings not directly related to sprint tasks is to provide context for the absence of progress on sprint tasks.