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How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

zachholman.com

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Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#31

Post by mtogo »

whalesalad wrote: post #28

Just a heads up we do async chat all the time here at my office, but we use Skype instead of Campfire. I don't want anyone to feel like they need to pay a monthly fee to get that service. Skype does persistent chat, you can add people to rooms and they remain persistent as well. You can 'favorite' rooms to keep them sort of pinned in one spot in your list of active convos. It's handy. http://cl.ly/2d3d1M072M1H1h3P1A0…

Skype is really terrible imho. If you're looking to move away from skype because it sucks, you can try an XMPP server + Candy, or an IRC server plus CGI:IRC or qwebirc.

Both solutions take about 15-20 minutes to set up and cost nothing, provided you have a VPS to host the server on.

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#32

Post by skeletonjelly »

famousactress wrote: post #30
whalesalad wrote: post #28

Just a heads up we do async chat all the time here at my office, but we use Skype instead of Campfire. I don't want anyone to feel like they need to pay a monthly fee to get that service. Skype does persistent chat, you can add people to rooms and they remain persistent as well. You can 'favorite' rooms to keep them sort of pinned in one spot in your list of active convos. It's handy. http://cl.ly/2d3d1M072M1H1h3P1A0…

We use Skype too.. and it's fine. By fine I mean, it sucks.. but it's a chatroom so we have very few needs. Wanted to correct something. Skype's chat is NOT persistent (if I'm wrong, lemme know.. I'd love to find out there's a feature I'm missing). That is to say, the chat persists.. but only on the distributed hosts that participate in it. So if I sign off at 10pm, and wake up before any of my team members are signe…

Yeah that's seems correct. You won't receive a message until you're both online. We use it here at work for interstate chat and it works well as we have our work machines on 24/7. So logging in from a laptop off site will sync the messages. Note that the read status doesn't get synced.

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#33

Post by bguthrie »

famousactress wrote: post #6
jherdman wrote: post #2

I really wish the author didn't use such an inciteful title for his section on meetings. The title offers another catch phrase to avoid meetings. I'd much rather have seen Zach focus more on his actual point: holding short, focused, and tiny meetings. I fear that his title, and other catch phrases like it, encourage siloing. Siloing is far more "fucking toxic".

Where did you pick up the fact that his actual point was to hold tiny focused meetings? Working asynchronously is pretty anti-meeting, and frankly it's totally independent of a culture that supports silos. I work in a very asynchronous culture right now. Very few meetings.. but that's not to say we don't communicate. We communicate very thoroughly. However short and focused they are, my definition of a meeting is a s…

The trouble with working asynchronously is that you're relying on everyone to contribute their knowledge diligently. Github has a great culture and this works well for them. In places where it doesn't, brief standup-like meetings help get everyone on the same page at least once a day - a chance to say 'sup.

The goal isn't to decide on anything, just to let everyone know where you're at.

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#35

Post by jeff18 »

mattparcher wrote: post #34

> I tend to loathe meetings even more than 37signals. Zach, can you go into more detail? From the few things I’ve seen, you seem to admire them more than despise them. Is there a particular reason for your displeasure?

It should read as

> I tend to loathe meetings even more than 37signals loathes meetings.

(assuming you are not being facetious)

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#36

Post by azov »

jrockway wrote: post #27
rgarcia wrote: post #19

...meetings pull you from doing actual work in order to talk about doing work. It’s easier to push a branch up, check out the diff, and then iterate on that diff rather than assuming you’re going to perfectly whiteboard system design ahead of time. This seems over-broad to me, and seems to violate the accepted wisdom "Good programmers spend 10% of their time coding, and 90% of their time thinking." A good system/desi…

The problem with the whiteboard design is that you have to defer, "oh, let's see if that works" indefinitely. While you spend 90% of your time thinking and 10% typing, you don't spend 9 hours thinking and then 1 hour typing. You spend 5 seconds typing, then 30 seconds thinking, then a minute or so typing, and so on. Getting feedback from the computer is important for anything that's complicated enough to require a de…

> Share with coworkers

wouldn't this part be easier to do in a meeting than in a huge email thread?

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#37

Post by reemrevnivek »

azov wrote: post #36
jrockway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the whiteboard design is that you have to defer, "oh, let's see if that works" indefinitely. While you spend 90% of your time thinking and 10% typing, you don't spend 9 hours thinking and then 1 hour typing. You spend 5 seconds typing, then 30 seconds thinking, then a minute or so typing, and so on. Getting feedback from the computer is important for anything that's complicated enough to require a de…

> Share with coworkers wouldn't this part be easier to do in a meeting than in a huge email thread?

The article talks about using Campfire (http://campfirenow.com/), which is a lot nicer than a huge email thread. From the campfire page:

Team collaboration with real time chat.

Campfire is like instant messaging, but designed exclusively for groups.

Share text, files, and code in real time.

I don't think anyone is advocating huge email threads here!

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#38

Post by donaq »

This appeals to me immensely because I absorb information way faster by reading than when someone talks at me. I wonder what percentage of the population is like me as opposed to those who absorb better by listening?

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#39

Post by markrandrus »

I agree that most things called meetings today are toxic and unproductive, but gatherings in the work place that occur organically and ones that resemble group work sessions are healthy. For anyone who wants more detail on what Zach mentions regarding "the zone", breaking flow and job autonomy lookup the book Drive by Dan H. Pink. Great Post thanks!

Re: How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous

#40

Post by 3pt14159 »

reemrevnivek wrote: post #37
azov wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Share with coworkers wouldn't this part be easier to do in a meeting than in a huge email thread?

The article talks about using Campfire ( http://campfirenow.com/ ), which is a lot nicer than a huge email thread. From the campfire page: Team collaboration with real time chat. Campfire is like instant messaging, but designed exclusively for groups. Share text, files, and code in real time. I don't think anyone is advocating huge email threads here!

This is a point I've been making for a long time:

"What's a long email? 1000 words? 5000 words? 10,000? Let's call it 10,000, just to be over the top. I can scan read at 800 wpm, and finely read at 250 - 500. So absolute worst case scenario I'll have to spend 40 mins reading an extraordinarily long email. That is still better than an hour long meeting where I'll listen at 40 to 80 wpm and have completely no recollection of it two weeks from then. So why the fuck do we consider ten thousand word emails completely insane but we even entertain the idea of an hour long meeting?"

Obviously something like campfire or flow or whatever is better than emails, but I'll take long emails over meetings any day of the week.

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