1–10 of 23 posts
On the teams I've worked on, I've usually always been part of a public Slack channel (with managers, product, designers, various stakeholders) and a private slack channel which is only engineers.
1.) I think the private channel makes people more likely to ask the "dumb questions", be more frank, and generally more communicative: do you agree?
2.) Should engineering managers be part of the private channel?
In general, I'm curious what HN thinks about this paradigm!
What I've seen in our own "private" room is that the list of invitees has grown and now some folks with power but not context have gotten into the room. I feel that their confidence in our team has dropped due to them seeing "dumb" questions (things like, "hey, does anyone know how such-n-such-critical-component work?" with responses like, "doesn't it do blah?" "no, it does blah blah ... I think. Don't recall."
We previously had a public room and a private room for chat. But with the private room having some important folks now, I'm not sure we can just kick them out. We might need a private-private room.
Thanks for the question, it reminded me to have this conversation with my manager (as we would want her in the private-private room, but want her blessing and input - maybe she is fine telling the others to leave).
I'm generally in favor of it. Whether to include your manager or not is up to the team dynamic. On our team, absolutely (she used to be a dev on the team, then the team lead, then the team manager). What I've seen in our own "private" room is that the list of invitees has grown and now some folks with power but not context have gotten into the room. I feel that their confidence in our team has dropped due to them see…
Should the manager be there is the question I'm hung on. Since she's the one who does reviews, 1:1s, and ultimately reports the "status" of each engineer, I feel like her presence changes the dynamic from a cooperative-team-locker-room to something that involves a little more posturing. Which saddens me.
Hmmm...
As an engineer I want to be comfortable asking questions that are too technical for the general audience. And to ask them without fear of the managers thinking I'm an idiot (and yes, managers/non-engineers do come to that conclusion if you ask a question that they feel that every engineer should know, even if they're nowhere near to being in a position to make that judgement).
Besides just factual knowledge-sharing, there needs to be a place where engineers can complain, celebrate, swear, and say whatever comes to their mind. The general/main channel doesn't allow for that.
And sure, engineering managers can be in the channel, so long as they don't throw their weight around and keep the tone informal. I.e., don't use something that an engineer said in that channel against him, or put anything in a negative light. Basically, the more informal the side channel, the better and healthier. If people can't shoot the shit freely, negativity will build up and toxic patterns WILL emerge.
Also important for "Widget X might be broken folks, do we have a problem?" triaging without inviting premature noise, especially given some such concerns will be false positives.
> [...] employers of the 1960s regarded programmers as unmanageable, citing contemporary sources that branded programmers as "prima donnas" who were "arrogant," "egocentric," and devoid of social skills.
> [...] a manager at IBM and Diebold bemoaned the fact that programmers' labor-market power undermined "the normal employer-employee relationship, which, in part, depends on the fear of termination or disciplinary action."
> Weinberg, who managed large software projects at IBM [...], argued that software was produced most effectively in egalitarian teams that emphasized open communication among members. [... He] contrasted his approach with what he saw as the macho attitude of many managers: "Managers tend to select themselves from the 'aggressive' component of society... They are especially at a loss to understand the smooth functioning of a programming group based on mutual respect for individual talent and cooperation in the common cause."
Janet Abbate - Recoding Gender, p93-95
The latter is fairly locked down and limited to only the dev team, and it’s where we troubleshoot together, ask dumb questions, and chat about work in general. Having it definitely makes working through certain issues feel much “safer” without risking looking like we don’t know what we are doing to management (though whether or not I know what I’m doing is debatable).
I'm generally in favor of it. Whether to include your manager or not is up to the team dynamic. On our team, absolutely (she used to be a dev on the team, then the team lead, then the team manager). What I've seen in our own "private" room is that the list of invitees has grown and now some folks with power but not context have gotten into the room. I feel that their confidence in our team has dropped due to them see…