I manage teams without a single call
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I manage teams without a single call
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Re: I manage teams without a single call
#2The top one reason I want to retire so bad is because of useless meetings and calls. I had a boss for 6 months that would call me randomly during the day "just to check how things are going", I mean wtf.
But as I age, I see that there are people out there that NEED to talk and to speak to other people. And of course, you have those doing micromanagement.
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#3I also work without calls, deadlines, schedules, scrums https://orchidfiles.com/building-without-booking-time/
But how do you find others developers like yourself ? Most people need calls. They might say they don't like it, but they're more productive once they have them. They need to feel there is a human on the other side that cares about the results, that is waiting for them and pushing them. Most people need deadlines, even if they're fake. They need to tell people around them they have to do X before Y, they wouldn't be able to justify what they're doing to themselves and their surrounding without that fake deadline. They wouldn't think about telling coworker about a similar piece of code or feature they're working on without that daily standup.
All those boring useless things, all those methods, those rules, those office politics, they're here for a reason
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#4So much time more to play Doom…
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#5Some kind of work can live in this "put it in a well structured & considered ticket" mode, some cannot. If this is your style and you've found a place where it works, fantastic, but I don't believe this to be generalizable.
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#6Using your analogy, imagine it's the year 2026. Two armies are fighting. One uses letter to communicate. One uses phones. Which army do you want to fight in?
This is an obviously poor policy.
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#7I don't begrudge anyone management practices that work for them, but this doesn't seem like a complete analysis.
> I can’t even imagine a task or question that can’t be discussed over text.
Can't is a strong word. I can easily imagine, and the author earlier in the article did imagine, cases where someone does not want to discuss an issue over text. Issues like:
* I have broad concerns about the direction of the company and I'm not quite sure how to frame them.
* Coworker X keeps not doing the things that he's promised to do, to the point that I'm beginning to consider him untrustworthy.
* I need you to pay me more money, and I'm not explicitly threatening to quit yet, but I'd like to create some informal common knowledge that I could have a higher paying job next month if I wanted.
If you have a stable team where everyone's well-aligned on the roadmap, no personnel issues ever arise, and nobody's slacking? Sure, no calls can work. But without the calls you may not notice when those stop being true.
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#8Seems like a local maximum or organizing around an individual’s quirks.
Like all team building I feel like the fundamental question is, “what works for this group of people?”
Rather than “teams with/without calls is superior,” and slamming every team you work with into it.
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#9While I agree Scrum and agile are overkill and somewhat performative for the managers. I also like how OP gets that being an effective manager means understanding what the engineers are doing, as in, you rose through engineering into management, which is also a good thing!
But some teams, and some people, and some work is more effective with regular scheduled human interaction. People who need direction, guidance, or just to feel more physically connected with their work and team.
I'm so glad you are able to remove all "live human interaction" from your management style. I'd miss having a boss that felt like I was worth face-time. This feels like going too far for async work, I don't know how you wouldn't feel disconnected.
Re: I manage teams without a single call
#10The problem is literacy. Even if you can read and write, that does not mean you can reduce a complicated idea into text. It also doesn't mean you can decode ambiguously worded and poorly structured writing. A meeting is often needed; not because the relevant people can't be bothered to write their thoughts down, but because they literally are not capable of doing it.
I've seen many grotesque misunderstandings go through 30 iterations of confusion across teams because nobody is good at communicating clearly. Then one 20 minute in person meeting clears it up.