[HN Gopher] If you're remote, ramble
___________________________________________________________________
If you're remote, ramble
Author : lawgimenez
Score : 618 points
Date : 2025-08-03 10:32 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stephango.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stephango.com)
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| This is unreadable. Increase the contrast, please...
|
| Edit: I may be falsely blaming the contrast, but something about
| the design is causing me eye strain. Im not sure what. Here is a
| screenshot how the site looks to me: https://imgur.com/a/LNVCMRc
| Maybe someone else can figure it out.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Maybe there is some technical issue for you regarding the
| automatic switch between light and dark mode. Under normal
| circumstances, it is perfectly readable.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I tried both light and dark. Ended up switching to reader
| mode.
|
| Maybe its the font or something else? Something about the
| design is causing eye strain at least.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Just saw your imgur. That is broken, yeah. The text should
| have a far more darker color. As another commenter pointed
| out, maybe there is an issue with the Javascript on this
| page.
| bapak wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with the contrast, it's more than 10:1.
| For reference 4.5:1 is AA and 7:1 is AAA in WCAG
| mavamaarten wrote:
| It's almost-white light gray on almost black. What are you on
| about?
| baobun wrote:
| It was unreadable for me too initially. Quick guesstimate:
|
| The page has a (JS-dependent) light-mode/dark-mode switch. It
| defaults to "light". Meanwhile a browser configured to default
| to dark theming will only partly apply the themed parts (the
| pages own function being stuck in light), resulting in an
| objectively unreadable black-on-dark-gray.
|
| Even enabling JS, the button in the upper right corner still
| has to be clicked to make it readable.
| shakna wrote:
| On my lower end smartphone, the font is so fine that there's
| dropped pixels that is upsetting my eyes.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| A social channel seperate from work stuff is good. It lets you
| post the messages that otherwise be "oh won't post that as it'll
| bother 20 people who meed to decide if it's urgent"
| bobek wrote:
| Mildly related are written standups [1] when treated as
| journal/logbook.
|
| [1] https://www.bobek.cz/the-power-of-written-standup/
| romanovcode wrote:
| So... basically use a private-messaging feature?
| querez wrote:
| I think what is distinct in this proposal is that there are n
| 1:n channels
| 9dev wrote:
| The cynic in me says this ends up as yet another list of channels
| that I need to scan for anything interesting, and interact with
| to keep up an appearance of engagement.
|
| I appreciate any effort to increase social cohesion in remote
| teams, but intermingling it with one of the main stressors of my
| work environment--keeping up with team communication--isn't the
| right way IMHO.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > The cynic in me says this ends up as yet another list of
| channels that I need to scan for anything interesting, and
| interact with to keep up an appearance of engagement.
|
| The post says it's channels you mute and you are not expected
| to interact with.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| In teams and mattermost, they show up as bold and almost
| unavoidable to the eye. Any other software that truly mutes?
| OJFord wrote:
| Slack will turn them a muted colour, and they'll only get
| an unread indication if you're explicitly pinged by
| default, but I think you can turn even that off too.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Hmm ok we don't use Slack and it would have to be on prem
| due to company policy
| aar9 wrote:
| Muted channels in Slack do not indicate in any way when
| there's a new message.
| stavros wrote:
| Slack mutes fine.
| delecti wrote:
| Mattermost can truly mute. Doing so disables the behavior
| that makes the channel name bold when there are unread
| messages.
|
| Just hover on a channel name, click the three dots, then
| "Mute".
| hk__2 wrote:
| Mattermost truly mutes.
| 9dev wrote:
| But you still _know_ they are there, and that your colleagues
| should perceive you as at least casually interested in what
| the others are up to. Even if muted, these channels
| inevitably become another liability.
| starttoaster wrote:
| I think everyone knows and silently understands that the
| people responding/emoji-ing in those channels all day every
| day are doing so at the cost of work output, and that there
| are a lot of people working that aren't typing away about
| the last audiobook they listened to. I think you've created
| a stressful situation out of something that isn't
| inherently stressing.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| What is "inherently stressing"? Is it not enough that
| some people feel stressed by something for it to actually
| be stressing?
|
| I know that also for me these rambling channels would add
| to my stress.
| 9dev wrote:
| Generating business value is not your only
| responsibility, though. Most companies expect you to be a
| team player, to stay in touch, to communicate across
| departments, and so on.
|
| So depending on your work environment, communicating and
| responding quickly may be implicitly expected and not
| conforming may lead to stagnation in your career.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. It's either channels that you actively engage with or
| you effectively block. For active communication purposes
| the "you might see it" in-between option isn't really very
| effective. It happens anyway to some degree. But isn't
| ideal.
| Aurornis wrote:
| That will last until the first person shares a link to their
| rambling channel or the first time a pair of team members
| discuss something at standup that only appeared in someone's
| ramblings channel.
|
| Every time a company has said "you should mute and ignore
| this channel" but also encourages relevant project discussion
| in that channel, it becomes something people realize they
| need to unmute and monitor.
|
| The only people who have the luxury of completely ignoring
| channels are managers and leads, because they can dictate how
| people need to bring information to them.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Do you really pursue "inbox zero" on slack? That sounds like a
| full-time job in itself.
| kj4211cash wrote:
| I do. At Walmart. It drives me slightly insane. Wish I could
| turn that part of myself off more often.
| gertlex wrote:
| I'm also like this.
|
| Have never been like this with email though (but email is
| much higher volume/more individual things to click on...
| and less interesting :D)
| j45 wrote:
| Slack isn't really an organized way to do organizational
| knowledge or communication.
|
| At best it can be temporary or short term messaging and there's
| probably something missing between slack and email that needs
| to exist in the world.
|
| I'm not a notification or interruption driven individual, and
| it shows in my productivity. Having a place to put things or
| share things, can be helpful.
| paradox460 wrote:
| I love using the unreads thing in slack while I'm brushing my
| teeth or waiting for my tea maker to finish. Tinder for work
| spam. Everything is processed as quickly as possible, into
| either "to-do" or "done/ignore"
| 9dev wrote:
| If you're working while brushing your teeth, you may want to
| question your working habits...
| rablackburn wrote:
| I did read the post, but allow me to also recommend rambling when
| you're remote.
|
| As in, take time in your day to wander and roam. (I would go for
| a ~1hr hike in the mornings as my "commute")
|
| It gives you a sense of distinction from being home or "at work".
| The routine cardio, and musings you have while walking make it
| well worth it.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| This is also known as "driving your kids to school."
|
| When my schedule allows, I walk my dog with my daughter and
| pause at her bus stop and meet her friends. Years ago it was a
| 45 minute walk, round trip, to daycare.
| closewith wrote:
| Ideally not driving, as the walk is at least half the
| benefit.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| not to be confused with "dropping the kids off at the pool,"
| right?
| tnel77 wrote:
| No. That happens once you get to work and you've had your
| first cup of coffee.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| How do you mean?
| swivelmaster wrote:
| You must not be a coffee drinker!
| pbnjay wrote:
| Dropping the kids off at the pool is a euphemism for a
| bodily function that diuretics like coffee help with...
| kmarc wrote:
| Indeed, I, as a fully remote, probably overworked person,
| sometimes wonder if I'm a loser just because I never
|
| * pick up Becky from school
|
| * feel under the weather today so I'll be offline and "take it
| easy" (never hear about me anymore today)
|
| * sorry "traffic jam" (10:00am)
|
| * sorry "train canceled"
|
| * will leave a bit early (2pm) for [insert random reason]
| appointment
|
| While all these can be completely valid reasons, it's just
| funny hearing one of these daily. On a side note, I also kinda
| like my job and am not interested in slacking.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under the
| weather" events.
|
| However I do think we need to make extra room for parents (I
| am not one, yet). I'm going to need a doctor who's younger
| than me when I'm 80+
|
| Folks could always just disappear instead of announcing these
| things, but is that better? And as a senior on my team, I
| over announce certain stuff to let the other team members
| know that WLB is ok.
| exe34 wrote:
| > I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under
| the weather" events.
|
| That's one reason people feel like they have to keep hiding
| it and it builds up to burnout.
| doubled112 wrote:
| 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".
| sgt wrote:
| If someone you work with and you otherwise trust e.g. with
| your code, servers, and business, says they are feeling
| under the weather, why should you not assume they are not
| telling the truth?
| jama211 wrote:
| Especially as it's obviously not a lie. A lie would be
| like, their 7th grandma to die or something. Saying you
| just feel under the weather is... exactly what someone
| who was just feeling under the weather and didn't want to
| lie about it would say.
| jzb wrote:
| Um, why?
|
| The other day I had a killer headache. Just couldn't shake
| it. I did everything I needed to that was time sensitive,
| then went AFK. I don't see any reason to be suspicious of
| others if they do similarly--we all have days when we're
| just not at our best for some reason.
| kmarc wrote:
| To defend @bagacrap, they said they tend to be a bit
| suspicious.
|
| And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same
| person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered,
| she asks me "from what"?)
|
| I'm all in for more times off for parents, more PTOs,
| sabbaticala, etc. But come on, having "a cold" twice a
| month... IT IS suspicious.
| closewith wrote:
| > And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same
| person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered,
| she asks me "from what"?)
|
| I'd say you're missing the hint that it is none of your
| business.
| kaashif wrote:
| If someone was ill, then they're back, asking them if
| they're feeling better is totally normal conversation.
|
| The suspicion etc may not be, but the question is
| obviously fine.
| closewith wrote:
| Given you're suspicious about these people and the way
| you talk about them, they are most likely well aware that
| you're on a fishing trip feigning interest.
|
| People like you are always more transparent than you
| realise.
| kaashif wrote:
| Apologies if it wasn't clear, I am a different person to
| the one you replied to, and am not suspicious - I was
| commenting on the other person's suspicion and indeed
| said that it wasn't normal.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Who cares? Only their manager should. And it's not about
| butts in seats but overall productivity. This attitude is
| why companies ate pushing for RTO.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| > But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS
| suspicious
|
| Suspicious in that it's only twice a month? When my kid
| first started preschool, we got exposed to all sorts of
| wonderful novel viruses, and I had respiratory infections
| of various sorts for probably 50% of the days for the
| entire autumn and winter. Most of them not rising to the
| level of high fever and not being able to work, but
| definitely noticeably cutting my productivity.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| Suspicious that it's probably a massive hangover rather
| than "a cold". And I assume it's during the week,
| otherwise noone but your liver cares what you do on a
| Friday or Saturday evening.
|
| "A cold" doesn't usually totally incapacitate someone
| working from the comfort of their home, down a
| paracetamol, drink hot liquids, take a nap, don't need to
| be 110% productive but still can manage to get some job
| done. But "a massive hangover" is something that surely
| can knock someone out.
| tranceylc wrote:
| Are you sure you aren't projecting your substance abuse
| issues onto others? Assuming someone has a hangover in
| the middle of the week is odd behaviour
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Maybe they're in recovery or had a family member with
| substance abuse problems.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| >> Assuming someone has a hangover in the middle of the
| week is odd behaviour
|
| Sure, this never happens. Literally, noone in the history
| of mankind has gotten wasted in the middle of the week.
| kqr wrote:
| For anyone curious: an average of 1.2 instances per month
| the first year and a half. During the worst season, it
| can be twice in a month, sure.
| https://entropicthoughts.com/how-often-does-a-child-get-
| sick
|
| (Child spent 16 % of the year sick. Across two parents,
| that is nearly a month of absence in a year.)
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Do they perform adequately at their job in general? If
| so, who cares?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Typically if such a thing catches your eye it's because
| in fact they aren't performing adequately.
| kmarc wrote:
| I cannot say all of them were performing bad
|
| But yeah, some of them... Definitely.
|
| Someone said in another thread, it's none of my business.
| Indeed. Especially as an external. I also would never
| report any of my suspicion. Sometimes,however, I'm
| blocked by this (waiting on others, etc.) so not entirely
| unaffected, tho
| cassianoleal wrote:
| And if not, that's a much better thing to focus on vs
| whether they took a few days off for whatever reason.
| ryandrake wrote:
| One of the benefits (to me) of going remote is I'm sick a
| heck of a lot less often! In fact, I don't think I've
| even had a cold or upper respiratory infection since I
| started remote, where I used to get colds at least once a
| month, likely due to being in close concentration of
| other sick people in the office. Touching door handles
| everywhere to get from office to office, touching
| elevator buttons, eating together with 100 other people
| in the office cafeteria... yuck! Now that I'm remote, I'm
| in my hermetically sealed home office, and I can go weeks
| without even seeing another person, let alone touching
| things they touched and breathing their air.
| tayo42 wrote:
| So many reasons why you might be sick for one day. Colds
| start light, peak and fade off, sometimes you just need one
| day to sleep off the worst of it.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > So many reasons why you might be sick for one day.
|
| I'd bet a fair few "under the weather" days are because
| people have mental health issues but aren't going to
| announce that publicly (due to the ongoing stigma.)
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I've been sick so often now (thanks kids) that I can feel
| _immediately_ when something is coming on. Rather than be
| down and useless at home and work for 2 or 3 more days, I
| tag out, go to bed and usually knock it out in a night. I
| feel like that's way better for me and everyone else
| overall.
| ralferoo wrote:
| > I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under
| the weather" events.
|
| I bill by days worked, and I'll still take a day off if I'm
| feeling terrible in the morning. Even taking the hit on pay
| is worth it, because I'll probably recover in one day
| instead dragging it out for 3 days.
|
| But then, maybe I'm too honest. On occasions when I've felt
| ill later in the day, I've also just signed off early
| before the team meetings and just left a message like "I
| worked 6 hours today, but felt really unproductive, so I'm
| finishing early and I'll only bill a half/quarter day"
| (depending on how little I got done). Not had any
| complaints yet.
| wallstop wrote:
| Interesting. When I do not feel up to the task of working,
| whether it is a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or
| arbitrary cause, I use one of my provided PTO days and
| email the team a short "I will not be showing up to work
| today" message, without explaining the cause.
|
| I similarly don't bat an eye when a coworker takes off for
| whatever reason. We're allotted PTO. Why jump through hoops
| to convince ourselves that it's ok to use it?
| closewith wrote:
| It's because the GP doesn't value you as a person or
| trust you. In that worldview, you cannot allow any
| autonomy and all time not spent at work must be tightly
| regulated. It will also spill in other areas, and you can
| bet the GP is not well liked by their colleagues.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I don't even use a PTO day if I'm just feeling "blah" as
| long as I'm available via Slack to answer questions and
| can attend ad-hoc meetings. There are so many times I've
| had to/chosen to work late, I don't say anything.
|
| I don't think I've taken a "sick day" once since going
| remote over 5 years ago. But for the last 10 years I've
| been leading initiatives first at startups and then at
| consulting companies and I mostly have autonomy and the
| trust to get things done.
| xandrius wrote:
| Re-reading your own message should definitely be a bell for
| you to notice either your lack of trust in others and/or
| your twisted perspective that work is the goal of life.
|
| Unless you are the one paying for that person and they are
| not performing as by contract, even if someone needs an
| extra day off to chill, you should be happy they do take it
| as it creates an environment where you also could take it
| off if you so wished.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I'm neutral on this topic between you and GP, but I do
| think you're discounting the fact that distrust can be
| legitimate. You're assuming that we should trust blindly,
| it seems.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We shouldn't make extra room for parents, we should just
| create a society where everybody has enough free time to
| handle kids. People without kids can enjoy their other
| outside work stuff.
|
| Everybody says having kids is really rewarding, so the
| folks who don't should also get some time to find their own
| rewards. And, if we're making extra space for people who
| have kids, that puts those people at a competitive
| disadvantage.
|
| I mean, like, we should have maternity leave as a special
| thing. But everybody should get enough days off to deal
| with a 10 year old's baseball games, school plays, doctor
| appointments, or whatever. And even for maternity leave--
| maybe just give everybody a sabbatical at some point!
| rkomorn wrote:
| I'm okay with parents getting more perks and time to deal
| with their kids.
|
| I have zero desire to be a parent but I think people
| having kids is a pretty important part of keeping
| humanity/society going, so I'm happy to accommodate (or
| even reward) it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| IMO it would be better to subsidize this at the
| government level than the employer level.
|
| We definitely don't want to create a situation where
| parents are less desirable to employ, right?
|
| And, most people have kids (even in places countries with
| highly developed economies and lower fertility rates).
| So, we shouldn't think of this as an extra perk (some
| special case benefit). The treatment of folks who have
| had kids is the average case. The special case is
| whatever we for people who don't have them (we shouldn't
| make a special negative case, right?)
| rkomorn wrote:
| Sure, it's better for governments to provide the
| incentives.
|
| Regarding your second point, I guess you're right. :) I'm
| just looking at it from my "you couldn't even pay me to
| have a child" perspective.
|
| Your question about making it a negative case is an
| interesting can of worms I'll elect not to open.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think it is a can of worms really; making special
| negative cases for subsets of the population is a can of
| poop! There's nothing so complicated as a worm in there.
| threetonesun wrote:
| It used to be common to say you're taking a "mental health
| day", which was a recognition that while maybe you were not
| physically ill (or were, just not in a way anyone else had
| to worry about or to an extent that you couldn't make it to
| the office), you were not in a state to contribute
| meaningfully to the work being done.
|
| Which is fine. And better than the people who show up no
| matter what and drag others down by being miserable and
| making mistakes.
| dTal wrote:
| >I do tend to be a bit suspicious of the one-day "under the
| weather" events.
|
| If you don't normalize one-day "under the weather" events,
| you are trading them for multi-day "off sick" events.
|
| Personal anecdata: I recall once at a job with a
| particularly easygoing boss I simply didn't feel up to my
| morning commute, for no easily definable reason. I rang in
| sick anyway and went back to sleep. I then proceeded to
| more or less sleep through the _entire following 24 hours_
| , until it was time to go to work again. Lo and behold I
| magically had the energy this time, and bounced into work.
| I then realized that I had been suffering from fatigue from
| the early stages of an infection which I had successfully
| fended off through rest - had I dragged myself into work, I
| most assuredly would not have been there the following day,
| and probably not the day after that either.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yeah, children bring home all sorts of vile stuff that'll
| knock you out for a day. And sometimes, it'll just be
| something random. This morning I had - let's call it
| "digestive distress" to avoid describing _the horrors_ -
| that would have definitely meant I wouldn 't be able to
| work if it were a weekday, but I think I'm over it now, and
| I'll be showing up tomorrow just fine.
| closewith wrote:
| What you're describing is life, not slacking.
|
| It sounds like those people have their priorities and you
| have yours. Personally, theirs sound much more sustainable
| than yours.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah... Maybe read the post because this is complete off topic.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| One of the best parts of my day is to put on my straw cowboy
| hat on, no shirt and walk around the block at around 10am to
| get some raw sunlight on the body. No phone just walk around.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| I can also vouch for this. Going to the park near my house to
| walk for 30 mins is great just for the sake of getting out the
| house and moving my body when I'm feeling anxious. It does
| wonders for me. Important part to is that I walk for as little
| or as long as I want, no guilt or shame, no expectations.
| skhameneh wrote:
| This is what things like "water cooler chat" looks like for
| remote-first.
|
| This is the fundamental difference between what a healthy remote-
| first company starts to look like versus the soulless version
| historically in-person companies try to sell.
|
| To the author, thank you for sharing your version of the
| dynamics.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| It also shows that remote work requires work to work out. You
| simply cannot bump into your colleagues, so socializing needs
| to be planned. On a small scale, a regular coffee talk might
| work. But I love the idea of this being more of a "pull". Like,
| everyone can consume it at their own pace.
| jon-wood wrote:
| We've got a similar but different approach at work of having
| assorted channels that are around non-work topics. DIY,
| cooking, music, etc. It's not quite the same as a water cooler,
| and we augment this with regular get togethers, but it does
| help give everyone a glimpse into people's wider lives.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Our ramble channel is literally called "Water Cooler". After
| reading this post I will ramble in there more often, I think.
| siva7 wrote:
| > We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent
| of water cooler talk.
|
| This is the difference. Most teams have scheduled daily (!)
| meetings, so such rambling channels often times feel more like
| another chore and therefore fail because they haven't emerged of
| a natural need from the team.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Although it really depends on the team's maturity to
| acknowledge that they are missing social interaction in the
| first place.
|
| I'd also argue that "scheduled meetings" doesn't translate to
| "water cooler talk" automatically. So even if you'd have
| regular scheduled meetings, you might still crave for some
| socializing.
| siva7 wrote:
| I would hope so that scheduled meetings would not translate
| to water cooler talk. I want to talk about the agenda and not
| some smalltalk. People tried crazy things during covid to
| replicate the water cooler talk through remote tools. If we
| can have some laughs together about the agenda, that's what i
| like. People are different i guess.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I usually ask people if they are open to a coffee talk.
| Just 15 minutes each month. Some people talk about their
| personal life, others talk about what's on their mind with
| regards to this and that work project. It's interesting how
| different people are. I'm fine with any of those topics - I
| value the interaction more than the content.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm not anti social by any means. Part of my job has been
| flying out to talk to customers, the business dinners,
| helping sells to close deals (I'm more of the post sales
| architect), etc.
|
| There is a bar downstairs where I live in a tourist area
| where I'm friends with the bartender. I'll go down there,
| maybe get a drink or sip on diet soda and just talk to
| whoever comes down and with the bartender.
|
| We had a regional in person get together a day before I went
| on vacation and the get together was supposed to be an
| overnight trip. I flew in the morning and flew out back home
| late that night just so I could attend the social events the
| day before the meeting.
|
| All that and I _hate_ remote "social" events and don't
| attend. I loved our team's quarterly get togethers where we
| would fly out out to one of our company's headquarters once a
| quarter someone in the US. All of us are older (35+) and have
| lives outside of work. We come to work to make money, not to
| socialize.
| codethief wrote:
| I have worked for remote companies since covid and even though
| we have daily meetings, a dedicated space for ramblings
| actually sounds like a cool idea. We usually try to keep our
| meetings strictly on-topic.
| count wrote:
| We schedule a 2x a week 15-30 minute no-project-talk
| socialization meeting for our fully distributed team. It helps
| a LOT. We also have dedicated rambling channels in slack,
| active much of the day.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| We tried that but it ended up being just a few people talking
| and most people just listening and/or continuing their work.
|
| As a team lead within a small, fully remote company I'm
| struggling to find the right dynamics as I can see people
| really like to socialize (I have 3 1on1's with each of them
| every week, and a lot of times we just talk about personal
| hobbies, what they did last weekend, etc), but it seems like
| in groups people end up being too shy to socialize.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The sound
| only allows one person at a time to speak so its extremely
| your-turn-my-turn in a way that an organic, in-person group
| socialization isn't. It isn't as jarring in a 1:1 because
| you can watch that person's face and without much effort
| predict when they're going to speak and so not interrupt
| them. When it goes beyond that, the flow of the
| conversation gets stilted
| parpfish wrote:
| Even worse is the situation our hybrid half-remote/half-
| inperson company runs into during meetings:
|
| The in-person group will go into the conference room and
| naturally start multiple rambling side conversations.
|
| But the remote people just have to sit there and watch.
| Usually they can't really hear each of these
| conversations and you can't casually join a room-based
| side conversation from the remote because any audio that
| comes out of the teleconferencing screen automatically
| commandeers the whole rooms attention
| ghaff wrote:
| And the probably correct alternative is that if some
| people are just on video, everyone should be on
| individual video.
|
| The the in-person group tends to be resentful that
| they've commuted into the office just to spend a good
| chunk of their day at their desks on Zoom calls.
|
| It's always a tradeoff. Even pre-COVID and hybrid work at
| large companies, you were dealing with groups at
| different locations, often in vastly different timezones.
| But certainly current hybrid work makes the dynamics even
| trickier.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| There are two rules about any job I take these days.
|
| 1. I will not work at in office job.
|
| 2. I won't work for a company that is not "remote only".
| ponector wrote:
| Hard to follow this rules unless you are living in a low
| cost of living area.
|
| Remote people from India/Afrika will be happy to work for
| a fraction of western salary.
| widforss wrote:
| Sp you want to be the special remote guy?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > group discussions over zoom just don't work IMO. The
| sound only allows one person at a time to speak
|
| I do wonder if there are any technical solutions to be
| found to this. Now that high-speed fibre is pretty
| widespread, what if we transmitted every participants
| audio feed to every other participant, and merged them on
| the client, instead of the server?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| 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
| swiftcoder wrote:
| 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).
| throwaway290 wrote:
| sure... I'm just saying mixing on client already exists.
| starkparker wrote:
| 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!
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| There are a handful of Spatial Audio videoconferencing
| solutions that work pretty well to allow multiple
| simultaneous conversations.
| jerlam wrote:
| Discord is designed like this, because there is no
| special "presenter" or "organizer" and all participants
| are equal. Everyone can present simultaneously and you
| can mute individual speakers for yourself and not
| everyone else.
|
| The single speaker is a design decision, not a technical
| issue. Only one "presenter" is allowed is allowed in
| business, or in school.
| count wrote:
| This is how group conversations happen in person at an
| office too. I think it's fine, and everybody has reported
| feeling more connected / less isolated during our periodic
| polls since we started doing it.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > just a few people talking and most people just listening
| and/or continuing their work.
|
| Same experience on full time remote gig. Didn't help that
| my colleagues were mostly speaking about topics that I had
| zero interest in. So I just muted myself and practiced some
| guitar. You pay me for this time, you organized this
| meeting, so be it.
| jama211 wrote:
| I would honestly hate that so much. A meeting at the wrong
| time throws out half the day's momentum and work is hard to
| get done. A _socially draining_ meeting? Forget it.
|
| If you did this at my company, I would turn up with a smile
| every time, and then get hours less practical work done that
| day, because I would be drained and also because I know I
| would be shut down if I tried to say that these social
| meetings don't work well for me, so you wouldn't even know.
|
| Just remember, just because nobody has complained doesn't
| mean something doesn't impact people.
| ruszki wrote:
| I've never used such rambling channel, but I "ramble" quite a
| lot. For me, the chore is not ramblings, but scheduled
| meetings. On my dailies, no new information is created, and
| basically I just repeat things which are known already by
| interested parties. I never wait for meetings to say things. I
| would just loose time.
|
| Also, during informal random meetings, scrum masters don't kill
| spark of great ideas by saying "we should discuss these
| elsewhere". It happened numerous times.
| goalieca wrote:
| > Most teams have scheduled daily (!) meetings,
|
| .. And because we spend 30-50% of our day in meetings, some
| person is always saying "take this offline" or "we'll circle
| back later".
| processing wrote:
| any tips for a team of one and claude code?
| siva7 wrote:
| that's what this site is for.
| blitzar wrote:
| sometimes I complain about the team to chatgpt or gemini.
| swader999 wrote:
| Volunteer in your local community.
| madduci wrote:
| At work we use Teams and one interesting feature that I use isnky
| own chat (where inam alone), where in post links that mostly
| interest me.
|
| Also Signal offers something similar, called "Personal Notes"
| navane wrote:
| Too many typos
|
| isnky -> is my Inam -> I am In -> I?
|
| Funnily, the first two autocorrected when I typed then in and I
| genuinely didn't know what isnky was supposed to mean.
|
| On topic though, if no one else can read it it's like writing
| in your own local notes files.
| cheschire wrote:
| ...I use is my own chat (where I am alone)...
| senko wrote:
| I fail to see how this is different from a general off-topic chat
| channel which you're not expected to follow (but can peek at on
| downtime or while waiting for Claude Code).
|
| While that doesn't scale for large companies, for 2-10 (mentioned
| in the article) it's better than 2-10 such channels you need to
| keep track of.
| barnabee wrote:
| Yeah, encouraging using and engaging in a single off topic
| channel would create far less overhead on all but the smallest
| teams
| nottorp wrote:
| That's what #general on slack is for, mostly?
| Stratoscope wrote:
| #random
| layer8 wrote:
| It depends, #general isn't necessarily declared to be only
| used for off-topic content. It can serve as an official
| channel that everyone is obligated to read.
| senko wrote:
| In my experience some orgs use it as all-hands (with #random
| for chitchat), others as water-cooler.
|
| As long as everyone agrees on the usage (usually set from the
| top), anything's fine.
| herval wrote:
| "while waiting for Claude Code" is the new "compiling" innit
| kepano wrote:
| In practice 2-10 individual channels with 1-3 posts per week
| has less overhead than one off-topic channel with 30 posts
| because there's less mystery meat. It reduces the "am I missing
| something important?" feeling.
|
| We do also have an off-topic channel but on our team the
| individual rambling channels get more posts. Maybe because it's
| less likely to derail an existing conversation and allows more
| continuity with each person's thoughts.
| senko wrote:
| > Maybe because it's less likely to derail an existing
| conversation and allows more continuity with each person's
| thoughts.
|
| That's a good point.
|
| I think threads would help here (always reply to a thread),
| but enforcing this consistently can be a chore (on all
| parties).
| apples_oranges wrote:
| I think perhaps counter intuitively this harms the team spirit.
| Those things still get voiced in chat threads and more
| importantly in 1:1 calls/chats, allowing individuals to bond more
| intimately over non strictly project related things.
|
| Team chat is for the project.
| esperent wrote:
| I already have fatigue from too many chats and channels. Please
| don't make me track and check another ten.
|
| A single rambling channel sounds like a good idea though.
| jelder wrote:
| I use something similar, but call them "Rubber-duck channels."
|
| http://www.jacobelder.com/2025/02/25/habits-and-tools-effect...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Each ramblings channel should be named after the team member,
| and only that person can post top-level messages. Others can
| reply in threads, but not start new ones.
|
| I'm trying hard to understand why it has to be a personal
| channel. Water coolers aren't personal, that's the whole point.
|
| In particular you're still adjusting what you write to be OK for
| anyone in your team read, so the distinction with the other
| "casual" channels sounds thin.
|
| OTOH if your team doesn't have a casual place to say random
| stuff, it would be a nice improvement to get one.
| aljimbra wrote:
| I am conscious of double posting, and bumping other people's
| messages off of the page too soon. If I'm posting too much I
| get annoyed at myself on behalf of other people. So that would
| be a big plus of these channels to me.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I see your point.
|
| It might not help in all situations, but I see some people
| threading their posts to avoid that effect and somewhat keep
| a context to their thoughts if someone wants to jump in.
| npteljes wrote:
| Common channels can also work nice, but sometimes there is a
| vocal few who absolutely dominates them, and then the other
| people won't participate at all. The idea in TFA is to everyone
| have their own channel, where others cannot start a topic, so
| they don't stifle those who communicate less.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Steve Martin is a Ramblin' Guy!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frcRMQ2m1B4
| codesnik wrote:
| I've tried to create or revive a watercooler channel in every
| remote company I've worked in last 10 years. For some reason it
| usually doesn't work. Some people don't needed it, some people
| just call each other and vent out privately. I miss watercooler
| talk.
| danieldk wrote:
| We had watercooler meetings some at remote companies I worked
| at, but yeah they usually don't really work. One problem is
| that the stream always attenuates to one person (which is good
| in normal meetings to not pick up too much random background
| noise), but it completely kills spontaneity. Also, there are
| always people with horrendous mic quality or background noise.
|
| As a result 1:1s tend to work much better technically for
| socializing, but it of course doesn't bring the group vibe.
|
| The idea in the article sounds really nice! Unfortunately does
| not really scale to larger companies than maybe 5-10 people.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| TBH one of the best part of watercooler talk was the limited
| range (only the people who're there) and no trace of the
| exchange (all verbal)
|
| We also tried scheduled casual talks with the whole team, but
| didn't have more success than you.
|
| I think the closest we get was the small talk before meetings
| start, but as we're starting to get auto-transcript for all our
| meetings that also became very bland.
| prmoustache wrote:
| At my work place we have a meeting on friday afternoon. It
| was initially a meeting dedicated to quick knowledge transfer
| or helping out a member of a team who needs help on a
| particular topic but is also used to chit chat a bit before
| wishing everyone a nice weekend. We don't do transcript nor
| recording of these.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Venting privately is usually a symptom of bad management.
| Employees feel that they can't discuss any grievance publicly,
| for whatever reason, and so choose more careful means of
| communication
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| This type of writing down ideas and half-thoughts is useful even
| if you work alone. Thoughts are very fleeting, the instant you
| put them to paper (or bits) they materialize and it becomes much
| easier to evolve them.
|
| When doing deep work in some problem domain, often I find the
| brain starts to drop these highly ephemeral fragments of ideas
| (that are sometimes downright ingenious). Caveat is they often
| only come once, and then they're gone if you don't grab them.
|
| I often keep an envelope or scrap paper next to my desk where I
| write down any idea I have, whether it's "I should fix this" or
| "what if I did that", really no matter how small I try to put it
| to paper.
|
| What usually ends up happening is I somehow end up with a fairly
| concrete todo list of easy improvements.
| ljosifov wrote:
| I stuff those in my logBook nowadays - a single ascii text
| file. Started as you say with notes on random scraps of paper.
| To relieve my mind of carrying that burden, when I have
| something more pressing to do. But yeah these half-thoughts,
| intuits etc have showed useful over time? Some made it into
| TODO, and latter even into the DONE entries. Even if mostly
| their final destination is DONTDO. :-)
| romanows wrote:
| I think it is significant that this rambling channel supplements
| the yearly in-person meeting. Presumably, that's where one tends
| to form deeper social connections and get a feel for what
| different people find interesting to talk about? That is, if the
| team is varied enough so that there is little overlap in hobby
| interests or daily life.
| junon wrote:
| I have a whole private discord server with multiple channels just
| for this, for my personal projects. Yes yes, walled garden and
| all, I know. But it's incredibly useful even though I'm the only
| one in there.
|
| I'd imagine this is highly team dependent. I'd personally love if
| my company adopted this. I think only one other team member would
| actually participate though. We're far too busy.
| dpdpdpdpdp wrote:
| Ramble in the panopticon?
| dakiol wrote:
| In my experience, these kind of channels end up being filled with
| complaints about the company/processes/managers/c-levels... (ofc,
| managers are not invited to these private channels)
|
| Like, if the ceo said something very stupid in the last All
| Hands, well, you use the ramble channel to talk about it.
| Sometimes this works (you feel like you're not the only one that
| thinks X), but it could easily go south.
| echo42null wrote:
| Good point. You do need to create an environment where people
| feel safe to talk about anything, But it shouldn't just become
| an endless complaint loop about the company.
|
| I've seen this dynamic too: once people start venting, the
| channel can spiral. I sometimes wonder how to steer that energy
| into something constructive. Maybe it helps to let people
| express uncertainty or frustration before decisions are final,
| and to respond with context before things snowball.
|
| It's tricky, because most coworkers only overlap on the job
| itself, they might not share much else in common. so their
| "bonding" can easily turn into shared complaining.
|
| Curious if anyone has found ways to keep that from going south
| without shutting people down completely.
| sublinear wrote:
| You can't "steer" people like that. Good fences make good
| neighbors.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I've been working remote for over 25 years, and one of the better
| options to what this post is describing is to open, and leave
| open a voice channel / speaker phone on in all the locations that
| a remote team operates. Of course, this is not every day, but is
| used to create a "shared virtual space" that is very useful when
| the team is exploring something new as a group, and ambient
| conversation while doing so aids one another, plus social chatter
| and jokes are natural then too. Furthering a sense of community.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| At the start of the pandemic I saw tools that reminded me of
| old social flash games I would play as a kid (habbo hotel, club
| penguin, Gaia online) where you had a kind of avatar you could
| move around a 2D cubicle farm, and the program would adjust the
| volume of other people as they moved closer/further from you.
| Thered always be voice enabled (unless you muted obviousl) but
| i think the idea was to lower the social cost of initializing
| voice communication
|
| Neat idea, but personally I think the benefit of working
| remotely is asynchronous communication - I think we should
| encourage more forum-like communication rather than something
| like a ventrillo channel, though bringing back vent would be
| cool
| rubslopes wrote:
| It's http://gather.town
| JustExAWS wrote:
| I would hate this. More than the commute, the reason I hated in
| office work are the constant interruptions. Now when I need to
| do "deep work", I turn off Slack, email etc and block off my
| calendar.
|
| We are all busy, when we want to talk about something or get
| sanity checks, we schedule time on each others calendar. I go
| to work for one reason - to exchange labor for money. I'm not
| anti social and I can carry on small talk with the best of
| them. But there is a strict separation between church (home)
| and state (work). Well I did meet my now wife at work in
| 2009...
| bsenftner wrote:
| > when the team is exploring something new as a group, and
| ambient conversation while doing so aids one another, plus
| social chatter and jokes are natural then too.
|
| It was not used routine, it was for times when the entire
| team is looking at an SDK for the first time, we all have a
| group item to discuss, and times like that. It's like a non-
| meeting, ambient party call. Not for continual use, by any
| means.
| echo42null wrote:
| We used to have something very similar with our office coffee
| machine - spontaneous 1-2 minute chats while grabbing a coffee.
| Sometimes it was just, "Sorry, can't talk, swamped right now,"
| and the other person would rush off - but even that told you
| something.
|
| These micro-interactions gave valuable context: which teams were
| under pressure, where things might be stuck, and sometimes where
| a quick helping hand was needed.
|
| When we went remote, we tried to recreate this with a single
| global "coffee chat" channel. It worked for a while, but quickly
| became noisy.
|
| I really like your idea of having one ramblings channel per
| person instead. It feels like a cleaner way to keep that
| background awareness and human connection alive without
| overwhelming everyone. We're going to try this next.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| A post encouraging more performative behavior at work, as if
| there wasn't enough already. By the way, my scrum update is
| yesterday I was mostly in meetings.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| More performative "I'm cynicaler than thou" comments as if
| there aren't enough on HN anyway.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| My comment isn't performative, I really mean it :)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I feel that part of what I'm paid for is to structure those
| ramblings into clear communications to be shared at the right
| time in the right meeting or channel.
| chvid wrote:
| Or just show up at the office once in a while.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I created a "watercooler" channel at my company to keep chitchat
| out of the main channel. It's a lot easier than juggling multiple
| channels.
| OJFord wrote:
| Love this idea for 2-10 person orgs, but it really doesn't scale.
|
| I suppose you could do something similar with local sub-
| org/2-pizza team, but bit of a different vibe, and then if there
| is a #topic channel would your thought on topic go in #topic or
| #ramble-name?
| charlie0 wrote:
| This doesn't work top well with teammates who don't like to write
| to communicate, which is a surprising amount of people around me.
| (I'm the only one who writes tech docs)
| comrade1234 wrote:
| I have a somewhat mentally ill (as in he takes medication for it)
| coworker that would just ruin this. The entire channel would be
| just be walls of his text. It's hard enough just to understand
| his wall of text emails that have a big report embedded somewhere
| in it.
| musicnarcoman wrote:
| I think they meant each person has a public channel of their
| own.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Like the Confluence spaces they ignore /s
| sublinear wrote:
| Thank you for having the guts to leave this comment and not
| pretend like people are always perfect and optimistic.
|
| I think that's precisely why the ramblings should be a separate
| channel apart from all the emails and more serious
| communication, but I have some thoughts why this still might
| not work.
|
| I used to be guilty of leaving walls of text in our "random"
| channel, and we weren't even remote back then. My reasons
| weren't entirely irrational. Most of the time I felt like I
| wasn't taken seriously because of the way the business was run
| and it was the only chance I had to speak "out of turn". These
| workplaces that encourage a lack of boundaries are usually
| small startups that hire inexperienced people. Ultimately
| whatever anyone said was used to manipulate them or for the
| rotten parts of middle management to "steal" ideas.
|
| I'm not a fan of this concept either and I think it's easily
| abused by all.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I used to work for a small company, and I'd sometimes write
| short essays about things in general. It was rarely even
| related to programming, but people seemed to love that. Then
| I switched to corporate and I quickly understood to shut up
| because whenever I say something, someone might get upset
| over it for whatever reason and then it's going to be a
| problem.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Common topics include:
|
| > - ideas related to current projects
|
| > - musings about blog posts, articles, user feedback
|
| > - "what if" suggestions
|
| > - photos from recent trips or hobbies
|
| > - rubber ducking a problem
|
| Work-related and private topics should be separated, IMO. Some
| might be interested in the former but not the latter, and also
| might be interested in them at different times (of the day/week).
| There's also the formal/legal aspect that the work-related topics
| can count as work time whereas the private ones doesn't.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| > work-related topics can count as work time whereas the
| private ones doesn't
|
| All of these people are salaried, why does it matter?
| layer8 wrote:
| What do you mean? Your employment contract says you need to
| work _n_ hours per week. Private activities obviously don't
| count as work.
| parpfish wrote:
| I think building rapport with your team counts as work.
| layer8 wrote:
| Depending on how much time you spend "building rapport",
| HR might disagree.
|
| My point is that channels should be set up such that it's
| well-defined whether they are work-related or not.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I have never once had a contract that said I'm expected to
| work n hours a week.
|
| In fact it is just the opposite, salaried employees are
| paid the same no matter how many hours worked.
| elric wrote:
| > There's also the formal/legal aspect that the work-related
| topics can count as work time whereas the private ones doesn't.
|
| So when you're at the office, you never have a chat about a
| non-work topic at the coffee maker?
| layer8 wrote:
| This is formally/legally a work break that you're not allowed
| to count as work time. If I have a half-hour conversation
| about a non-work topic, which I sometimes do, it means I'll
| need to work half an hour more. At the office it's
| effectively at everyone's discretion how exactly they count
| it, but on a chat platform it can in principle be tracked if
| someone spends substantial time on #offtopic.
| handoflixue wrote:
| Legal definitions vary country to country: I wouldn't be so
| quick to insist on some universal definition. I'm pretty
| sure you're wrong about US law there - docking someone's
| pay for "chatting" sounds extremely difficult to defend.
|
| Besides, multi-tasking exists: sometimes I need to let my
| brain idle on another topic for 15 minutes, because I'm
| working through something complex, or just wrapped up a
| project and have a meeting.
|
| Certainly, nowhere I've ever worked has tried enforcing
| anything like this. I've had plenty of co-workers who made
| a point of wandering over to socialize for 5-10 minutes
| every day, which must have easily added up to an hour a day
| - but they were also the expert that knew exactly where
| everyone was and who needed to coordinate with who.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm not in the US, so that may be right. In my view this
| is more about how the employee feels about it: I don't
| want to get into a dispute whether the half hour a day I
| spent on the rambling channel counts as work or not. For
| that it makes a significant difference if people use the
| channel to discuss their hobbies or whether they discuss
| work-related ideas. I also don't want to miss the work-
| related topics just because I'm not interested in the
| hobby discussions.
| prmoustache wrote:
| In my country, we are allowed an half an hour break that is
| not deducible from your work time. It is expected that you
| need to take breaks in a 8h or 8h24 shift and you are free
| to decide if you want to take one long one or several
| shorter ones. Also going into the bathroom is not deducted,
| even if one day you need 15 minutes to take a proper dump
| or another day you have stomach issues and need to go more
| often.
|
| bottom line: YMMV. check your local laws and/or collective
| agreements.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| What a terrible situation in which to find oneself.
| ipdashc wrote:
| > Work-related and private topics should be separated, IMO.
|
| Why does it feel like people take this (reasonable) idea too
| far so often these days (and always on the Internet - I've
| never seen anyone in real life act like that).
|
| Like, yes, don't treat your job like a family or spend your
| whole day talking about your personal drama. Be careful or
| avoid dating coworkers. Etc. But this stuff is, as the author
| said, the equivalent of water cooler talk.
|
| If I had a salaried job that tracked the fact that I spent 15
| minutes (when not on a time crunch, of course) talking about
| some random interesting blog post or a coworker's trip, I
| would... probably look into leaving that job. I have never had
| a job that met that description. (On the contrary, many jobs I
| had, especially back as an intern/student, let us get away with
| way too much time spent fooling around or talking, in
| retrospect.)
|
| Even the stereotypical overworked fast food employee is allowed
| to chat with their coworkers when there's downtime, it's
| perfectly normal. I can't imagine pursuing the "work/life
| balance" ideal to the point one avoids regular old casual
| conversation with their coworkers.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Agreed. Some of the solutions I've seen and even experienced
| seem like something right out of severance
|
| Please engage in the mandatory socialization experience
| bitwize wrote:
| "Well, Mike, let's talk performance: your code is good, you get
| along well with your teammates, but you just haven't been
| rambling enough in the rambling channel. So unfortunately I'm
| going to have to put you on a PIP. If we don't see an improvement
| to at least 3 ramblings per week, further action may be taken, up
| to and including termination. Sorry it has to be this way, but
| we've got KPIs to hit."
| nasalgoat wrote:
| I worked at a large fully remote company and it had dedicated
| topic channels you could join. I thought that was an excellent
| solution since people could discuss their interests with other
| employees without it seeming like a corporately mandated chat
| break.
|
| I now work for a much smaller company and I miss the chat
| channels.
| larrydag wrote:
| I agree. Group channels on relevant topics is very helpful.
| Especially on technical details relevant to getting work done.
|
| Yet here goes my rant. Nothing can replace a good in-person
| interaction. Perhaps I'm the old guy in the room. When teams
| are trying to build something there is nothing like water-
| cooler talk and banter about the work that helps relate shared
| challenges. Granted this is going to very specific to
| organizational needs.
|
| I don't work in software development so perhaps my needs are
| different than most on Hackernews. I've managed teams in person
| and remotely. I've found that managing in person is a much more
| productive way to work.
| nasalgoat wrote:
| The channels I'm talking about weren't about work, they were
| about hobbies - biking, cars, cats. I found that interaction
| quite fun and actually much better than in-person chats
| because I could choose to interact at my pace and comfort
| level.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| I'm also an old guy at 51. I have been in cloud consulting
| for the last five+ years and I'm perfectly capable of leading
| large projects remotely.
|
| I can do it in person. But I find diagramming with
| collaborative tools, shared Google docs, etc to be much
| better than in person drawing on a whiteboard. There are
| remote collaborative tools for everything.
|
| With the tools available now, you can record all of the
| meetings and don't have to take notes, have transcripts
| automatically generated and summarized with AI. I can then
| take all of the transcripts and other artifacts, throw them
| in Google's NotebookLM and ask questions and get answers
| about the project (with citations).
|
| I do the same for transcripts of meetings I am not in -
| mostly pre-sales.
|
| Yes these are all approved tools.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Can you not just create those channels? I did at my 10 person
| company and at my 100k company, no body seems to mind
| nasalgoat wrote:
| Yes but they get very lonely all by yourself.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| This is so anglo-saxon to be individual channels for ramblings.
| We have group wide channel. It's supposed to be social - no
| pressure to post. Lurkers welcome. Just share. Naturally, some
| are more talkative than others. The idea is to foster a
| group/social culture - not have atomized diaries about
| individuals.
| parpfish wrote:
| Every place I've been to has a dedicated "random" or "off
| topic" channel and it's where all the good team building
| happens. There are usually a few more narrow channels for
| specific topics (video games, music, pets, food, etc) which can
| help if there are big personalities that dominate a channel.
|
| It can be intimidating to join in when you're new though. You
| got to lurk for a while to read the room a bit and learn the
| culture.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Internal Twitter should be more of a thing.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| I strongly agree with the title but the prescribed details are
| not to my taste.
|
| Pick a channel grouping that makes sense (by-team/by-project/by-
| manager) and Just Start Typing. Busy channels are alive and will
| create their own culture organically. Freely mix in work talk
| with pictures of cool stuff you found while walking the dog.
| "threads" makes this extremely manageable.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > "threads" makes this extremely manageable.
|
| Strongly agree. This is what threads in the project channel are
| for.
|
| Creating excessive channels for everything gets out of hand
| quickly. It's a habit you see from people who worked at small
| companies before threads were available on discussion
| platforms.
| danparsonson wrote:
| This sounds like Twitter for Enterprises - how about setting up a
| local instance of Bluesky or Mastodon or one of those? People can
| then follow whomever they want to and the rest of us can continue
| not being interested in that sort of thing.
| aprilnya wrote:
| Or if you use M365 then Viva Engage/Yammer can be great!
|
| PS. between the two Mastodon will be better, you can fully
| disable all federation and even have SSO! + setting up a
| private Bluesky is quite a bit harder
| hkon wrote:
| So, if you're remote, why not just talk to your real friends on
| discord or whatever?
|
| I think this whole "we are all a family" trope that companies
| push has pretty much been seen through by remote workers.
| lttlrck wrote:
| Right. Not everybody wants, needs or has these interactions
| even _in-person_.
|
| This stuff needs to happen organically to be meaningful.
| Templates don't work.
|
| It's like starting a chess club that everyone has to join.
| robertclaus wrote:
| Why not a shared "Ramblings" channel? And at that point, why not
| re-use something like "Random" that many companies already have?
| gavmor wrote:
| OP is proposing something more like internal blogging.
| sublinear wrote:
| No thanks. One of the best parts of going remote is letting your
| work truly speak for itself to a much broader audience. This
| would have been impossible in person.
|
| High performers usually have their own thing going on outside of
| work and don't need the workplace for socializing. This boosted a
| lot of careers, and otherwise made life way less toxic. Unless
| you're fresh out of college I can't see anyone wanting this
| again.
| nip wrote:
| We do something similar that we call << Office a la Zoom >>:
|
| Two times a week, the weekly standup is extended by an hour, from
| 15min to 1h15.
|
| People are welcome to jump in and out of that open zoom that acts
| as a water cooler corner: any topic goes, from work to personal
| hobbies, etc
|
| We're fully remote (US / EMEA / APAC)
| spike021 wrote:
| my team just has a couple off-topic channels we use from time to
| time to chat about random things. i'd say that's pretty
| sufficient. ymmv of course.
| srcoder wrote:
| We do the same, just topic specificaties channels like kids,
| random or pets... Works very well and you only need to join if
| you want to...
| fHr wrote:
| Nah not another useless channel to maintain, I'm good.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| This article is about nothing, how does this kind of stuff hit
| the front page? Is it because of bots?
| majke wrote:
| Let 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 onboarded had similar
| questions. Some subjects were about pure onboarding friction,
| some were about workflows most folks didn't know existed, some
| were about theoretical concepts.
|
| So I moved the questions to a public (within company) channel,
| and called it "Marek's Bitching" - because this is what it was.
| Pretty much me complaining and moaning and asking annoying
| questions. I invited more London folks (Zygis), and before I knew
| half of the company joined it.
|
| It had tremendous value. It captured all the things that didn't
| have real place in the other places in the company, from
| technical novelties, through discussions that were escaping
| structure - we suspected intel firmware bugs, but that was
| outside of any specific team at the time.
|
| Then the channel was renamed to something more palatable -
| "Marek's technical corner" and it had a clear place in the
| technical company culture for more than a decade.
|
| So yes, it's important to have a place to ramble, and it's
| important to have "your own channel" where folks have less
| friction and stigma to ask stupid questions and complain.
| Personal channels might be overkill, but a per-team or per-
| location "rambling/bitching" channel is a good idea.
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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 at the center of projects they just happen to know a lot
| about.
|
| So while the Q&A format is good to have available, I'd
| discourage creating separate channels around a person. I would
| encourage everyone to just go to the appropriate topic channel
| and discuss it there.
|
| I do the same thing when someone starts asking specific
| technical questions in #random or #general: Redirect to the
| project specific channel. That's the place where all of the
| relevant people will be relevant and watching and it's the
| first place they'll search in the future.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| This is the difference between a good idea and the
| implementation.
|
| People just act differently in "official" topic channels.
|
| It's like when you buy that super secure door lock and the
| lowest bid handyman bends it while installing because it's
| such a pain to align correctly and now it's just as
| vulnerable as any other lock.
| eldenring wrote:
| 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.
| Aurornis wrote:
| People start by searching within a channel, especially
| when terms are vague or frequently used.
| deathanatos wrote:
| 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 day I was struggling to find an external
| channel. I figured it should be easy. But again, I chose
| a synonym of the name, so miss there, but I though still
| -- by management edict, all of our external channels
| start with #external-, I'll just pull up all external
| channels and linear search by eyeball ... but management
| had named this one #ext-...
| latchkey wrote:
| > _from a manager's perspective this format is something
| we've tried to avoid_
|
| I'd rather avoid the manager's perspective.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The blog post is from a manager's perspective. It's a
| manager explaining what they had their employees do.
| latchkey wrote:
| As a CEO 'manager' myself, I try to let people just be.
| Getting too granular about person vs. topic and
| redirecting people to the right room sucks the fun out of
| everything. Let people mess up and post in the wrong
| place, who cares?
|
| OP's post was about a great experience 'tremendous value'
| they had and now you're pooping on it with 'manager'
| opinions. Read what you wrote from the employee
| perspective, you're sounding like the self-appointed fun
| police.
|
| Update: Cue the downvotes from the managers.
| kepano wrote:
| FWIW it's not something I asked anyone to do. The
| practice started organically and continues to exist
| because everyone created their own channel and kept going
| with it.
|
| One thing I suggested was that they should be muted by
| default so that they aren't a distraction and don't set
| the expectation that they should be read.
|
| I thought it would be interesting to write about
| _because_ it was an emergent practice that seems to be
| sticky and useful within our team.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| yeah, total buzzkill.
|
| I get the need to call a peg a peg, but it's also good to
| allow a little fun as well or you end up with these
| dementors sucking the life out of a company.
|
| For a slack group, I think it's relatively harmless if the
| focus is around casual shoot the shit convos.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| That's the remote equivalent of banning informal
| conversations in the hall and saying "save it for the daily
| team meeting".
|
| It feels good as a manager to formalize things, but the best
| collaboration and ideas happen organically at less formal
| times and places - and those times are worth at least as
| much, if not more to the company than anything formal.
|
| You might as well say "no thinking about work in the shower."
| saltcured wrote:
| Ouch, my wife has encountered almost exactly that in a
| recent brush with a biotech company that seems to have been
| infected by FAANG expats. She was advised that any kind of
| sidebar conversation is a faux pas.
|
| I struggled to guess at the real motive. Is it some project
| manager's blatant control freakery? An org-level, cynical
| management attempt to commoditize their knowledge workers?
| Or some kind of emergent failure where culture morphs
| through openness -> radical transparency -> enforced
| conformism a la 1984?
| seadan83 wrote:
| I've found the best way to kill a conversation is to point
| out the appropriate place the conversation should have
| started.
| majke wrote:
| 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 reach)
| by your non-expert colleagues than waiting longer for the
| experts on the other continent to wake up.
|
| Maybe there should be an option to... move conversation
| threads across channels?
|
| I think there is place for both - unstructured conversations,
| and structured ones. What I don't like about managerial
| approach, is that many managers want to shape, constrain,
| control communication. This is not how I work. I value
| personal connections, I value personal expertise and
| curiosity. I dislike non-human touch.
|
| "You should ask in the channel XYZ" is a dry and discouraging
| answer.
|
| "Hey, Mat worked on it a while ago, let's summon him here,
| but he's in east coast so he's not at work yet, give him 2h"
| is a way better one.
|
| 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.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _I do the same thing when someone starts asking specific
| technical questions in #random or #general: Redirect to the
| project specific channel._
|
| What if it is a specific technical question but does not
| clearly belong to a specific project?
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| We have an organic channel like this that's just called "Study
| Hall". People constantly ask technical questions and they know
| it's a judgement free zone. Probably one of the most productive
| chat channels in our org.
| serf wrote:
| >and they know it's a judgement free zone.
|
| that's the thing that's so inorganic about this whole thing :
| it's not a judgement free zone, it's a zone that tricks
| people into presuming that.
|
| If some underling somewhere says something that exposes their
| ignorance or naivety to either a policy problem or a
| technical problem you'd better realize that it's going to
| trigger a 'review mechanism' somewhere down the road within
| the organization; to think otherwise would be pure fantasy.
|
| Similarly : if you go drinking with the boss, you do _still_
| have to remember that the drunk puking slob who you 're
| carrying to their hotel room is going to wake up and _be your
| boss_ tomorrow.
|
| _very_ few humans actually disconnect this stuff from their
| internalized judgements of people.
| oefrha wrote:
| Yeah, maybe I'm small-minded, but if someone I'm not
| familiar with, say a new hire asks a question way beneath
| their presumed experience level I'm absolutely gonna judge,
| judgement free be damned; and if they're my report I'm
| gonna question the hiring (in my mind). There's no shortage
| of imposters in the industry, most of them who're capable
| of landing jobs above them are probably also smart enough
| to scoff at pure fantasy like "judgement free zone".
| anon84873628 wrote:
| There's no such thing as a judgment free zone when humans
| are involved :-)
|
| I tell new hires that they shouldn't be scared of asking
| questions, and that if they're not asking questions
| they're probably not pushing themselves enough. But also
| caution to make sure that they check available resources
| first, and then ask the right audience.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| In work and job markets like this.
|
| You got to be really careful.
|
| If there's a lot of jobs and a lot of market opportunity
| and a lot of demand for talent, then workplaces can be
| like this.
|
| I'm afraid that with AI, one of these types of things are
| simply gone.
| onion2k wrote:
| Having spent a long time in tech and worked with a lot of
| people I've realised there are two sorts of people who
| are "imposters". There are those who have BS'd their way
| up and are in a role where they're out of their depth,
| and there are those who were lucky to have landed a role
| that's a bit beyond them (often because they have deep
| experience elsewhere.)
|
| The first type don't ask questions. They know they're
| imposters and don't want to be called out.
|
| The second type do ask questions. They also know they're
| imposters but they're trying to learn so they're not.
|
| Judge people on their actions else you'll only spot the
| second group, and often with a bit of support those ones
| can go on to do great things, especially if they're
| experienced at one thing but they're not learning a new
| thing. When they get enough knowledge to connect the two
| things they can be absolutely brilliant.
| BoxFour wrote:
| This strikes me as a somewhat unfair characterization of
| many of these communities. In my experience, a much more
| common issue is that the people who do have answers end up
| ignoring the group and it becomes pointless. It rarely
| becomes a source of career hindrance or long-lasting
| judgement, it just ends up being useless because there's
| not a lot of incentive for the expert side of the equation.
|
| People who are likely to judge people for dumb questions
| are rarely involved in those groups in the first place, for
| exactly all the obvious reasons.
|
| The more realistic outcome isn't that your boss ends up a
| drunk puking slob (and for what it's worth most of these
| groups don't include leadership anyway, so not sure why
| anyone's boss would be involved) but that an intern floats
| a terrible idea ("I'm thinking of taking these 10 shots of
| 151"), nobody responds, they take silence as approval, and
| they end up causing a mess and then being judged for the
| mess they caused.
|
| A quick gut check from them with a healthy group might get
| a few eye rolls and a "here's why that's a bad idea", but
| not any lasting judgement unless they completely ignored
| the advice.
|
| The only case I can think of where that might happen is if
| they _already_ did something which has policy or legal
| implications ( "hey i accidentally dumped the whole user
| base including PII to my phone"), in which case - good?
| There should be a review mechanism, including consequences
| if they ignored a bunch of roadblocks.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > It rarely becomes a source of career hindrance or long-
| lasting judgement, it just ends up being useless because
| there's not a lot of incentive for the expert side of the
| equation.
|
| Yeah, the incentive structure for something like this is
| totally misaligned for this to work effectively in many
| cases outside of a very small, tight-knit team. (In which
| case... why the formality in the first place?)
|
| For the "juniors": Why waste time digging through
| documentation, searching, or thinking--I can just post
| and get an answer with less effort.
|
| For the "seniors": I'm already busy. Why waste time
| answering these same questions over and over when there's
| no personal benefit to doing so?
|
| Sure, there are some juniors that will try and use it as
| a last resort and some seniors that will try their best
| to be helpful because they're just helpful people... but
| I usually see the juniors drowned out by those described
| above and the experts turn into those described above.
|
| I think we _could_ come up with something that better
| aligned incentives though. Spitballing--
|
| Juniors can ask a question. Once a senior answers, the
| junior then takes responsibility for making sure that
| question doesn't need to be answered there again--
| improving the documentation based on that answer. Whether
| that's creating new documentation, adding links or
| improving keywords to help with search, etc. That change
| then gets posted for a quick edit/approval by the senior
| mainly to ensure accuracy.
|
| Now we're looking at something more like:
|
| For the "juniors": If I ask a question, I will get an
| answer but it will create additional work on my end. If I
| ask something already answered in the documentation that
| I could have easily found, I basically have to publicly
| out myself as not having looked when I can't propose an
| improvement to the documentation. And that, fairly, is
| going to involve some judgement.
|
| For the "seniors": Once I answer a question, someone is
| going to take responsibility for getting this from my
| head into documentation so I never need to answer this
| again.
|
| This has an added benefit of shifting some of the
| documentation time off of the higher paid, generally more
| productive employees onto the lower paid, less productive
| employees and requiring them to build out some
| understanding in order to put it into words. It may also
| help produce some better documentation because stuff that
| a senior writes is more often going to assume knowledge
| that stuff a junior writing may think to explain because
| _they_ didn't know it. It also means that searching in
| the Slack/other channel, any question you find should end
| up with a link to the documentation where it's been
| answered which should help you discover more adjacent
| documentation all of which should be the most up-to-date
| and canonical answer we have.
| BoxFour wrote:
| I'm on board with the overall point, though I'd actually
| flip the logic in this section:
|
| > Once a senior answers, the junior then takes
| responsibility for making sure that question doesn't need
| to be answered there again.
|
| That might make sense for simple questions. But for
| anything more complex, especially when the issue stems
| from something you have control over, having senior folks
| take ownership might make more sense. If they can tie the
| fix to visible impact, there's a strong incentive for
| them to actually solve the root problem. Otherwise,
| there's always the risk that experienced team members
| simply ignore the question 100% of the time (which also
| solves the problem of "i've already answered this
| question").
|
| One way seniors might approach these types of groups is
| by treating them as a source of ideas. Repeated questions
| like "how do I use X?" might indicate that X needs a
| redesign or better onboarding. An experienced corporate
| climber could treat those questions as justification for
| "X 2.0 which is way easier to onboard to" and get backing
| to work on it.
|
| Anyone who's spent time at a large tech company has
| likely seen this dynamic play out, because it's a common
| pathway to promotion. Definitely taken to problematic
| extremes, no doubt, but a slightly-healthier version of
| that playbook still beats the alternative of relying on
| the arcane knowledge of a select few as gatekeepers of
| information.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| This is going to depend a lot on culture.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| Fwiw, Marek's technical corner still exists and still gets some
| activity.
| dknecht wrote:
| And it still lives on today where we reposted this post!
| jamesog wrote:
| > 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".
|
| Hi, that's me! There were definitely a lot of fun
| conversations.
|
| I liked that a culture of internal blogs became a thing too. It
| was good to see people brain dumping their experiments and
| findings. I think people learnt a lot from following all the
| internal blogs.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| 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
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| Huh, 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 small but steady flow
| of use, mostly questions that people probably should know, but
| can't remember the answer/process of the top of their head, and
| the occasional slightly less-than-professional complaint or
| criticism about a service/tool/process. My favourite part is that
| I can actually discuss things in there - in the main chat, once
| the question is answered/problem is solved, if we keep chatting
| about it it's seen as clutter/distraction. I think it's
| beneficial to have an outlet for these things.
| chaz6 wrote:
| 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.
| kqr wrote:
| It also gives you cover to ask questions that reveal
| politically inconvenient truths: you can pretend you had no
| idea that answer would pop out of it.
|
| (Of course, in an organisation that contains many politically
| inconvenient truths, you can easily end up doing that too
| much and people will catch on to it and dislike what you're
| doing. Another drawback is you have to be willing to look
| stupid and trust that the stupid first impression goes away
| with time.)
| fantasizr wrote:
| I always respected leaders who did this, preprogramming the
| dumb questions in a presentation for the benefit of the timid
| ones
| codingdave wrote:
| I'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 assuming everyone has
| communications skills, topics that become relevant to the whole
| team are then shared with the whole team.
|
| I agree that such discussions are healthy, maybe even required,
| for a functional remote team. But let people organize themselves
| - don't prescribe specific methods that teams must follow. The
| last thing we need is a formal framework of how to have organic
| discussions.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| Do you grow the olives as well
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would
| hate the details in the post
|
| This seems to happen a lot: Someone writes some highly
| exaggerated career advice that has good intent at the core but
| turns into overly weird suggestions by the end. They might be
| trying to be memorable or to make an impact by exaggerating the
| advice.
|
| Then some people, often juniors, take it literally and start
| practicing it. They think they're doing some secret that will
| make them the best employee. Their coworkers and managers are
| more confused than impressed and think it's just a personality
| quirk.
|
| As a manager I found it helpful to skim Reddit and other sites
| for semi-viral advice blogs like this. With enough juniors in a
| company there's a chance one of them will suddenly start doing
| the thing written in a shared post like this. Knowing why
| they're doing it is a good way to help defuse the behavior
| (assuming they don't really benefit but rather do it because
| they perceive it will look good)
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe Agile was one of these things, but then a bunch of
| people started doing it literally.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| The original manifesto wasn't[0], but it's certainly likely
| a lot of cargo-cult "Agile" is.
|
| [0] https://agilemanifesto.org/
| twic wrote:
| Other way round, i think. The original form had a lot of
| weird practices which actually worked. The form most common
| today is just lip service.
| throwanem wrote:
| The weird practices worked as reported, but as an
| accident of the context where they arose. Outside that,
| they're about as robust as really rare orchids, which I
| think to their credit the authors realized, hence all the
| "don't take _our_ word for it! " with which they hedged
| around their wildly bestselling school of management
| consultancy.
| p1necone wrote:
| I like to say that the outwardly visible practices and
| processes of highly effective teams are mostly symptoms,
| not causes of their success. You can't invert the causal
| relationship.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > but then a bunch of people started doing it literally
|
| Most people doing "agile" do literally the opposite of what
| is on the manifesto.
| jama211 wrote:
| Lol yep. Our company decided "sprints" were now to last 4
| weeks, but there's also no task scheduling, no retro, no
| sprint planning... just tasks get given whenever they
| come up based on what they feel like.
|
| So... what's the point of a "sprint"? We don't even do
| monthly releases. It's hilarious.
|
| I suspect we do "agile" in name only so they can pretend
| to the board that there is a system at all.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Or maybe they know that saying something wrong gets more
| comments / "engagement" than something more reasonable.
| daxfohl wrote:
| "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful
| metric"
| ronbenton wrote:
| "I see you've only had 15 rambles this week"
|
| "Isn't 15 the minimum?"
|
| "Well, yeah, if you just want to do the bare minimum. But look
| at Todd over there - he has 37 rambles"
|
| "Well if you wanted people to have 37 rambles why wouldn't you
| make that the minimum"
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Recently $DAYJOB has been moving more and more towards Office
| Space. But none of the young'ins are aware of it. So I just
| showed them the scene with the Bobs. Their faces were
| priceless. I doubt any of them came to office with same
| mindset again.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Mine certainly is. If my employees don't fill out their
| timesheets and tps reports how will I do payroll
| clickety_clack wrote:
| Bro, some of my employees don't put the new covers on
| their TPS reports. Do you know how much we paid the
| consultant for the new designs?!
| rusk wrote:
| A question I've always been afraid to ask: wouldn't it be
| easier to do it yourself?
| merelysounds wrote:
| The scene with the Bobs:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwfNjGxa_D4
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| When I told them the movie came out before they were
| born, yet depict their life damn near exactly as they
| were living it, their enlightenment lit the room anew
| hah.
|
| Someone please save my soul..
| throwaway743 wrote:
| That's just a straight shooter with upper management
| written all over them
| ducktective wrote:
| > Hey Veo, guess what? New plot for another Black Mirror
| episode just dropped
| mjevans wrote:
| Ref: Office Space (Movie) Flare at the restaurant (I believe
| it's a spoof on TGI Fridays / Chillis etc)
|
| If you have not seen Office Space ... It has a couple raunchy
| things and it's general political correctness calibration is
| circa ~2000 USA so go in with about that level of culture
| expectations.
|
| Having said that, it's a GREAT movie which is practically a
| comedic documentary of US office politics and tropes. Though
| some of the standards have shifted a tiny bit, the general
| culture is still relevant today in many if not most offices.
| The movie showcases culture and human nature more than any
| particular era.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's so much like real work I can't watch it. Same with
| _The Office_ series.
| Mawr wrote:
| Don't watch Silicon Valley.
| saltcured wrote:
| Pay more attention to your surroundings, and eventually
| you can feel the same way about _Schizopolis_
| geoka9 wrote:
| I don't know, I kind of like those cubicles.
| gopalv wrote:
| > The movie showcases culture and human nature more than
| any particular era.
|
| Most of my middle management experiences has been between
| Office Space and Better off Ted.
|
| One with "Don't care" as an answer and the other says "Care
| more" as its.
|
| Those are the two extremes of the genre.
| imchillyb wrote:
| One of my favorite dialogs is from the pilot:
|
| Ted Crisp: We do everything: industrial products,
| biomedical, cryogenics, defense technology.
|
| Veronica Palmer: We want to weaponize a pumpkin.
|
| Ted Crisp: Then so do I. Because?
|
| Veronica Palmer: There's a country with whom we do
| business that grows a great deal of pumpkins and would
| welcome additional uses for them. As well as cheaper ways
| to kill their enemies.
|
| Ted Crisp: Well, finally, the pumpkin gets to do
| something besides Halloween.
|
| I believe this showcases, succinctly, corporate "ethics"
| in our society.
|
| Absolutely anything to make a buck and strengthen trade.
| anonymars wrote:
| Veronica Palmer: Pie.
| cnasc wrote:
| Better off Ted was sadly canceled way too early. Part of
| me wishes a streaming service would pick it up for a
| revival, but I know the monkey's paw there would be that
| it would be subverted by precisely the sort of
| corporation it set out to lampoon.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Fun fact: I was a key player in actualizing the plan for
| Project Jabberwocky.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > general political correctness calibration is circa ~2000
| USA
|
| there is white people rapping and Michael Bolton is ashamed
| of his name. Tread carefully folks!
| rusk wrote:
| There's a scene where they smash the shit out of a
| printer and that still rings true
| topato wrote:
| I think that was the first R rated movie I saw as a child
| (and probably the first movie I pirated, on pre-P2P
| networks). The grand wisdom of the Geto Boys (sic) has
| stuck with me ever since. "The type of chicks that'd double
| up on a dude like me do [care about money]" I've gotten way
| off topic
| edm0nd wrote:
| The first movie I can remember pirating was the original
| Fast and Furious movie using Napster (or KaZaA).
| topato wrote:
| I've fotgotten: Did Napster eventually open up to sharing
| videos and software after MP3s? I can't remember if I'm
| just conflating it with memories of Kazaa (I was only 10
| or 11 years old at the time, my memory is fuzzy lol). I
| know I got addicted to pirating and filesharing after
| being introduced to Hotline at an even younger age.
|
| I couldn't buy rated M games or R rated movies, but I
| could certainly download them... which led me to my first
| graphics card and RAM upgrade, installing a TV tuner
| card, and eventually to PC building. Doing all this while
| in grade school was the best tech education I could get,
| especially back in the 90s.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications
| apwell23 wrote:
| Its crazy how that movie has stood the test of time
| echelon wrote:
| Yeah, but Obsidian is a startup. A remote startup.
|
| If you're in a startup of <10 people and someone isn't
| communicating with the rest of the team, it's not going to
| work.
|
| I can see how this feels dystopian in a giant corporation,
| but that's because everyone is there for the paycheck.
|
| In a startup, people are making sacrifices to make the thing
| work. They could get a higher paying, less stressful job.
|
| Picking a startup and not being engaged is disruptive.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| .. yet "being disruptive" is supposed to be the goal of a
| startup innit?
| echelon wrote:
| You want to disrupt the market, not the team.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > Don't ever go full [disrupt].
| tossandthrow wrote:
| If this is your attitude, then you are not part of a team of
| 2 to 10
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| Yeah, I don't like it in "channels" either because it's too
| random. What I started years ago at a previous company who was
| using Confluence (yuck, I know), as the knowledge base was to
| have a "Personal Space" where I created internal blog posts. I
| still do it at my new place using their tools. What I do is
| more "bloggy" and than "rambly".
|
| When I'm considering a refactor, I write up my thoughts in
| English (which often helps clarify things rather than focusing
| in code at first). And then I point the rest of my team, to the
| post and say something like, "I'm going to tackle this next
| Wednesday, let me know if you see anything wrong with the
| approach". People who care and have options can chime in, if
| they're too busy they can ignore it. But everyone is given the
| chance to comment.
|
| But where I find the real value is when I'm working on a new
| algorithm or analysis approach. Our internal blog software
| natively supports LaTeX math blocks (like GFM), so I can write
| out my algorithm ideas using formal math notation. I've pre-
| found a bug or bad idea many times just by translating my
| English into LaTeX. I actually find the expression of those
| ideas in a blog post the key tool to solidify ideas before I
| code them.
|
| I'm under no illusions that most of the team even reads what I
| write, but the work of formalizing it for semi-public
| consumption really clarifies my thoughts and keeps me from
| spinning too much while I'm actually writing the code.
|
| These aren't super formal academic quality publications, more
| like semi-formal ramblings, but I think the difference between
| hitting "publish" vs just typing in a channel slows me down
| enough to really think through things - and those who do end up
| reading them are reading slightly more thought out idea than a
| stream-of-consciousness rambling which means they'll get more
| out of it too.
| mjevans wrote:
| Same idea as rubber-duck debugging or just explaining things
| to someone else. The work of translating the idea forces your
| mind to marshal and walk the structures from a fresh angle
| and you can gain insights that were lacking.
|
| Getting more eyeballs on that idea also helps. Both in the
| different knowledge and expectations / assumptions they have
| and in proofing how clearly the idea's communicated. Really
| helps reveal areas where there's ambiguity you hadn't even
| realized because it's not even a confusion spot you'd
| consider with your knowledge.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Off topic, 10 years ago, I hated confluence and wanted my
| team to be able to continue using DokuWiki.
|
| Now, I've consulted at places that use Microsoft Teams file
| shares for their "documentation", and I feel like I'm back in
| 2005. Confluence would be a dream.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Confluence as well as other atlassian tools have evolved
| quite a bit, in the good direction (minus the ai fluff)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So once upon a Time, jireh and confluence were far better
| solutions than things like bugzilla and other "solutions".
|
| The last 10 years I've seen jira and confluence groaned
| about, what has replaced what they do?
| Tohsig wrote:
| I'll add on to this that per-user channels could work well in
| teams where everyone is comfortable sharing, but could be
| absolutely paralyzing in other situations.
|
| My personal preference is to have some kind of "Off-Topic" or
| "Open Discussion" channel that is communal. I'll then make a
| point of consistently posting half-developed ideas to that
| channel. _Especially_ the ideas that I know are going to morph
| as the team discusses them. I find that helps do two things:
|
| - Helps create a culture of collaboration rather than one of
| "whatever the lead dev says goes".
|
| - Provides Cover For/Reduces Pressure On anyone that is less
| comfortable putting their thoughts out there for discussion.
|
| As the parent comment said, the fundamental idea in the post
| isn't bad, but the mechanism may need tweaking for a given
| team.
| kepano wrote:
| > Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random
| thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me.
|
| I agree that if it becomes a top-down expectation or a
| performance metric it would be terrible. The practice at
| Obsidian was emergent and bottom-up. Maybe that's because of
| the small team size and flat structure. Also why the article
| states "They should be muted by default, with no expectation
| that anyone else will read them."
| oulipo wrote:
| I don't think he mentioned anywhere "expected"? it's more a
| kind of log, of stuff you'd like to share in a fuzzy way, but
| don't know where
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > The last thing we need is a formal framework of how to have
| organic discussions.
|
| this is no different from best practices for programming
| though. People take a rule that generally works well, but a
| manager who doesn't understand it tries to enforce it blindly
| ("more unit tests!!") and it stops working
|
| computer engineering & social engineering share a lot of the
| same failure modes (which is good news, if you are very good at
| debugging computers, but find people & politics confusing, you
| can unlock the latter once you see in what ways your insight in
| one domain can transfer to the other)
| kiitos wrote:
| Nothing in this post suggests any kind of expectation, mandate,
| or obligation to post anything in any kind of channel.
|
| The problem that this post is trying to address, is that these
| kinds of informal rambling channels -- which have enormous
| value -- almost never happen organically.
| jama211 wrote:
| They say something about posting 3 times a week. Even if it's
| not a formal obligation, it'll certainly feel like one if
| they notice you never post whilst other people do.
| kiitos wrote:
| it's pretty interesting to see this discrepancy in response
| to this idea
|
| some folks -- i guess like you? -- read this and think,
| "oh, great. a mandate that fixes a problem i don't have,
| and now might be something i'm forced to participate in
| against my will"
|
| and other folks -- definitely me, and i believe the OP as
| well -- read this and think, "oh, great! an idea that might
| help me with a problem that i have, and might be something
| i can point-to as one possible solution to that problem"
| throwanem wrote:
| 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, it sounds positively _miraculous_ to me.
| starkparker wrote:
| 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.
| conradev wrote:
| Hack Club, the largest Slack instance I've ever been a part of,
| has a culture of personal channels and it is incredibly organic
| and fun. It's largely restricted to students under 18, though!
|
| I feel like it's a common pattern that organically forms.
| People want to express themselves, they don't want to distract
| group chats, so they make a space to do it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random
| thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me._
|
| It all comes down to company culture.
| Aurelius108 wrote:
| 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.
| pimlottc wrote:
| 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..."
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I hate this idea. If I have an idea I think we should implement
| when I was a mod level developer [1] and had to get buy in for
| it, I would think it through and ask for a coworkers opinion,
| take their suggestions, and then keep reaching out to who I
| thought would be my toughest critics until I got their buy in.
|
| Once I was convinced that I had enough buy in, I would then
| officially propose it in a team setting. It's called "pre-wiring
| a meeting".
|
| Now it's more of getting peer reviews and sanity checks than
| anything else before I go down a road. We also have Slack channel
| where we ask for peer reviews now of architectural decisions
| (working in cloud consulting).
|
| [1] My _title_ has been "Senior Developer" for decades at various
| companies. But in reality, based on "scope", "impact", etc not "I
| codez real good" I was really what would be considered a mid
| level developer until a decade ago.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Long back, I used to set up P2 for teams, inspired by WordPress's
| theme-based personal/team updates. The current theme seem to have
| changed over time but the early versions where tweet-ish kinda
| flow of events which people/team wrote.
|
| https://wordpress.com/p2/
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Ramblings channels let everyone share what's on their mind
| without cluttering group channels.
|
| This is a great place to use threads.
|
| If someone wants to ramble, you say "Starting a thread to think
| through <topic>" _in the project channel_ and then you put your
| follow-up chats in the thread. This way it only occupies a single
| line and notification (for those who have it enabled) but keeps
| it in the right place.
|
| Creating excessive numbers of channels is a common small company
| mistake that they'll come to regret later. Every growing company
| I've worked for has gone through a "let's create channels for
| everything" phase followed later by a "we're all so burnt out
| from being in 80 different channels" phase. Creating a separate
| channel for every person of a project will scatter the
| discussions and add excessive cognitive load for juggling
| channels.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| There is a kind of leader that's threatened when they don't
| control communication. In these cases, random thought bombs on
| slack feel like chaos. Like people are going in random directions
| not rowing together. I don't think this is true of course --
| people are just sharing inspiration and ideas. But in some places
| / cultures just rambling on slack can be dangerous and put a
| target on your back. You can be labeled as "distracting" by these
| leaders that feel threatened / worried about the perception the
| team is not executing on their marching orders.
|
| Somehow this is more embarrassing to this leader than random
| hallway conversations you'd have in a regular office environment.
| So these leaders have an especially hard time in a remote
| environment. But they do soon learn that even Slack DMs can be
| searched and they love this tool to root out "troublemakers".
|
| Of course, if you can, leave such a place. But not everyone has
| this luxury.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| This is true because it has happened to me. I was at a place
| where there was a very ingrained hierarchy in the culture where
| people were afraid to ask questions in public (slack), to
| discuss problems and solutions, because the "leaders" were so
| thin-skinned, doing anything outside of being ticket-solving
| machines was seen as wholly objectionable.
|
| I got tired of the abject fear that some of those idiots were
| stoking so I took it upon myself to set the example for the
| more junior people and started rambling and asking questions
| and doing the things that the "leaders" obviously didn't like.
| You can imagine how that went as I got a bit more bold week
| after week... I've never been more relieved, and proud, to be
| canned.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Most people, myself included, cannot thrive in a culture of
| fear and control. I think what you did is the best way to
| handle it. Do the right thing and surrender to the outcome.
| Like you, I was happier that way.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Happened at an ex-employer's where they were prying on people's
| chats, emails, whatever accounts they were logged into while
| connected to their network without them knowing, and using what
| they found for office politics. From what I found and had
| confirmed from someone in IT, at a minimum at least one manager
| was using mitm software, IT had sslstrip on network traffic (I
| know there's a real security use for it but they also used it
| to pry), managers requested IT to let them read other people's
| emails, and managers had logs of chats (not sure if that was
| feature for admins/paid subscribers). Also happened at a well
| known company someone I know worked at, where they monitored
| and fired people over what they wrote in chats.
|
| Careful with what you type if they're paying for the software,
| devices, and/or your traffic is routed through their network.
| ogou wrote:
| After watching so many work chats disintegrate from politics,
| social commentary, or pedantic arguments I have totally avoided
| all unstructured channels. Since 2020 I saw two people get fired
| after discussions got out of hand. There were many more team
| meetings, code of conduct edicts, and all hands declarations
| about communication issues. It wasn't until the bans on politics
| in Slack arrived until things got better. Even now there are
| people I will screenshot any DMs that have even a hint of
| conflict. I doubt I will ever participate in any work chats in a
| social way again.
| mjevans wrote:
| There's a distinction between random (probably not for work,
| 'water cooler chat') and 'obviously divisive' topics like
| politics. Particularly in the US, those are the sort of things
| you avoid.
| ogou wrote:
| Those distinctions evaporated in 2020 and never returned.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Must depend on the company/office. My team (200+ people)
| has a "offtopic/socialize" chat channel set up for this
| kind of rando chit chat, and it has never, not once in many
| years, even had a hint of divisiveness or politics. Yes,
| you do need to be working with grownups who can behave and
| leave that shit at home.
| ogou wrote:
| Basecamp is a well-known example. I saw it personally at
| 3 different companies, including one in Germany.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032627
| jama211 wrote:
| Not in any company I've been in, but I don't live in
| America
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Huh? Thats just not true. We have channels for gamers,
| pets, golf, home automation, "lounge", "memes", etc. I've
| been at this company 4 years and can only thing if 3 times
| I've seen a dispute, and even that was very civil. It's
| really not hard to leave politics at home.
| ogou wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032627
| esco27 wrote:
| There are certain things in life that are meant to be
| unstructured and spontaneous. The moment you try to sandbox them
| they tend to devolve into noise which then calls for more
| structure or "rules", it's a slippery slope. If you're remote,
| you can always start a huddle and talk while you work, or if
| talking is not your thing, a good old DM can work. If you're
| worried about noise or things getting lost, you can always move
| the work related things into their own channel as they come up.
| Just 2 cents.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| struggling to create the organic interactions you had in-person?
| Here's a reomte process you can mandate and measure to ensure
| everyone is casually interacting in the correct, company-approved
| way!
| Separo wrote:
| Channels should also include a #roast-the-product channel which
| encourages harsh, direct but valid criticism of the product (NOT
| people / feature authors etc).
|
| It should be an anything-goes place where anything can be vented
| but also, no responses are required.
| t5teveryweek wrote:
| Hey at least it's not T5T (top 5 thing)that you're forced to do
| every other week because your founder read one nvidia blog post
| nicoritschel wrote:
| You should do this in normal channels relevant to the discussion
| topic to facilitate discussion, not a separate channel per
| person. What.
| RedNifre wrote:
| We did something like that on a private Minecraft server 15 years
| ago, where everybody was required to have an identi.ca account
| for this server (status.net, like mastodon today). All messages
| appeared posted to the walls of a large library building in the
| middle of the world and people could post to their accounts from
| the ingame chat.
|
| It worked really well for about half the people, the other half
| ignored it completely.
|
| I wouldn't mind if today's office chats like Teams or Slack added
| a microblogging feature where you could subscribe to interesting
| colleagues.
| andrewrn wrote:
| I really cannot imagine working remote full-time, it sounds so
| depressing. We already don't go to church or bars or movies or
| clubs anymore. Work is one of the few remaining places to
| interact with other humans.
|
| I'd be interested in trying this if I was remote, but I still
| just prefer in-person work.
|
| I worked an in-person job recently at an oil company where we had
| no regular meetings (I was doing absolute grunt drafting work),
| and it was the most depressing experience of my life. This would
| be better than in-person w/o water cooler chats.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I mean, no one is stopping you from going to church or bars or
| movies or clubs. All of those things are still there if that's
| what you fancy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, different strokes for different folks. Since going
| remote, I now have the choice about if, where, and when to
| interact with other people, and who those people should be.
| If I want to go two weeks without seeing another person (IRL,
| not counting video conference), I can do it. If I want to go
| out and socialize, I have 4 formerly-commuting hours back
| every day that I can use to do so.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| People are different. I worked around 1.5 years on fully remote
| gig and it was the best time of my life ever.
|
| Wake up at 6, start working, finish at 2 pm. In the middle do
| all the house chores that I could squeeze in (cleaning,
| shopping, eating, even chopped few cubic meters of wood in span
| of weeks) while keeping my output the same as other teammates
| (it wasn't particularly hard, either). Each day I was out at 2
| pm, ready to decide on MY terms, who to meet, what to do, what
| to attend.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| People are different. I have been fully remote for 5 years
| after 5 in-office, so I've seen both.
|
| In office was fine while I didn't have kids. Now I have kids
| and my life would be in shambles if I had to commute. I also
| live in BFE and would make probably 70% less if I worked
| locally.
|
| I grew up on the internet in the early 2000s. So I'm well used
| to getting lots of my social interaction from text chats, and I
| prefer it. I can text chat all day. I can in person chat for
| about 45 mins before I want to be alone with my thoughts.
|
| Plus, I get off work and get to socialize with my family, who I
| like roughly 100x more than my favorite coworker.
|
| It's just different people, different communication styles,
| different lives.
| standardUser wrote:
| If you want your remote teams to have increased cohesion you need
| to fly them all to the same location (at company expense, only
| during weekdays) multiple times per year and give them the
| opportunity to actually get to know each other.
|
| Anything else usually just feels awkward and pathetic. But since
| online game shows or "breakaway rooms" cost the company a whole
| lot less money, that's what we're stuck with.
| twinkjock wrote:
| This whole post is unnecessary if you have threaded replies and
| threaded conversations.
| throw10920 wrote:
| I put my work ramblings in daily journal notes in Markdown files
| in a git repository. Unfortunately, I don't spend the time to
| then ensure that they're accessible to my co-workers - and given
| the amount of value that I would get if _they_ did that, I should
| do it myself.
|
| Also, I'm very glad that I don't work in a place with Slack/chat
| culture. I really like the idea of making your ramblings
| available, but the thought of forcing everything into chat is
| repulsive. Just use a wiki page or files in a Git repo (as long
| as they're sufficiently easy to access) and that's good enough.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Try using a static site generator like Jekyll or Hugo with
| GitHub Pages to automatically publish your Markdown ramblings -
| minimal setup, preserves your workflow, and gives teammates a
| simple URL to bookmark.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Oh, that's a great idea - thank you.
| rayrey wrote:
| Machine Stops comes to mind
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
| jedberg wrote:
| We use #random for this.
| gardnr wrote:
| They had these at BigCorp I worked at. Anyone can make a channel
| like #x-gardner and then people can join that channel if they
| choose. The way that you find them organically is by searching
| the chat app for some random thing that you are interested in and
| then finding a few people discussing it in an X channel.
|
| It felt very natural and created connections where they otherwise
| wouldn't be.
| j45 wrote:
| Where rambling might not have a positive connotation, imagining
| them as "musing" channels seemed to resonate.
|
| Having a way to share what's on your mind that might not get
| shared is usually what can happen in person during the early days
| of a startup.
|
| It can also allow the initial startup group to have a better
| connected sense of what's going on in each person's world
| compared to what they take the time to type.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| We had this, but they were called journal channels. It worked
| great cause I always have something to say but it's not worth
| putting in a shared channel.
| surge wrote:
| This is just rubberducking into a private channel. It's really
| not that new.
|
| I actually do this, but into a personal google doc.
| nunez wrote:
| This used to be the #random channel on Slack iirc
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I like having an #offtopic and #thoughts channel for not worrying
| about burying important info in. If something meaningful happens
| it'll get captured, otherwise it serves to connect and relate.
| babyshake wrote:
| One of these is not like the others:
|
| ideas related to current projects musings about blog posts,
| articles, user feedback "what if" suggestions photos from recent
| trips or hobbies rubber ducking a problem
|
| it seems like the goal is to split #random into #work-random and
| #not-work-random. but #ramblings seems like a weird naming
| convention. Why is an idea related to a current project a
| "rambling"?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| For one of my small-biz clients, I could use what the author
| outlines - restrictions and all (if I'm an outlier, is fine).
|
| Besides fixing my customer's stuff, I learn and improve their
| systems. There's a small corral of offsite indy IT talent; I'm
| the onsite, everything else guy.
|
| I could use a simple space to quickly post v1 thoughts in an
| unpolished format. They'd be available for our other IT to review
| and comment on.
|
| Since _I_ want this, all the client will pay for is for me to
| implement it. Nothing else. Also, the owner likes data to stay in
| house. Together it rules out subscription and cloud products. I
| 'll see what my FOSS options are.
| your_friend wrote:
| Why not one common channel?
| steele wrote:
| Reads like pro-tips for middle management avoiding losing
| knowledge captured in DMs from layoffs
| jama211 wrote:
| I would prefer this so much to enforced daily meetings. This is
| much more natural and interesting.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Seconding OP with my own experiences:
|
| The best companies I've worked for freely encouraged workers to
| leverage chat or forums for non-work stuff. Rooms for AV
| enthusiasts, for sharing music, for discussing photography,
| corporate gripes, new ideas, personal projects, meeting
| colleagues on holiday, you name it.
|
| You can absolutely have the spontaneity of physical collaboration
| through solely online and remote means. The internet itself is
| proof positive of this, companies just need to encourage that
| behavior more (and only minimally police it to avoid HR incidents
| or lawsuits).
| projexorcism wrote:
| There's no such thing as a dumb question. Only dumb people.
| projexorcism wrote:
| There's no such thing as a dumb question. There are only dumb
| people.
| matsemann wrote:
| > All the ramblings channels should be in a Ramblings section at
| the bottom of the channel list. They should be muted by default,
| with no expectation that anyone else will read them.
|
| I hate that Slack and other apps have nothing in between "mute"
| and "tell me immediately if I have anything unread". Many
| channels I want to know if there are new messages and read, just
| not by the second. If it could batch them up and only show them
| as unread after lunch, perhaps.
| fennec-posix wrote:
| yeah my coworkers deal with this in our "banter" channel, my raw
| thoughts.
| mattbee wrote:
| This 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?
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