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This is the power of meeting the "needs" of business side suits who don't know how to use git or a real editor. So many times I've gotten pushback about writing

This is the power of meeting the "needs" of business side suits who don't know how to use git or a real editor. So many times I've gotten pushback about writing docs in git instead of in confluence because "what about the non-technical people, what if they need to edit something?". So the lesson learned is that if you can use your proprietary vendor lock in to trap a bunch of C-levels via stockholm syndrome you can just keep failing up no matter how shitty the actual tech on your product is.

pembrook 5y ago
What's ironic...is instead of educating and offering a workable alternative, you actually made the problem worse and the sale easier for Atlassian! No, the rest of the company shouldn't be required to enter the complex and esoteric world of Git and fire up a terminal + a bloated code editor and deal with merge conflicts just so they can collaborate on a simple text doc. This reads like a horror story I'd find on the landing page of some Saas tool under a heading that reads, "The Problem"
- arminiusreturns 5y ago
  > No, the rest of the company shouldn't be required to enter the complex and esoteric world of Git and fire up a terminal + a bloated code editor and deal with merge conflicts just so they can collaborate on a simple text doc. Instead, they just won't update the doc at all and will pester the kind of person who does know how to use git until they do it for them. Then the doc will sit there dormant and un-updated until the process repeats. > a bloated code editor Have you ever used Confluence? SMH. All those defending Atlassian need to go read this other current front page hn article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28414308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28414308 and probably lots of other articles about good documentation. To be fair, I understand what you are saying, but the problem is you are trying to meet the needs of suits, while I'm trying to meet the needs of technical teams. I can acknowledge that git can be daunting for suits, and probably not the correct method for them to write docs, (e.g., I'm not saying force the suits to use git, even though, with a web interface like GHE or gitlab etc, this is actually quite easy and visually intuitive, no terminal or (laughing) "bloated code editor" required) but it seems the "suits side" of this argument doesn't want to acknowledge that the needs of technical teams aren't being met when they force their lowest common denominator tool on the entire org.

pembrook 5y ago

What's ironic...is instead of educating and offering a workable alternative, you actually made the problem worse and the sale easier for Atlassian! No, the rest of the company shouldn't be required to enter the complex and esoteric world of Git and fire up a terminal + a bloated code editor and deal with merge conflicts just so they can collaborate on a simple text doc. This reads like a horror story I'd find on the landing page of some Saas tool under a heading that reads, "The Problem"

arminiusreturns 5y ago
> No, the rest of the company shouldn't be required to enter the complex and esoteric world of Git and fire up a terminal + a bloated code editor and deal with merge conflicts just so they can collaborate on a simple text doc. Instead, they just won't update the doc at all and will pester the kind of person who does know how to use git until they do it for them. Then the doc will sit there dormant and un-updated until the process repeats. > a bloated code editor Have you ever used Confluence? SMH. All those defending Atlassian need to go read this other current front page hn article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28414308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28414308 and probably lots of other articles about good documentation. To be fair, I understand what you are saying, but the problem is you are trying to meet the needs of suits, while I'm trying to meet the needs of technical teams. I can acknowledge that git can be daunting for suits, and probably not the correct method for them to write docs, (e.g., I'm not saying force the suits to use git, even though, with a web interface like GHE or gitlab etc, this is actually quite easy and visually intuitive, no terminal or (laughing) "bloated code editor" required) but it seems the "suits side" of this argument doesn't want to acknowledge that the needs of technical teams aren't being met when they force their lowest common denominator tool on the entire org.