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> everyone on the team writing up weekly summaries. Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely

> everyone on the team writing up weekly summaries. Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. > record every video conference Don’t do this shit. It’s a great way to have everyone reserved rather than relaxed with free flowing ideas.

jordanbeiber 5y ago
> Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. This is probably true if you work in complete isolation. If, however, you are a part of a larger team or organization a lot of value can come out of this type of transparency - it removes the need for a lot of meetings and is a great tool in an asynchronous work environment. Just two minutes ago one of the devs in a team I manage picked something someone from a different team logged about, and decided to initiate a discussion about a potential conflict. I agree that it should not be mandated though, but should come from the fact that people see it as valuable. There's also a cultural aspect of it - it brings life to an online community that have to be built, and it works to fill the need of casual interactions during lunch or other spontaneous gatherings that no longer occur with regular cadence.
- sdoering 5y ago
  I am one of the most senior members of the team I am in. I receive around 50 to 70 mails per day (on a slow day). Most of them corporate noise from the mother ship. I still need to at least skim them as sometimes parts or single mails are relevant. Also there is a barrage of mails from the different projects I am onboarded onto as an expert for specific topics. So I need to take a close look at these and see if there are action items for me included. Then the regular mails from within the team I need to skim if anything is expected of me. On top of that there is Slack and MS Teams. And a few different Jira Instances I need to stay on top of. Over the last 16 months I have seen my team in person exactly once for an afternoon at a working offsite. When Corona started I did a daily stand-up post in our team channel in Slack. I stopped a few weeks ago as except for one colleague nobody had participated for over a year. So why add to the noise for them I asked myself. How would you expect me to read additional prose about what my colleagues have done. I just wouldn't get enough out of it. Because the things I would profit from in terms of synergies would be nitty-gritty technical details that would be omitted in a weekly summary. It would just be additional noise to me. If I have a question I ask in Slack and receive great substantial replies within very short time. If I can contribute I answer questions in Slack. Else I do my work and try to ignore as much of the corporate noise as possible. At least it is email noise. Not open space office noise. The latter is harder to ignore.
  - jordanbeiber 5y ago
    Seems like your place of employment have a bunch of cultural and work process issues to sort out, to be honest. The diary entries are supposed to replace other forms of communication - not be an addition. My place of work strive for autonomous teams within specific business domains. You describe yourself as kind of a bottleneck, as things are expected from you in various projects, via email no less. We’re facing completely different work environments, and as such you see a daily or weekly log as an additional burden. I see it as replacing tones of emails and meetings. Again - it’s not required here, but as people have noticed the use and asynchronous discussions arising from these log entries, it’s taken a hold. I do them myself as a manager, as my team deserves to know what I’m up to.
    - sdoering 5y ago
      > Seems like your place of employment have a bunch of cultural and work process issues to sort out, to be honest. The place and direct team not - the corporate mothership probably. It would be easy if I could at least filter out (internal) spam via sender addresses, but the sender address is a central one for ham as well as spam. > You describe yourself as kind of a bottleneck, as things are expected from you in various projects, via email no less. I am in part a bottle neck - in part just the consultant that is being onboarded into projects for specific questions, but as the probability is high that in the future there will be additional requests in my specific domains I am not rolled off these projects and therefore receive all client/project based "global" communication - even if my contribution is one hour every half a year. So yeah. This is an interesting way of putting strain on my inbox. > I see it as replacing tones of emails and meetings. I would love this. Would probably not work with my specific job - even if it could work for a lot of people in the place I work at. Being a function across different teams makes this unpractical for me - but not for others.
      - jordanbeiber 5y ago
        Interesting read - I love questioning “the process” and drilling down in ways of working. I am, almost an involuntary, manager of 6 different dev teams, and I often say that my aim to reduce the “management” part of my job to a shared duties whiteboard. Having this as an utopian goal I really strive to remove anything that will hinder team autonomy. Transparency, communication and ownership is crucial to this mission. Always team, never individuals!
dewey 5y ago
> Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. Where I work we have weekly update emails usually sent out on Friday. I actually enjoy writing down a bullet list of tasks I finished and which ones are planned for next week to keep myself organized. It's mostly for myself and not for others. You are not really expected to religiously read everyone's emails and skimming them is fine to keep a general overview what people around you are up to.
Kaze404 5y ago
> Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. Try daily summaries, which is what we do. Glad to know this screaming "micromanaging" wasn't paranoia from my part though.
drooby 5y ago
> Don’t do this shit. It’s a great way to have everyone reserved rather than relaxed with free flowing ideas. It’s kind of a shame that this is probably true. My company has some bi-weekly presentations/meetings that are recorded and I get a ton of value out of not attending them, but then pulling them up in my own time and playing them back at 2x speed.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  > I get a ton of value out of not attending them, but then pulling them up in my own time and playing them back at 2x speed. i used to enjoy this too until i realised that not everybody can do it and i am probably beeing a dick for doing it. idk your specific situation; it might make sense temporarily, but try to be emphatic.
eropple 5y ago
> Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. I'm a senior who's been here for a while on a team of folks who are less experienced or are comparatively new to the company. My team has started doing a brief (few sentence) drop into Slack every few days and I couldn't be happier because it means I know when people are stuck and need a hand.

jordanbeiber 5y ago

> Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. This is probably true if you work in complete isolation. If, however, you are a part of a larger team or organization a lot of value can come out of this type of transparency - it removes the need for a lot of meetings and is a great tool in an asynchronous work environment. Just two minutes ago one of the devs in a team I manage picked something someone from a different team logged about, and decided to initiate a discussion about a potential conflict. I agree that it should not be mandated though, but should come from the fact that people see it as valuable. There's also a cultural aspect of it - it brings life to an online community that have to be built, and it works to fill the need of casual interactions during lunch or other spontaneous gatherings that no longer occur with regular cadence.

sdoering 5y ago
I am one of the most senior members of the team I am in. I receive around 50 to 70 mails per day (on a slow day). Most of them corporate noise from the mother ship. I still need to at least skim them as sometimes parts or single mails are relevant. Also there is a barrage of mails from the different projects I am onboarded onto as an expert for specific topics. So I need to take a close look at these and see if there are action items for me included. Then the regular mails from within the team I need to skim if anything is expected of me. On top of that there is Slack and MS Teams. And a few different Jira Instances I need to stay on top of. Over the last 16 months I have seen my team in person exactly once for an afternoon at a working offsite. When Corona started I did a daily stand-up post in our team channel in Slack. I stopped a few weeks ago as except for one colleague nobody had participated for over a year. So why add to the noise for them I asked myself. How would you expect me to read additional prose about what my colleagues have done. I just wouldn't get enough out of it. Because the things I would profit from in terms of synergies would be nitty-gritty technical details that would be omitted in a weekly summary. It would just be additional noise to me. If I have a question I ask in Slack and receive great substantial replies within very short time. If I can contribute I answer questions in Slack. Else I do my work and try to ignore as much of the corporate noise as possible. At least it is email noise. Not open space office noise. The latter is harder to ignore.
- jordanbeiber 5y ago
  Seems like your place of employment have a bunch of cultural and work process issues to sort out, to be honest. The diary entries are supposed to replace other forms of communication - not be an addition. My place of work strive for autonomous teams within specific business domains. You describe yourself as kind of a bottleneck, as things are expected from you in various projects, via email no less. We’re facing completely different work environments, and as such you see a daily or weekly log as an additional burden. I see it as replacing tones of emails and meetings. Again - it’s not required here, but as people have noticed the use and asynchronous discussions arising from these log entries, it’s taken a hold. I do them myself as a manager, as my team deserves to know what I’m up to.
  - sdoering 5y ago
    > Seems like your place of employment have a bunch of cultural and work process issues to sort out, to be honest. The place and direct team not - the corporate mothership probably. It would be easy if I could at least filter out (internal) spam via sender addresses, but the sender address is a central one for ham as well as spam. > You describe yourself as kind of a bottleneck, as things are expected from you in various projects, via email no less. I am in part a bottle neck - in part just the consultant that is being onboarded into projects for specific questions, but as the probability is high that in the future there will be additional requests in my specific domains I am not rolled off these projects and therefore receive all client/project based "global" communication - even if my contribution is one hour every half a year. So yeah. This is an interesting way of putting strain on my inbox. > I see it as replacing tones of emails and meetings. I would love this. Would probably not work with my specific job - even if it could work for a lot of people in the place I work at. Being a function across different teams makes this unpractical for me - but not for others.
    - jordanbeiber 5y ago
      Interesting read - I love questioning “the process” and drilling down in ways of working. I am, almost an involuntary, manager of 6 different dev teams, and I often say that my aim to reduce the “management” part of my job to a shared duties whiteboard. Having this as an utopian goal I really strive to remove anything that will hinder team autonomy. Transparency, communication and ownership is crucial to this mission. Always team, never individuals!

dewey 5y ago

> Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. Where I work we have weekly update emails usually sent out on Friday. I actually enjoy writing down a bullet list of tasks I finished and which ones are planned for next week to keep myself organized. It's mostly for myself and not for others. You are not really expected to religiously read everyone's emails and skimming them is fine to keep a general overview what people around you are up to.

Kaze404 5y ago

> Waste of time unless you’re an obsessive micromanager. Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. Try daily summaries, which is what we do. Glad to know this screaming "micromanaging" wasn't paranoia from my part though.

drooby 5y ago

> Don’t do this shit. It’s a great way to have everyone reserved rather than relaxed with free flowing ideas. It’s kind of a shame that this is probably true. My company has some bi-weekly presentations/meetings that are recorded and I get a ton of value out of not attending them, but then pulling them up in my own time and playing them back at 2x speed.

hansel_der 5y ago
> I get a ton of value out of not attending them, but then pulling them up in my own time and playing them back at 2x speed. i used to enjoy this too until i realised that not everybody can do it and i am probably beeing a dick for doing it. idk your specific situation; it might make sense temporarily, but try to be emphatic.

eropple 5y ago

> Other team members either don’t read these entirely or just skim them. I'm a senior who's been here for a while on a team of folks who are less experienced or are comparatively new to the company. My team has started doing a brief (few sentence) drop into Slack every few days and I couldn't be happier because it means I know when people are stuck and need a hand.