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> Asynchronous first Umm... as an engineer I know the ins and outs of async. The fact is that synchronous is so much more efficient when it is practical. You

> Asynchronous first Umm... as an engineer I know the ins and outs of async. The fact is that synchronous is so much more efficient when it is practical. You can exchange mails with the other person for 3 weeks to get details of something nailed or get the meeting room with a whiteboard for 2 hours and get out with the complete solution without wasting time typing all those emails. Asynchronous is for when you can't get that other person/persons in the room and expect to get the thing done in reasonable time. There is a reason why you don't do standups asynchronously.

japanman425 4y ago
I push for async stand ups because they’re just such a waste of time. Look at the frigging board if you want to know what’s going on. Blockers should be brought up as soon as they occur.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Depends on how long your standups are and how disciplined the team is. I try to keep standups under 5 minutes after which most people can get back to whatever they are doing. The goal is to increase return on investment by reducing the investment while preserving most of the return. It requires that people are able to show on time, though.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    What kind of useful team conversation is taking place in under five minutes?
    - twawaaay 4y ago
      Not a conversation. There is an information exchange that may also lead to a conversation. If this is the case, the conversation happens after standup proper. The usefulness of people telling what they will be doing or what problems they are facing at the moment is that they might not know there is somebody else in the team that can help them solve this problem very quickly. Or sometimes people find they are working on same or similar thing. I also like to think it puts a little bit of pressure on people to get something done so they can show some progress on the next standup.
      - randomdata 4y ago
        > he usefulness of people telling what they will be doing or what problems they are facing at the moment is that they might not know there is somebody else in the team that can help them solve this problem very quickly. I have worked on teams of chickens running around with their heads cut off before. While that is one way to try and rein them in, would you not be better served by moving away from making and instead towards engineering? > I also like to think it puts a little bit of pressure on people to get something done so they can show some progress on the next standup. From experience, initially it does. But soon you realize that when you're racing the clock you end up taking shortcuts (introducing bugs, making poor design decisions, not properly documenting your work, etc.) that will harm you and your team later. Appearances aren't worth sacrificing the company over. It is far better to be seen as a poor employee than to be seen as the superhero of a failed business.
      - japanman425 4y ago
        >happens after standup proper This comment will get flagged and deleted shortly. However. Have you considered not using pretentious “grammar”. The “puts pressure on people” piece is a huge alarm bell of poor people skills. I’d quit shortly after interacting with you… proper.
        twawaaay 4y ago
        Not sure what your beef is. A month ago I signed up for a marathon that is in the fall. I then told my family, friends and coworkers. This puts a bit of pressure on me to get results. I did not strictly have to do this but, in my experience ,it makes it more likely I will complete my training. See, most people need a little pressure to be successful because we are naturally lazy. And yes, this includes me. If you want to work in an environment that puts absolutely no pressure on you, sure, do your own thing. There are places where nobody cares for results. But ask anybody who knows anything and they will tell you these are not good places for people who want to be successful.
        Nevermark 4y ago
        Some pressure and some stress are beneficial. They push as past our own expectations. They make focusing easier, because we have to. Too little, or too much, of either is the problem to avoid.
  - japanman425 4y ago
    None of what you said made any sense. “Reducing the investment” in what. “Preserving the return” of what.
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      Reducing the time of standups, while maintaining what is useful about them.
- musicale 4y ago
  > async stand ups because they’re just such a waste of time But bosses love them as a submission/compliance ritual, a surveillance practice, and another flavor of presenteeism.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    And I don't mind them as it is an officially blessed "we don't need you to work right now" period, giving me some time to work on personal projects while others drone on about nothing. Which, indeed, is another reason why bosses love them. With less time working, more workers are needed to get an equivalent amount of work done, increasing the headcount under their watch. As a boss' worth is measured by how many people he leads, it is in his best interest to waste as much time as he can without losing his own job.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
chrsig 4y ago
Get me in a whiteboard session, and you get responses that I've spent 15 seconds tops thinking about. Send me an email and you'll get responses that I've spent an hour or two thinking about. There'll also be a written record of the exchange for future reference. The time spent writing the email isn't wasted. It's time saved putting together documentation.
- rented_mule 4y ago
  I think the huge gap between the parent and grandparent shows that async vs. sync optimality is heavily dependent on the work being done, the people doing it, and the team/company where it's being done. An example on the async side... I worked with a couple of fantastic engineers who would come back with amazing solutions if you let them go away and think about it in depth. That worked particularly well for problems which one person could get their head around with deep focus. If you asked those two for a solution in a meeting or at a whiteboard they'd literally say "I won't answer you in real time." I've seen a lot of solid foundational infrastructure created this way. On the sync side, I worked on a team that needed relatively senior software engineering knowledge (e.g., stream processing of many MBs/second of data before their were decent open source solutions) and PhD+ level math knowledge. The most valuable tradeoffs tended to be across the software engineering / math boundary (e.g., we could use much simpler math if we could process the data faster or process much less data if the math were a little more sophisticated). But it's very rare to find people who are experts at both. Put experts from each side who are good at interactive communication at a whiteboard and tons of value pours out in an hour or two as they leverage each other's knowledge. I saw one such discussion lead directly to 3,500 LOC in one subsystem being replaced with 500 lines of much simpler code and the math being reduced from graduate level to undergraduate level at the same time.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Or do both: - have a meeting where you discuss and build a shared intuition for the problem - tomorrow (or next week or…), have a meeting where you solve the problem This is closer to what large data processing does: Synchronize the data, distribute tasks to work, synchronize and compile the results.
babyshake 4y ago
The important thing about stand-ups is that you are standing up, and not comfortable in your chair. They should probably be renamed to stand on one foots to emphasize that the point is to get them over with so you can get back to work.
andreareina 4y ago
We’ve been doing async standups and it’s been fine. The thing that really requires synchrony is if there’s a blocker which we deal with as they occur on an ad-hoc basis.
cramjabsyn 4y ago
Thats all fine and good, but the context needs to be communicated async first. This allows everyone to investigate, think, prepare questions and organize ideas/approaches. Without that sync time is wasted explaining the basic premise
UncleMeat 4y ago
My experience is that people are very good at identifying meetings that could have been emails and terrible at identifying month long email threads that could have been a 30 minute meeting.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Synchronous is fantastic when applied appropriately. The common failing I see isn't with synchronous meetings. It's with arbitrarily scheduled synchronous meetings. Scheduling a recurring meeting for a team is a fantastic way to communicate to everyone that they should wait for that recurring meeting to communicate with the team. The least productive points in my career have been characterized by recurring meetings. Once a company gets to the point where recurring meetings drive everything, the meetings themselves become the output for a large number of people. Getting work done is secondary, so long as you have something to talk about in the meetings. Synchronous communication applied judiciously on an as-needed basis is very effective, though. It just shouldn't be the first tool that everyone reaches for for simple problems, nor should it be forced into recurring schedules for the sake of filling up calendars.
hw 4y ago
> There is a reason why you don't do standups asynchronously. There are plenty of teams that do standups async. I dont need to know what everyone else is working on on a daily basis. Not to mention a 15 min recurring meeting to start the day is soul sucking, especially when you hear the words ‘I have a blocker’ and it becomes a 30 min meeting

japanman425 4y ago

I push for async stand ups because they’re just such a waste of time. Look at the frigging board if you want to know what’s going on. Blockers should be brought up as soon as they occur.

twawaaay 4y ago
Depends on how long your standups are and how disciplined the team is. I try to keep standups under 5 minutes after which most people can get back to whatever they are doing. The goal is to increase return on investment by reducing the investment while preserving most of the return. It requires that people are able to show on time, though.
- randomdata 4y ago
  What kind of useful team conversation is taking place in under five minutes?
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    Not a conversation. There is an information exchange that may also lead to a conversation. If this is the case, the conversation happens after standup proper. The usefulness of people telling what they will be doing or what problems they are facing at the moment is that they might not know there is somebody else in the team that can help them solve this problem very quickly. Or sometimes people find they are working on same or similar thing. I also like to think it puts a little bit of pressure on people to get something done so they can show some progress on the next standup.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      > he usefulness of people telling what they will be doing or what problems they are facing at the moment is that they might not know there is somebody else in the team that can help them solve this problem very quickly. I have worked on teams of chickens running around with their heads cut off before. While that is one way to try and rein them in, would you not be better served by moving away from making and instead towards engineering? > I also like to think it puts a little bit of pressure on people to get something done so they can show some progress on the next standup. From experience, initially it does. But soon you realize that when you're racing the clock you end up taking shortcuts (introducing bugs, making poor design decisions, not properly documenting your work, etc.) that will harm you and your team later. Appearances aren't worth sacrificing the company over. It is far better to be seen as a poor employee than to be seen as the superhero of a failed business.
    - japanman425 4y ago
      >happens after standup proper This comment will get flagged and deleted shortly. However. Have you considered not using pretentious “grammar”. The “puts pressure on people” piece is a huge alarm bell of poor people skills. I’d quit shortly after interacting with you… proper.
      - twawaaay 4y ago
        Not sure what your beef is. A month ago I signed up for a marathon that is in the fall. I then told my family, friends and coworkers. This puts a bit of pressure on me to get results. I did not strictly have to do this but, in my experience ,it makes it more likely I will complete my training. See, most people need a little pressure to be successful because we are naturally lazy. And yes, this includes me. If you want to work in an environment that puts absolutely no pressure on you, sure, do your own thing. There are places where nobody cares for results. But ask anybody who knows anything and they will tell you these are not good places for people who want to be successful.
      - Nevermark 4y ago
        Some pressure and some stress are beneficial. They push as past our own expectations. They make focusing easier, because we have to. Too little, or too much, of either is the problem to avoid.
- japanman425 4y ago
  None of what you said made any sense. “Reducing the investment” in what. “Preserving the return” of what.
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    Reducing the time of standups, while maintaining what is useful about them.
musicale 4y ago
> async stand ups because they’re just such a waste of time But bosses love them as a submission/compliance ritual, a surveillance practice, and another flavor of presenteeism.
- randomdata 4y ago
  And I don't mind them as it is an officially blessed "we don't need you to work right now" period, giving me some time to work on personal projects while others drone on about nothing. Which, indeed, is another reason why bosses love them. With less time working, more workers are needed to get an equivalent amount of work done, increasing the headcount under their watch. As a boss' worth is measured by how many people he leads, it is in his best interest to waste as much time as he can without losing his own job.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

chrsig 4y ago

Get me in a whiteboard session, and you get responses that I've spent 15 seconds tops thinking about. Send me an email and you'll get responses that I've spent an hour or two thinking about. There'll also be a written record of the exchange for future reference. The time spent writing the email isn't wasted. It's time saved putting together documentation.

rented_mule 4y ago
I think the huge gap between the parent and grandparent shows that async vs. sync optimality is heavily dependent on the work being done, the people doing it, and the team/company where it's being done. An example on the async side... I worked with a couple of fantastic engineers who would come back with amazing solutions if you let them go away and think about it in depth. That worked particularly well for problems which one person could get their head around with deep focus. If you asked those two for a solution in a meeting or at a whiteboard they'd literally say "I won't answer you in real time." I've seen a lot of solid foundational infrastructure created this way. On the sync side, I worked on a team that needed relatively senior software engineering knowledge (e.g., stream processing of many MBs/second of data before their were decent open source solutions) and PhD+ level math knowledge. The most valuable tradeoffs tended to be across the software engineering / math boundary (e.g., we could use much simpler math if we could process the data faster or process much less data if the math were a little more sophisticated). But it's very rare to find people who are experts at both. Put experts from each side who are good at interactive communication at a whiteboard and tons of value pours out in an hour or two as they leverage each other's knowledge. I saw one such discussion lead directly to 3,500 LOC in one subsystem being replaced with 500 lines of much simpler code and the math being reduced from graduate level to undergraduate level at the same time.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Or do both: - have a meeting where you discuss and build a shared intuition for the problem - tomorrow (or next week or…), have a meeting where you solve the problem This is closer to what large data processing does: Synchronize the data, distribute tasks to work, synchronize and compile the results.

babyshake 4y ago

The important thing about stand-ups is that you are standing up, and not comfortable in your chair. They should probably be renamed to stand on one foots to emphasize that the point is to get them over with so you can get back to work.

andreareina 4y ago

We’ve been doing async standups and it’s been fine. The thing that really requires synchrony is if there’s a blocker which we deal with as they occur on an ad-hoc basis.

cramjabsyn 4y ago

Thats all fine and good, but the context needs to be communicated async first. This allows everyone to investigate, think, prepare questions and organize ideas/approaches. Without that sync time is wasted explaining the basic premise

UncleMeat 4y ago

My experience is that people are very good at identifying meetings that could have been emails and terrible at identifying month long email threads that could have been a 30 minute meeting.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

Synchronous is fantastic when applied appropriately. The common failing I see isn't with synchronous meetings. It's with arbitrarily scheduled synchronous meetings. Scheduling a recurring meeting for a team is a fantastic way to communicate to everyone that they should wait for that recurring meeting to communicate with the team. The least productive points in my career have been characterized by recurring meetings. Once a company gets to the point where recurring meetings drive everything, the meetings themselves become the output for a large number of people. Getting work done is secondary, so long as you have something to talk about in the meetings. Synchronous communication applied judiciously on an as-needed basis is very effective, though. It just shouldn't be the first tool that everyone reaches for for simple problems, nor should it be forced into recurring schedules for the sake of filling up calendars.

hw 4y ago

> There is a reason why you don't do standups asynchronously. There are plenty of teams that do standups async. I dont need to know what everyone else is working on on a daily basis. Not to mention a 15 min recurring meeting to start the day is soul sucking, especially when you hear the words ‘I have a blocker’ and it becomes a 30 min meeting