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Less meetings / more async isn’t always the best answer. Most people are terrible at written communication, and much better at spoken (which makes sense since
by tiffanyh 3y ago
Less meetings / more async isn’t always the best answer.
Most people are terrible at written communication, and much better at spoken (which makes sense since most speak more than write).
So even though it’s terribly unfortunate, for the masses, more times than not - meetings have a total net-gain effect vs async written.
- turnsout 3y agoYeah the answer is actually MORE meetings which are shorter and have 5 or fewer participants. I can’t tell you how many 1 hour meetings I’ve sat through with 20 people, only 2 of whom are talking.
- esafak 3y agoWe must stop constantly lowering the bar. Let them learn to write, or don't hire them in the first place. Communication skill is a good hiring criterion.
- tiffanyh 3y agoThat’s much easier said if you work for a startup. But if you work for either a large organization or a company that’s been around for decades, you influencing that kind of change (across departments you don’t own) is virtually impossible unless you’re the CEO. And even then, extremely difficult.
- esafak 3y agoIf a company as big as Amazon can pull off mandating writing standards so can yours. I understand that many companies just don't care. They tend to be run by steward CEOs and mercenary managers. I simply avoid them. https://rahulramchandani.com/writing-culture-at-amazon/ https://rahulramchandani.com/writing-culture-at-amazon/
- tiffanyh 3y agoBezos pulled it off by starting that practice from immediate onset of founding his company (hence my startup comment). It’s not like 20-years into Amazon, he then decide to implement that practice. Also, people misconstrue Amazon as being an async culture. That’s incorrect. Amazon is actually an anti-PowerPoint culture. So when meetings need to happen, you need to convey your info in long form writing since PPT isn’t allowed. That doesn’t mean the culture is async.
- watwut 3y agoI would not call it lowering the bar. People were always vad at writing. It is more of not raising the expectations too much.
- vladvasiliu 3y agoI would. At least in my experience, people who are bad at written communication are bad at communicating, period. The saving grace of spoken communication is that you can quickly see the lacking information and immediately ask for details, instead of going back and forth via email or other async medium.
- shrimpx 3y agoBy the way, since the beginning of time, open source was happening asynchronously on email and IRC. Linux, one of the most complex and most useful pieces of software that exists, was done over asynchronous text. There are innumerable examples of builder success when working async. The synchronization obsession comes from managers and execs.
- jayd16 3y agoHow is this compelling compared to the countless projects that used meetings? All it proves is both can work, not that one is better than the other.
- shrimpx 3y agoWe have plenty of proof that you can build successful large-scale software without synchronization or zoom or in-person meetings. A successful project that makes use of synchronization doesn't prove that synchronization itself is successful. At best it proves that synchronization may not destroy the craft entirely. I admit that synchronization may add something to the development of business software, but we have plenty of business software that doesn't use synchronization, like Gitlab, Tailscale, etc.
- asdff 3y agoWhile most people are terrible at written communication, I think there are even fewer people that can have a nice efficient meeting. I've been in so many meetings that amount to "so whats new?" What a complete waste of time. Those meetings by definition have no agenda. I update what is new, and inevitably there are all these follow up questions, and time spent sitting around not speaking and merely thinking silently about the situation. Meetings like these can be anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. I'm not getting anything from this process that I wouldn't have gotten from emailing my update out in some bullet points, and responding to follow up emails on specifics where I perhaps have more time to come up with good responses that doesn't come at the cost of everyone else sitting there in the meeting.