5 ms·
Agreed it is the weirdest thing ever to me that people don't email anymore. Just send an email. In an email it's written down and I can search for it. In an ema
by chrismarlow9 3y ago
Agreed it is the weirdest thing ever to me that people don't email anymore. Just send an email. In an email it's written down and I can search for it. In an email I can think at my own pace and respond without worrying about trampling others. In an email people can't ramble on and on and if they do you can just not read the email. And if it's work to be done, just make a ticket.
The amount of meeting time waste baffles me. And then you try to make them productive and include information in the invite and you show up and nobody read it. So now you have to waste more time when you could have just gone directly into brainstorming.
At this point I kind of just give up. I make my suggestions to make things more efficient and try to remember that even if the work gets done sooner I won't be working any less.
- drozycki 3y agoI don’t use email at work anymore because it is siloed to the original participants. Someone on the inside needs to know to forward the whole thread to anyone who needs the information after the fact. This info is lost forever when participants leave the company. With Slack I can search through conversations where the participants are long gone. It is not the end all be all of communication, but the auto-documentation aspect is way improved over email.
- xemoka 3y agoI often thought a private, indexed, and archived, mailing list is best of both worlds. I’ve had trouble getting buy in though.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoUntil you stop paying. Not a good place to lock up communication. Zulip might work, but better to move to docs/wiki as needed.
- TexanFeller 3y ago> I don’t use email at work anymore because it is siloed to the original participants. For many people that's a selling point. I practically beg my teammates to ask questions in the team slack channel instead of DMing me, but they never do. I think it's stage fright and wanting to reveal ignorance to as few people as possible amplified by various higher up people joining the channel. Also compounded by tons of people from other teams joining our channel and no one pushing back because "we want to have an inclusive conversation" or similar platitude.
- nine_zeros 3y agoThe stage fright comes from a place of lack of psychological safety. Too many mediocre managers see asking questions as poor performance.
- JohnFen 3y ago> I practically beg my teammates to ask questions in the team slack channel instead of DMing me, but they never do. I would probably be one of them (although I'd be more likely to email you if that's an option). If I have to ask my stupid question in public, I'm more likely to simply not ask it at all -- especially if management or people who are not on my immediate team are in the Slack channel.
- baxtr 3y agoAgree. I'm shocked by how much some people despise email. "You still use email?" Yes, I do, and I believe it is really effective...
- luckman212 3y agoSame as the "you still use a desktop computer?" people. Yes, my dual 4k screens, ergonomic desk, wired Ethernet connection and powerful CPU do in fact make my life easier and my work faster than hunching over a butterfly keyboard and squinting at a 13" screen in a noisy coffee house.
- icedchai 3y agoSome people use Slack for things that should be an email. 50+ line messages, unnecessary notifications, scheduled messages.
- operatingthetan 3y agoEmail is for stuff on the record, slack and teams not so much. Especially in client service.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoExcept it doesn't work like that. There is the expectation that you wake up and go and read all the messages in a Slack channel from when you stopped working yesterday until this morning. And because it's Slack it's not organized in any way shape or form. You don't know what's important and what not.
- operatingthetan 3y agoI don't think we're talking about the same thing.
- icedchai 3y agoIf it's important, it shouldn't only be in Slack.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- atq2119 3y agoLots of people are incredibly bad at written communication. My theory is that people who worked remotely pre-Covid were selected one way or another to have above-average written communication skills. Covid suddenly brought everybody remote, and naturally the average communication skills for remote work dropped.
- throitallaway 3y ago"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?" OK, which pipeline, what errors are you receiving, when did it last work, any changes since then, etc.? A lot of people aren't good at communication, period. It's like pulling teeth sometimes.
- operatingthetan 3y ago>"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?" Even that is better than someone pinging you "hi." It's such an immediate red flag in communication skills.
- x86x87 3y agoHey! Do you have a few minutes?
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoSure! What's going on? <2 hours later> Can we jump on a Zoom?
- SlightlyLeftPad 3y agoKill me
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoHey, I did X and I got an error. Do you have screenshots? No. Console error logs? No. Time that it happened? No. Network logs? No. Can you reproduce the bug? No. Great, that was 10 minutes wasted.
- benhurmarcel 3y agoI think it’s pretty common to be drowning in both emails and meetings.
- nullc 3y ago> and if they do you can just not read the email you've identified part of the problem. Some of the people who want constant meetings are poor communicators whose messages won't be read (or won't communicate effectively) without a captive audience.
- JohnFen 3y agoI agree. Email is productive communication. 99% of meetings are a huge waste of time.
- btbuildem 3y agoEmail means there's a paper trail. I've had conversations drastically change tone when the medium changed (eg, from text messages to phone call, or from video meeting to email thread). Some people don't want to be held accountable for what they say.