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I found this can have negative consequences for more timid employees, junior hires or new joiners. People dont like sounding stupid in public, especially not in

I found this can have negative consequences for more timid employees, junior hires or new joiners. People dont like sounding stupid in public, especially not in front of people they dont know. No matter how much of a safe culture you instil, human nature tends to prevail here and you get the loudest personalities being the the users of those public channels whilst others either dont ask those important questions or seek back channels anyway

vel0city 2y ago
Yeah, I'd agree you want a healthy balance of 1 on 1 and group conversation. A quick aside is one thing, and if it is a question that should lead to documentation then documentation should be written for it instead of just assuming someone is going to search through a year+ of slack messages in some public channels. Even in person, not every conversation is good to be had in front of the large group for a variety of reasons.
mvdtnz 2y ago
Then these employees should use it as a growth opportunity. If you want to be effective at work you need to accept you'll be uncomfortable at times.
- 7k5kyrty45 2y ago
  Hamfisting an ideology to human nature just doesen't seem to work no matter how nice the end result could be. People don't generally do uncomfortable things unless they are forced to, take for example literally anything else in life; entire fields of professions exist because we don't like cleaning thing X or Y
aen1 2y ago
1000% agree. I'd rather spin my wheels for an hour on Google than ask a silly question in public
- negus 2y ago
  I would like to work with you. Asking searchable things may be considered disrespectful to one's time
  - griomnib 2y ago
    Given the rapidly declining quality of search results, and the subtle hallucinations of LLM on advanced topics, I think that attitude is outdated. We’ve gone backwards in terms of the internet being reliable. Human experience is still useful.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I think this is something that can really be mitigated by more senior people modeling good behavior. For example, as a principal engineer on a new project or working on something I wasn't familiar with, I'd go out of my way to ask things along the lines of "Hey, this might be a dumb question, but I'm new to X so could you explain how I do ..." I think this goes a long way to building up a culture of psychological safety on a team.

vel0city 2y ago

Yeah, I'd agree you want a healthy balance of 1 on 1 and group conversation. A quick aside is one thing, and if it is a question that should lead to documentation then documentation should be written for it instead of just assuming someone is going to search through a year+ of slack messages in some public channels. Even in person, not every conversation is good to be had in front of the large group for a variety of reasons.

mvdtnz 2y ago

Then these employees should use it as a growth opportunity. If you want to be effective at work you need to accept you'll be uncomfortable at times.

7k5kyrty45 2y ago
Hamfisting an ideology to human nature just doesen't seem to work no matter how nice the end result could be. People don't generally do uncomfortable things unless they are forced to, take for example literally anything else in life; entire fields of professions exist because we don't like cleaning thing X or Y

aen1 2y ago

1000% agree. I'd rather spin my wheels for an hour on Google than ask a silly question in public

negus 2y ago
I would like to work with you. Asking searchable things may be considered disrespectful to one's time
- griomnib 2y ago
  Given the rapidly declining quality of search results, and the subtle hallucinations of LLM on advanced topics, I think that attitude is outdated. We’ve gone backwards in terms of the internet being reliable. Human experience is still useful.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I think this is something that can really be mitigated by more senior people modeling good behavior. For example, as a principal engineer on a new project or working on something I wasn't familiar with, I'd go out of my way to ask things along the lines of "Hey, this might be a dumb question, but I'm new to X so could you explain how I do ..." I think this goes a long way to building up a culture of psychological safety on a team.