4 ms·

But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. This might not scale well to larger teams, but we simply write a short message in a dedicated chann

by dgb23 1y ago

But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. This might not scale well to larger teams, but we simply write a short message in a dedicated channel each day. It contains a short status and a few bullet points to plan the next day. Slack makes this conventient because you can write a top level message and then use the reply feature to add more details.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y ago
As you said, async doesn’t go well with scale, and async comms is OK if statuses are all you’re gonna write there. But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether. Anyway, I’ve come to really dislike async comms. If something is being communicated to you over async, it’s something not important enough that you can ignore it, in many cases indefinitely. Meetings are still the best way to keep everyone in sync and it’s a structural strategy to keep everyone accountable for making progress at their jobs.
- portaouflop 1y ago
  > you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. What? Instead you are punishing everyone to sit on a meeting, hearing two people discuss something that could have been a dm. I get that some people prefer meetings but to me every meeting with more than 3 people is a massive waste of time
  - scott_w 1y ago
    When you get to that point, those two people should take the discussion outside of the sync call. The purpose of a sync is to figure out whether your current work is on track and, if not, who and what is needed to fix that.
- poincaredisk 1y ago
  >async doesn’t go well with scale, Sync is even worse at scale. I had the pleasure of attending standups in a 20-person team. It was a nightmare where I said two sentences and then wasted the next two hours of my life listening to things I either know or are unrelevant to me. >you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read Great, because skipping three pages of unimportant conversation is faster than skipping 30 minutes of banter between two extrovert UI developers as a backend specialist. >structural strategy to keep everyone accountable Sounds exactly like something mid level managers say to themselves. Structural synergy? Keeping people accountable? I just want to work, damnit.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
    The problem with all processes is that people aren’t interested in sticking with them. Why is your team 20 people if the majority don’t do anything you’re remotely close to? Someone should have split the team or at least the standup. Why doesn’t your lead enforce a time limit and script? It can happen the other way round as well. My team is small but only I ever stick to the script. Every one else talks in detail for 2-3 minutes. Their updates could have been 20sec. You wouldn’t be complaining if someone actually did something about it.
    - ipaddr 1y ago
      Now you need three managers. The reason for the 20 person standup is to save money and give lip service to the standup trend.
      - Talanes 1y ago
        Same manager with right-sized stand-ups wouldn't cost anymore money, unless that manager is making many multiples over what any of their team makes. It seems more like a kneejerk reaction to not "waste" the manager's time at the expense of the actually-more-important-but-hierarchically-less-important employees.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
        Easy. Have another team member run the stand up. Again the problem is that no one is interested in processes to make things better or more efficient and then people blame the process. The process might have plenty of short comings, but we’ll never know.
- coldtea 1y ago
  >But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether All of that can happen just fine in a real-time team chat as well - and give people the chance to provide actual context and links, and also check back at the actual discussion later.
- izacus 1y ago
  Essentially the old "This meeting could be an email. Yeah, but would you actually read the damn email?" thing.
randomcarbloke 1y ago
async scales better than sync in this context as on larger teams you might need a queue.
scott_w 1y ago
> But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. In practice, this is harder because people don't speak up unless prodded. And on Slack, I spend a lot of time and effort prodding people for that update, whereas a stand-up takes 15 minutes, tops. Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack.
- coldtea 1y ago
  >Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack If a second "please respond, I need the answer now" Slack message is not enough, you have bigger problems
  - scott_w 1y ago
    So add yet more process and bureaucracy instead of following tried and true management techniques of having a synchronous meeting lasting 15 minutes every morning?
    - laserlight 1y ago
      This whole thread is about how standups are not “tried and true”.
      - scott_w 1y ago
        Ignoring the basics of a simple process doesn’t make the process “bad.”
jon-wood 1y ago
Over the years I've moved away from thinking of the daily standup as being a way to update everyone on what we're doing. The value in it is having a daily time when everyone on the team sees each other's faces and has a brief conversation. Sometimes it'll be a quick hello, other times we'll talk for half an hour about nothing in particular, but that's valuable on a remote team where it's all to easy to forget that everyone else is a real person.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  That's what happy hours and optional team activities are for. After hours gaming groups, book clubs, hobby groups, etc do this much better.
  - esafak 1y ago
    You don't have those things when working remotely. You need to foster social relations at work too; after-work socializing is not a substitute for a collaborative work atmosphere.
    - gunsle 1y ago
      You don’t “need” to foster social relations at work. They will naturally arise as people work together. This idea that we need to turn the workplace into a big “family” is nonsensical corporate propaganda pushed by HR departments primarily staffed by women. I promise, most men don’t give a single fuck about “fostering social relationships” at work. The guys I have respected and became the most friendly with at work have been the ones I’m in the trenches with, designing, building, etc. I don’t need to know what Susan in HR’s kid did over the weekend, it’s legitimately useless information to my entire life. I’ve got ~90 years on this planet at best. I’m not interested in wasting 1/5th of my working career in meetings, listening to people I don’t even know, telling me personal details about their lives I will not retain for more than 5 seconds. To me, it’s genuinely insulting to my time to waste it with these pointless fake displays of familiarity instead of getting to the work at hand and ending the meeting early.

by dgb23 1y ago

rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y ago

As you said, async doesn’t go well with scale, and async comms is OK if statuses are all you’re gonna write there. But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether. Anyway, I’ve come to really dislike async comms. If something is being communicated to you over async, it’s something not important enough that you can ignore it, in many cases indefinitely. Meetings are still the best way to keep everyone in sync and it’s a structural strategy to keep everyone accountable for making progress at their jobs.

portaouflop 1y ago
> you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. What? Instead you are punishing everyone to sit on a meeting, hearing two people discuss something that could have been a dm. I get that some people prefer meetings but to me every meeting with more than 3 people is a massive waste of time
- scott_w 1y ago
  When you get to that point, those two people should take the discussion outside of the sync call. The purpose of a sync is to figure out whether your current work is on track and, if not, who and what is needed to fix that.
poincaredisk 1y ago
>async doesn’t go well with scale, Sync is even worse at scale. I had the pleasure of attending standups in a 20-person team. It was a nightmare where I said two sentences and then wasted the next two hours of my life listening to things I either know or are unrelevant to me. >you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read Great, because skipping three pages of unimportant conversation is faster than skipping 30 minutes of banter between two extrovert UI developers as a backend specialist. >structural strategy to keep everyone accountable Sounds exactly like something mid level managers say to themselves. Structural synergy? Keeping people accountable? I just want to work, damnit.
- 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
  The problem with all processes is that people aren’t interested in sticking with them. Why is your team 20 people if the majority don’t do anything you’re remotely close to? Someone should have split the team or at least the standup. Why doesn’t your lead enforce a time limit and script? It can happen the other way round as well. My team is small but only I ever stick to the script. Every one else talks in detail for 2-3 minutes. Their updates could have been 20sec. You wouldn’t be complaining if someone actually did something about it.
  - ipaddr 1y ago
    Now you need three managers. The reason for the 20 person standup is to save money and give lip service to the standup trend.
    - Talanes 1y ago
      Same manager with right-sized stand-ups wouldn't cost anymore money, unless that manager is making many multiples over what any of their team makes. It seems more like a kneejerk reaction to not "waste" the manager's time at the expense of the actually-more-important-but-hierarchically-less-important employees.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
      Easy. Have another team member run the stand up. Again the problem is that no one is interested in processes to make things better or more efficient and then people blame the process. The process might have plenty of short comings, but we’ll never know.
coldtea 1y ago
>But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether All of that can happen just fine in a real-time team chat as well - and give people the chance to provide actual context and links, and also check back at the actual discussion later.
izacus 1y ago
Essentially the old "This meeting could be an email. Yeah, but would you actually read the damn email?" thing.

randomcarbloke 1y ago

async scales better than sync in this context as on larger teams you might need a queue.

scott_w 1y ago

> But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. In practice, this is harder because people don't speak up unless prodded. And on Slack, I spend a lot of time and effort prodding people for that update, whereas a stand-up takes 15 minutes, tops. Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack.

coldtea 1y ago
>Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack If a second "please respond, I need the answer now" Slack message is not enough, you have bigger problems
- scott_w 1y ago
  So add yet more process and bureaucracy instead of following tried and true management techniques of having a synchronous meeting lasting 15 minutes every morning?
  - laserlight 1y ago
    This whole thread is about how standups are not “tried and true”.
    - scott_w 1y ago
      Ignoring the basics of a simple process doesn’t make the process “bad.”

jon-wood 1y ago

Over the years I've moved away from thinking of the daily standup as being a way to update everyone on what we're doing. The value in it is having a daily time when everyone on the team sees each other's faces and has a brief conversation. Sometimes it'll be a quick hello, other times we'll talk for half an hour about nothing in particular, but that's valuable on a remote team where it's all to easy to forget that everyone else is a real person.

CuriouslyC 1y ago
That's what happy hours and optional team activities are for. After hours gaming groups, book clubs, hobby groups, etc do this much better.
- esafak 1y ago
  You don't have those things when working remotely. You need to foster social relations at work too; after-work socializing is not a substitute for a collaborative work atmosphere.
  - gunsle 1y ago
    You don’t “need” to foster social relations at work. They will naturally arise as people work together. This idea that we need to turn the workplace into a big “family” is nonsensical corporate propaganda pushed by HR departments primarily staffed by women. I promise, most men don’t give a single fuck about “fostering social relationships” at work. The guys I have respected and became the most friendly with at work have been the ones I’m in the trenches with, designing, building, etc. I don’t need to know what Susan in HR’s kid did over the weekend, it’s legitimately useless information to my entire life. I’ve got ~90 years on this planet at best. I’m not interested in wasting 1/5th of my working career in meetings, listening to people I don’t even know, telling me personal details about their lives I will not retain for more than 5 seconds. To me, it’s genuinely insulting to my time to waste it with these pointless fake displays of familiarity instead of getting to the work at hand and ending the meeting early.