5 ms·

Let me share a personal story. Back in 2014 when I was working at Cloudflare on DDoS mitigation I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him l

by majke 1y ago

Let me share a personal story. Back in 2014 when I was working at Cloudflare on DDoS mitigation I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". I quickly realised that these conversations had value outside the two of us - pretty much everyone else onboarded had similar questions. Some subjects were about pure onboarding friction, some were about workflows most folks didn't know existed, some were about theoretical concepts. So I moved the questions to a public (within company) channel, and called it "Marek's Bitching" - because this is what it was. Pretty much me complaining and moaning and asking annoying questions. I invited more London folks (Zygis), and before I knew half of the company joined it. It had tremendous value. It captured all the things that didn't have real place in the other places in the company, from technical novelties, through discussions that were escaping structure - we suspected intel firmware bugs, but that was outside of any specific team at the time. Then the channel was renamed to something more palatable - "Marek's technical corner" and it had a clear place in the technical company culture for more than a decade. So yes, it's important to have a place to ramble, and it's important to have "your own channel" where folks have less friction and stigma to ask stupid questions and complain. Personal channels might be overkill, but a per-team or per-location "rambling/bitching" channel is a good idea.

Aurornis 1y ago
I understand the point you were making, but from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid. Having a place to have people ask questions is great and encouraged, but doing anything that starts gravitating the knowledge toward a person instead of a topic creates problems for discoverability, searchability, and risks creating the impression (for new employees) that certain specific people are at the center of projects they just happen to know a lot about. So while the Q&A format is good to have available, I’d discourage creating separate channels around a person. I would encourage everyone to just go to the appropriate topic channel and discuss it there. I do the same thing when someone starts asking specific technical questions in #random or #general: Redirect to the project specific channel. That’s the place where all of the relevant people will be relevant and watching and it’s the first place they’ll search in the future.
- Xeoncross 1y ago
  This is the difference between a good idea and the implementation. People just act differently in "official" topic channels. It's like when you buy that super secure door lock and the lowest bid handyman bends it while installing because it's such a pain to align correctly and now it's just as vulnerable as any other lock.
  - eldenring 1y ago
    yep, also doscoverability is not an issue with Slack. You can find most things with a search, people typically don't go scrolling through a channel to find something.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      People start by searching within a channel, especially when terms are vague or frequently used.
    - deathanatos 1y ago
      What a Poe's Law of a comment. Slack's search is … okay … but there are any number of times when I have issues finding a thread I was looking at prior. For all the AI hype that is the current time, search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant" when "sorting by relevance" or b.) … find the thread when I use a synonym of an exact word in the thread. Or the other day I was struggling to find an external channel. I figured it should be easy. But again, I chose a synonym of the name, so miss there, but I though still — by management edict, all of our external channels start with #external-, I'll just pull up all external channels and linear search by eyeball … but management had named this one #ext-…
      - sk5t 1y ago
        Yes - not only is Slack search underpowered, but also records management folks are likely to configure pruning of Slack content older than a couple years or so. This is IME less likely to be a problem with wiki pages.
ZeroCool2u 1y ago
We have an organic channel like this that's just called "Study Hall". People constantly ask technical questions and they know it's a judgement free zone. Probably one of the most productive chat channels in our org.
- serf 1y ago
  >and they know it's a judgement free zone. that's the thing that's so inorganic about this whole thing : it's not a judgement free zone, it's a zone that tricks people into presuming that. If some underling somewhere says something that exposes their ignorance or naivety to either a policy problem or a technical problem you'd better realize that it's going to trigger a 'review mechanism' somewhere down the road within the organization; to think otherwise would be pure fantasy. Similarly : if you go drinking with the boss, you do still have to remember that the drunk puking slob who you're carrying to their hotel room is going to wake up and be your boss tomorrow. very few humans actually disconnect this stuff from their internalized judgements of people.
  - oefrha 1y ago
    Yeah, maybe I’m small-minded, but if someone I’m not familiar with, say a new hire asks a question way beneath their presumed experience level I’m absolutely gonna judge, judgement free be damned; and if they’re my report I’m gonna question the hiring (in my mind). There’s no shortage of imposters in the industry, most of them who’re capable of landing jobs above them are probably also smart enough to scoff at pure fantasy like “judgement free zone”.
    - anon84873628 1y ago
      There's no such thing as a judgment free zone when humans are involved :-) I tell new hires that they shouldn't be scared of asking questions, and that if they're not asking questions they're probably not pushing themselves enough. But also caution to make sure that they check available resources first, and then ask the right audience.
    - AtlasBarfed 1y ago
gr3ml1n 1y ago
Fwiw, Marek's technical corner still exists and still gets some activity.
dknecht 1y ago
And it still lives on today where we reposted this post!
jamesog 1y ago
> I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". Hi, that's me! There were definitely a lot of fun conversations. I liked that a culture of internal blogs became a thing too. It was good to see people brain dumping their experiments and findings. I think people learnt a lot from following all the internal blogs.
- DiggyJohnson 1y ago
  Always funny to see these sort of missed connections on HN. > internal blogs In my personal experience the problem is the total lack of writing culture at non-premiere companies. Put differently: unless you’re working on a great team at a great organization roughly 90% of people cannot be expected to write/read well as a component of technical collaboration. Any thoughts on that? I may just be too cynical
  - torton 1y ago
    This is rather likely to get worse. Reading comprehension is declining. Emphasis on individual "impact" and deadline pressure, common at both premiere companies and "non-premiere" companies mindlessly copying the former, both consume time that could have been spent thinking, writing, and engaging with optional things others wrote. People who avoid documents because they might get outdated create systems with no documentation at all. And now, LLMs promise a world where documents don't need to exist a priori -- a model will look at your code and generate a plausible description of possible intent and system architecture on demand, if someone implausibly happens to ask for documentation. If nobody happens to ask, that's even more time saved - a win-win! Leadership can either support or inhibit the culture of writing and reading. However, modern managers are not immune from the rising pressure. Their response is to shift from thinking and deliberate information processing to rapid-fire pattern matching. Some of them don't see documents as "real output" to begin with, and operate solely in meetings without any written record or documentation whatsoever. Of coures their staff will pick up on the pattern. I have a vivid memory of engaging with a full team working on a substantial project in the absence of their senior leader, getting the tactical picture and then asking the team about the project's goal. You could have heard a pin drop. None of the people working on the project could speak about anything but their immediate assigned tasks.
kirso 1y ago
Not to mention, its how people bond...
_ea1k 1y ago
I've noticed a trend in the last few years toward more and more DMs within our teams, and I really don't think it is a good thing. An amazingly large number of questions are generally applicable, but it is really hard to maintain a culture that actively encourages that.
throwaway-blaze 1y ago
Not to be pedantic but I spent at least a solid minute trying to understand how you collaborated with a piece of artwork. Then I realized you meant colleague. ;)

by majke 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

I understand the point you were making, but from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid. Having a place to have people ask questions is great and encouraged, but doing anything that starts gravitating the knowledge toward a person instead of a topic creates problems for discoverability, searchability, and risks creating the impression (for new employees) that certain specific people are at the center of projects they just happen to know a lot about. So while the Q&A format is good to have available, I’d discourage creating separate channels around a person. I would encourage everyone to just go to the appropriate topic channel and discuss it there. I do the same thing when someone starts asking specific technical questions in #random or #general: Redirect to the project specific channel. That’s the place where all of the relevant people will be relevant and watching and it’s the first place they’ll search in the future.

Xeoncross 1y ago
This is the difference between a good idea and the implementation. People just act differently in "official" topic channels. It's like when you buy that super secure door lock and the lowest bid handyman bends it while installing because it's such a pain to align correctly and now it's just as vulnerable as any other lock.
- eldenring 1y ago
  yep, also doscoverability is not an issue with Slack. You can find most things with a search, people typically don't go scrolling through a channel to find something.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    People start by searching within a channel, especially when terms are vague or frequently used.
  - deathanatos 1y ago
    What a Poe's Law of a comment. Slack's search is … okay … but there are any number of times when I have issues finding a thread I was looking at prior. For all the AI hype that is the current time, search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant" when "sorting by relevance" or b.) … find the thread when I use a synonym of an exact word in the thread. Or the other day I was struggling to find an external channel. I figured it should be easy. But again, I chose a synonym of the name, so miss there, but I though still — by management edict, all of our external channels start with #external-, I'll just pull up all external channels and linear search by eyeball … but management had named this one #ext-…
    - sk5t 1y ago
      Yes - not only is Slack search underpowered, but also records management folks are likely to configure pruning of Slack content older than a couple years or so. This is IME less likely to be a problem with wiki pages.

ZeroCool2u 1y ago

We have an organic channel like this that's just called "Study Hall". People constantly ask technical questions and they know it's a judgement free zone. Probably one of the most productive chat channels in our org.

serf 1y ago
>and they know it's a judgement free zone. that's the thing that's so inorganic about this whole thing : it's not a judgement free zone, it's a zone that tricks people into presuming that. If some underling somewhere says something that exposes their ignorance or naivety to either a policy problem or a technical problem you'd better realize that it's going to trigger a 'review mechanism' somewhere down the road within the organization; to think otherwise would be pure fantasy. Similarly : if you go drinking with the boss, you do still have to remember that the drunk puking slob who you're carrying to their hotel room is going to wake up and be your boss tomorrow. very few humans actually disconnect this stuff from their internalized judgements of people.
- oefrha 1y ago
  Yeah, maybe I’m small-minded, but if someone I’m not familiar with, say a new hire asks a question way beneath their presumed experience level I’m absolutely gonna judge, judgement free be damned; and if they’re my report I’m gonna question the hiring (in my mind). There’s no shortage of imposters in the industry, most of them who’re capable of landing jobs above them are probably also smart enough to scoff at pure fantasy like “judgement free zone”.
  - anon84873628 1y ago
    There's no such thing as a judgment free zone when humans are involved :-) I tell new hires that they shouldn't be scared of asking questions, and that if they're not asking questions they're probably not pushing themselves enough. But also caution to make sure that they check available resources first, and then ask the right audience.
  - AtlasBarfed 1y ago

gr3ml1n 1y ago

Fwiw, Marek's technical corner still exists and still gets some activity.

dknecht 1y ago

And it still lives on today where we reposted this post!

jamesog 1y ago

> I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". Hi, that's me! There were definitely a lot of fun conversations. I liked that a culture of internal blogs became a thing too. It was good to see people brain dumping their experiments and findings. I think people learnt a lot from following all the internal blogs.

DiggyJohnson 1y ago
Always funny to see these sort of missed connections on HN. > internal blogs In my personal experience the problem is the total lack of writing culture at non-premiere companies. Put differently: unless you’re working on a great team at a great organization roughly 90% of people cannot be expected to write/read well as a component of technical collaboration. Any thoughts on that? I may just be too cynical
- torton 1y ago
  This is rather likely to get worse. Reading comprehension is declining. Emphasis on individual "impact" and deadline pressure, common at both premiere companies and "non-premiere" companies mindlessly copying the former, both consume time that could have been spent thinking, writing, and engaging with optional things others wrote. People who avoid documents because they might get outdated create systems with no documentation at all. And now, LLMs promise a world where documents don't need to exist a priori -- a model will look at your code and generate a plausible description of possible intent and system architecture on demand, if someone implausibly happens to ask for documentation. If nobody happens to ask, that's even more time saved - a win-win! Leadership can either support or inhibit the culture of writing and reading. However, modern managers are not immune from the rising pressure. Their response is to shift from thinking and deliberate information processing to rapid-fire pattern matching. Some of them don't see documents as "real output" to begin with, and operate solely in meetings without any written record or documentation whatsoever. Of coures their staff will pick up on the pattern. I have a vivid memory of engaging with a full team working on a substantial project in the absence of their senior leader, getting the tactical picture and then asking the team about the project's goal. You could have heard a pin drop. None of the people working on the project could speak about anything but their immediate assigned tasks.

kirso 1y ago

Not to mention, its how people bond...

_ea1k 1y ago

I've noticed a trend in the last few years toward more and more DMs within our teams, and I really don't think it is a good thing. An amazingly large number of questions are generally applicable, but it is really hard to maintain a culture that actively encourages that.

throwaway-blaze 1y ago

Not to be pedantic but I spent at least a solid minute trying to understand how you collaborated with a piece of artwork. Then I realized you meant colleague. ;)