Yes, that's a good thing because you have searchable history [1] and can communicate asynchronously without interrupting anyone :)
[1] Although that may be bad for CYA purposes.
At my WFH job, I spent a lot of time searching Slack, and reading through documentation which had been distilled from Slack conversations. I learned a lot faster than I have, so far, at this job.
It’s a huge drag on their efficiency, in person or remote, and hurts hiring because they struggle to provide even a handful of of remote days per year in a market where every office worker I know (aside from here) is at least hybrid-leaning-remote (and most office workers I know aren’t in tech, nor is this a tech company). They have no idea that it’s bad, though.
I try to encourage public (or group) chats but I _think_ people, especially juniors or new-joiners, are reluctant to look unknowledgeable.
For some things, I've explicitly told people: "can you copy and paste this question in our support channel, so I can answer there?" But for a lot of things, I've just accepted that this is the new normal, and for some of it, I even understand why it is the way it is.
And god help you if your org also has a short chat retention policy.
Spoiler alert: He was one of, if not the worst, manager I have ever had because, surprise! he was awful in every other dimension as well.
The problem with chat-based solutions is people get lazy in articulation. So instead of a cohesive idea it’s spread across a giant thread. And instead of actually creating a proper document, it’s easy to say, “Meh, I’ll do it later it’s in slack.” But then it never gets done, and the info is privy to only those in the conversation.
It can be good or bad either way, but there’s no substitute for in-person communication; and there’s no substitute for a thoughtfully constructed document.
Seems like an actual use case for LLMs. Yeah I understand the potential issues but (worst case) confusing documentation with some errors and flawed assumptions yet proper citation and sources (so it can be manually improved and eventually turned into thoughtfully constructed document) seems better than having no docs or entirely outdated ones.
But after that, it's a real tradeoff. You can't just expect people to create and publish meeting notes when they catch a senior in the hallway and get an explanation they need, even if it would help others in their situation (or help themselves, in 6 months when they need to do that again and can't quite remember the steps (Unless their mentor modeled this important skill, I guess?)). https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri...
So after this kind of conversation I would compose a short email to him, "As agreed during the conversation today, I will do this and that within given period." He hated these emails, I could tell. I'm so glad this shit-show is over.
Great for bad/mediocre managers, horrible for workers.
My boss at this point understands that he's often putting me in a double or triple bind, but is obligated to do so and is never going to get approval for not doing so; My attempts to acquire verbal directives as to priority are met with "figure it out" and a grin. But then he's also extremely forgiving about accountability, doesn't attempt to apply metrics, because he understands that I'm going to be working on it all day anyway.
Sometimes the bureaucratic style, enforced from the top down, is "Ask for unreasonable things in order to attain reasonable outcomes".
I do not work with life-critical systems, where this sort of thing absolutely would not fly.
Seems like at this point, you two have trust which has been built up based on respect/maturity, evidence of honesty/sincerity and delivery. You two are more or less a well oiled machine.
Works for bosses and more importantly for customers who may not even know how to define the work properly.
Few months or weeks is fine. Everything else is just contributing to noise. Slack started when Snapchat introduced disappearing stories.
A work from home full time and don’t want to go back to the office, but the periodic need for unscheduled ad-hoc communication is absolutely the most exhausting part of it.
There’s a balance here, as the 15 minute conversation is often a 45 minute disruption for the target and often the people around them. The other challenge is in my experience the trade off wasn’t “this information cannot be obtained any other way” but more along the lines of “it’s easier to walk over than read the documentation/make any attempt to answer the question on my own”.
Asynchronous shifts the downsides to the person asking, so people tend to have strong opinions if they tend to be on one of those sides a lot more than the other.
Sure, but that’s going to impact the claimed time differential if you have to schedule it and wait.
I think both approaches have their merits but unless you’re in a group focused on the same goals I prefer the approach of trying to solve it yourself and trying an asynchronous message first, possibly turning into synchronous if needed, because the first two steps don’t have dependencies and will make the last more productive.
I mean you ask away... asynchronously... then do some other task or part of task that doesn't require the blocker. By the time you're done with that you may have your answer or whoever's attention that you need.
I fucking hate this, it's less disrupting for you but the person you asked might be like me and need another 15-30 min to get back into the same focus state they were before your question came through.
If you think it's hard to go do something else while you are waiting for a response to not lose context the same applies to the other side, it can be hard to get back into the context they were pulled from.
At least with async communication I can reply when I get unfocused or finish what I was working on, even just saying "sorry, can't answer you right now" when in a state of deep focus takes me out of that state...
It's extremely exhausting being the person who gets asked multiple times a day about things outside of the current context, switching them to answer your inquiries is not effortless, it just looks that way to you.