Communication Means
Our primary means of communication is the company Slack Chat. We use it for almost everything, including project discussion, communication with clients, and informal chats. In addition, sometimes we have video conferences, which we hold in Zoom.
Our channels also get automatic notifications from GitHub about new commits, from Jenkins about build results, and from monitoring services about bugs or problems on production servers. Additionally even our Minimal Bureaucracy™ ends up on Slack.
If this is your first time in our chat, we recommend you start with these channels:
- #generic - everything about everything except politics. Funny cat pictures are especially welcome;
- #english-lessons - proofreading, English lessons, and whatever else in English;
- #learning - useful and informative materials for learning;
- #Your-Project-Channel - Each project has a dedicated channel for working discussions. We consider these channels to be necessary reading, as they will help you become aware of what is happening in your project.
Most of our communication at work is in writing. Of course, there are face-to-face and Online-meetings, but the bulk of our communication happens in writing. There are a number of reasons for this:
To Save Time. Thoughts have this property: while they are in our heads, they seem simple and clear. However, as soon as we try to write them down, all sorts of ambiguities and contradictions emerge. Written thoughts may therefore require more effort than verbal explanation, but this effort is not in vain - we save not only our readers time, but, ultimately, our own as well. First, the story is more comprehensible and orderly (assuming we really have put a modicum of effort into its writing). Secondly, in contrast to oral conversation, our audience will be able to reread what was written earlier, eliminating moments of "please repeat, I didn't hear (or I was distracted)", and reducing the probability of requests like "remind me about what we discussed last time".
To Save (human) Memory. Our memory capacity is limited. Trying to hold too much information that you "mustn't forget" leads only to decreased efficiency, as much energy will be spent in the "not forgetting" (an effort which anyway doesn't guarantee at all that we won't forget something). The solution is very simple: write it down. Writing frees up memory and allows us to focus on our work at hand. Doing most of our working communication in writing puts this practice into effect automatically. We no longer have to try to remember what, when, and with whom we talked - everything is written down and we can go back and take a look at any time.
Store Longer amounts of Information and Minimize Information Distortion. Human memory, besides its inconvenient vulnerability to forgetfulness, is also vulnerable to information distortion. We often miss details, and sometimes it seems like our recollection turns into the complete opposite of the event itself. This doesn't happen with written messages; they remain unchanged for as long as you store them, and they keep all the details without any omission. Sometimes it is necessary to retrieve some details from a past dialogue, and communicating in writing gives us a tool to do, located conveniently in our pocket.
To Involve Third Parties with Ease. During work discussions, You'll regularly find yourself in a situation where you'd like to get someone else's opinion on an issue. Oral communication would require you to communicate the entire context to the new person. With written communication, it's enough to just send them the correspondence (or its most important details). This requires much less effort, and the information gets transmitted without any distortion or lost detail.
Please feel free to use public chat channels for any work-related communication. Even if your question is addressed to only one person (as long as it does not for some reason need to be kept secret), please ask in a public channel and not over DM. This improves a projects communication in several ways:
- It automatically keeps your colleagues informed about what you have discussed and what conclusions you have reached. If you communicate in public, you will be much less likely to have to recapitulate discussions and decisions. In most cases your colleagues will already have read what they need to, and if they haven't, it'll often be enough to simply send a link to the corresponding discussion;
- It gives participants the opportunity to get faster and more complete answers. Sometimes the person you are directly speaking with is either busy or does not have all the information about your issue. However, it may well be that someone else reading this chat channel will be able jump in an give a good answer quickly;
- You're less likely to have to explain what you're working on. It should be obvious from your communication;
- When you talk publicly, you share your experience. Sometimes, just by reading other people's discussions, we discover problems or solutions that we didn't even realize we ourselves had, and which we wouldn't have ever reached from the way we approached the conversation;
- Communication in public channels is not as distracting as personal messages.
Each private message usually triggers a notification for your intended
recipient. Messages in public channels do not trigger this effect by default,
i.e., the communication is asynchronous. This reduces developer distraction,
and each distraction, as you well know, constitutes a loss of focus that has
a disastorous effect on a programmer's productivity. The vast majority of
work-related questions are not so urgent that they should immediately demand
someone else's attention. If your question is really urgent, it's easy to
transform asynchronous communication into synchronous communication: simply
mention the desired person with the an
@usernameand thus trigger a notification.
Some people find themselves feeling a bit shy about public communication, especially if they are not used to it. Sometimes people think that their question is too minor to deserve public attention, or they are afraid to seem stupid. Please do not be shy :) Our chat room is really friendly, without sarcasm or ridicule. We don't have anyone who would ever call your question stupid, and we are really happy when people ask questions publicly.
For all the advantages of written communication, it's not always the best choice. Situations arise where communication in writing would be overly lengthy, or where there's a participant who is not comfortable with communicating in writing. Written communication may also convey emotions poorly, which causing misunderstanding between people.
For such cases, we use video meetings. This link provides some simple recommendations on how to make this type of communication more productive.
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