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A lot of companies just suck at it too. "Here's Slack, figure it out" seems to be a common approach. In person you can pester the person next to you when you're new, overhear conversations, etc. but remote it is MUCH harder to ascertain the culture, Slack etiquette, etc (my favourite was "people write in Slack all the time, in public, even to themselves, it's your job to mute Slack when you need focus, and don't use DM's unless you really need the privacy"), but I have only seen this done very well in one place - Auth0 (pour one out :-( ) . Maybe because it started remote with founders thousands of KM apart.


I agree.

Rarely companies want to hire communication expert to help shape good practices even though they’re spending hundreds of thousands if not millions on stuff like Datadog etc.

I have this theory that mailing lists with rich search (slash Google Groups slash Newsgroups) are the best communication tools.

Hadn’t had opportunity to try it out though, as it was shunned „old tech”.


Ehh, IME companies are hesitant because it's not a free parameter. All of your internal processes are built on top of how people communicate, so you can't change it without changing the entirety of how work gets done. People routinely hire experts for external comms, manager training, etc. because those are easier to adjust in isolation.




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