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I am a firm believer that written communication is the best way to sustain a productive team.

Talking, especially in person, might get you the result you're looking for faster. Look, we decided what we needed to make and skipped the overhead of opening a ticket and capturing the back and forth.

But then you have to revisit your decision and your reasoning behind them 4 months from now. Why didn't we just do that other thing that seems more efficient? Or even worse, someone picks up your work after you leave and they have to do that, without the potential ability to recall the context. Or then you leave a meeting about making any sort of decision and start working and a few days later realize you're not on the same page.

I get that writing might not be some people's best skill, or even their preferred way of communication. We all have to put up with things we don't enjoy and learn skills to work, why should this be any different?

I work for company that is in the process of going remote first, without embracing a culture of writing first and writing everything and it's not very pretty.

Previously, I worked for a company that despite not really prioritizing remote workers, because teams were distributed across the world, had to capture a lot of the things I mentioned in the tickets created for each task. And it was really empowering to have a lot of context as someone who was tasked with maintaining those things.




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