from Hacker News

If you're remote, ramble

by lawgimenez on 8/3/25, 10:32 AM with 464 comments

by majke on 8/3/25, 1:56 PM
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.
by rablackburn on 8/3/25, 10:47 AM
I did read the post, but allow me to also recommend rambling when you’re remote.
As in, take time in your day to wander and roam. (I would go for a ~1hr hike in the mornings as my “commute”)
It gives you a sense of distinction from being home or “at work”. The routine cardio, and musings you have while walking make it well worth it.
by codingdave on 8/3/25, 2:13 PM
I'm with the other commenters who agree in spirit, but would hate the details in the post. Assigned channels where you are expected to post your random thoughts feels utterly dystopian to me.
In my experience, "rambling" channels build up organically... as you have a thought, you share it with someone relevant, not just drop it into a channel and see who reads it. Over time, small group chats evolve naturally, and assuming everyone has communications skills, topics that become relevant to the whole team are then shared with the whole team.
I agree that such discussions are healthy, maybe even required, for a functional remote team. But let people organize themselves - don't prescribe specific methods that teams must follow. The last thing we need is a formal framework of how to have organic discussions.
by siva7 on 8/3/25, 10:49 AM
> We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent of water cooler talk.
This is the difference. Most teams have scheduled daily (!) meetings, so such rambling channels often times feel more like another chore and therefore fail because they haven't emerged of a natural need from the team.
by softwaredoug on 8/3/25, 2:57 PM
There is a kind of leader that's threatened when they don't control communication. In these cases, random thought bombs on slack feel like chaos. Like people are going in random directions not rowing together. I don't think this is true of course -- people are just sharing inspiration and ideas. But in some places / cultures just rambling on slack can be dangerous and put a target on your back. You can be labeled as "distracting" by these leaders that feel threatened / worried about the perception the team is not executing on their marching orders.
Somehow this is more embarrassing to this leader than random hallway conversations you'd have in a regular office environment. So these leaders have an especially hard time in a remote environment. But they do soon learn that even Slack DMs can be searched and they love this tool to root out "troublemakers".
Of course, if you can, leave such a place. But not everyone has this luxury.
by 9dev on 8/3/25, 10:47 AM
The cynic in me says this ends up as yet another list of channels that I need to scan for anything interesting, and interact with to keep up an appearance of engagement.
I appreciate any effort to increase social cohesion in remote teams, but intermingling it with one of the main stressors of my work environment—keeping up with team communication—isn’t the right way IMHO.
by ryankrage77 on 8/3/25, 2:05 PM
Huh, just realised my team did this organically without realising it. People were often hesitant to ask questions they perceived as 'dumb' in the group chat, and definitely unwilling to post anything seen as complaining/moaning about problems. We created a second chat without any managers in it, with a description clarifying it was a dumping ground for questions and comments that didn't fit in other chats. It sees a small but steady flow of use, mostly questions that people probably should know, but can't remember the answer/process of the top of their head, and the occasional slightly less-than-professional complaint or criticism about a service/tool/process. My favourite part is that I can actually discuss things in there - in the main chat, once the question is answered/problem is solved, if we keep chatting about it it's seen as clutter/distraction. I think it's beneficial to have an outlet for these things.
by liveoneggs on 8/3/25, 12:56 PM
I strongly agree with the title but the prescribed details are not to my taste.
Pick a channel grouping that makes sense (by-team/by-project/by-manager) and Just Start Typing. Busy channels are alive and will create their own culture organically. Freely mix in work talk with pictures of cool stuff you found while walking the dog. "threads" makes this extremely manageable.
by senko on 8/3/25, 11:02 AM
I fail to see how this is different from a general off-topic chat channel which you're not expected to follow (but can peek at on downtime or while waiting for Claude Code).
While that doesn't scale for large companies, for 2-10 (mentioned in the article) it's better than 2-10 such channels you need to keep track of.
by ogou on 8/3/25, 3:02 PM
After watching so many work chats disintegrate from politics, social commentary, or pedantic arguments I have totally avoided all unstructured channels. Since 2020 I saw two people get fired after discussions got out of hand. There were many more team meetings, code of conduct edicts, and all hands declarations about communication issues. It wasn't until the bans on politics in Slack arrived until things got better. Even now there are people I will screenshot any DMs that have even a hint of conflict. I doubt I will ever participate in any work chats in a social way again.
by marginalia_nu on 8/3/25, 11:35 AM
This type of writing down ideas and half-thoughts is useful even if you work alone. Thoughts are very fleeting, the instant you put them to paper (or bits) they materialize and it becomes much easier to evolve them.
When doing deep work in some problem domain, often I find the brain starts to drop these highly ephemeral fragments of ideas (that are sometimes downright ingenious). Caveat is they often only come once, and then they're gone if you don't grab them.
I often keep an envelope or scrap paper next to my desk where I write down any idea I have, whether it's "I should fix this" or "what if I did that", really no matter how small I try to put it to paper.
What usually ends up happening is I somehow end up with a fairly concrete todo list of easy improvements.
by comrade1234 on 8/3/25, 12:33 PM
I have a somewhat mentally ill (as in he takes medication for it) coworker that would just ruin this. The entire channel would be just be walls of his text. It's hard enough just to understand his wall of text emails that have a big report embedded somewhere in it.
by skhameneh on 8/3/25, 10:48 AM
This is what things like "water cooler chat" looks like for remote-first.
This is the fundamental difference between what a healthy remote-first company starts to look like versus the soulless version historically in-person companies try to sell.
To the author, thank you for sharing your version of the dynamics.
by makeitdouble on 8/3/25, 11:17 AM
> Each ramblings channel should be named after the team member, and only that person can post top-level messages. Others can reply in threads, but not start new ones.
I'm trying hard to understand why it has to be a personal channel. Water coolers aren't personal, that's the whole point.
In particular you're still adjusting what you write to be OK for anyone in your team read, so the distinction with the other "casual" channels sounds thin.
OTOH if your team doesn't have a casual place to say random stuff, it would be a nice improvement to get one.
by esperent on 8/3/25, 11:05 AM
I already have fatigue from too many chats and channels. Please don't make me track and check another ten.
A single rambling channel sounds like a good idea though.
by jelder on 8/3/25, 11:07 AM
I use something similar, but call them “Rubber-duck channels.”
http://www.jacobelder.com/2025/02/25/habits-and-tools-effect...
by bobek on 8/3/25, 10:44 AM
Mildly related are written standups [1] when treated as journal/logbook.
[1] https://www.bobek.cz/the-power-of-written-standup/
by mnafees on 8/4/25, 10:48 AM
I’ve been working remotely for YC startups for the past 3.5+ years, and I completely agree. I went from being the quietest person in the room to someone who often ends up rambling on most calls. Remote work has not only given me the space to speak my mind - and sometimes even find answers to my own questions - but also the opportunity to learn so much from my colleagues.
by dherikb on 8/4/25, 12:50 AM
This reminds me of something I did in one of the previous companies where I worked.
Like anyone else, when I joined the company, I had various questions: how to access certain systems, how to handle permissions, how to debug specific services, etc.
I compiled all these questions and answers as notes in a Git repository that my teammates could access. I wrote the notes using QOwnNotes, utilizing its Git integration. So, when someone had a question for which I already had the answer, I could simply share my notes, or create/update a node and share it.
The names of the notes were straightforward and easy to follow, such as:
- aws.md
- azure.md
- kubernetes.md
- staging.md
- production.md
- useful-commands.md (jq, sed, base64, etc)
My teammates used this resource frequently. As I was preparing to leave the company, I suggested them to fork my notes repository. I later heard that they continued to use it for many months afterward.
by quantile12 on 8/4/25, 9:26 AM
No - focus on communication that adds value to your company and your career. Don't get sucked into distractions. Spend your time aligning yourself with projects, ideas, people etc that will boost your career
Is isn't 2018 any more. Don't ramble about off topic casual stuff somewhere where it's all kept on record and easily viewable by your boss (and if your boss isn't invited to the channels, what do you think they'll think when they find out all their employees have lots of 'rambling' channels?). What if HR gets wind of this during the next planned RIF? Your job is to add value to the company
Take your project ideas etc directly to your boss. Don't let other people steal them
Join a non-work Slack group for this kind of socialising
by layer8 on 8/3/25, 12:40 PM
> Common topics include:
> - ideas related to current projects
> - musings about blog posts, articles, user feedback
> - “what if” suggestions
> - photos from recent trips or hobbies
> - rubber ducking a problem
Work-related and private topics should be separated, IMO. Some might be interested in the former but not the latter, and also might be interested in them at different times (of the day/week). There’s also the formal/legal aspect that the work-related topics can count as work time whereas the private ones doesn’t.
by j45 on 8/3/25, 5:15 PM
Where rambling might not have a positive connotation, imagining them as "musing" channels seemed to resonate.
Having a way to share what's on your mind that might not get shared is usually what can happen in person during the early days of a startup.
It can also allow the initial startup group to have a better connected sense of what's going on in each person's world compared to what they take the time to type.
by gardnr on 8/3/25, 5:09 PM
They had these at BigCorp I worked at. Anyone can make a channel like #x-gardner and then people can join that channel if they choose. The way that you find them organically is by searching the chat app for some random thing that you are interested in and then finding a few people discussing it in an X channel.
It felt very natural and created connections where they otherwise wouldn't be.
by grvdrm on 8/4/25, 4:22 PM
This post talks about remote but I will generalize beyond remote.
Effective sharing is amazing and a superpower. Doesn't have to be chat either.
Years ago (between 2006-2012) I worked for a company that implemented Salesforce. We were all in the office but spread across floors, US offices, and some offices elsewhere in the world.
Someone structured Salesforce in such a way that every client question/answer was clearly documented and properly linked. So, over time, I found and learned so much searching through that knowledgebase. Had some garbage questions/answers just like anything (including chats).
What's key though is MOST client-facing folks bought into sharing/linking/documenting to Salesforce. Rather than sitting in individual inboxes.
So, if you're able to create that same sort of magic through a chat channel, do it. If you don't see an org that understands that sort of behavior, might not be worth your time. It takes effort!
by romanows on 8/3/25, 11:45 AM
I think it is significant that this rambling channel supplements the yearly in-person meeting. Presumably, that's where one tends to form deeper social connections and get a feel for what different people find interesting to talk about? That is, if the team is varied enough so that there is little overlap in hobby interests or daily life.
by nasalgoat on 8/3/25, 12:45 PM
I worked at a large fully remote company and it had dedicated topic channels you could join. I thought that was an excellent solution since people could discuss their interests with other employees without it seeming like a corporately mandated chat break.
I now work for a much smaller company and I miss the chat channels.
by mjaniczek on 8/4/25, 7:46 PM
Related: Rubber duck channels. https://wolfgangschuster.wordpress.com/2023/04/14/ducks/
I've now seen this across two companies, and it's great to have #rd-martinjaniczek where I can just talk about what I'm doing as I'm doing it, post error messages and later how I solved them (or let somebody else jump in and tell me how they solved it etc.), it helps Slack searchability and combats the remote loneliness, it's pretty great.
And reading other folks' RD channels, you realize how frickin' funny some people are.
by codesnik on 8/3/25, 11:24 AM
I've tried to create or revive a watercooler channel in every remote company I've worked in last 10 years. For some reason it usually doesn't work. Some people don't needed it, some people just call each other and vent out privately. I miss watercooler talk.
by danparsonson on 8/3/25, 1:01 PM
This sounds like Twitter for Enterprises - how about setting up a local instance of Bluesky or Mastodon or one of those? People can then follow whomever they want to and the rest of us can continue not being interested in that sort of thing.
by WarOnPrivacy on 8/3/25, 6:00 PM
For one of my small-biz clients, I could use what the author outlines - restrictions and all (if I'm an outlier, is fine).
Besides fixing my customer's stuff, I learn and improve their systems. There's a small corral of offsite indy IT talent; I'm the onsite, everything else guy.
I could use a simple space to quickly post v1 thoughts in an unpolished format. They'd be available for our other IT to review and comment on.
Since I want this, all the client will pay for is for me to implement it. Nothing else. Also, the owner likes data to stay in house. Together it rules out subscription and cloud products. I'll see what my FOSS options are.
by throw10920 on 8/3/25, 4:43 PM
I put my work ramblings in daily journal notes in Markdown files in a git repository. Unfortunately, I don't spend the time to then ensure that they're accessible to my co-workers - and given the amount of value that I would get if they did that, I should do it myself.
Also, I'm very glad that I don't work in a place with Slack/chat culture. I really like the idea of making your ramblings available, but the thought of forcing everything into chat is repulsive. Just use a wiki page or files in a Git repo (as long as they're sufficiently easy to access) and that's good enough.
by stego-tech on 8/3/25, 8:56 PM
Seconding OP with my own experiences:
The best companies I’ve worked for freely encouraged workers to leverage chat or forums for non-work stuff. Rooms for AV enthusiasts, for sharing music, for discussing photography, corporate gripes, new ideas, personal projects, meeting colleagues on holiday, you name it.
You can absolutely have the spontaneity of physical collaboration through solely online and remote means. The internet itself is proof positive of this, companies just need to encourage that behavior more (and only minimally police it to avoid HR incidents or lawsuits).
by RedNifre on 8/3/25, 4:17 PM
We did something like that on a private Minecraft server 15 years ago, where everybody was required to have an identi.ca account for this server (status.net, like mastodon today). All messages appeared posted to the walls of a large library building in the middle of the world and people could post to their accounts from the ingame chat.
It worked really well for about half the people, the other half ignored it completely.
I wouldn't mind if today's office chats like Teams or Slack added a microblogging feature where you could subscribe to interesting colleagues.
by hkon on 8/3/25, 1:10 PM
So, if you're remote, why not just talk to your real friends on discord or whatever?
I think this whole "we are all a family" trope that companies push has pretty much been seen through by remote workers.
by bsenftner on 8/3/25, 12:01 PM
I've been working remote for over 25 years, and one of the better options to what this post is describing is to open, and leave open a voice channel / speaker phone on in all the locations that a remote team operates. Of course, this is not every day, but is used to create a "shared virtual space" that is very useful when the team is exploring something new as a group, and ambient conversation while doing so aids one another, plus social chatter and jokes are natural then too. Furthering a sense of community.
by madduci on 8/3/25, 11:00 AM
At work we use Teams and one interesting feature that I use isnky own chat (where inam alone), where in post links that mostly interest me.
Also Signal offers something similar, called "Personal Notes"
by booleandilemma on 8/3/25, 12:06 PM
A post encouraging more performative behavior at work, as if there wasn't enough already. By the way, my scrum update is yesterday I was mostly in meetings.
by babyshake on 8/3/25, 5:55 PM
One of these is not like the others:
ideas related to current projects musings about blog posts, articles, user feedback “what if” suggestions photos from recent trips or hobbies rubber ducking a problem
it seems like the goal is to split #random into #work-random and #not-work-random. but #ramblings seems like a weird naming convention. Why is an idea related to a current project a "rambling"?
by abc123abc123 on 8/4/25, 12:06 PM
Why would I? It is boring and adds no value. Much better to work instead. If I need something, I ask. If people need something from me, they ask. I think the biggest increas in productivity for me was when we banned chatting and moved all communication to email. The amount of distractions was reduced significantly!
by Brajeshwar on 8/3/25, 2:49 PM
Long back, I used to set up P2 for teams, inspired by WordPress’s theme-based personal/team updates. The current theme seem to have changed over time but the early versions where tweet-ish kinda flow of events which people/team wrote.
https://wordpress.com/p2/
by dpdpdpdpdp on 8/3/25, 11:58 AM
Ramble in the panopticon?
by nip on 8/3/25, 1:38 PM
We do something similar that we call « Office a la Zoom »:
Two times a week, the weekly standup is extended by an hour, from 15min to 1h15.
People are welcome to jump in and out of that open zoom that acts as a water cooler corner: any topic goes, from work to personal hobbies, etc
We’re fully remote (US / EMEA / APAC)
by OJFord on 8/3/25, 12:20 PM
Love this idea for 2-10 person orgs, but it really doesn't scale.
I suppose you could do something similar with local sub-org/2-pizza team, but bit of a different vibe, and then if there is a #topic channel would your thought on topic go in #topic or #ramble-name?
by twinkjock on 8/3/25, 4:42 PM
This whole post is unnecessary if you have threaded replies and threaded conversations.
by Aurornis on 8/3/25, 2:54 PM
> Ramblings channels let everyone share what’s on their mind without cluttering group channels.
This is a great place to use threads.
If someone wants to ramble, you say “Starting a thread to think through <topic>” in the project channel and then you put your follow-up chats in the thread. This way it only occupies a single line and notification (for those who have it enabled) but keeps it in the right place.
Creating excessive numbers of channels is a common small company mistake that they’ll come to regret later. Every growing company I’ve worked for has gone through a “let’s create channels for everything” phase followed later by a “we’re all so burnt out from being in 80 different channels” phase. Creating a separate channel for every person of a project will scatter the discussions and add excessive cognitive load for juggling channels.
by nixpulvis on 8/3/25, 5:54 PM
I like having an #offtopic and #thoughts channel for not worrying about burying important info in. If something meaningful happens it'll get captured, otherwise it serves to connect and relate.
by bravesoul2 on 8/3/25, 10:44 AM
A social channel seperate from work stuff is good. It lets you post the messages that otherwise be "oh won't post that as it'll bother 20 people who meed to decide if it's urgent"
by charlie0 on 8/3/25, 12:28 PM
This doesn't work top well with teammates who don't like to write to communicate, which is a surprising amount of people around me. (I'm the only one who writes tech docs)
by rayrey on 8/3/25, 4:54 PM
Machine Stops comes to mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
by gregoriol on 8/4/25, 9:12 AM
"with no expectation that anyone else will read them" => this is depressing, why would anyone ramble (or do anything actually) with this in mind?
by mattbee on 8/3/25, 10:45 PM
This speaks to me!
I've worked on 3 different projects / workplaces in the last year where I've been the only talker on a Slack with 10s of people on it. Sometimes I'll write 5-6 detailed messages in a day, talking about particular problems or updates on things I'm working on, and almost nothing from anyone else.
These are in subject-specific channels (#network-engineering or #programmers or the like) where colleagues are subscribed.
But the real business of each company seemed to happen in private group chats or video meetings, with no long-term records.
I'm like to state a problem before I've solved it, for the rubber ducking. Very occasionally someone would reply to help, and occasionally I reply with a :facepalm: if I realise I've just been hasty or sloppy. But even if nobody replies, I am very happy to have a public log of my work, the problems I've solved (or not), and the people I might tag for particular input.
If someone DMs me for help with something that is possibly of interest to >1 person, I tend to re-state the issue (without identifying who asked me), then answer in public, and thank them for asking.
If I have a question for a colleague, I will tend to ask it in a channel, as it becomes something searchable.
I ask work questions on Stack Overflow for the same reason, and often self-answer because the place is dead as a community, but the search works well. After a few years I find my own answers as a complete surprise.
But I have colleagues who've not said a line in public basically forever. I've not been a manager for years, always an IC lately. I've not had any objections, but it seems like nobody wants to join me to make "work in public" the default.
Apparently I'm happy to be the exhibitionist little freak?
by DonHopkins on 8/3/25, 11:18 AM
Steve Martin is a Ramblin' Guy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frcRMQ2m1B4
by spauldo on 8/4/25, 1:03 AM
The first thing this puts me in mind of is mcom.bad-attitude, the internal Netscape newsgroup for this sort of thing.
jwz wrote about how well that worked out on his blog.
by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF on 8/3/25, 5:38 PM
We had this, but they were called journal channels. It worked great cause I always have something to say but it's not worth putting in a shared channel.
by Waterluvian on 8/3/25, 12:07 PM
I feel that part of what I’m paid for is to structure those ramblings into clear communications to be shared at the right time in the right meeting or channel.
by gwbas1c on 8/3/25, 12:12 PM
I created a "watercooler" channel at my company to keep chitchat out of the main channel. It's a lot easier than juggling multiple channels.
by robertclaus on 8/3/25, 1:11 PM
Why not a shared "Ramblings" channel? And at that point, why not re-use something like "Random" that many companies already have?
by andrewrn on 8/3/25, 4:29 PM
I really cannot imagine working remote full-time, it sounds so depressing. We already don't go to church or bars or movies or clubs anymore. Work is one of the few remaining places to interact with other humans.
I'd be interested in trying this if I was remote, but I still just prefer in-person work.
I worked an in-person job recently at an oil company where we had no regular meetings (I was doing absolute grunt drafting work), and it was the most depressing experience of my life. This would be better than in-person w/o water cooler chats.
by nicoritschel on 8/3/25, 4:07 PM
You should do this in normal channels relevant to the discussion topic to facilitate discussion, not a separate channel per person. What.
by t5teveryweek on 8/3/25, 3:59 PM
Hey at least it's not T5T (top 5 thing)that you're forced to do every other week because your founder read one nvidia blog post
by nunez on 8/3/25, 5:42 PM
This used to be the #random channel on Slack iirc
by surge on 8/3/25, 5:41 PM
This is just rubberducking into a private channel. It's really not that new.
I actually do this, but into a personal google doc.
by mhh__ on 8/3/25, 12:52 PM
Internal Twitter should be more of a thing.
by sublinear on 8/3/25, 1:22 PM
No thanks. One of the best parts of going remote is letting your work truly speak for itself to a much broader audience. This would have been impossible in person.
High performers usually have their own thing going on outside of work and don't need the workplace for socializing. This boosted a lot of careers, and otherwise made life way less toxic. Unless you're fresh out of college I can't see anyone wanting this again.
by dakiol on 8/3/25, 12:00 PM
In my experience, these kind of channels end up being filled with complaints about the company/processes/managers/c-levels… (ofc, managers are not invited to these private channels)
Like, if the ceo said something very stupid in the last All Hands, well, you use the ramble channel to talk about it. Sometimes this works (you feel like you’re not the only one that thinks X), but it could easily go south.
by jama211 on 8/3/25, 7:40 PM
I would prefer this so much to enforced daily meetings. This is much more natural and interesting.
by steele on 8/3/25, 7:09 PM
Reads like pro-tips for middle management avoiding losing knowledge captured in DMs from layoffs
by djmips on 8/4/25, 10:21 AM
Rambling also makes you visible which is not a bad thing when you're remote.
by jamesblonde on 8/3/25, 12:50 PM
This is so anglo-saxon to be individual channels for ramblings. We have group wide channel. It's supposed to be social - no pressure to post. Lurkers welcome. Just share. Naturally, some are more talkative than others. The idea is to foster a group/social culture - not have atomized diaries about individuals.
by matsemann on 8/3/25, 9:39 PM
> All the ramblings channels should be in a Ramblings section at the bottom of the channel list. They should be muted by default, with no expectation that anyone else will read them.
I hate that Slack and other apps have nothing in between "mute" and "tell me immediately if I have anything unread". Many channels I want to know if there are new messages and read, just not by the second. If it could batch them up and only show them as unread after lunch, perhaps.
by projexorcism on 8/3/25, 9:12 PM
There's no such thing as a dumb question. There are only dumb people.
by respondo2134 on 8/3/25, 3:43 PM
struggling to create the organic interactions you had in-person? Here's a reomte process you can mandate and measure to ensure everyone is casually interacting in the correct, company-approved way!
by bitwize on 8/3/25, 12:42 PM
"Well, Mike, let's talk performance: your code is good, you get along well with your teammates, but you just haven't been rambling enough in the rambling channel. So unfortunately I'm going to have to put you on a PIP. If we don't see an improvement to at least 3 ramblings per week, further action may be taken, up to and including termination. Sorry it has to be this way, but we've got KPIs to hit."
by apples_oranges on 8/3/25, 11:03 AM
I think perhaps counter intuitively this harms the team spirit. Those things still get voiced in chat threads and more importantly in 1:1 calls/chats, allowing individuals to bond more intimately over non strictly project related things.
Team chat is for the project.
by Separo on 8/3/25, 3:47 PM
Channels should also include a #roast-the-product channel which encourages harsh, direct but valid criticism of the product (NOT people / feature authors etc).
It should be an anything-goes place where anything can be vented but also, no responses are required.
by projexorcism on 8/3/25, 9:09 PM
There's no such thing as a dumb question. Only dumb people.
by junon on 8/3/25, 11:50 AM
I have a whole private discord server with multiple channels just for this, for my personal projects. Yes yes, walled garden and all, I know. But it's incredibly useful even though I'm the only one in there.
I'd imagine this is highly team dependent. I'd personally love if my company adopted this. I think only one other team member would actually participate though. We're far too busy.
by spike021 on 8/3/25, 1:43 PM
my team just has a couple off-topic channels we use from time to time to chat about random things. i'd say that's pretty sufficient. ymmv of course.
by scarface_74 on 8/3/25, 2:34 PM
I hate this idea. If I have an idea I think we should implement when I was a mod level developer [1] and had to get buy in for it, I would think it through and ask for a coworkers opinion, take their suggestions, and then keep reaching out to who I thought would be my toughest critics until I got their buy in.
Once I was convinced that I had enough buy in, I would then officially propose it in a team setting. It’s called “pre-wiring a meeting”.
Now it’s more of getting peer reviews and sanity checks than anything else before I go down a road. We also have Slack channel where we ask for peer reviews now of architectural decisions (working in cloud consulting).
[1] My title has been “Senior Developer” for decades at various companies. But in reality, based on “scope”, “impact”, etc not “I codez real good” I was really what would be considered a mid level developer until a decade ago.
by romanovcode on 8/3/25, 10:45 AM
So... basically use a private-messaging feature?
by echo42null on 8/3/25, 12:02 PM
We used to have something very similar with our office coffee machine – spontaneous 1‑2 minute chats while grabbing a coffee. Sometimes it was just, “Sorry, can’t talk, swamped right now,” and the other person would rush off – but even that told you something.
These micro‑interactions gave valuable context: which teams were under pressure, where things might be stuck, and sometimes where a quick helping hand was needed.
When we went remote, we tried to recreate this with a single global “coffee chat” channel. It worked for a while, but quickly became noisy.
I really like your idea of having one ramblings channel per person instead. It feels like a cleaner way to keep that background awareness and human connection alive without overwhelming everyone. We’re going to try this next.
by processing on 8/3/25, 10:53 AM
any tips for a team of one and claude code?
by esco27 on 8/3/25, 3:24 PM
There are certain things in life that are meant to be unstructured and spontaneous. The moment you try to sandbox them they tend to devolve into noise which then calls for more structure or "rules", it's a slippery slope. If you're remote, you can always start a huddle and talk while you work, or if talking is not your thing, a good old DM can work. If you're worried about noise or things getting lost, you can always move the work related things into their own channel as they come up. Just 2 cents.
by fennec-posix on 8/3/25, 9:56 PM
yeah my coworkers deal with this in our "banter" channel, my raw thoughts.
by your_friend on 8/3/25, 6:32 PM
Why not one common channel?
by standardUser on 8/3/25, 4:42 PM
If you want your remote teams to have increased cohesion you need to fly them all to the same location (at company expense, only during weekdays) multiple times per year and give them the opportunity to actually get to know each other.
Anything else usually just feels awkward and pathetic. But since online game shows or "breakaway rooms" cost the company a whole lot less money, that's what we're stuck with.
by jedberg on 8/3/25, 4:59 PM
We use #random for this.
by _Algernon_ on 8/3/25, 10:43 AM
This is unreadable. Increase the contrast, please...
Edit: I may be falsely blaming the contrast, but something about the design is causing me eye strain. Im not sure what. Here is a screenshot how the site looks to me: https://imgur.com/a/LNVCMRc Maybe someone else can figure it out.
by thedudeabides5 on 8/4/25, 2:28 PM
yup
by fHr on 8/3/25, 1:44 PM
Nah not another useless channel to maintain, I'm good.
by PeterStuer on 8/4/25, 8:01 AM
In my experience, every business social/communication channel will be gamed for (stealth or blatant) personal promotion.
At first not everyone will catch on to this. Those will be the first to be called into HR or get remarks on their anual review.
by chvid on 8/3/25, 12:09 PM
Or just show up at the office once in a while.
by ManlyBread on 8/3/25, 1:51 PM
This article is about nothing, how does this kind of stuff hit the front page? Is it because of bots?