That said, I've received feedback from multiple people that they never know how my work is progressing, are surprised when it's completed, and would like more status updates along the way, so I think it's safe to say that my preferences are an anomaly and you should probably follow the article's advice instead.
Communicating about communicating is underrated.
Then comes the adage 'under promise over deliver'.
If you send out an update saying you're working on cool X module/technology/idea to solve a problem, and then it turns out you couldn't, it's a bummer across the table.
Even if it succeeds, you don't get much credit for it because everyone 'pitched in' with their ideas/tweaks at the beginning, so now the entire team feels like you were just the implementer of the team's design/strategy.
Call me a lone-wolf cowboy if you will, but it's a plain truth that no amount of 'team-players' can deny.
And if companies do not want to work with such under-communicators, no big deal. Not everyone meshes with everyone else. There's plenty of other candidates in the sea, and plenty of other companies in the sea.
For example, I would say I get too much email so I really don't want more: likewise IMs or other forms of interruption. Like everyone else, I have things I actually need to get done, so constantly fielding incoming communication can become pretty frustrating.
What I do need are timely and relevant updates, not constant updates and over-communication. I prefer dealing with these updates in a structured fashion, whether I'm giving or receiving them - e.g., weekly 1:1s and other scheduled meetings - rather than ad hoc.
Thinking in more general terms, I prefer behaviour and action that is considered rather than reactive. This goes beyond personal preference though: I don't believe it's possible to effectively scale by being reactive or ad hoc in your actions and communications. I also don't believe that people who cannot (or will not) structure their behaviour are suitable for management or leadership in a growing organisation.
Sometimes events require a more reactive approach but I don't believe this should be the norm.
I think the article have a good point, but it is also important to only "overcommunicate" to people who depend on you. Otherwise it's just noise.
A lot of communication (what I'm going to work on next week) falls under promise. So I don't tell what I'm doing until I've already done it. Or when I'm unable to do it.
In other words, I let success or failure be known only after I've made sure of either using my best efforts. This usually takes ~2 weeks of isolated/concentrated effort to find out.
Then as a consultant at Big Tech working with different customers, I found out they are not big fans.
'promise. deliver or not' - is what they seem to prefer.
Obviously none likes shocks. But they also don't like surprises.
Source - got fired despite extra-mile technical achievements.
Over communication is shallow work. We should limit that. There is a useful amount.
This seems like plain common sense and required courtesy but I've been on the wrong side of this from both approaches enough times from both sides of the table - people somehow have a block in sharing the bad news (also because in unhealthy places the messenger is shot - just makes me realize that I'm in a good place).
(In any case the blog actually talks more of sharing the context you are in and not just about sharing bad news early - sharing context is definitely safer and a better approach)
I always try to front-load the riskiest and most difficult work on projects for this reason: that way you're never in the situation where everything looks fine until it all goes off the rails at the last minute.
I've never heard that saying btw but it's a great one, I'll definitely remember it for future use!
For e.g. if they're travelling, etc. Could result in loss of revenue as well.
Coming from college where deadlines were immutable and professors didn't really care to hear about why some long research paper was taking longer than expected, the idea of telling a boss that you're behind schedule doesn't necessarily come naturally.
It's not like school where if one is late, one might as well not even turn it in; even if it's late, it's still valuable, and school doesn't teach that.
But mostly, I wish there were ways to recognize, navigate, negotiate people's different styles.
TMI from recent my turn at the woodshed:
Noob manager (Jane) is unhappy with my communication. Wants more detail. Her prerogative, so I try. So in addition to adjacent desks, always on Skype, standups, status reports, very verbose commit messages, novels added to JIRA tickets, I start writing daily status reports.
Months of "improvement", no change in satisfaction.
So us chickens are sitting around trying to troubleshoot something. Me (Bob) and another coworker (Stan) casually noticed that a third (Steve) seems to have a great working relationship with manager (Jane).
Stan and I are astonished (gobsmacked) to learn that Steve is privately texting (via Skype) Jane 15-20 times per day. The smallest updates. "Just committed changes for JIRA 123". "PR 303 approved and merged." "Build successful!" All sorts of emoji.
I would have NEVER thought to spam my manager all day every day. But that's apparently what Jane wants.
The weird part in all this, like most miscommunication, is Jane couldn't say what she wants. Nor did it occur to her to tell Stan and me to be more like Steve.
There was a line in an old TV show that stuck with me: one of the characters asks, “When’s the date of that dinner again?” The other character says, “It’s Saturday, I just told you that.” The first character replies, “Yeah, but I only listen when I ask.”
In my experience, each person has their own way of listening, and it’s a challenge to keep straight who consumes information in which way:
* Person A only reads the first line of any email, so you have to ask each question or offer each nugget of information in a separate email and there can only be a maximum of two sentences in the message
* Person B only wants to be told the information verbally in the hallway or in a meeting or over lunch, not in written form
* Person C has a lot going on and only has mental RAM, no long-term storage, so they want to be reminded of everything repeatedly: “Just a reminder, I’m out Feb. 15th.” Then “Just a reminder, I’m out next week.” Then, “Just a reminder, I’m out later this week.” then, “Just a reminder, I’m out tomorrow.”
* Person D needs quantified data, charts, and graphs
Etc. I’m not complaining – it’s the human condition, it is what it is – but personally I find it challenging to thread the needle.
My response is that I will now be on the lookout for new strategies, ideas.
I imagine some kind of HR, team building, skill training exercises where everyone discovers each other's communication style(s). Most of it will be hooey, but there will certainly be some kernels of truth.
It also now occurs to me that UX & ethnography types could observe users to infer what works. Eye gaze, like buttons, time spent, etc. Imagine building "emotional intelligence" like feedback tools into Skype.
I know it's creepy. But brainstorming might lead to something useful.
Anyway, thanks again.
If that's what was really wanted by management, I'd have to spend a half day writing some git hooks or toss in a notification rule on the CI server to auto-generate cutesy micro-status updates.
If you've ever seen five minutes of an opera (go to YouTube if not), they move their mouths in an almost comical exaggeration so the people farther away can see what's going on.
Early on when I relied on subtlety, I'd find repeatedly that someone has grossly mistaken my intention and undone a bunch of work that I put time into. The bigger the gesture the harder it is for them to either misunderstand or feign confusion (easier to ask forgiveness... unless forgiveness involves admitting you're an idiot).
The source of that aphorism is probably William H Whyte and is better understood with its context about listening.
"LET US RECAPITULATE A BIT: The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society–and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding."
I totally over-communicate on everything where I'm debugging or mutating the actual shared infrastructure. In some places, this is literally in the form of displaying all `sudo` logs in-line in the IRC channel. If I'm debugging some issue, I'll be copy-pasting links to google results, screenshots of the the monitoring graphs and any diagnostic command output into that slack thread. Once I figure it out and either run some one-off commands or make a PR to fix it, I'll include those in the the chat. If I typo some command and (almost) make a mistake, I'll certainly mention that as well.
It's a real-time log/diary of the investigative process and any changes. These slack threads are typically solo threads, with just me replying to myself. This is fine. Occasionally other people will comment on something, occasionally I'll be searching for and referring to those threads later on.
Stuff that I'm working on solo and isn't leaving my laptop outside of a `git push`? Not necessarily worth mentioning before it hits GitHub, but please spend some time and write a useful PR summary.
Communicating useful everyday things with coworkers brings in a more friendly atmosphere, which lets people trust you with work.
Going on full communication blackout helps in focusing on actually getting said work done.
> And of course, overcommunicating can be taken too far. If you are taking 4 hours to write up a detailed status on a 2-day project, that is obviously not the right return on investment! Get in the habit of writing status that is honest, relevant, and respectful, and also concise.
Seems like, in that case, the managers themselves didn't communicate until they had to, and even though they were seeing a problem, they didn't communicate earlier. Now it's in the onus of the employee to give constant updates else he risks losing his job, even though he wasn't given constant updates from the other direction in the first place.
In general, the article seems to be saying "tell everything to the managers, make their jobs easier", and here I thought one of the responsibilities of management was making work easier for the employees.
Sure, communicate, but it should be in both directions.
Every place I've worked, it's management's job to enforce status hierarchies on their subordinates, and making people's jobs easier is directly in conflict with that primary objective.
You may work in a different culture than I do though, the vast majority of work here no matter the industry is of the "no excuses" variety stated in the article.
I was being deliberately overly idealistic in my first comment (and it was perhaps a bit of a reassertion of how I would handle management in my hypothetical own company).
On top of which, to be perfectly honest, the people I work with are barely a step above strangers to me, so the last thing I want is to hear about their personal life. I certainly don't know or trust these people enough to trust with anything more than "I've got personal/family/medical issues, can you work with me while I handle these things?" and quite frankly I don't want or expect anything more from my coworkers than that.
I've found that usually when a conversation is going on, particularly in text format, much less information is conveyed than you think at the time.
An interesting thing I've done before is to go back through old conversations where I thought I really "bared my soul" about a particular topic.
Often there is next to no information actually exchanged. What I was actually doing was feeling strong emotions. They were in no way conveyed over to the other person.
I wonder if I am hurting myself with it and is it good or bad for my career and life.
I suppose there is a balance there somewhere, but I am not sure whether I am underasking or overasking etc
It's not good to wear training wheels all the time. Worrying about the minutia of communication makes you less able to see what is being said, and makes you look for confirmation of your predictions/worries instead.
