Lightcone has evolved a bit since Jacob wrote this, and also I have a somewhat different experience from Jacob.
Updates:
“Meeting day” is really important to prevent people being blocked by meetings all week, but, it’s better to do it on Thursday than Tuesday (Tuesday Meeting Days basically kill all the momentum you built up on Monday)
We hit the upper limits of how many 1-1 public DM channels really made sense (because it grew superlinearly with the number of employees). We mostly now have “wall channels” (i.e. raemon-wall), where people who want to message me write messages. (But, for people I am often pairing extensively with, I still sometimes use dedicated 1-1 channels for that high-bandwidth communication)
I think still try to have top-priorities set on Monday, but I think they are a bit looser than the way Jacob was running things on his team at the time.
Things I still basically endorse that feel particularly significant
Having people work onsite and near each other so you can easily get help unblocking yourself is indeed quite valuable. The difference between being in the same room and even one-room-over is significant, and being across the office very significant. Being offsite slows things down a lot.
Pairing feels even more important than this post makes it seem. I think there’s a lot of type of work that feels like you don’t need to be pairing, but I think pairing helps me stay focused long after my attention would have started to flag.
For pairing, I’d add:
When people don’t pair for a long stretch of time, my sense is they might initially feel more productive, but then slide into bad habits or avoidant behaviors that are hard to notice.
Pairing allows for skill transfer. Pairing between different people with different skills is great.
I personally prefer a style of pairing that is very explicit and… micromanagey (both for when I’m the driver or the navigator). i.e. “go to the top-right corner of the screen, click the button, then go to the middle of the screen and type [X].”). Some people find that difficult, it’s not one-size-fits-all, but I find it good for avoiding confusion that crops up when you try to give or receive more openended directions.
We have shifted to almost always pairing via zoom and screen share, rather than leaning over at each other’s monitors (even while in the same room), so we don’t have to crane our neck all the time.
I probably could say more but that seems like how much time I want to spend on it for now.
Lightcone has evolved a bit since Jacob wrote this, and also I have a somewhat different experience from Jacob.
Updates:
“Meeting day” is really important to prevent people being blocked by meetings all week, but, it’s better to do it on Thursday than Tuesday (Tuesday Meeting Days basically kill all the momentum you built up on Monday)
We hit the upper limits of how many 1-1 public DM channels really made sense (because it grew superlinearly with the number of employees). We mostly now have “wall channels” (i.e. raemon-wall), where people who want to message me write messages. (But, for people I am often pairing extensively with, I still sometimes use dedicated 1-1 channels for that high-bandwidth communication)
I think still try to have top-priorities set on Monday, but I think they are a bit looser than the way Jacob was running things on his team at the time.
Things I still basically endorse that feel particularly significant
Having people work onsite and near each other so you can easily get help unblocking yourself is indeed quite valuable. The difference between being in the same room and even one-room-over is significant, and being across the office very significant. Being offsite slows things down a lot.
Pairing feels even more important than this post makes it seem. I think there’s a lot of type of work that feels like you don’t need to be pairing, but I think pairing helps me stay focused long after my attention would have started to flag.
For pairing, I’d add:
When people don’t pair for a long stretch of time, my sense is they might initially feel more productive, but then slide into bad habits or avoidant behaviors that are hard to notice.
Pairing allows for skill transfer. Pairing between different people with different skills is great.
I personally prefer a style of pairing that is very explicit and… micromanagey (both for when I’m the driver or the navigator). i.e. “go to the top-right corner of the screen, click the button, then go to the middle of the screen and type [X].”). Some people find that difficult, it’s not one-size-fits-all, but I find it good for avoiding confusion that crops up when you try to give or receive more openended directions.
We have shifted to almost always pairing via zoom and screen share, rather than leaning over at each other’s monitors (even while in the same room), so we don’t have to crane our neck all the time.
I probably could say more but that seems like how much time I want to spend on it for now.