[skydhash]

> The only remedy I found is actively forcing people to talk to each other, starting with yourself.

That's not communication. That is forced socialization.

There are things that are expressed more efficiently in spoken form, but the truth is that spoken words are ephemeral and the mechanism for storing and retrieving them are cumbersome.

I like written communication, it forces you to be more structured in your thinking. And most importantly. It does not require another person to be actually present for this to happen.

> Doing a code review? Grab the reviewee in a Slack huddle for 15 minutes, it'll save time for both of you.

I strongly believe that a review that can be done in a slack hurdle in 15 minutes can be done async in less. And there is the need to actually schedule for that hurdle. And in practice, every one of these hurdles will actually be surrounded by a period of non-productive time.

Programming is thinking work. The actual coding, while visible, is the easiest part. We hate wasteful meetings because it contributes nothing to make thinking easier.

[chrisweekly]

Agreed; even further, the presence of even a small number of interrupts can disrupt the extended focus and context-building that are required to solve gnarly problems. See also pg's famous "Maker's schedule" post:

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

[hbrn]

> I like written communication, it forces you to be more structured in your thinking

It sure does, but I don't care if comms are unstructured if same job gets done much faster. You're not going to frame your structured communication and put it on the wall. You could argue that someone might find your past PR communication useful in the future, but that's what code comments are for.

> a review that can be done in a slack hurdle in 15 minutes can be done async in less

Strongly disagree, some code reviews have lots of back and forth. A branch that could be merged within an hour may take several days because reviewers and branch owner each going at their own pace. The more async you are, the more WIP you're going to have, and it is always a bad thing.

> every one of these hurdles will actually be surrounded by a period of non-productive time

I consider time spent getting on the same page with my team members to be one of the most productive things I can do. Even more productive than writing code.