# How GitHub Engineering communicates

<https://github.com/github/how-engineering-communicates/blob/main/how-github-engineering-communicates.md>

- Host: [github.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/github.com/)
- Saved: October 16, 2023 (2023-10-17T02:52:25Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/7d8eea3ee147/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/7d8eea3ee147.json

## What Jamie wrote

Interesting read from GitHub Engineering on how they desire to communicate amongst each other.

> This document is intended to encourage consistency over preference by outlining a common core of shared internal communication practices for all of Engineering in the form of opinionated guidance, and it was informed by a survey run within the Engineering organization in March 2023. Teams are still encouraged to adapt the practices for their unique circumstances, maintaining a common "API" to interface with other teams.

The key points are:

- Be asynchronous first
- Write things down
- Make work visible and overcommunicate
- Prefer GitHub tools and workflows
- Embrace collaboration
- Foster a culture that values documentation maintenance
- Communicate openly, honestly, and authentically
- Remember practicality beats purity

Three things that stand out to me:

1. Writing things down, being visible, overcommunicating, being asynchronous are expensive. Getting up on a whiteboard, scribbling in realtime, is fast and cheap. However, you will end up doing that 100 times. If you take the time to "write things down" you avoid the repetition.
2. If you need proof that engineering is a team activity and not a lone coder with a hoody in a dark room, here it is. Nothing of substance gets built by a single person.
3. Remember that you are communicating with people who have different backgrounds, experiences, and cultures to you. You need to write and structure your thinking in a way that will work across all of those people.

A good representation of "write things down" to put this together.

## Facts

- Kind: [Repository](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/repository/)

## Appears in

- [WT266: Weekly Thing 266 / Obsessed, DiceRight, Omnivore](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/266/), Featured

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://github.com/github/how-engineering-communicates/blob/main/how-github-engineering-communicates.md