How GitHub Engineering communicates
github.com/github/how-engineering-communicates/blob/main/how-github-engineering-communicates.md
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.