On 2013-04-25, at 2:07 PM, Justin Lebar <justin.le...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Justin pointed out his earlier post and the apparent disagreement I had with >> it with the >> "pick a long thread topic" example - and he has a point. I meant it as an >> example, and >> didn't say as much, and I meant more to focus on decision making, and didn't >> say that >> either. > > I also meant "pick a long newsgroup thread" as an example. I still > disagree with using the platform meeting for decision-making. > The reason the whole thread started is because Lawrence is looking for suggestion whether we need changes, and if so, what they are. I'm pretty sure that a quick vote right now would give us a great majority that thinks that the days of all of platform engineers in a single meeting are long gone. > >> However, if a particular topic is announced as "we've exchanged e-mails over >> two weeks >> on the topic X and we think we should now make a decision", then only the >> people >> interested would show up. > > The idea that the people in timezones which allow them to attend the > meeting are privileged to participate directly in decisions made > there, and anyone else who wants to participate in these decisions > needs a proxy, is antithetical to how Mozilla works and ought to work, > I think. OK. Yet we have meetings. > >> So, just by showing up, you're claiming to have interest in the particular >> topic. > > Well, you're claiming to have interest in /a/ particular topic, which > might be just one of many discussed at the meeting. Even in the event > that the agenda is announced ahead of time (good luck with that), you > may have to wait through an hour-long meeting just to talk for sixty > seconds. There would be one topic per meeting. One decision. > > Maybe we're solving a problem here that we don't have. I think we're > perfectly capable of debating and deciding things over e-mail. Do you > disagree, and do you have evidence for this? Do I have evidence that synchronous communication is useful at times? Are you really suggesting that all the decision making is always best done asynchronously? > > It seems to me that decisions that need in-depth, live debate are > poorly suited for a meeting that nominally involves all of > engineering. I have difficulty fathoming a decision which is simple > enough to be decided in a few minutes on a conference call involving > hundreds of engineers, but is so complex that we can't decide it > effectively over e-mail. I agree with "all of engineering". I think that topic is dead. There is no meeting useful for all of platform engineering, other than the "announcement" ones. > > Perhaps you could provide an example of something that you think would > have been decided much better in the paradigm that you're suggesting. An e-mail topic that takes 20 replies is often a waste of time. A small number of people was interesting in this particular topic to start, and at this point, an even smaller number cares. So, instead of the five that do care getting on the phone for 15 minutes, we are going to spend two hours typing and reading the e-mails. Yes, sending everything to everybody is open, and that's great. At some point, with the company 10x the size it was, there is going to be so much stuff flying around that we won't be able to get to the stuff we care about. A much simpler example is the bug triage. Takes a lot less time to reach a decision with everybody involved in the room. > >> The time zone mess is, well, a mess. Not much that can be done about it in >> general. > > This is begging the question. Of course something can be done about > the timezone mess: Asynchronous communication works around the problem > entirely. True. And yet, we do have meetings. And yet we do have work weeks and can't wait to have them, and rave about how useful they are. _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
