And that's how they got to announcing these things in an all hands meeting.

For any planned downtime, we use routine standup calls. When people usually say "This should have been an email", they're usually referring to meetings for something specific that did not need a dedicated meeting. A routine standup or all hands meeting covering a series of small items and important notices is exactly its purpose.

A meeting that should have been an email would be like "Here are the new features coming to our frontend" where you could have just sent the 2-3 bulleted items for what minor changes will be added instead of wasting 30 minutes of everyone's time on an overdone PowerPoint slideshow.

And then on the inverse end, things that should not be emails:

• If there is a chain of 2-3 people using Reply All to have a back and forth, that should have been an IM. No need to rope 20 other people into your 1 on 1.

• If there is an email that triggers 10+ concerned Reply Alls from different people, you should probably set up a quick call to hash it out and level set. A busy email chain is hard to follow and will end up with multiple loose threads.

Problem with these corporate spam emails. I often ignore these myself. Because they are abused by some department that wants attention and feels the need to remind everyone of their existence, lest they be laid off.

I don’t need to hear about Sheryl in HR updating the version of the payroll software on her pet hamster’s dildo wheel.

Damn. Yammer still exists??

You fucking know it.