> At a previous company, I shared a trick on slack every day with the engineering team, both technical and company-specific, and folks found them pretty useful.

I would find that annoying, however to not be seen as a jerk I wouldn't say anything.

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CableNinja 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think that "everyday" would be a stretch, but i dont understand why youd think thats annoying, someone took the time to consider helping the rest of the engineering team grow, by posting something useful.

I frequently do the same, but not everyday; only when i think its something actually useful/helpful beyond the everyday crap. Most recently, we have had a huge push to use ai (just like everywhere else), ive been getting pretty creative with it, and at this point have a well polished setup that i can give a shitty sentence on a problem, not only does it understand the task, but theres a full ticket->branch->work->pr review->ready comment flow that it uses. My team also uses ai but they havent quite wrapped their head on ways to really work with it. I have built and shared a number of helpful things with the team to try and help them grow. One such thing was a doc i had my ai instance write, based on how ive been using my setup. This alone has started to get the rest of the team up to where i am.

My team doesnt share the same types of things i do, but they still share helpful things.

Call it what you will; I think if youre not helping your team grow by providing insights and helpful things, then youre not the kind of person i want to work with.

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NegativeLatency 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think there's a fine line between helping your team grow and the sorta annoying self promotion I've seen people do in overly broad slack channels.

One is actually helping and the other is making yourself more visible to mgmt for promotions.

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metabagel 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I rather think the opposite. People who share tips and hacks are genuinely trying to help others, while people who hoard information are competing on an individual basis without regard for team.

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davidee 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Please take this in good faith, as I hope your own post is, but I interpret the thread you're replying to as focusing on the "everyday' part.

Share knowledge? I don't think anyone here is arguing against that in any way (or conversely arguing for hoarding knowledge).

The concern, one I share, is where the sharing has to happen publicly "every day" - so no matter how trivial, useless, niche, overly-specific the tip is (whatever, the list isn't exclusive), someone shares it.

That's the part that's not sharing knowledge for the benefit of others, but rather self-serving. I might even go so far as to say self-serving doesn't even need to be selfish; the person might genuinely believe they're doing good, but even there, self-serving.

TLDR: Share your knowledge, don't make sharing something every day, even when you don't have something valuable to share, your target.

PS - if this note irks anyone (are routine maxxers a thing?), make the goal to learn something every day, then share where appropriate.

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aquariusDue 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, crop dusting knowledge in a public space without at least tying it to something relevant is a faux pas in my book.

Offering to teach someone something proactively? Sure, go ahead.

Sharing stuff freely when asked and arming someone with the tools to investigate further? Amazing!

Treating a public channel like ye olde facebok wall? Mildly annoying.

	▲	BeetleB 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Treating a public channel like ye olde facebok wall? Mildly annoying. Every team/department/org/whatever should have channels everyone should subscribe to, and channels individuals set up that are optional for everyone. The appropriate way to handle this is for the OP to write a few tips once in a while in the public channel, and if people seem to like it, announce that all future tips will be in that channel.

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soulofmischief an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Depends on the banality of the tips.

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BeetleB 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We work in very different places. Wherever I've worked, the guy who knows all these tricks is not the guy getting promoted. Senior management doesn't care about your shell or scripting skills. Sure - they make you more productive, but at a very local level (may be good for a single promotion early in your career).

Most senior engineers I've worked with have forgotten all these tricks, and they actively tell you that while you should try to get better at these things, career gains lie elsewhere. Focus on things with higher impact.

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rootlocus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why just one each day then? Why not a shared knowledge base? Do you start with a "bag of tricks" and then hand them out one by one each day to remind people you're the guy with the bag of tricks?

"Oh, yeah, I know a cool trick, but y'all have to wait until tomorrow to find out what it is."

"Look! It's a way to evaluate SQL expressions with a select with a from! Oh, you already knew about it?"

I have nothing against sharing knowledge, especially when seeing someone else do something that can be done better. But just leaving daily breadcrumbs to remind people you're the guy that teaches random trivia feels like attention seeking.

	▲	t-writescode 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You’re right, a centralized repository would be good too. Both a centralized repository AND a daily message, especially for new employees, would be ideal, imo! Normalize chatting and sharing stuff in slack!
	▲	taink 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't think that's a generous way to interpret it. I see it more as: every day they will go on the slack channel and pause, wondering "Is there a neat trick I've learned or used recently?" then they share it. It's like a ritual to remember that you can share things because it's easy to forget other people don't work the same way you do. Writing it all at once is difficult (you have to remember a lot of stuff at once) and it tends to go unread. I also think every single day is a stretch, but it's nice to pause once in a while to think about how you could help other people with something you've learned.

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blooalien 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think I would prefer an optional separate channel specifically for people to share such things with each other who wanted to see that exact sorta thing. Then nobody gets bothered by it who's not interested in such things, and people who are have a place that's dedicated to exactly that.

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saulpw 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

s/seen as//

Annoyance is a clue; not about them, but about you.

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NegativeLatency 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Weird personal attack, thanks.

What I'm saying is I am not a jerk and actually do care about my coworkers, however I also don't want a bunch of noise in a chat app I have to use to do my job.

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saulpw 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I thought it sounded like a nice gesture of trying to be helpful and making a small connection with their coworkers. One message a day is hardly "a bunch of noise". Even though you say you wouldn't have said anything at the company, you said something here, and that has a similar chilling effect on other people who might have been inspired by the OP to share their tips and tricks with their coworkers.

Sorry for the "personal attack" but my point stands, you may not think of yourself as a jerk, but I saw your comment and thought "this guy imagining himself being annoyed at a coworker for a daily message with a helpful tip might be more of a jerk than he realizes". As a jerk myself I judged myself qualified to make that assessment and commented accordingly.

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simlevesque 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can mute the channel. Why would you want your teammates to communicate less ?

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NegativeLatency 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I think that it would be unwise to mute #engineering or whatever the main eng channel is

>I shared a trick on slack every day with the engineering team

	▲	simlevesque 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		An engineering team may have multiple channels.

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owebmaster 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The post writer is also a person that you attacked for no reason even tho he's not your coworker.