Posted by theorchid 8 hours ago
This is an obviously poor policy.
Are we avoiding leaving RF spectrum traces? Are we worried about compromised digital channels? What is the reasoning?
In 2026 I'd rather be fighting for the army that evaluates all options to come up with the most effective way to accomplish an objective rather than one that dogmatically clings to ineffective methods.
In other words: if the winning side uses letters and the losing side uses phones, I'd rather be on the letter writer's side.
I switched my team to text based daily updates submitted anytime before ~10am.
A nice perk was it gave people the option to do it at the end of the day to help plan their following day so they hit the ground running in the morning. It was especially useful for Mondays where people spent time filling dead air on calls trying to remember what they were doing on Friday.
Everyone could see what was happening, stalled work and people going off track were really obvious if the updates weren't specific enough. "still working on" and "I couldn't solve it so I'm going try and run git bisect over 10 years of commits to see where it breaks"
Management were happy that they were getting their status updates and we could all stay in the zone for the whole morning.
There's a very strong "focus culture" which relies on the idea that work is not done in meetings. This is wrong. Progress comes in many forms.
Is there really anything wrong with that? Most managers manage their teams the way they're used to. Founders build their startups the way they're used to—based on their own experience and mistakes. Founders and managers don't adapt to the team's needs. Instead, they look for a team that will adapt to them.