Engineering Work Changed. Our Tools Haven’t Caught Up.

[#1]

Five years ago, engineering teams made decisions on the fly

✅ Whiteboard sessions
✅ Hallway chats
✅ Emergency meetings

Today, we’re scattered across continents and time zones.

Decisions unfold slowly in Slack threads, GitHub comments, and Loom replies.

This shift gave us more flexibility.

But it broke how we document why decisions were made.

We need tools that match how we actually work now: distributed, async, and discussion-first, not meeting first.

[Nick M - EYMH Staff]

What do you mean discussion first not meeting first?

[John Funk]

Yep, I think tools will always lag so that they don't overreact too quick for something that might just be a fad. 

[__ Jimi Wikman]

I have to admit that I do not recognize the descriptions on how work was done 5 years ago. Maybe that is because I work in a different segment or that we do things differently here in the Nordics?

It sounds like you have transitioned from an ad-hoc situation to a dysfunctional asynchronous situation? Both are in my experience very bad for productivity, morale and of course interconnectivity that is a requirement for building teams.

No matter how you look at things all collaboration are meetings. The difference is if you have an ad-hoc or thinking loud session is that they are generally shallow thinking, while collaboration should always be a problem-solving session with deep thinking.

It sounds like whatever industry you are in need to go back to basics and start working with proper requirements again as you can only do that if you have a business need defined and you are trying to find a solution to solve that business need.

Running like a bat out of hell and throwing things on a wall to see what sticks is a poor practice in 2025 and if you don't engage in deep thinking and plan towards a strategy, then you are not even being very professional.

I guess this is why Atlassian is finally investing in strategy and goal oriented work. Hopefully it will help you and the people that have experienced what you are experiencing to find your way back to team based work as opposed to group based disconnected experimenting as well.