I feel like I need to mention this in case some eyes see it that need to hear it. If you're running global teams and you have a side of that team that has to show up at the ass-crack of dawn every morning while you get to show up at 4PM with the entire context of a full work day behind you - ROTATE THE TIMES or ASK the engineers on both ends of the spectrum how they feel about it and be understanding if some of them don't want to show up at 8am anymore. Not to mention it puts us into a super weird conversation where we're half asleep and trying to sound like we know what's going on to someone grilling us with full cognition.
Also, async is one thing. Respecting your peoples time is another thing. Slack, etc can show you what time it is in that employees time zone. How do you feel when the first thing you do is open Slack while sipping coffee and eating your bagel and your boss has 10 messages to you from 6am-9am your time?
Probably not the best start to your day. Let people log in, socialize, be humans and colleagues for a little bit before you hammer them, especially now when work is the only real human interaction some people are getting.
> How do you feel when the first thing you do is open Slack while sipping coffee and eating your bagel and your boss has 10 messages to you from 6am-9am your time?
Feels like it’s a day that ends in ‘y’. (My boss and our team get along famously and are all in the same time zone, yet have loads of traffic on our channel(s) between 6 and 9 most days.)
Slack is really poorly built for async workflows though. That's why in my product I have all communication be async, and figure out who needs to get notifications (also async) from their role in the interaction.
For example, if you're the owner of a story and someone asks a question you get notified, and the asker gets notified when you reply, but everyone else gets to keep their sanity.
I also structure comments and require you tag them with the purpose of the comments so people know what it is up front (question, sugestion, todo, etc). That really keeps the stress levels down.
Also, async is one thing. Respecting your peoples time is another thing. Slack, etc can show you what time it is in that employees time zone. How do you feel when the first thing you do is open Slack while sipping coffee and eating your bagel and your boss has 10 messages to you from 6am-9am your time?
Probably not the best start to your day. Let people log in, socialize, be humans and colleagues for a little bit before you hammer them, especially now when work is the only real human interaction some people are getting.