Unpopular Collaboration Views in Big Tech | Generated by AI
Question: What are unpopular ideas about communication or collaboration in big corporate engineering teams?
Answer:
Here are several contrarian or unpopular views on communication and collaboration practices commonly praised in large corporate engineering teams (e.g., at Big Tech or similar organizations). These challenge mainstream advice like “more meetings are better,” “Agile/Scrum maximizes collaboration,” or “constant open communication boosts productivity.”
-
Too many meetings kill deep work and productivity: Daily stand-ups, syncs, and cross-team meetings are often seen as essential for alignment, but critics argue they fragment focus, waste time on status updates (better handled asynchronously via tools like Slack or email), and create “meeting fatigue” in large orgs where coordination overhead dominates actual engineering.
-
Scrum/Agile rituals hinder rather than help collaboration: Popularized for fostering teamwork, Scrum (with sprints, points, retros, and roles like Product Owner) is criticized as micromanaging engineers, rewarding superficial velocity over quality, and turning creative work into bureaucratic mini-waterfalls—especially in big companies where it’s scaled poorly.
-
Over-communication and “radical transparency” breed politics, not better collaboration: Big corps push open channels, shared docs, and frequent updates for inclusivity, but this can lead to performative busyness, empire-building, information overload, and indirect politicking instead of direct, efficient problem-solving.
-
Forced cross-functional or open collaboration creates silos in disguise: Emphasizing cross-team syncs and “breaking silos” sounds ideal, but in reality, it often results in blame-shifting, diluted ownership, and hidden silos due to misaligned incentives—engineers end up protecting their turf more fiercely.
-
Asynchronous written communication trumps synchronous talks: Verbal meetings and calls are favored for “building relationships,” but unpopular views hold that heavy reliance on written docs (e.g., design reviews, RFCs) reduces misunderstandings, scales better in large/distributed teams, and forces clearer thinking—while endless calls favor extroverts and quick talkers.
-
Not everyone needs to collaborate or communicate equally: Inclusive practices like soliciting all opinions in meetings are standard, but contrarians say this democratizes mediocrity—decisions should be driven by the most capable engineers, not consensus, as broad input often delays progress without adding value.
These ideas are “unpopular” because they push back against dominant corporate cultures emphasizing hyper-collaboration, but proponents argue they lead to higher-quality output in complex engineering environments.
References:
- https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-and-especially-scrum-are-terrible/
- https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/06/29/does-scrum-ruin-great-engineers-or-are-you-doing-it-wrong/
- https://devops.com/agile-scrum-is-a-failure-heres-why/
- https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/project-management-in-tech
- https://age-of-product.com/engineers-despise-agile/
- https://dev.to/ragnarkon/a-criticism-of-scrum-21al
- https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1l0wg36/big_tech_engineering_culture_has_gotten/