> I know that concentrating knowledge / ownership at a person is not always good, but perhaps a better way to manage this is to... hire someone else who is competent or make other people more vocal.

> And yes, I don't like managers trying to shape communication patterns.

I'm a manager who shaped communication patterns (e.g. default conversations to a public channel) because we're solving different problems. By moving conversations to a public channel away from an individual, we're improving redundancy and reducing single points of failure. Our primary responsibility, which understandably garners discontent, is to prioritize the system over the needs of individuals, within reason.

There are many issues resulting from defaulting conversations in private channels or DMs that you've probably seen first-hand.

"WE ARE THE BORG. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. YOUR UNIQUENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR COLLECTIVE. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

It does feel a bit like that fighting institutional pressure to "optimise efficiency" and "reduce individual dependence".

Your uniqueness is not tolerated, assimilate to the collective, follow the processes given to you, don't think individually.

Except when solving these problems, they require creativity, be creative. BUT ONLY HERE

I like this post. It has the right balance between uncomfortable reality and some humour!

All middle managers (in my experience) talk a big game about reducing/preventing key person dependencies, but on 100% of my teams, there were always multiple key person dependencies. The real issue: If you are not the key person for anything, you are the easiest to layoff (fire).

Thanks, the humour helps keep the melancholy at bay.

Agreed, you never want to be the one holding no secrets when the music stops.

A slightly different viewpoint is that sharing in public or larger private channels allows for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Sometimes the key person is wrong because they aren't the only one working on something. I know that ego might get in people's way sometimes but other people in the team and in the organization also have valid perspectives. As a manager, its important to try and get to a best solution and that means collaboration, not a specific person's approach all the time.

The redundancy also helps the key person be able to disconnect when on vacation. If you are the sole knowledge base for some critical part of the company, might as well drag the work laptop with you every where you go.

OTOH I hugely appreciate my manager who makes a conscious effort to direct people to ask questions in public channels and not just ping “hey” in my DMs all day. And it saves them time too, because my response is going to be “you should ask in channel xyz”. (And yes, in that public channel I am likely to be the one who answers it, but not always, and it’s now visible for other people who also need to know - the exact problem you were so proud of solving!)

The best Slack culture I ever saw also had a strict “No DMs” policy. All discussions had to take place in public or semi-public channels. DMs were reserved for “hey you’re missing standup” or similarly trivial stuff.

> Maybe there should be an option to... move conversation threads across channels?

I believe Zulip can do this, but Zulip is not really favored in these parts