In Defence of Tiger Teams

I am a fan of the minimum number of chat channels. People want to avoid embarrassment, so they move into private channels to ask questions they feel will make them look dumb. Learning and openness happen as a group.

However, when remote startups have growing pains and need to work out processes, there is a tendency to start piling as many people into a Slack channel. Account management doesn't understand the problem, so they pull in a sales engineer. They pull in their bosses. Bosses throw other managers. Suddenly the entire company is weighing in.

This never seems to go well. Egos get involved, and managers arguing with managers look bad for all. Tech isn't our friend.

Emergency situations usually have playbooks, and I recommend that for all issues. Leadership should empower ICs to solve problems. If policy has gaps, one manager should escalate to his peers and come back with at least a temporary response.