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An ex-Amazon PM ‘promoted’ the silent reading culture in my previous company. Definitely brought a lot of benefits:

- forced more senior / leadership members to read through and internalize the details. Reduces wasted time asking already answered questions.

- we used google docs. Question and answers were posted as comments. This formed a log of the majority of the discussion. Less note taking needed.

- allowed less assertive members to ask questions or give answers.

The only drawback - the overwhelming silence at the start that I never really got over…



As a dev, o boy, the silence while people read your docs was maddening. Great people watching though as they digested and marked up what you wrote. Whole process is mildly cathartic to be honest.


> The only drawback - the overwhelming silence at the start that I never really got over…

Dealing with silence is a cultural thing. In Nordic countries silence is the norm.


It seems that way to me too. In the US silence is basically a crime against humanity.


> The only drawback - the overwhelming silence at the start that I never really got over…

More the overwhelming anxiety you face being the person who has written and edited the document multiple times during the 30 minutes of silence at the beginning of the meeting.


I just pop on my headphones and get reading. Silence gone.




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