Working at an established org right now, where the team is still remote first. I tried suggesting this, but got pushback and the team actually settled on the opposite. For example, they want any optional changes (e.g. suggestions) in pull requests not to be left as comments but discussed in private which 90% of the time means calls. They seem to dislike discussion threads in Slack and want meetings for things instead. I’ve also noticed things like the person who reviews a pull request being the one who has to merge it and essentially take responsibility for it, versus just giving approval and the author merging it and making sure everything is okay after CD.
I’m very much the opposite and prefer to have things in writing and like asynchronous communication. But when it is written messages, usually people either ask for a call or just do “Hey.” I actually made this a while ago hah: https://quick-answers.kronis.dev Either way, people also really seem to dislike writing README files, or all that many code comments, or making the occasional onboarding script or introducing tooling to do some things automatically. I don't get it.
- Public communication about pull requests encourages knowledge sharing, not just between reviewer and reviewed, but anyone reading. It stores this knowledge sharing long term, so that any future reader can read up on the context and back-and-forth done to get to the chosen solution.
- Meetings are transient. Unless someone takes minutes or a recording/transcription is made and shared, it means the communication in that meeting will be duplicated when it has to be shared elsewhere.
- While I do think the author and reviewer share responsibility for the code in question, merging should be done by the author so that they know when it was merged and can jump in if something goes wrong. That said, in an ideal world it shouldn't matter who hits the merge button, and in fact, something should be automatically merged if it's approved and the pipelines are green, but that's uncommon.
I'd take notes if you ever notice waste from e.g. private / unrecorded meetings, or if someone has to repeat things said in a meeting; take it to a manager and hint that there is a lot of waste.
But ultimately, don't make it a hill to die on. I dislike people going "hey can we do a call" as well - I'm usually busy / elsewhere / focused on something, and there not even being a hint on what it's about is aggravating. The person asking it clearly believes their time and attention is more important (as in "I need feedback on this now"). Sending people that link (after ignoring them for X amount of time after sending a "hey") is passive-aggressive, but educational. Ultimately though, it should be higher-ups that encourage a culture and the etiquette of asynchronous communication.