Standups, Slack, and async-first communication
Lesson 1 of 3 in Workplace Communication for Tech IEPs · 22 minutes
Canadian tech runs on asynchronous communication — Slack, email, GitHub, written design docs. This is different from many home cultures. This lesson covers the patterns and the etiquette.
What you'll learn
- Run an effective standup contribution
- Communicate effectively in Slack
- Use async patterns to reduce meeting load
- Adapt to time-zone-distributed teams
From the lesson
Canadian tech in 2026 is mostly async-first. Slack and email replace much of what used to be meetings. Written design docs replace ad-hoc whiteboard sessions. Daily standups are short (10-15 minutes) and focused. The goal: minimize synchronous time so engineers have deep-work blocks. This lesson teaches the patterns IEPs need to thrive in this environment.
1. The daily standup
Format: 10-15 minutes daily. Each person briefly shares: what they did yesterday, what they're working on today, what's blocking them.
The standard pattern (rotating, ~60 seconds each): • 'Yesterday I shipped X, debugged Y, and started on Z.' • 'Today I'm continuing on Z and reviewing John's PR.' • 'No blockers' or 'Need…