by rayshan on 2/18/22, 11:54 PM with 78 comments
by zomglings on 2/19/22, 4:56 AM
I have worked in companies of various sizes, from (currently) running my own startup, to leading teams in rapidly growing startups, to a cog in the engineering wheel at Google. From (currently) fully remote, to having some team mates working remotely and others on-site, to fully on-site.
I have never found the particular wiki/document tool we were using to be even close to a critical factor in the onboarding process. Onboarding works well when experienced teammates are given the time to show their newer colleagues the ropes. It works poorly when there is no personal attention given and people are just asked to go and read docs and left to their own devices.
My sincere recommendation to anyone starting their own business is to stop wasting time, money, and energy on decisions like these which do not materially impact anything about your business. If you're using GSuite, just use their stuff. If you're using Microsoft's equivalent, use their stuff. Otherwise, JIRA + Confluence are free for small teams. Otherwise, if you're already paying for GitHub, Gitlab, whatever, just use their tools.
Last thing you need to do is spend an additional $8/team member/month for functionality you are already getting for free in other services you are using. Believe me, it will not make a difference to your likelihood of success. These decisions are just procrastination traps which distract you from the important stuff - talking to users, talking to customers, and building things they need.
by jmacd on 2/19/22, 1:43 AM
The primary issue is very straightforward, but one that plagues so many companies: search.
Searching in Notion doesn't actually exist. It will perform some string matching based on some text you provide, but it is unable to provide any of the needed context in order to decide which result is the right one. It is also aloof of whatever structure you might be trying to impose, so when you are searching you truly are looking for a needle in the haystacks.
by statico on 2/19/22, 1:02 AM
The one thing holding me back from declaring that all new companies should use Notion for everything is the text editing. Doing any kind of long-form content, such as blog posts or design docs or technical documentation, is arduous and painful. The editor is usable but clunky. Editing links, selecting text, and using formatting shortcuts is wonky. Joining paragraphs is hard. If they can make editing more fluid, it might just be the perfect information organization tool.
by trynewideas on 2/19/22, 6:14 AM
If your company uses a Notion page for a job listing, I'm already concerned. Doubly so if it requires a Notion account to view, which is becoming WAY, WAY too common.
This might be something Notion CAN do, but nothing gives me the impression that a company is either under-resourced or lacking in sufficient self-awareness like a Careers page that requires me to log in to a third-party service to even view the req.
by dahdum on 2/19/22, 1:48 AM
Also, is Kopa.co an active company or still in prototype phase? All I see when I browse the city lists are 404s and no listings[1]. I mean no disrespect and don’t have all the details, but it seems counterproductive to spend so much time on business organization before the product.
by gumby on 2/19/22, 5:24 AM
Ever read a web page that was actually a notion doc? You can’t even scroll to the next page with the space bar. Someone had to go to extra work to break something that’s been a reading convention since the 1960s.
by tracyhenry on 2/19/22, 2:00 AM
by chachra on 2/19/22, 2:29 AM
Other than that, a much more manageable product, has external integrations, automations etc. built in that even a non-technical or non-power-user can enjoy and use.
by ryanSrich on 2/19/22, 1:45 AM
I’ve found that the less process and overhead for internal documentation the better. No one at my company has time to groom and upkeep something like Notion to the degree described. That’s not to say it isn’t valuable, it’s just not something that brings value to us.
Personally speaking, not for company use, Notion requires too much unnecessary structure. It’s very difficult to just start writing. I first have to figure out where the thing goes, and how the thing is connected to these things, and how I won’t lose it if I move it, etc.
by firecall on 2/19/22, 7:29 AM
It seems I'm constantly seeing templates for this, that and other all built in Notion!
Are the Notion team doing an incredible astroturf marketing job?
Is it people just cashing in on Notion's popularity for internet points?
A search for 'Notion' on Product Hunt returns a couple of thousand results!
by gmays on 2/19/22, 1:37 PM
It also offer a subscription for updates, but I wouldn't recommend it. I canceled mine last year since 1) updates aren't frequent and 2) after initial setup I don't plan on changing much since the initial template purchase serves us perfectly well, which is why I highly recommend it.
by bschwindHN on 2/19/22, 7:25 AM
by StopHammoTime on 2/19/22, 10:54 AM
If your company is a culture of reviewing and updating documentation it will have good documentation, if it doesn’t, it won’t.
by dispencer on 2/19/22, 4:06 PM
But many of the drawbacks I've seen mentioned in this thread are solved by my addon tool. It adds full-text searching to Notion pages, discoverability, and the ability to use Notion docs externally as-well as internally.
I agree, it won't solve all problems for all teams but it's an option if you haven't heard of it.
by VoidWhisperer on 2/19/22, 1:58 AM
by winrid on 2/19/22, 7:43 AM
https://blog.fastcomments.com/(10-05-2021)-adding-commenting...
by ahelwer on 2/19/22, 4:08 AM
by Normal_gaussian on 2/19/22, 1:27 AM
> I've spent over 500 hours creating an entire Notion org, including all wikis, databases, and templates, for you to copy.
This guy spent quarter of a working year building a second version of his fancy wiki, rather than work on his startup.
> We were one week away from onboarding our first employees, and we had started creating onboarding docs in Google Docs when it started to seem messy.
It doesn't sound like they've ever really used anything else.
This article (and knowledge/data stores in general) has all the hallmarks of the tribalistic fad that plagues note taking. In particular there is no hard data, no specific problem exploration, no notion of tradeoffs. Its all fanbasing and salesmanship of their wonderful concepts.
I've never worked at a truly huge company like many of you have, my biggest was around the 150 people mark. I've rarely been without access to information that wasnt being politically kept from me, and maintaining the relevance of documented data has been a significant challenge everywhere. Notion doesn't solve the first, and it doesn't seem to make maintaining easier either (in fact all the cross linking seems to make it harder). I expect it'll perform about the same as the other systems - that is to say the benefit comes from the disciplined use over time, without this they are all messes in a year.
Regardless of my dismissiveness, my current company has just embraced notion. When the co-founders are on the hype train there is no going back, so I'm hoping to harness the momentum for some general improvements in comms skills across the team.
by frebord on 2/19/22, 1:16 AM