Comment by bonesss

> "I keep begging people to have conversations in public channels... Guess what, devs refuse to do that."

So, stop begging. Managerial directives come as orders, not pretty-please requests. Also, stop letting your subordinates refuse you. They are your reports, you are approving their money, that can change if they aren't doing their jobs. Fire one for ignoring policy, and their attitudes will change.

On the tech side, clarify that you want all project comms logged and searchable for onboarding and auto-generating documentation as well as identifying technical hotspots where investments in refactoring can save the team time. Whatever. What gets measured gets done, if you are trying to spy on everyone, this is a bad way. Do it if it has value.

> "Many cultures don’t allow for someone to say bad things about their coworker"

Managers in any culture, and especially across cultures, are tasked with learning those cultural sensitivities and then working around them pragmatically. You have identified a problem. That is the start of solutions, not the end of them.

> "If you have better metrics or management skills than what everyone in the world has figured out"

This kind of attitude isn't productive at finding genuine answers, and might be obfuscating the problem.

Lots of people have figured out better metrics and management skills than the local application suggests. It's not the advanced esoteric stuff that is missing, it's the basics.