Comment by giantrobot

> For example, I’ve been running a remote team for 8ish years now and I keep begging people to have conversations in public channels.

No one does this because it's a bunch of bullshit noise in a channel disrupting everyone. It also opens a conversation up to bikeshedding which drags down the entire discussion.

Small ad-hoc groups can be very effective at solving problems.

1. The more intimate the group the less friction there is in conversation. There's less need/desire to put everything in "business speak" so no one gets their feelings hurt.

2. Small groups don't need to dumb down conversations for less technical participants if there's no non-technical participants.

3. Private chats mean no one is hovering over the conversation demanding some useless status update. A problem is either solved and committed or the group is still working.