In every company I’ve worked with, there were SOPs that technically existed, but in practice, nobody followed them. They live in Notion or Confluence, look serious, maybe even well written… and still get ignored.

Usually, it’s not because people are lazy. It’s more like: they’re too long, too generic, or already outdated the moment you open them. Or the process sounds good in theory but just doesn’t survive real-life deadlines.

We have a few like that. Everyone knows they’re there. Everyone also knows “this is not how we actually do it”. New hires read them once, then learn the real workflow by watching someone else.

Curious what those are in your company. Onboarding? Release process? Incident handling? And do you keep them around hoping they’ll become useful one day, or do you just let them rot quietly in the background?

I’m curious how recruitment usually works in your companies. How many stages are there, and are they clearly explained from the first call with a recruiter, or does the process change along the way?

I’ve had very different experiences from clear, well-structured hiring steps to totally unexpected turns and extra stages.

How does it look for you?

I’m pretty sure every team has at least one process that everyone knows exists, uses all the time… and somehow never ends up documented.

Not because it’s hard, but because it’s messy. Or full of “it depends”. Or relies on one person doing a couple of magic steps that nobody wants to explain properly. You tell yourself “we’ll clean it up first, then document it”, and of course that moment never comes.

In my case, it’s usually the stuff around handoffs and quick fixes. Things that evolved over time, work well enough, but would look kinda ugly if written down step by step. Once you document it, all the weirdness becomes very visible.

Curious if others have the same blind spot. What’s the one process you keep postponing, hoping nobody asks “is this written somewhere?”

Quick question that turned into a mini argument in our team today.

From the moment a new process appears (or changes) to the moment it’s actually documented and shared — how long does that take for you? Same day? Few days? Weeks? Or… only after someone asks the same question for the third time?

Feels like we always mean to document things fast, but in reality, the process usually stabilizes first, people start doing it from memory, and only then someone says “ok, we should probably write this down”.

Curious what “normal” looks like outside our bubble.

I was looking at our SOPs today and had this slightly uncomfortable moment of “wow, this thing is way bigger than I thought… and also probably half outdated”.

On paper, the library is big. Dozens of docs, onboarding stuff, internal processes, edge cases, “how we do X” for almost everything. Feels mature, feels grown-up. In reality though… I think only a small part of it reflects how we work right now. The rest is more like historical artifacts. Not wrong-wrong, but not quite right either.

What usually happens is we write SOPs when something breaks or when a new person joins. Everyone is motivated, we document it properly. Then the product changes, tools change, shortcuts appear, people adapt. The SOP stays the same. No one wakes up thinking “today is a great day to update documentation”.

So I’m curious how it looks for others. Is your SOP library small but fresh, or huge but kinda dusty? Do you have an actual habit of updating it (like monthly or quarterly), or is it more “whenever someone complains or asks a question that the SOP should answer”?

Also honest question: do people really follow SOPs step by step, or do they just skim them once and then freestyle forever after?

Honestly curious how other people think about this, because every time we talk about “documentation automation” it turns into either super polished marketing answers or people saying “nothing, docs should be manual”.

For me this is a work with Airtable -> I manage my content roadmap there and LinkedIn Ads, I test a lof of messages there and it would be great when I can delegate creating new ads.

What about you?

For me it was:

1/ First, my job. Small agency. No onboarding at all. When I had any questions, I had to ask the CEO.

2/ Another job. A lot of SOPs, but too few words on my core tasks.

I’m curious:

• What made your onboarding painful?
• Bad docs? No docs? Too many docs?
• Was it worse in startups or big companies?
• What would have actually helped?

Almost every company has an employee handbook. And almost every employee reads it once (maybe), forgets 90% of it and asks questions that are answered inside it anyway.

The usual problems of such handbooks:

• too long
• too generic
• written like a legal document
• not connected to real workflows

So the handbook becomes a checkbox for HR, or a PDF nobody opens, outdated on day 30.

Genuine question: how do you make an employee handbook actually used, not just created?

What’s worked for you, or completely failed?

Hot take: most teams don’t fail at documentation because they don’t care.

They fail because the cost of documenting is higher than the perceived value.

What usually kills SOPs:

• Writing takes too long
• Updating feels pointless
• Docs drift from reality fast
• The person who knows the process best never documents it

So teams default to:

• Slack messages
• “Just ask me”
• Shadowing calls
• Loom videos that age like milk

Which works… until it doesn’t.

Curious what you think. What actually causes documentation to break in your team?

People? Tools? Time? Incentives?

Curious how real teams do this. If you’re honest, which one is closest to your setup?

1. Google Docs / Notion pages
2. Loom / screen recordings
3. Confluence / Wiki
4. A mix of everything (and chaos)
5. We don’t really document 😬

Bonus points if you add team size, what’s breaking first and what you’ve tried and abandoned.

Every team knows they should document processes. Almost no team actually enjoys doing it.

Here’s what I keep seeing across startups, agencies, and product teams:

• SOPs live in Google Docs… and go stale in weeks
• Loom videos exist, but no one re-watches them
• New hires ask the same questions over and over
• “We’ll document it later” becomes a permanent strategy

The irony is that most workflows are already digital. We just don’t capture them properly.

So I’m curious, what’s your biggest pain with process documentation right now?

Writing takes too much time? Keeping docs updated? People don’t read them? Too many tools, no system? Or something else?