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Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#131

Post by vundercind »

great_wubwub wrote: post #18

One thing people miss about remote work is that it's inherently transactional. Show up to a meeting, get or give what's needed, then go back in your hole. This is nice but for many people the lack of genuine social interaction is a killer. A few jobs ago we set up Donut (donut.com) to set up a couple 15- or 30-minute 1:1s per week and tried to stick to the rule that we weren't supposed to talk about work, just chat a…

I cannot relate to the notion that interactions over the Internet must be sterile and non-social. It's like reading someone assert that 2+2=5. My brain breaks trying to process it and starts contorting to figure out how it might somehow be true from some off-kilter perspective when it straightforwardly isn't.

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#132

Post by GardenLetter27 »

Make all repos public within the company and use issues a lot on the repos directly - so they remain searchable along with the code.

Same for Slack - keeping stuff public as much as possible.

Set aside time for reviewing PRs separately and together, and same for project plans (RFCs, timelines, etc.).

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#134

Post by organsnyder »

why-el wrote: post #123

I learned the following: - Everything public in Slack. Create a fun-sounding moto that discourages DMs. Even if a DM happens, and the back and forth resulted in a consensus, share that consensus in a public channel (which makes it searchable). - Record your team meetings, preferably with software that can AI-summarize. Folks on vacation / leave can get the rundown easily. - Encourage the sharing of solutions to vario…

> Meeting the people in real life humanizes them more. I know it sounds silly to say, but it's very true in my experience.

I've found once per quarter to be the sweet spot. It builds up so much trust.

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#135

Post by GardenLetter27 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #24

Like an MMORPG guild. which in 2024 means Discord. (No “professional” solution is even close to gamer tech for remote communication)

It's funny how true this is - how long has Discord had voice channels now?

Maybe Zulip for a slightly more searchable option?

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#137

Post by zikduruqe »

em-bee wrote: post #88
vdvsvwvwvwvwv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every team needs a one-nine (CB channel for chat/truckers)

what happens on that channel?

    ♫ ♪ ♬  
    It was the dark of the moon
    On the sixth of June
    In a Kenworth, pullin' logs
    Cabover Pete with a reefer on
    And a Jimmy haulin' hogs
    We was headin' for bear
    On 'I-1-0
    'Bout a mile out Shakey Town
    I says, Pig Pen this here's the Rubber Duck
    And I'm about to put the hammer down
    ♫ ♪ ♬

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#138

Post by [deleted] »

hackernewds wrote: post #34
zb1plus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All work (in-office or remote) is inherently transactional. If I am in an office, I have to pretend to have genuine social interactions with people. Social bonds made between colleagues have will happen organically. No in-office mandatory fun.

I never pretend that co-workers are my friends. I just understand they are co-workers and treat them as such. so then if I was forced to have mandatory socialization and fun I would quite despise it. if I wanted to interact with them, I would reach out and schedule one-on-ones as would happen IRL

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#139

Post by shortrounddev2 »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #3

Slack / IM often, don't demand a response instantly though, async & remote go hand in hand. Put important stuff in email not slack/IM Have a company wiki Prefer video calls for alignment Write to each other often, spend time crafting written narratives, 1-pagers, amazon 6-pagers etc. to share ideas, make people read them, use google docs or ms word online and get comments inline in the document using those tools, fol…

> Put important stuff in email not slack/IM

I personally think important stuff should be in public slack/teams/whatever channels. I pretty much never use email for any communication; the amount of spam I get, even on my work email leads me to ignore basically all email notifications I get. If I really need someone to see some information, it goes in slack. Email is only used for external communication, and even then if both orgs use slack we just create an external channel instead. I get crap for this on HN every time it comes up but I just can't stand email as a communication medium

Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

#140

Post by lutorm »

paxys wrote: post #30

Make conversations public by default. If you use Slack, make team channels, project channels, announcement channels etc. all public. Discourage 1:1 and private communication unless really necessary, especially for engineering topics. This single change will have an immense impact on overall company culture.

My experience (being fully remote for over a decade) is that it's extremely distracting to have all discussions public. It creates a lot of noise and it's very hard for people to not get drawn into conversations that doesn't directly affect them. It's definitely good to have finished conclusions available for everyone, but the "sausage making" is more distracting than useful.

Of course it depends on the size of the team we're talking about.

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