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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?

#21

Post by mh- »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #17
screye wrote: post #12

If you're in similar time zones, try https://www.gather.town/ ? I've used it for remote conferences, and I like its 2D UI. Real sense of space there.

This would be insanely disruptive to me and I think most of my team. There are much better ways to handle this like using gitlabs handbook. To me this is the equivalent of having to be on camera all day. Am I idle if my avatar hasn’t moved or interacted with something in game?

> Oh god, please kill it with fire.

> This is horrible.

> This would be insanely disruptive to me and I think most of my team.

> There are much better ways to handle this.

Hi! You could probably turn this from a low-effort rant into a productive comment by removing the first 2 lines of your comment and expanding the last one into something informative.

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

#22

Post by kingkongjaffa »

jjcm wrote: post #9

Huge bias here as I work for Figma, but multiplayer collaborative editors like Figma do wonders. We run nearly everything out of a figma or figjam file. Retros, planning, etc. There's something really nice about being able to see everyones cursors at once, and feeling like you're collaboratively creating something. Presos and slide decks often feel very one-direction from a data flow perspective, which becomes proble…

how do you think Figma slides will play into this? (Big Figma/Jam fan here BTW, thanks for your work!)

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

#23

Post by extr »

screye wrote: post #12

If you're in similar time zones, try https://www.gather.town/ ? I've used it for remote conferences, and I like its 2D UI. Real sense of space there.

Gather is great. I think it lowers the barrier to chats just enough to make it more organic. In particular I find it's really great if you're having a 2-3 person conversation and realize someone else would be really valuable to add. You can just glance at their desk and see if they're available, "wave" to them, etc.

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

#25

Post by dmitrygr »

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…

ALL work is transactional. I solve your problems, you pay me money.

I have family and friends for "social interaction" and "meaning". I do not seek that from a job, nor do I want a job that claims to provide it.

Any recruiter that tells me "our company is like a family" gets a reply that says "so i can cry on your shoulder in case of a bad breakup, and you'll help me move furniture?" and then gets blocked.

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

#27

Post by mushufasa »

1. gather.town 2. Zulip (nuances of design much better than other chat systems for remote work specifically) 3. the 'latent energy' is going to be lower when people aren't eating lunch together and rubbing shoulders. you have to bring the energy to an empty room all the time when working remote. this also has to be exemplified by founders. doesn't mean loudness but instilling a sense of urgency etc.

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

#28

Post by extr »

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…

Donuts are okay, I've used it at 2 different companies now, but I inevitably find myself disabling it after 2-3 months on the job, usually when I start getting repeats. Maybe it would be okay if you could silently veto who you got paired with. No offense to some of my coworkers but I groan when paired with someone who isn't very conversational where I know I'm going to have to shoulder the burden of finding something to talk about.

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

#30

Post by paxys »

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.
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