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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?

#211

Post by [deleted] »

aen1 wrote: post #159
patrickhogan1 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great list. Add a few.. 1. Meet in person every quarter. Fly people into the HQ if there is one. If not just rent meeting place. 2. Have a well written handbook like Gitlab that explains how your company works. 3. Onboarding program - remote onboarding sucks. Do onboarding in person (if you can) or assign an onboarding buddy if you can’t. 4. Slack Is Great But (SIGB) - teach people that they don’t need to read everyt…

Meeting in person >1 hour away is difficult for people in many life circumstances. And if there are constant meetings, it either strains families or makes the person who can't make it feel left out

[deleted]

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

#212

Post by saxelsen »

bezier-curve wrote: post #204
eddd-ddde wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, you are collaborating with a team, if you are not comfortable sharing thoughts how are you gonna be comfortable sharing _code_.

There's also such a thing as oversharing context with people that are already burdened with a lot of context related to their own tasks. Splitting off into private conversations helps keep irrelevant members from context switching.

From my experience working remotely for 2 years, this can be accomplished by starting a thread with a descript title and posting the body (with the context) inside the thread. Just like reading across a bunch of article headlines on HN.

For ongoing discussions about a topic, start a channel and perhaps prefix it "temp-" to indicate that it's a temporary channel.

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

#213

Post by saxelsen »

lvspiff wrote: post #117
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.

I'm at a company now where we are trying to do this but the CIO/CEO keep weighing in on EVERY conversation where they disagree with the approaach. The whole reason we are having the open conversation is for ideation and good communication but when a high level person comes along and says "well thats not the way I would do it" everyone decides to go back to 1:1s, direct messaging, and calls so as not to document anyth…

I don't think this would be such a problem if people were comfortable challenging the CIO/CEO. So maybe that's the cultural aspect that needs to change on the exec's behalf?

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

#215

Post by m0rphling »

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…

I get that a lot of people see Slack as a panacea for all communications, but too often it ends up a dumping ground for anything and everything for which searches might not be as effective over time. Also, that data in Slack can and will be a liability risk to you when it comes to data privacy, compliance, and any litigation hold requests. Do understand that larger organizations (especially FAANG) will purge slack conversation data after a certain period of time for these reasons.

Finally, I feel DHH's article on group chat still provides valid criticisms and recommendations to retain your sanity and prevent the feeling of FOMO: https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat...

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

#216

Post by em-bee »

singleshot_ wrote: post #170
jerf wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I'm sure that the only reason that face to face meetings are not logged is technical capability more than anything else. The law just hasn't metaphorically noticed yet that those can all be recorded to. It's still on the pricy side at the moment. (Don't forget not every business is a tech business that still reasonably expects 20%+ profit margins.) I often bang on the fact that laws made in the 20th century ar…

“Slack” under the law is quite an interesting concept. “Inherent logistic pseudo-discretion” might make me think less about a friendly guy smoking a pipe, but it has some disadvantages, too. I’m interested by the fact that you and I could travel to Nebraska and whisper to each other in a cornfield in ways that violate the law left and right. Why is this not a huge problem? Because inherent in the logistics of getting…

well, it depends on the country. in germany this kind of surveillance is illegal unless ordered by a judge, and there is a high bar to get that order. even at work recording of conversations is generally illegal to protect employees privacy. however i think logging of text chats and storing emails is legal. and i believe some people want to make it mandatory.

it is a constant back and forth between both sides.

earlier i have made the argument why written communication should be treated just like the spoken one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41913176

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41912666

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

#217

Post by Gigachad »

saxelsen wrote: post #213
lvspiff wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at a company now where we are trying to do this but the CIO/CEO keep weighing in on EVERY conversation where they disagree with the approaach. The whole reason we are having the open conversation is for ideation and good communication but when a high level person comes along and says "well thats not the way I would do it" everyone decides to go back to 1:1s, direct messaging, and calls so as not to document anyth…

I don't think this would be such a problem if people were comfortable challenging the CIO/CEO. So maybe that's the cultural aspect that needs to change on the exec's behalf?

It’s still a waste of time to have to debate every single thing every day.

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

#219

Post by em-bee »

jerf wrote: post #200
singleshot_ wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Slack” under the law is quite an interesting concept. “Inherent logistic pseudo-discretion” might make me think less about a friendly guy smoking a pipe, but it has some disadvantages, too. I’m interested by the fact that you and I could travel to Nebraska and whisper to each other in a cornfield in ways that violate the law left and right. Why is this not a huge problem? Because inherent in the logistics of getting…

The friendly guy smoking a pipe was merely ahead of his time. If we are flinging ourselves into an AI-driven total surveillance state we're all going to miss slack more than ever. Hopefully if anyone survives the AI-driven total surveillance state will eventually realize that with the degree of control it has it doesn't have to crack down on literally everything just because it can.

in the culture series iain banks paints an optimistic picture of an AI driven idealistic utopian post scarcity society where nothing is secret, from the AIs at least.

some of the ideas seem to be that in post scarcity many crimes become meaningless, and that the AIs keep your privacy.

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

#220

Post by mxuribe »

I have worked with several companies and collaborating across vastly different time zones...and the thing that seems to work best is some central document repo/wiki. Sure, group chats help, 1:1 chats help, email helps...but for institutional knowledge, or even info that needs to be passed across time zones, i find it helps to "dump" info in a central place that everyone knows to look at like a doc repo/wiki...and a chat becomes too ephemeral, plus as new messages get added very critical info gets pushed down...and if a chat platform allows to "pin" some critical info, then you just pivoted to need a doc repo/wiki of some sort.

I will also add that if the info to be conveyed is less than institutional knowledge, and it more about "what's status of a project?", that too, can best be posted in some sort of succicnt dashboard...which can live somewhere in an appropriate place in your doc repo/wiki. Again, i will state again that ephemeral platforms like chat have their place, but there's nothing more powerful to ensure EVERYONE everywhere in your org knows what's up, what's happeneing, and/or how to get help to keep moving forward on all efforts.

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