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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?

#261

Post by lomereiter »

aen1 wrote: post #158
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…

Totally disagree. For introverts, "everything public in slack" means that I would rather not say something than have 50 people see my thoughts/rants/silly questions in public

IMO the actual difference between introverts and extroverts is that the latter use @here and @channel a lot more frequently

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

#262

Post by takemetoearth »

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…

You're not getting genuine social interactions from people who are paid to spend time with you. If you want genuine social interaction, get a dog.

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

#263

Post by takemetoearth »

dmitrygr wrote: post #25
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.

You're being downvoted because you aren't being a team player. Now please sign this PIP from your "family".

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

#264

Post by takemetoearth »

mvdtnz wrote: post #148
dmitrygr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you might say hi if you walk past their desk No. I would never interrupt someone's flow for a "hi". What an insane take. Those like you, interrupting us for a "hi" and throwing us off a good thought process when you "walk by", is one of the main things which make us all want to work remotely, far from you, protected by a need to have a purpose for your "hi".

After reading your comments I have decided if I'm ever a recruiter I'm going to say "we're like a family" on every communication just to weed out folks like you.

Love it, love the spite, but you will actually legitimately lose people who don't want to join a cult. If you wouldn't drive me to the airport for free, then we're not family, sorry. Save that term for, like... people who aren't paid to spend time with you.

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

#265

Post by takemetoearth »

travisb wrote: post #4

Video calls. If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong. Configure it such that starting a video call takes no more than 4 clicks. Have a company-wide General/Coffee chat where people talk about arbitrary things. It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours. Write lots of short documents -- especially for designs. Review them much like you would review code. This…

I've had a lot of productive days where I wasn't forced to broadcast my face for an hour. Can you tell me what I was doing wrong?

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

#266

Post by wellthisisgreat »

lanstein wrote: post #232
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…

s/Slack/Zulip

Zulip is amazing

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

#267

Post by jorgesborges »

takemetoearth wrote: post #262
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…

You're not getting genuine social interactions from people who are paid to spend time with you. If you want genuine social interaction, get a dog.

I think you mean get a cat.

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

#268

Post by sumedh »

nitwit005 wrote: post #136

Actually do something when people don't reply to their peers. Even at companies that aren't "remote", there are people who will simply ignore emails and messages. You're forced to go nag their manager or escalate to yours to get them to respond.

> You're forced to go nag their manager or escalate to yours to get them to respond.

That usually happens in big companies. It is so annoying.

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

#269

Post by mozman »

diggan wrote: post #151
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…

> 1. Gitlab somehow statistically tracks public / DMs. Haven’t implemented at my startup but if anyone knows a simple way to do - please let me know. If you use Slack, I think the admin panel already contains the number of messages in channels VS DMs. Long time I last saw it myself, but I think it was missing a breakdown on how many members of the Slack received the channel/"public" messages (as not everyone is part…

Slack is meant to be addictive. I only use the web client and modify it with tampermonkey

All notifications disabled and I only read when pinged. davison updates are the only mechanism allowed.

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

#270

Post by jesterson »

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.

How do you deal with unavoidable information overload and necessity to read bazillion channels with tons of irrelevant crap in it?

Since that's teh inevitable state of communication via slack with this sort of policy.

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