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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?

#31

Post by extr »

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.

This is such a simplistic take. There is a huge gulf between "We are a family" saccharine corporate BS and "I am a cog in the machine. I am forced to make conversation. Hello Coworker How Do You Do" robo-employee mnemonic.

Personally I prefer to work with people who have a sense of humor, self-awareness about the importance (or lack of) of our work, have some interesting things to talk about it, can be surprising, etc. They don't have to be my best friend ever but I don't want to be bored.

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

#32

Post by dartos »

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.

I think you can read between the lines of the OC.

They obviously meant social interactions in remote environments are inherently transactional.

You never make a zoom call just to say hi to your coworker when your mouse moves past the icon, but you might say hi if you walk past their desk.

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

#33

Post by rsingel »

Tickets. Email. Signal (emergencies and sensitive info only).

Async all the things.

Keep devs out of meetings.

Don't track work hours.

Never do Slack/Teams unless a client pays a lot to suck you into that or if they pay a very large number to have your devs in it as well.

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

#34

Post by hackernewds »

zb1plus wrote: post #19
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 (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

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

#35

Post by morkalork »

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.

I'm surprised at all the positive mentions of gather town. It just looked like a childish gimmick to me? I was tempted to log in and make some jokes about the pool being closed but I didn't want to out myself like that at work.

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

#36

Post by viewhub »

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.

Massively agree with this. It can be difficult to create a culture where everyone talks in the open but it can save so many little and big mistakes!

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

#37

Post by esses »

alexchantavy wrote: post #7
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…

> It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours. This sounds fun to have a b.s./watercooler chat channel. It'd be cool if Slack had that feature but I wonder if that's a non-starter for corporate reasons.

Workspace Owners and Org Owners can adjust retention settings for public channels. Private Channels and DMs can also be set by members if allowed by admins.

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

#38

Post by piotrkaminski »

We do three things:

First, we use Missive to integrate email and chat. This way everything's in one place, properly threaded, and we can easily discuss emails internally in context. Much much better than GMail + Slack.

Second, I run video chat office hours twice a week (Tuesday/Thursday). Anybody can drop in to discuss anything — or not, if there's no need. This lowers the activation energy for "in person" discussions that otherwise might not get scheduled and promotes async work the rest of the time.

Third, regular company offsites! Even a few days a year is good.

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

#39

Post by cole_ »

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.

When we tried it, gather.town set an awkward expectation that team members had to stand at their virtual desk, otherwise they weren't _actually_ online / working.

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

#40

Post by dijit »

mushufasa wrote: post #27

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.

+1 for Zulip.

Still some warts, truthfully, but the core of it is just better for finding information and structuring things.

Integrations are also easier.

Definitely one of my more controversial additions to my company, but the pure volume and quality of conversations would he impossible otherwise. You would be required to wade through a lot of irrelevant dialogues otherwise.

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