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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?

#51

Post by szszrk »

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 to find comfort for and include characters that don't like the spotlight? At least not during early phase/brainstorming.

I've worked with many great people that hate to handle things without their usual group first, and will stall until a reasonable approach can be presented. Which means creating shadow communication process - the more you push for "discouraging 1:1" the more they will hide.

What your organisation did with such "incompatible" people, relate them until the team left likes how they work, or were there better ideas?

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

#53

Post by gwbas1c »

> No plans to be in person

Figure out how to have some kind of face-to-face relationship. This could be an annual all-hands trip, or otherwise take a week to fly out and spend time with the person you work with.

You learn A LOT about each other when you interact face-to-face. I once worked with two developers in India, and assumed that the shy one was just so-so, and the talkative one was brilliant.

After some deep day-long conversations, and a few day trips, I realized my assumptions were completely wrong: The shy one was shy, and the talkative one spoke before thinking.

---

More recently, I started work with a hybrid team. I live 60 miles from the office, but it's brutal commute. I go in once a week.

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

#54

Post by dmitrygr »

dartos wrote: post #32
dmitrygr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

  > 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".

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

#55

Post by gwbas1c »

extr wrote: post #31
dmitrygr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, et…

The "we're like family" phrase can mean many different things in the work environment, so don't read too deeply into it.

That being said, it's often a sign of poor management; managers will use "we're like family" instead of addressing problems that they need to address. It can create a very stressful situation if you're a high performer, because the expectations and handholding quickly get unreasonable.

(The song "Surface Pressure" from Encanto explains the situation exactly.)

For example, I once worked with a manager who used the "we're like family" excuse when incoming tickets were incomprehensible and missing critical information. He was just copping out of his job, which was to set processes and make sure new employees knew the processes. Instead, his expectation was that I would handhold the organization through the ticketing system.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

extr wrote: post #31
dmitrygr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, et…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by quectophoton »

If you find yourself constantly trying to explain stuff visually, invest on a graphics tablet. Even a "cheap" As for the "whiteboard", just opening Excalidraw when you need it is very low friction in my experience. Google Jamboard and Miro were okay-ish, I guess, but for me the simplicity and responsiveness of Excalidraw is still better.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by gwbas1c »

piotrkaminski wrote: post #38

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" discussion…

> I run video chat office hours twice a week

I used to do that with a large remote team. It was extremely helpful with onboarding, and keeping a dedicated space for technical discussions.

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

#60

Post by beAbU »

quectophoton wrote: post #57

If you find yourself constantly trying to explain stuff visually, invest on a graphics tablet. Even a "cheap" As for the "whiteboard", just opening Excalidraw when you need it is very low friction in my experience. Google Jamboard and Miro were okay-ish, I guess, but for me the simplicity and responsiveness of Excalidraw is still better.

I've integrated draw.io into our Confluence. We can now create inline diagrams right in the page being edited. Resulted in higher quality documentation, with a lot more diagrams for even mundane things. I generally work in pictures, so it's great for me.

But I do agree, excalidraw is great. I recon its an importan skill to be able to confidently and quickly whip up a diagram while in a call. I worked with an engineer who preferred MS Paint, but he was really good at it, and it resulted in him explaining tricky concepts really elegantly.

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