Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 290 posts

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

#81

Post by em-bee »

szszrk wrote: post #51
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 organisatio…

if i know a colleague is uncomfortable to speak in a group i can collect their ideas in person, and share it with the group, but ideally the protocol should be public. so create a public chat group with only the two people joining.

if the issue is that the person is afraid to speak up because of being ridiculed for their ideas, you have a culture problem that needs to be adressed.

if the shy person is new, addressing the problem can be as simple as having the new team member do pair programming sessions with everyone on the team, so that they can get to know everyone better, which will make them more comfortable to speak up. maybe their previous job had a bad culture that influenced their behavior.

those pair programming sessions can also help you identify if there are particular people that cause problems by being intimidating in some way to others. sometimes pair programming can even fix those problems, by allowing the two to get to know each other better and learn to respect each other. that doesn't always work though, and care must be taken that the person who is "afraid" to work with the "bully" is not forced to an interaction they are not comfortable with. if the discomfort is that high a more cautious approach is needed. especially if the person afraid is a long term team member.

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

#82

Post by em-bee »

bdangubic wrote: post #73
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’d want this as much as I used to enjoy open floor plan at the office… Discouraging 1:1 and private communication in my experience would actually have 100% opposite effect of what you are describing. This is equivalent to discouraging pair-programming which while may not be everyone’s cup of tea many find extremely productive

you bring up a good point. what matters is the forum where decisions are made. you can talk about ideas in private. but the ideas need to be brought up in the group before any decisions are influenced. especially if the private conversation is with a team leader. if a team leader hears an idea in a private conversation they should ask that person to repeat the idea in public. but also they should discourage team members to specifically approach them to bring ideas. that is what is meant by discouraging private conversations. of course you can talk in private, but if the idea is not repeated in public then it is as if it was never talked about

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

#83

Post by jspdown »

I worked for multiple companies remotely and the thing that worked the best for me was:

- Everyone must be connected to Discord in an audio room. - Encourage pair programming. - Record every meeting make them available to everyone. - Log every decision in a central place, easy to browse and discover. - Meet regularly (IRL) with you colleagues.

By far the most important point is always being on Discord. You can quicky jump in someone's room and feel very connected to your teammates. Obviously, like in a real office, don't disturb someone if it can be managed asynchronously.

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

#84

Post by em-bee »

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.

there is nobody in my family on whose shoulder i can cry except my wife. the friends that i have where i can do that i all met through work. and yes, coworkers have helped me move too.

"we are a family" is still a warning sign though.

it could mean that the team is a tight knit group that a newcomer will have difficulty to break into, especially an introvert.

or it could mean certain expectations towards each other that i would not understand or be comfortable with because i have not experienced any family like that

so instead of rejecting the idea i would ask some questions to find out what they mean by that.

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

#85

Post by em-bee »

dmitrygr wrote: post #54
dartos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

there is a middle ground. if i walk past you and you make eye contact, i say hi. if you are focused on your screen ignoring me, then i remain silent

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

#86

Post by menaerus »

oc_elder wrote: post #68
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 can appreciate the thinking here, but it not ideal. Different details are relevant to different people. And async is inefficient for many situations. Yes publish findings/results, but overcommunicating has a cost. Better to create different channels (sync, async, 1:1, broadcast), provide guidance and trust workers.

... and soon with this type of setting you will arrive at siloing the information. Having all communication public in the channels comes with its cost but everything is as transparent as it can be. Important distinction is that you get to choose if the detail is relevant for your work or not. And not your manager or whoever.

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

#87

Post by em-bee »

singleshot_ wrote: post #6
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. Probably wise to run that by counsel.

it is insane that we can have face to face and even video meetings that are not logged, but we can't have text based chats like that? what if we meet on IRC? should that be illegal without a bot to log the conversation?

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

#89

Post by KronisLV »

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.

> Discourage 1:1 and private communication unless really necessary, especially for engineering topics.

Working at an established org right now, where the team is still remote first. I tried suggesting this, but got pushback and the team actually settled on the opposite. For example, they want any optional changes (e.g. suggestions) in pull requests not to be left as comments but discussed in private which 90% of the time means calls. They seem to dislike discussion threads in Slack and want meetings for things instead. I’ve also noticed things like the person who reviews a pull request being the one who has to merge it and essentially take responsibility for it, versus just giving approval and the author merging it and making sure everything is okay after CD.

I’m very much the opposite and prefer to have things in writing and like asynchronous communication. But when it is written messages, usually people either ask for a call or just do “Hey.” I actually made this a while ago hah: https://quick-answers.kronis.dev Either way, people also really seem to dislike writing README files, or all that many code comments, or making the occasional onboarding script or introducing tooling to do some things automatically. I don't get it.

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

#90

Post by szszrk »

em-bee wrote: post #81
szszrk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 organisatio…

if i know a colleague is uncomfortable to speak in a group i can collect their ideas in person, and share it with the group, but ideally the protocol should be public. so create a public chat group with only the two people joining. if the issue is that the person is afraid to speak up because of being ridiculed for their ideas, you have a culture problem that needs to be adressed. if the shy person is new, addressing…

I appreciate your insight (and all other commenters).

> if the shy person is new

> if the issue is that the person is afraid to speak up

But that's my whole point: it's not always "fear". I'm talking about character. Personal preference. Or "people/character colors" or "16 personalities" or some other names it had.

Enforcing a strict way to communicate and bashing exceptions (which is my way of phrasing the original comment) will work for some, but will also create an artificial leash for others. I think it's too strict and to generic to try to just implement it by force. Yes, whole team should be available to see details, be able to participate, but why enforce that on such a low level as forbidding 1:1 talks...

From my recent experience, aside of excluding many personalities, it kills a lot of inertia that spontaneous prototyping and brain storming needs.

Post reply on HN