Ask HN: How do remote first businesses maintain cultural cohesion?

1. We do a weekly team meeting that has an open Q&A element to it. Whenever someone new joins the team, we ask them to do a self-intro sharing hobbies and interests and also a teardown or repair of an electronics product (really specific to us).

2. For regions where we have clusters of people, we bring them together occasionally for work and social activities.

3. We do regular workshops where we bring people together in person, with most of the time not covered by a set meeting agenda. This is massively useful for empathy-building and makes us more effective when remote.

4. We’ve reached a scale where we’re now also introducing random match 1:1s bi-weekly for people to connect with others who they normally wouldn’t (folks can opt out if they want to, but nobody has).

You might note that none of these activities (except the teardown) are deliberate culture-builders, but are instead about connection and empathy building. With connections and empathy, you have the scaffolding to make culture stick.

I think an org has good culture if it has a good mission, the mission is communicated clearly and consistently throughout the org, people plan together thoughtfully for how best to execute the mission, and they execute their plans reliably and with respect for the time and effort of colleagues (e.g. reasonable questions and requests are answered in a courteous and timely fashion).

If all of that happens, I would rate the org culture as great, and people will naturally enjoy the company of their colleagues out of mutually earned respect.

None of this seems to have anything to do with getting together in person. You can set and communicate mission without being physically together, and you can plan thoughtfully without being physically together. And directed, thoughtful, and reliable people are great to work with whether it's in person or through a screen, and the opposite kind of person is also a pain regardless of the medium.

There are specific situations when being in-person can work better. I'm sure with very creative work, like developing a Disney movie, you sometimes want to get together to feed off each other's energy. But I don't think it's really that important in general. The important thing is everyone doing their jobs, and the people doing their jobs getting proportional recognition.