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

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?

Core values are core values, and for better and worse, everything is not for everyone.

If all-communications-are-public is the company culture, then the company culture is also not to accommodate that alternative communication style.

Because any out of channel communications require multiple people to participate, not just the person who prefers it.

No one is inherently "incompatible". It's mostly the environment influencing their behavior. There needs to be a culture where everyone feels comfortable speaking up and working outside silos, and that is always driven by management and senior eng leaders. For example do junior engineers get constructive criticism on a bad idea or design or are they yelled at and penalized? If the latter, of course everyone will think twice about being open.

And even then you can only do so much. If someone really doesn't want to participate then, well, it's on you to decide how to deal with that.

In my experience, most of the time this can be solved by resetting expectations. Once people learn that asking basic questions won’t open them up to mockery, things move a lot smoother for everyone.

After all, a culture on 1:1 communication has a lot of downsides. The same question gets asked repeatedly, replies don’t become searchable, the same people (usually the most experienced) end up being constantly tapped for answers

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.

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.

not being willing to speak up is not a personal preference. being an introvert is not a preference.

it can be a deep seating discomfort, that comes from negative experiences to speak up in the past. sometimes it is so deep that they are not even aware of it themselves.

i was that person. i had no friends in school until i entered university. every negative reaction was a setback. fortunately my experience was mixed and i did have positive reactions too. i learned public speaking as a scout leader for example. otherwise i'd be a hermit now.

people like us need more positive experiences. especially when joining a new team. to allow us to slowly change our preference.

and even introverts need to accept that they need to cooperate with others, and that requires sharing their ideas. or they should find a different line of work.

I'm afraid we speak of different things completely. I'm referring to personality differences and how to allow each personality to be part of the team. You speak of dealing with bad past experiences or maybe even trauma.

My point was that you should not and can not change other people's personality. You should make sure understand reasons of why others might not embrace same methods. And some advice in this thread ignores that. It's actually a source of frustration for many, not being understood on such basic level, while nothing is wrong with you.

i know what you mean. my argument is that a personality difference that is so strong that it prevents you from participating in a group discussion must be caused by trauma.

group discussions are a requirement in our industry. if not wanting to talk to people is a mere choice then you should be looking for a job where you don't have to talk to people.

in my understanding, having difficulty or even just discomfort to talk in a group implies trauma. and they deserve any help we can offer. but if there is no trauma and they simply can't be bothered to make an effort to accommodate the group, then why should i make an effort to accommodate them?

There was nothing that drastic in my original comment. I'm speaking of differences that are present in all of us, not extremes.

See those 16 personalities or character colors tests I referred to. (although I'm not saying these are good, just illustrate well what level of differences I'm speaking of)

those differences should not prevent you from speaking up in a group. not wanting to speak up when you have something to say is something drastic that needs to be addressed.

That's key, it has to be considered safe to ask questions. Anyone mocking or showing contempt to another on a channel would be immediately reprimanded in private by managers at my company.