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

238 points aml183 | 2 comments | 15 Nov 24 19:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.601s | source

We are a remote company. Everything is going well. No plans to be in person, but I’d say we can do a better job at communicating. Any tips or articles to read?
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travisb ◴[15 Nov 24 20:04 UTC] No.42150361[source]▶
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 can be as simple as Markdown documents in your repository using your normal code review tool. Ensure all documents are listed in a single easy-to-find index of some sort.

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ziddoap ◴[15 Nov 24 20:10 UTC] No.42150412[source]▶
Agree with the occasional relaxed "coffee chat", and having a repository full of good documentation, but...

>If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong.

That seems excessive to me, especially if everyone is also staying connected via chat, emails, etc. Weekly meetings are about my limit, considering I also have work to do, meetings with external stakeholders, ad-hoc meetings, etc.

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1. travisb ◴[17 Nov 24 18:41 UTC] No.42165970[source]▶
At least one video call a day is more about socialization than work; chat and email doesn't really strengthen psychological feelings of connection to the team. Regularly putting a face to the nickname is important.

I consider small meetings (say <10 people) within the team, ad-hoc or otherwise, to count against the once a day minimum. It doesn't need to be a purely social call to be effective.

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2. ziddoap ◴[19 Nov 24 16:56 UTC] No.42185556[source]▶
Different people want different levels of socialization attached to their job duties. If the meetings are a requirement, having them daily is too much for my taste and is more likely to strengthen my psychological feelings of being annoyed.

In any case, not having a daily meeting does not mean something is wrong, as the parent poster stated.