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

238 points aml183 | 1 comments | 15 Nov 24 19:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.237s | 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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paxys ◴[15 Nov 24 20:51 UTC] No.42150868[source]▶
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.
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marliechiller ◴[19 Nov 24 17:21 UTC] No.42185891[source]▶
I found this can have negative consequences for more timid employees, junior hires or new joiners. People dont like sounding stupid in public, especially not in front of people they dont know. No matter how much of a safe culture you instil, human nature tends to prevail here and you get the loudest personalities being the the users of those public channels whilst others either dont ask those important questions or seek back channels anyway
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1. vel0city ◴[19 Nov 24 17:31 UTC] No.42186014[source]▶
Yeah, I'd agree you want a healthy balance of 1 on 1 and group conversation. A quick aside is one thing, and if it is a question that should lead to documentation then documentation should be written for it instead of just assuming someone is going to search through a year+ of slack messages in some public channels.

Even in person, not every conversation is good to be had in front of the large group for a variety of reasons.