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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: 0.428s | 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. hn_throwaway_99 ◴[19 Nov 24 19:24 UTC] No.42187109[source]▶
I think this is something that can really be mitigated by more senior people modeling good behavior.

For example, as a principal engineer on a new project or working on something I wasn't familiar with, I'd go out of my way to ask things along the lines of "Hey, this might be a dumb question, but I'm new to X so could you explain how I do ..." I think this goes a long way to building up a culture of psychological safety on a team.