←back to thread

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

238 points aml183 | 1 comments | 15 Nov 24 19:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.321s | 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?
Show context
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.
replies(15): >>42150920 #>>42150993 #>>42151105 #>>42152006 #>>42152011 #>>42152642 #>>42155060 #>>42155607 #>>42158830 #>>42185599 #>>42185634 #>>42185891 #>>42185940 #>>42186302 #>>42192048 #
lvspiff ◴[19 Nov 24 17:03 UTC] No.42185634[source]▶
I'm at a company now where we are trying to do this but the CIO/CEO keep weighing in on EVERY conversation where they disagree with the approaach. The whole reason we are having the open conversation is for ideation and good communication but when a high level person comes along and says "well thats not the way I would do it" everyone decides to go back to 1:1s, direct messaging, and calls so as not to document anything publicly in feat of being called out by the higher ups.
replies(10): >>42186007 #>>42186637 #>>42186791 #>>42186928 #>>42187421 #>>42187662 #>>42187677 #>>42188206 #>>42189059 #>>42189193 #
1. crystal_revenge ◴[19 Nov 24 23:11 UTC] No.42189059[source]▶
What's happened here is precisely why communication should be public, it's revealed a real problem in the company you're at.

I've been on teams exactly like this, but the problem isn't public channels, it's "leadership" not knowing how to let go and trust their teams. Doing more work in private is the negative consequence of this bad practice, but I assure you this issue will eventually cause problems no matter how clever people are in avoiding public conversations.

And startups that are on the path to long term success will have leadership abandon this type of butting into every day communication very early in their growth. A good C-level must learn the build teams that can scale beyond their individual interventions. You literally cannot grow beyond a 30 person organization (and survive) if this much intervention is required.