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by kodah 1387 days ago
I just started at a 100% remote company. I don't feel a loss of social interaction here, but I did at my previous company. There's a couple things I would note if you want to succeed with a remote culture:

- Have very direct conversations on your team about how you want communication to go. Our agreements sit right next to our team charter.

- How the company manages chat seems to affect how people communicate. If there's zero organization and everything gets dumped into a single channel, then people also stop bantering in that channel.

- Company chat channels shouldn't just be for business. Have some community channels that let people coordinate around topics. Supply "feed" channels where people can dump pictures and videos; I tend to post pictures of my dog, plants, or brews.

- Let people create channels on their own but give them a framework for doing so. That way they're more discoverable and descriptive. For instance, all of our community channels start with #comm- and team channels start with #team-

- Email should only be for formal and external communication. Having all of your communication in one place, for the most part, is quite nice.

- Establish quasi-working hours. My team has a window where all or most of us are online. It's not super strict, but it's there so we can coordinate. Most of our work is done asynchronously though.

- Have a stated bias towards using video. We also use the video tool built into our chat application instead of something external like Zoom.

- All meetings are remote first.

2 comments

A framework for naming channels is something you don't realize you need until it's too late. My company is absolutely atrocious at it, and we now have thousands of channels. Many are cryptically named, and we have at least a couple of competing "standards" for naming channels. It's a real challenge to find what you're looking for.
Obligatory xkcd on "standards" https://xkcd.com/927/
These are very helpful tips. Thank you.