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I've worked as a remote tech lead for a couple of years and I often find myself at 6pm New York time asking an important question to someone in London, 11pm the

I've worked as a remote tech lead for a couple of years and I often find myself at 6pm New York time asking an important question to someone in London, 11pm their time. Slack is bad for this, I wonder what people make of me DMing them that late, also I rarely get a response the next day. How does the "Async" blog you mentioned solve these sort of issues? Is it just a regular blog or does it have special features?

samastur 8y ago
Have experience working in teams up to 9 time zones apart, but not working at Zapier. I have phone set up to not disturb me with notifications between 10pm and 7am so I wouldn't mind as long as nobody expects a response before next working day morning. Before I could do that I simply did not have company's chat/email on my phone. My day starts with reviewing any received messages (no matter what channel -- email, chat...) and responding to them. I would find it unprofessional if someone did not. If this wasn't just an occasional oversight, then I would take it up with them.
viraptor 8y ago
Not from zapier. I think it's up to them to disconnect from work chat on their private phones, or silence it out of hours. I worked in TZ 11h away from the rest of the team and unless I was on call, I wouldn't see any messages until morning/Monday. If you don't want it to look like you expect an immediate response, you can always add something like "..., when you start your day."
mseebach 8y ago
Slack has a scheduled do not disturb feature, you can set a period every day when you don't want to be disturbed by notifications. If someone DMs you, Slackbot tells them that you're in do not disturb (and gives them the option to "poke through" and notify you anyway). I work for a company with offices in both Europe and US (and people travelling frequently between them, so you don't always know where they are), and this feature is broadly used.
- scaryclam 8y ago
  "and gives them the option to "poke through" and notify you anyway" Yeah...this is why I close down slack when I don't want disruptions. There's no point in a DND if others can do it anyway. It shouldn't be an option. If someone at work has an emergency and needs to get hold of me, they can give me a phone call. Non-verbal communications have a tendency to be abused, but the reality of actually having to have a conversation with the person you're disturbing means only serious calls seem to get made.
  - paxys 8y ago
    Sounds like more of a culture problem, and no software can help with that.
    - OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
      With this feature it makes the software complicit.
matthewheath 8y ago
Speaking solely from personal experience, I find that Async helps keep everyone on the same page. Rather than needing to scroll back through Slack or keep tabs on multiple channels, all I need to do is log in to Async and read the various posts folks have put up that mention me (if you're mentioned, it's important and you should probably read it) as well as other posts that might cover areas outside of my team that interest me. It's a much more scalable approach than trying to read the backscroll in Slack, IMO. It has a few special features, but on the whole it's basically like a company-wide journal.
- scruple 8y ago
  I am a full-time remote employee, and I also work with folks in South America over to Belarus. I am curious, what is Async? Searching for it on Google is not fruitful.
  - matthewheath 8y ago
    Sorry for not clarifying in my earlier comment: Async is an internal Zapier tool (custom built) used to communicate across the company. Think of it like an internal blog system.
    - scruple 8y ago
      Ah-ha! That's awesome, thanks for the clarification. That does sound very useful, in fact.
      - SnootyMonkey 8y ago
        We happened to have built an OSS / SaaS version of Asynch if you're interested: https://github.com/open-company https://github.com/open-company / https://carrot.io https://carrot.io
        scruple 8y ago
        I am! I'll check this out, thanks!
bryanh 8y ago
Async is for the area between "Slack" and "Documentation" -- it covers things like project statuses, requests for comment, new feature discussions, company announcements, Friday updates and lots more. You can think of it like a cross between a blog and Twitter feed. We're starting to add more Reddit-like features for customizing the experience and sub-groups but that is pretty early still. I don't think Async solves the problem you mention -- that is more of a cultural thing. We expect folks to message each-other frequently (preferably in a public room with an @ mention) but set the expectation that you don't need to respond immediately. The public aspect is important as you will often get "drive-by help" from someone else on the team!

samastur 8y ago

Have experience working in teams up to 9 time zones apart, but not working at Zapier. I have phone set up to not disturb me with notifications between 10pm and 7am so I wouldn't mind as long as nobody expects a response before next working day morning. Before I could do that I simply did not have company's chat/email on my phone. My day starts with reviewing any received messages (no matter what channel -- email, chat...) and responding to them. I would find it unprofessional if someone did not. If this wasn't just an occasional oversight, then I would take it up with them.

viraptor 8y ago

Not from zapier. I think it's up to them to disconnect from work chat on their private phones, or silence it out of hours. I worked in TZ 11h away from the rest of the team and unless I was on call, I wouldn't see any messages until morning/Monday. If you don't want it to look like you expect an immediate response, you can always add something like "..., when you start your day."

mseebach 8y ago

Slack has a scheduled do not disturb feature, you can set a period every day when you don't want to be disturbed by notifications. If someone DMs you, Slackbot tells them that you're in do not disturb (and gives them the option to "poke through" and notify you anyway). I work for a company with offices in both Europe and US (and people travelling frequently between them, so you don't always know where they are), and this feature is broadly used.

scaryclam 8y ago
"and gives them the option to "poke through" and notify you anyway" Yeah...this is why I close down slack when I don't want disruptions. There's no point in a DND if others can do it anyway. It shouldn't be an option. If someone at work has an emergency and needs to get hold of me, they can give me a phone call. Non-verbal communications have a tendency to be abused, but the reality of actually having to have a conversation with the person you're disturbing means only serious calls seem to get made.
- paxys 8y ago
  Sounds like more of a culture problem, and no software can help with that.
  - OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
    With this feature it makes the software complicit.

matthewheath 8y ago

Speaking solely from personal experience, I find that Async helps keep everyone on the same page. Rather than needing to scroll back through Slack or keep tabs on multiple channels, all I need to do is log in to Async and read the various posts folks have put up that mention me (if you're mentioned, it's important and you should probably read it) as well as other posts that might cover areas outside of my team that interest me. It's a much more scalable approach than trying to read the backscroll in Slack, IMO. It has a few special features, but on the whole it's basically like a company-wide journal.

scruple 8y ago
I am a full-time remote employee, and I also work with folks in South America over to Belarus. I am curious, what is Async? Searching for it on Google is not fruitful.
- matthewheath 8y ago
  Sorry for not clarifying in my earlier comment: Async is an internal Zapier tool (custom built) used to communicate across the company. Think of it like an internal blog system.
  - scruple 8y ago
    Ah-ha! That's awesome, thanks for the clarification. That does sound very useful, in fact.
    - SnootyMonkey 8y ago
      We happened to have built an OSS / SaaS version of Asynch if you're interested: https://github.com/open-company https://github.com/open-company / https://carrot.io https://carrot.io
      - scruple 8y ago
        I am! I'll check this out, thanks!

bryanh 8y ago

Async is for the area between "Slack" and "Documentation" -- it covers things like project statuses, requests for comment, new feature discussions, company announcements, Friday updates and lots more. You can think of it like a cross between a blog and Twitter feed. We're starting to add more Reddit-like features for customizing the experience and sub-groups but that is pretty early still. I don't think Async solves the problem you mention -- that is more of a cultural thing. We expect folks to message each-other frequently (preferably in a public room with an @ mention) but set the expectation that you don't need to respond immediately. The public aspect is important as you will often get "drive-by help" from someone else on the team!