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Ask HN: How do remote first businesses maintain cultural cohesion?

• pts_ 4y ago
  Please do not run workplaces like a cult, and force people into things. You will face attrition otherwise.
• theandrewbailey 4y ago
  If you want to talk about non work things, find people who aren't your co-workers. It's OK to only do work things at work, and to separate personal and professional life.
  • bluefirebrand 4y ago
    I'm gonna second this. "Company Culture" is mostly an attempt to get people more invested in the workplace than they should be, trying to replace their workers' social lives and family lives with work instead by making work seem more appealing. Remote first companies are great precisely because it cuts away all of this bullshit. Work stays work, and "company culture" stays out of your personal time and personal life.
    • troyvit 4y ago
      I managed a person who believed that. It was a nightmare. Oh they work all the time, more than they should, because they believe in what the company's doing. But man I completely failed making any sort of connection that allowed us to understand each other (and therefore work well together). Maybe it depends on the company though. This is a 100 person boot-strapped open source company that has a strong mission. Maybe if you're working for a 10,000 person public entity where everybody's just another cog the whole "culture" thing is just a veiled attempt to make the company your life.
      • no-privacy 4y ago
        Some people do not want to have a social or personal connection with their colleagues. But they still want a deep connection, and they look for that through the work itself. By doing it together, by talking about it, and by talking about the process behind the work, and the big ideas they have about all that. But if they get matched with a colleague who wants to build a connection by getting to know the person beyond that, then that doesn't work well.
        • cProdigy 4y ago
          true
    • bognition 4y ago
      Yes company culture can be gamed and abused, but this isn't always the case. Having a workplace that recognizes important life events (like the birth of a child) is meaningful to the individuals on a human level. We can't write that all off as corporate big brother trying to control us. Ultimately we are all people working with other people, and a business can do quite a bit to help us recognize each other as humans.
  • bognition 4y ago
    Sure but at the same time, building a baseline relationships with people is important. It builds capital that can be used to diffuse misunderstandings and tense situations. I'm not looking to replace my family with my co-workers but instead enabling them to get to know each other and connect a bit more.
    • troyvit 4y ago
      I second this. Building relationships with your co-workers that includes non-work contexts gives you more background to understand their motivations, and they yours. As as side benefit it can pay off as a great friendship that extends past the time when professionally speaking you go your separate ways. Five of my favorite friends are ex-coworkers.
      • hklgny 4y ago
        Part of building relationships from a management perspective means understanding how people operate, and then helping to create an environment that’s conducive to them. Your responses in this thread read like you expect everyone you work with to instead meet you on your level. That’s great when everyone is like minded, but as teams scale up it doesn’t work that way. I also have many ex-coworkers who are great friends. I have others who are doing great and I only see random updates on LinkedIn every few years as they move around. Both are fine, both sets of people were awesome hires (on a remote team)
        • troyvit 4y ago
          I'll think about that, though I definitely don't expect teams to meet me on my level. I mean if you read my comments on this thread I talk about my failures, not expectations that others failed to meet. If I make the mistake of joining a team whose level I can't meet then it's my mistake and I leave with as little disruption as possible.
  • karaterobot 4y ago
    But, it's also okay to be friendly with people you see every day, and whose patience, generosity, insight, and attention you rely to do your work. So, the question is a valid one: how best to strengthen those necessary relationships in a remote environment?
  • bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, don't try to make your employees be friends and family. HOWEVER, you can still build the "work friend" camaraderie through some specific things. For example, get together at least once a year, maybe more often for "in-person sessions" - if you have no main office just rent a room or two from a hotel and have everyone stay on premises, pay for lunch and dinner, etc. Don't force everyone to go to dinner together, but do have one nice staff dinner. Always be late to staff meetings, give people time to chat before the meeting begins. Up to you if this is explicit or not. Don't record everything.
  • wslh 4y ago
    It depends, in your company you can find good friends when your topics of interest and ethics are the same. I personally find more commonalities in a company that in the university or high school.
  • paulcole 4y ago
    I’ll agree with this except that if this is your attitude you shouldn’t expect to enjoy working at a company that does value co-workers talking about non-work things. Some companies don’t think it’s OK to only do work things at work and it sounds like the OP prefers to work at a company like that.
• ericfrazier 4y ago
  In my experience, they don't
• pokstad 4y ago
  GitLab is great at remote first culture. Check out their open source company handbook. Remote first requires proactive process to keep employees engaged and communicating effectively. If you feel isolated and trapped in a silo, good process can pull you out. Also, look for companies where remote strategy emanates from the senior leadership. A CEO that flows down remote strategy will be more effective.
  • i_have_an_idea 4y ago
    GitLab pays people differently for the same roles, based on where they're located so, by definition, they aren't great at remote first culture.
    • angrais 4y ago
      How's that a negative aspect? For many, that seems fair as it means you get paid the local rate and so can live anywhere in the world comfortably. Remote first does not necessarily mean bay area pay while living in a low cost of living country.
      • speakfreely 4y ago
        > How's that a negative aspect? Well, it reinforces a system where predominantly rich, white men who won the passport/work-permission lottery at birth are destined to continue receiving more money for doing the same work than the predominantly brown people of Asia and South America. It's difficult to understand why anyone who values equality would support this. > you get paid the local rate and so can live anywhere in the world comfortably You mean, what the company considers "comfortable", even though they don't live there?
        • pokstad 4y ago
          Technically, both parties have to agree on a local rate that is comfortable. No one is putting a gun to your head to accept an offer. If you accept an offer, it is because you consider it advantageous to accept rather than reject.
• androng 4y ago
  I worked at a remote first health hardware company with 35 employees for 1 year. From my perspective, there was no culture whatsoever. There was one zoom party where the company sent everyone snacks and playing cards. But aside from that, nothing. Only work talk. No side conversations, therefore no friendships. I think step one is to have the zoom call on for much longer than just the scheduled meeting time, which we never did.
  • bognition 4y ago
    Did people enjoy this?
    • naillo 4y ago
      If people don't enjoy it and crave friendships in their coworkers I figure they'll just initiate (non forced) conversation with whoever they want to be friends with (like adults).
    • androng 4y ago
      I don’t know. I never talked to other employees about the company.
  • closeparen 4y ago
    I don't see how there can be "no culture whatsoever." Culture lives in things like how decisions are made, how performance is evaluated, how information flows, whether and how criticism and feedback work, what you do when you disagree, balance of written vs. verbal communication, how technologies are chosen, etc.
• 0xbadc0de5 4y ago
  Begs the question - is (corporate) cultural cohesion something worth pursuing or maintaining? I've heard plenty of good arguments in favor, but the most convincing (to me) arguments are against.
  • bognition 4y ago
    Corporate culture doesn't have to be an oppressive controlling thing. It CAN be that but it doesn't have to be. Lots of businesses recognize that investing a little bit of effort can help employees form meaningful interpersonal relationships. Business do better when their employees are happy and engaged. This doesn't have to come at the expense of the rest of their lives.
    • donnythecroc 4y ago
      But that's the Michael Scott type nonsense you hear from "leaders" all the time. I don't need help forming "meaningful interpersonal relationships".
• whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  Honestly just don’t think you can in any way that will be meaningful like IRL is. Video chat and the delays and how only one person can talk at once it just isn’t possible to have proper conversation and connections. Before the pandemic I would have believed it’s possible but now I just don’t care about remote workers anymore because I have been burned multiple times by them in ways that would never happen with IRL teammates.
  • bognition 4y ago
    Yeah, definitely. The almost real time nature of video chat kind of kills the experience. That doesn't mean there aren't other things you can do to improve cross team cohesion and moral.
  • herval 4y ago
    We actually stopped doing video calls and do exclusively audio, with or without sharing screens or apps like miro/figma, and I feel like stress dropped meaningfully. Video calls are awful, they add noise and delayed visual cues that just confuse the brain.
    • whywhywhywhy 4y ago
      Will agree the high framerate of talking over a Figma document is good for communicating that doc way better than screenshare. But we moved all design ideation and strategy to IRL because something about the delay, audio quality and only one person talking at once kills the ability to think and problem solve. It’s like because your brain is so focused in deciphering the meeting that it can’t get into connection building mode that drives new ideas.
• maxrev17 4y ago
  I've got better friends and more in common with people on a remote team than I ever had in an office day in day out. Depends on the people. Culcural cohesion feels like some bs term to keep managers relevant.
  • bognition 4y ago
    Is there anything that the remote team did that helped form those friendships?
• compacct27 4y ago
  We’re getting there, I’ve been in your spot and have some tips after fighting for a better remote culture for months: 1. In-person events must happen. Best case scenario, once per quarter. Even once per year is phenomenal though. This will put out a lot of remote culture failure fires. 2. Team-only social hour with games, works much better after an in person event. 3. My newest experiment win: opening up a casual zoom room to the team for anyone who wants to join. Once again, much easier and more desired by people after an in person event. We’ll work together, shoot the shit, etc. It’s really nice, and non-social people love not being obligated to join them. That’s as good as it’s gotten, and I really like where it’s at. It took months to get there. A lot of people wanted these things, but the convenience of not doing them keeps it from happening quickly. Persisting when support is present is super key to building it up. Honestly, making it happen is just as political as vying for anything else is. Alignment on wanting a good remote culture takes time even when multiple people really, desperately want it.
  • Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    > In-person events must happen. Best case scenario, once per quarter. Even once per year is phenomenal though. This sounds pretty terrible environmentally, as remote-first implies geographically distributed, which implies air travel with its associated externalities.
    • eightysixfour 4y ago
      Do the math on the comparison to a daily driving commute for all of the employees.
    • phamilton 4y ago
      It'd be interesting to see how a daily commute compares to a once a quarter flight. I used to drive 40 miles a day in my commute. Roughly 10k miles/yr. A flight to a centrally located place in the US will be about 3k round trip if everyone lives on the coasts (worst case scenario). Are 3k air miles better or worse than 10k car miles?
      • 4y ago
• jbluepolarbear 4y ago
  Encouraging frequent Zoom meetings is a good way to get people together. Like in situations where you’d normally go to a persons desk and discuss something, you’d now hop on a zoom call. Having seniors initiate can help juniors get used to hopping on a call. My company also has group testing every week where everyone hops on a call and chats while playing with the new build.
• helij 4y ago
  Work/company culture is overrated in my opinion. That's why I don't do anything special apart from regular catchups and being nice along with trying to get better paycheck and titles for people reporting to me. For everything else I let grownups (employees) decide if they want to mingle with others on and off work, either in person or over Zoom.
  • bognition 4y ago
    I dunno, I've worked at businesses that didn't care about culture and the working conditions were pretty mediocre. I've worked at businesses that intentionally tried to make the business a "good place to work" and people were happier. Sure people are less likely to quit, but isn't necessarily a bad thing. People like to think of our work selves as these alter egos we take off when we go home from work. Life is more nuanced than that. If you've got a stressful job that stress is going to bleed into your personal life.
    • pH14 4y ago
      big +1 to this. I've similarly been in orgs that aimed for some sense of culture and others that didn't, and it was much more pleasant to work at the ones that tried. 8 (and sometimes more!) hours a day is a big demand on one's time, and it's a lot more enjoyable when you know and appreciate the folks around you, not just as code-outputting machines, but as people. Good luck in your efforts, and please report back if you find something that works!
  • donnythecroc 4y ago
    Exactly. Pay me well and let me choose who to be friends with and how to spend that money. I used to work at a company that told you how much all their culture spend was per employee it was eye watering they could have doubled everyone's salary and had a much happier workforce.
  • herval 4y ago
    Culture isn’t about “mingling” - it’s about scaling a group of humans that’ll propagate a set of norms, rewarded behaviors and discouraged habits. If you just leave it to everyone to do whatever they please, you _might_ succeed, the same way you _might_ succeed by slinging code at the wall. You’re just ignoring the biggest leverage a group can use to achieve better results
• s1k3s 4y ago
  Mid pandemic one of my clients decided to bring in a manager to handle this. He tried everything that's been suggested here and more and the result was that 3 months later half their team left the company. My point is, some people don't want cultural cohesion and don't want to be "friends" with their coworkers and if you push it too hard on them they'll just leave. So learn to take no for an answer. Hope this helps.
  • Ancapistani 4y ago
    I’m one of those people, most of the time - but I’m also pretty engaged in trying to preserve my company’s culture as it grows. I think the key is to make these things available, but not to “push it”. I’m one of those weird people that wants to keep their camera off 99% of the time and am much more comfortable over Slack than Zoom, but I still look forward to getting together with people for a couple of days every few months. Like everything, there’s a balance to be struck here.
  • donnythecroc 4y ago
    Agree. People choosing to work at a remote first company likely abhor "The Office" style "culture" that you describe. It's the specific reason we hate everything you describe and you will just come off as a Michael Scott character to employees.
• dehrmann 4y ago
  One of the tradeoffs with remote work is flexibility for closer connections. You can work fight this somewhat, but it's the wrong work model for cultural cohesion.
  • bognition 4y ago
    Ok, I can see how that could be the case. What is a better model for cohesion in a remote first workspace?
    • dehrmann 4y ago
      You chose a model that has a potentially larger candidate pool that attracts people who have other things going on in their lives. That hour you spend on a Zoom happy hour is an hour they're not doing something they actually care about. These are the wrong people for a strong company culture.
• chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  You mentioned that a strong culture is built and requires intention. This is even more critical in remote teams. In person, without deliberate culture development, culture develops organically (which can be bad if it's not the culture you want). Remotely, without deliberate culture development, there will just be no culture at all. It also has to come from the top, or at least have buy-in from the top, for this to work. Here's some intentional things we do on our team: * We have a #community slack channel for sharing (that leadership participates in) * We incorporate community into our weekly all hands. For the first five minutes, people can drop photos from their week that they want to share with the team in a dedicated space in our figjam board and we have a community question people can vote on. Usually this triggers some conversation. We also have a 'goodbye question' that we do a round-robin on at the end of the call. These are both given dedicated time on the agenda. We make an effort to avoid any stale icebreakers and pick engaging questions. We're a small enough team that this works but probably wouldn't scale well. * Documentation is king. We make our culture expectations explicit and we write these in notion. We have lots of docs. Some of this is social culture (e.g. list of team members and a bit about them with their common working hours), some is work culture (e.g. we expect the team uses their vacation time and do not expect them to be reachable during it), some of it is vision (e.g. our mission statement and values). These are required reading for new hires and part of our onboarding process. * We regularly check in with the team using things like debriefs, retrospectives, and values assessments. * We get everyone together for physical retreats. COVID threw a wrench into this but I think ideally we aim for at least twice per year. I think quarterly would be nice to try but costs increase and people with families might find them a bit more trouble that way. * Daily team coffee calls. About 30 minutes long. Don't have to actually drink coffee. These are all individually optional, I try to make at least one per week and usually there's a few of us at any given one. We also use the donut slack bot which randomly matches 1:1 social calls once per week across the team. * Culture fit is one of the key three areas we rate candidates on during hiring. Not everything above is what everyone wants out of a job and that's OK. I agree with the other commenters here that work doesn't need to be the centre of your social life and team culture is not a replacement for work-life balance, but I also think knowing your team members beyond their email address builds better trust and trust is part of a highly effective team.
• dial9-1 4y ago
  why do employees have to go through this bullshit anyways?
  • Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Extroverts need their fix constantly and managers think it's a way to exploit workers for more productivity.
• nrp 4y ago
  What we’ve been doing that has worked well for the last 2.5 years: 1. We do a weekly team meeting that has an open Q&A element to it. Whenever someone new joins the team, we ask them to do a self-intro sharing hobbies and interests and also a teardown or repair of an electronics product (really specific to us). 2. For regions where we have clusters of people, we bring them together occasionally for work and social activities. 3. We do regular workshops where we bring people together in person, with most of the time not covered by a set meeting agenda. This is massively useful for empathy-building and makes us more effective when remote. 4. We’ve reached a scale where we’re now also introducing random match 1:1s bi-weekly for people to connect with others who they normally wouldn’t (folks can opt out if they want to, but nobody has). You might note that none of these activities (except the teardown) are deliberate culture-builders, but are instead about connection and empathy building. With connections and empathy, you have the scaffolding to make culture stick.
  • Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    If they were designed with empathy in mind, you'd understand why no one has opted out of the 1-on-1s even if they cause them stress. Anything that comes from HR and is labeled as option is mandatory. Anything that comes from a higher up in the company and is labeled as optional is mandatory. Just because people aren't willing to engage in the action of speaking up which they perceive could endanger their job, doesn't mean they really wanted to consent.
• ergonaught 4y ago
  It's mostly "obvious" and you seem to already understand that, but it does take support from top to bottom of the organization. ex: ensure communication channels exist (mailing lists, slack/irc/etc); enable, encourage, and allow "water cooler" sort of discussions to occur on same; allow folks who don't wish to participate in those to opt out in some manner; periodic in-person meetings with work and "fun" team-building activities; zoom/video really should not be overused but good luck getting folks to understand that. MySQL (the company) did this very well; some of its offshoots have done it well occasionally.
• civilized 4y ago
  Culture, culture, culture. It's universally cited as essential to an org's success, but... what exactly is the "culture" of a workplace? I think an org has good culture if it has a good mission, the mission is communicated clearly and consistently throughout the org, people plan together thoughtfully for how best to execute the mission, and they execute their plans reliably and with respect for the time and effort of colleagues (e.g. reasonable questions and requests are answered in a courteous and timely fashion). If all of that happens, I would rate the org culture as great, and people will naturally enjoy the company of their colleagues out of mutually earned respect. None of this seems to have anything to do with getting together in person. You can set and communicate mission without being physically together, and you can plan thoughtfully without being physically together. And directed, thoughtful, and reliable people are great to work with whether it's in person or through a screen, and the opposite kind of person is also a pain regardless of the medium. There are specific situations when being in-person can work better. I'm sure with very creative work, like developing a Disney movie, you sometimes want to get together to feed off each other's energy. But I don't think it's really that important in general. The important thing is everyone doing their jobs, and the people doing their jobs getting proportional recognition.
• smohare 4y ago
• micro_cam 4y ago
  Edit: be direct about the fact that you are trying to help people develop communication skills. In person heavy cultures only work for some people... like they tend to great for 20 somethings, with no kids, who drink, wan't to hang out at bars after work and can take a few days / a week for a retreat without putting a ton of child care burden on their partner if they have one. But if you have kids, or are serious about something outside or work (training for a sport, non profit or open source work, gardening or other hobby) they can be really hard. Often people just overlook this bias and it works out okay since most people with outside commitments are well established in their careers and have figured out how to be productive and communicate even with people very different from them. One of the great things about remote first companies is that you get a huge diversity of location, interest and life stage in employees. You get people with families, people serious about a sport they live where they can practice it, people running small farms or fixing up cabins in the mountains or living on aboat, people super active in non profits, always traveling etc... You really need to lean in on this and encourage people to share their interests and interesting stories, bond over common interests when they are there but also develop the skills and empathy to work with people who are really different them. Like at my current job i totally chat with another outdoorsy middle aged guy with kids in a rural mountain state, but i've also developed a really good working relationship with a young woman in another country, mentor a young guy in a city etc and do regular virtual coffee catch ups with a number of ex coworkers some of whom i've never physically met. This can be hardest to make work for new grads as for them often it is a choice between moving to a city where they don't know people or living at home...a lot of them do rely on work social networks as they get established. Many remote first companies only hire proven people. Game time and happy hours are ok but hard to make work across time zones. The think i have seen work well is really focusing on communication skills as an official part of career development. Organize short public speaking / lightning talk / story telling / ted talk / moth radio hour style sessions focused on work and not work stuff. Share a story from your life, teach use something, share your current work in 2 minutes. Rotating coffee one on ones, mentoring programs and paper reading groups can also work really well. And like, just directly give people guidance on how to communicate better or let them know that is what you are trying to do.
• stevenalowe 4y ago
  Can you define specific, measurable goals that this "culture" is supposed to achieve? I know it's uncomfortable, especially for the gregarious, but there's no intrinsic reason that co-workers must be any more than that. Focus on the mission, aid each other in that, learn about each other from that. Ice-cream socials are great...if you like ice cream and being social. Yes, it helps if you know and like your co-workers. This can and should be encouraged, but cannot be forced. This goes double for mandatory socializing on unpaid time :/
  • greggeter 4y ago
• dirtbag__dad 4y ago
  What are you actually trying to solve for? What does cultural cohesion look like? In my experience, most companies are mismanaged and no amount of culture building addresses those issues. If you want people to bond in a positive way, make work easier for them by ensuring they have clear goals, attainable timelines, and a path for career growth. Otherwise cultural cohesion is built on people complaining about the company. Maybe that’s actually figured out and your company is not a minefield of bs, in which case you are very lucky! —— Something one of my employers did was start our weekly executive team meetings with everyone saying three words to describe how they’re feeling and why for each. We’d get things like “excited”, “stressed”, “annoyed” with an honest description why … which was a fantastic barometer of the company’s emotions for the week + a window into how everyone thinks and wants to be treated. In our weekly all hands we’d start with everyone saying something they were anxious about and something they were excited about. Folks shared very personal stuff. It was sometimes hard to listen to people over share, but I knew more about people I hadn’t met in person in 6 months than i did folks I had worked with for several years. People loved the culture there, and I did too. But there was still churn from mismanagement.
• codingdave 4y ago
  > deeply invested in vibrant in person culture. What goal did they solve by having that culture? I've been in companies that focused on culture, and in ones that didn't give a crap as long as work got done. I did not see either direction as better or worse than the other, just different. It is also worth noting that every org has a culture, intentional or accidental. So the lack of personal events and friendship is the culture in some places. Your statements that people need to connect and talk about work things is not a universal truth, but a preference. Being engaged with your co-workers and having friendships is not a requirement for a business to work, nor for a life to be fulfilling. So before you try to "fix" your org's culture... you might want to consider that they already have one, it just isn't the one you want.
• exolymph 4y ago
  Just let me do my job ffs. We can bond at the [whatever cadence] company retreat in person. Zoom happy hour is my personal hell.
• applesaft2 4y ago
  I work at a well known remote company in tech. I would argue that the culture in my team is almost non-existent. There is very little socialising within the team, and many of the people, including the most tenured person, is usually too busy to even reply to a message on Slack, let alone get involved socially. I suppose people would refer to this as “leave me alone to do my work”. However this has created an environment where there is less incentive to help out others, review their pull requests, help cover their on-call, or just give time to others in the team. The team operates on a very transactional basis (I need something from you) and little else. I suppose some people quite enjoy that, but to me it has been very hard, and hurt my motivation to do good work. At previous company, where we all worked in person, we all developed very strong friendships which still exist 5 years later, even thought some of us no longer work there. I don’t think I will ever get this at my current company.
• tkiolp4 4y ago
  Culture is overrated. Be a professional, that’s enough.
• throwayyy479087 4y ago
  They don’t, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
• david38 4y ago
  Bosses like office culture because it targets them. Everyone is nice to them because they’re the boss. If they have a gathering at a bar, many will attend because of his status. Try this - have the lowest ranking engineer announce they’re going to go have drinks and see who follows. Track that number for ten announcements. The many rest of the people are so socially aware of power dynamics they go because they like being near Big Boss, or feel pressured.
  • jasonboyd 4y ago
    > Try this - have the lowest ranking engineer announce they’re going to go have drinks and see who follows. Track that number for ten announcements. Out of curiosity, what outcome do you expect? This thought seems incomplete, I think, maybe, because the outcome seems obvious to you, but it is not obvious to me.
• keiferski 4y ago
  I’ve worked remotely for almost a decade and have taken some notes on this topic. My three big suggestions are: - Have in-person meet-ups as often as possible. It can be at an industry conference or just having everyone visit the same city for a weekend. Working with someone online is very different from meeting them in real life. - Add more “fun channels” to Slack, but don’t mandate participation. It should be easy for people to share details about their everyday life without feeling awkward about it. This is what my street looks like, this is what I ate for dinner, here’s what I did last weekend, etc. However, don’t force people to do this or it will quickly build resentment. - Over-communicate what the company’s plans are, what the founders’ opinions are, the future roadmap, your values, etc. This stuff is mostly obvious when working in-person but can be completely unknown if you’ve only worked with people remotely.
• BerislavLopac 4y ago
  In my experience, the key thing is to have a "layered" culture. Yes, you start with a general "culture", which ideally boils down to "don't be a jerk", "respect others", and probably "we're all in the same boat"; but then you give the managers and team leads the authority to adapt that to their respective departments and individual teams. You have people who enjoy meetings and talking directly? Great, have some meetings and calls with them as necessary. You have others that - as a sibling comment stated it - don't want cultural cohesion and don't want to be "friends" with their coworkers? You implement techniques that allow them to be productive without constant interruptions and required interactions. On one hand, implement async working practices; but on the other, offer people a chance to meet their local colleagues (not necessarily on the same team) in a coworking space (e.g. using Hubble [0]) or on regular "offsites". For some reason, managers keep trying to find a "perfect" methodology they will just implement and things will keep running smoothly on their own; but that's an illusion. Management is all about constant adjustment and adapting to specific people and circumstances. [0] https://hubblehq.com/ https://hubblehq.com/
• drewcoo 4y ago
  If that's culture, I ask HN, how do I find a company without culture? What is described is not tangible or measurable. It is only about internal state: intention and connection and engagement as measured by no one in any way. How, oh, how, HN, can I possibly find a startup that I don't co-found that isn't entirely side-tracked on unmeasurable bullshit and politics? Does anyone know a company that does that well?? I'd rather not work with the OP whether we're reinventing wheels or feels.
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  I appreciate how the comoany I work at does it, it seems to work (entirely my opinion): - when hiring, culture is at the top in terms of requirements. The company go as far as to call people back if they were amazing culture fit, but didn't pass the interview for the role they applied to, when a lower-level role becomes available - standup is scheduled to last 30 minutes, the first 20 are reserved for random talk. As people join, various chat pop up and you get to know others - weekly lunch - cto is an amazing person, there is a lot of comradery, people are very affectionate to each other. I'm still not sure how this came to be, might have been a lack of social interaction due to covid? Point is, everyone is extremely caring for each other. The company allows it (sometimes doing this has economic costs), and it seems to go well