Ask HN: Tips to maintain culture after going remote? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tips to maintain culture after going remote?

3 pointsrlawson8 comments

So my company went fully remote during covid. It's a small company well known in the area for having a good culture in the tech dept. Lot's of board games at lunch, people doing stuff outside work, and long term tenures (10+ years). Now we are remote and we also lost some old timers who got scooped up by crazy startup money. We do quarterly in-person meetings. Also social stuff like lunches, disc golf, bowling, go-karts etc. What else works well to maintain and build up culture for a remote company?

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I feel like good work culture isn't board games at lunch.

couple jobs ago we had multiple playstation 3s, foosball, even board games; frequently there was team lunches paid for by the boss. I can 100% tell you, literally nobody on earth would consider this place good work culture.

You know how often you got to actually play with those? Never. You were too busy writing reports, writing statements of work, writing detailed thorough notes so anyone regardless of skill could follow the procedures. If your procedure wasn't perfect, you will take all the blame for someone else's actions.

In the root cause analysis and followup meeting you will have to justify your mistakes and you will be criticized greatly for having made them. Your desk will then get moved to a vacant part of the building to help avoid distractions. Your coworkers will get encouraged to turn on you or for that matter encouraged to call out your mistakes so issues are resolved quickly. Though that tends to end up in sabotage, audit logs literally proved that one.

When things go well though... you don't get any credit. It wasn't you who did the work. You do get a reward though, MORE WORK! 60+ hour weeks just to keep your head from melting down. Constantly under threat that if you don't work that much you'll be fired.

Long story short, I think good work culture isn't some token game playing or free lunches. It has far more to do with not being micromanaged, being treated with respect, being given the pats on the back you deserve. All these things can be done remotely.

Yeah 100% agree that the perks don't make the culture. Someone wiser than me said "real culture can't be faked and fake culture isn't real".

I mentioned the gaming because when in person everyone pretty much did play and the company always had a great work-life balance. It's a small company so you knew everyone and many people were friends outside of work.

It's still a great place after going remote but it does feel more impersonal. Maybe that's the nature of things and that's ok. I don't need work to be my social outlet but on the other hand it is really nice to enjoy being around your colleagues.

You can't maintain the same culture after going full remote. If that is your goal you will fail. Instead figure out what the right culture is as a remote shop and work to build up and maintain that.

What are some good things you have seen that are specific to remote companies to build up culture?

Emphasize written communication. Voice and Video are important but it's too easy to prioritize a Video Conference over written communication. The two mediums are complementary not fungible. If you needed a meeting you probable also need a published summary of the meeting. This doesn't need to me only technical either. Humorous and/or fun writing is also helpful to build culture. Provide appropriate forums for it. Moderate your informal written communication though. Ensure it's appropriate for the culture you are trying to maintain.

In person events periodically at least once a year but more frequent if you can swing it. They are important to help people put faces to names and that helps you teams develop empathy for the other person.

Thank you! I appreciate your summary!

Try to build a virtual hallway/watercooler. We use slack for this, and worked very intentionally to encourage people to post what they were working on in their respective channels, and to reflect conversations in slack threads.

This led to the team being able to observe what other people were working on, to occasionally "overhear" something that was relevant to them and hop in.

We also encouraged people who jumped into video conferences to drop the meet in the slack thread so that other people, if it mattered, could hop in. Though not always appropriate (we have plenty of private ish meetings) that makes it easier for remote people to engage in the random happy accidents you get from a physical office.

Thanks, good idea!

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