How we communicate at Slite

You might think "Why do we need a guide on how to communicate? Thinking Face".

Communication is the source of great... or awful teamwork. And our remote environment with heavy written culture and shared ownership makes it even trickier to master.

Across the years we have seen how newcomers had a hard time finding the right balance between tools, formats and rhythm. Here are a few thumb rules that could ease your onboarding.


The golden rule: When in doubt, communicate.

There is not such thing as too much communication in your early days.

If needed we'll give you feedback and help you adapt to our best practices. But don't censor yourself, not on the medium to use nor on the communication rhythm.



Balance async and sync

You probably read through articles we wrote about "async" work. And thus, you might feel uncomfortable pinging folks in Slack... Is it async enough?

Don't worry: we don't promote async-only communication. We encourage teams to find a better balance.

Start with what's natural to you, and you'll see your style evolve as you interact with us and see new practices.


Give the team transparency on your work

Individually, the goal of your communication is to give visibility on what you're doing.

As a newcomer, it allows for the team to build trust in you: they see you ship and understand how you work.

As a team this constant communication allows us to feel the team's pulse and build emulation. Leverage #updates, #shout-out, and  Weekly updates .

At all time you can ask yourself 2 questions:
does the team overall feel I'm moving forward? problems get solved, outcomes is reached, things are shipped etc...
do my direct teammates know what I'm doing, shipping, struggling with? If the answer is a no, communicate.
Thumb rule, if you or your squad have not communicated for a 1/2 working days, something is off.



Meeting tools

Always state where you expect to meet when arranging a call/meeting: e.g. choose the tool on the calendar invite or leave a note saying you'll use Slack Huddles.

Slack Huddles have become our preferred option for most calls. Feel free to use this as your standard.
For calls outside of Huddles, we recommend using Google Meet.


Write usefully

I'm not a native speaker nor a great writer, so this point is a constant attention for me.

Writing is about conveying information. If your reader gets bored after 2 paragraphs, you won't achieve that.

PG wrote a terrific article about it. It's about essays but you can pick the good parts and apply it to your communication.
In a nutshell the "recipe for good essay" is "importance + novelty + correctness + strength". How important is the info, how new it is to your audience, etc.

Check it out, and simply never forget to read what you share with the eyes of your audience.

Here it is. I hope this will prove useful, let me know if you find some of these unclear, have suggestion for additions or deletions.
And fyi this is not a new topic, we actually communicated internally on it almost 2y ago Winking Face: 43/2018 - 👏 & 📣 Overcommunicate 


In case of emergencies

(example: Slite is down on a Saturday), you can join the WhatsApp Group ( https://chat.whatsapp.com/DNTLkSWE7B4Ftas12sPPuH ) and post a message in the group. It's also an alternative solution when common communication channels are blocked.