Our team is fully remote across three time zones. Some days it works brilliantly. Some days I want to put everyone in an office just so I can see if they’re actually working.

Here’s what we’ve figured out after three years of distributed startup building.

The Hard Truth About Remote

Remote work is not for every company or every person. Before you commit:

Advantages:

• Access to global talent
• Lower overhead (no office)
• Happier people (often)
• Forced communication discipline

Disadvantages:

• Harder to build culture
• Communication overhead
• Time zone complexity
• Isolation problems

If your work requires constant real-time collaboration, remote is hard mode. If it’s project-based with clear deliverables, remote works great.

Our Communication Stack

Slack: Async communication. Expectation: respond within a few hours, not immediately.

Loom: Async video. Better than long Slack messages for anything requiring nuance.

Notion: Documentation. If it’s not in Notion, it doesn’t exist.

Zoom: Synchronous meetings. Kept to minimum.

Linear: Task tracking. Where work actually gets assigned and tracked.

Total cost: About $50/person/month.

The Meeting Problem

Remote teams either have too many meetings (death by Zoom) or too few (nobody knows what’s happening).

Our solution:

One weekly all-hands (30 min): Updates, priorities, blockers. Everyone attends.

Team standups (15 min, 2-3x/week): Just the people working together.

Everything else is optional: If you need to meet, schedule it. But default is async.

Total meeting time: 2-3 hours/week max. The rest is deep work.

Async by Default

The biggest remote mistake: treating remote like office work over video.

Async means:

• Writing things down instead of discussing live
• Recording videos instead of scheduling calls
• Expecting delays in response
• Working at your own rhythm

Our rules:

• No expectation of immediate Slack response
• Meetings require agendas shared 24 hours ahead
• Decisions documented in Notion, not Slack threads
• Time zone respect (no 6am meetings for anyone)

Building Culture Remotely

This is the hardest part. You can’t rely on hallway conversations and after-work drinks.

What we do:

Virtual coffees: Random pairings for non-work chat. Weekly.

Annual in-person gatherings: We fly everyone somewhere once a year. Worth every dollar.

Transparent communication: Good news and bad news shared openly.

Celebrate publicly: Wins announced in Slack with fanfare.

Personal channels: A Slack channel for pets, hobbies, life stuff.

Does it replace in-person bonding? No. But it’s better than nothing.

Performance Management

The fear: “How do I know people are working?”

The answer: Outputs, not hours.

We don’t track time. We don’t spy on screens. We set clear deliverables and deadlines. Either the work happens or it doesn’t.

This requires:

• Clear project definitions
• Regular check-ins on progress
• Trust (and willingness to let people go if trust is broken)

Counterintuitively, I’ve found remote workers often work too much, not too little. Watch for burnout.

The Hiring Difference

Remote hiring is different:

What matters more:

• Written communication skills
• Self-management ability
• Proactive communication
• Experience with remote work

What matters less:

• Physical presence/charisma
• Traditional work history patterns

In interviews, look for:

• Do they communicate clearly in writing?
• Do they ask questions proactively?
• Have they successfully worked remotely before?
• Can they structure their own time?

Common Failures

The Slack black hole: Conversations get lost. Use threads. Archive decisions to Notion.

Time zone blindness: Don’t schedule the Aussie for 6am. Rotate meeting times to share the pain.

Documentation debt: Things agreed verbally but never written. Creates confusion at scale.

Isolation: Someone goes quiet. Check in. Remote work can be lonely.

Culture erosion: Easy to become just transactional. Intentionally invest in relationships.

Is Remote Right for You?

Remote works well when:

• Your work has clear deliverables
• Your team is experienced and self-motivated
• You’re willing to invest in communication infrastructure
• You trust people (or learn to)

Remote is harder when:

• Work requires constant real-time collaboration
• You have junior staff who need mentorship
• Your culture requires physical presence
• You can’t let go of control

There’s no shame in being hybrid or in-person. Pick what works for your company, not what’s trendy.

My Honest Take

Remote works for us. I wouldn’t go back to an office. But it requires constant attention. The easy default is disconnection. You have to fight against that every day.

Three years in, we’re still figuring things out. That’s probably how it always is.