REMOTE COMMS

Remote teams' biggest enemy is the expectation of constant sync. It takes developers an average of 23 minutes to reach deep focus. A culture that expects instant Slack responses destroys productivity. I recommend making async the default and choosing sync intentionally.

Relying on verbal explanations loses information and creates repetitive questions. I enforce three documents:

• ADRs: Why specific technology choices were made
• Runbooks: Incident response procedures
• Onboarding guides: New hires productive on day one

Meetings are minimized and governed by these rules:

• No agenda, no meeting
• Schedule 25 or 50 minutes to preserve buffers
• Always ask: 'Could this be async instead?'
• Document key takeaways within 5 minutes

In distributed teams, timezone overlap is treated as precious sync time. I typically designate 10am–2pm local time as core hours, with fully async work outside that window. Weekly all-hands rotate time slots so the same people don't always bear the inconvenience.

Want to strengthen your remote team?

I can help design remote dev team processes, improve communication, or join directly as an engineer.