Are you remote-first or office-first?
A startup has to be either remote-first or office-first. Here’s how each of them works:
Remote-first
Hiring: Hire people anywhere in the world along as they’re willing to work1 10 AM - 2 PM Pacific Time. Change the timezone to match yours. And the time: for example in Bangalore, where people often start late, we’d start at 11 AM. Whatever it is, pick a 4-hour block and stick with it going forward.
Communicate asynchronously: Send a detailed proposal in Slack. Or create a spreadsheet. Or record a screencast of yourself explaining something:
People should be able to receive your communication at their preferred time. They’ll leave a comment with their thoughts. If a decision is reached asynchronously, a call isn’t needed. If you posted a proposal and said, “If you disagree, speak up” and nobody speaks up, the decision is considered to be agreed upon, and we don’t need a call. A video or phone call is the last resort, to be used only when the above hasn’t worked.
Office: The startup may not have an office. Even if there’s one, it’s just a place to sit and work, no different from a library or coworking space. There’s nothing special about the office. People who are in the office are still expected to communicate asynchronously so as not to exclude people who are not in the office. If they must attend a video call, everyone must go to a separate room with their own laptop, to not create a two-level system where people who are remote are disadvantaged.
Offsite: There will be an offsite every 6 months for bonding. This will last a week.
Office-first
Hiring: Hire people in the same city as the office.
Coming to office: Everyone is expected to come to office every Tuesday for meetings. And when you’re in the office, you should prefer meeting people to getting your work done. That doesn’t mean you should accept unnecessary meetings, but you shouldn’t refuse necessary ones saying “I need to finish something by today”. When you’re in office, meeting people is the priority. In addition, people are expected to come whenever a meeting is scheduled or anyone asks them to come. There can be a healthy give and take like “Instead of tomorrow, can we talk the day after, because I’m anyway coming the day after?” But people can’t be rigid, such as saying, “No, I’ll come only on Tuesday.”
Working from home: On days when you’re not required in the office, and you’ve planned out your work, you can work from home2, in a focused manner, without others interrupting you. If someone messages or calls you or invites you to a Zoom meeting, unless it’s an emergency or affects the work you’re doing today, please decline the meeting and tell them to meet you in person another day, so that your focus is not disturbed. The office is for collaboration, and the home is for heads-down work.
Avoid phone or video calls. Either communicate asynchronously (send a detailed proposal in Slack, create a spreadsheet, or draw a diagram) or meet in person.
Pros and cons
Hiring is easier if you’re remote-first, since you’re open to people all over the world, or at least the country.
Cohesion is higher in an office-first environment. By cohesion, I mean an emotional feeling that this is my company, as opposed to just a company I happen to work with. Disputes are easier to flare up when working remote-first, where it’s easier to reduce a person to a single dimension like “Rohit is a pushy, uncooperative guy!” and have this color all further interactions, leading to the relationship going downhill and collaboration breaking down. All the more so in a startup, where success is not assured, and the team really needs to come together to push the boulder up the hill. As opposed to Google, which will be around next year irrespective of you.
Documentation is important in both cases, but especially so if you’re remote-first, where you can’t tap on someone’s shoulder and ask “Hey, how do you log in to this server?”
If you take away only one thing from this post
If you’re running a company, you should explicitly choose whether to be local- or remote-first. You can’t have a hybrid, or remain undecided, because a choice dictates a way of working for everyone, and different people can’t operate in different ways if they are to work together.
Exceptions are fine, like a doctor’s appointment or a repairman coming. But not regular unavailability in these core working hours like “I have to pick up my kid from school every day at this time” or “I typically play tennis at this time”.
Or your girlfriend’s house or Starbucks or wherever you’re productive.