AMA: I've been working remote from the Alps for 12 years

@product_at_producthunt I think it depends on the team and type of work but 2 times a year has always been my baseline as well. If the business is growing particularly quickly (as it was with Intercom for several years), we would do quarterly offsites, but that was will a smaller group of managers (around 6-8 of us) so that the organization didn't become overwhelming. Another pro-tip on that. For as long as possible, do your offisites in houses where everyone can stay and you have access to a good kitchen. Other than saving money on eating out, I found that cooking and eating together was a really special experience for the team.

@michael_lachar Parlo bene l'italiano. 😉 In the area that we live in it's absolutely required. There are so few other foreigners and they all speak Italian too. I think it's really important to learn the language of the country you live in. Otherwise, it's always a barrier to understanding the people and the culture more deeply. That said, it wasn't that difficult. Nearly all Italians were super gracious and patient with me when I was learning and my friends are still great about correcting my mistakes in a kind way. You just have to force yourself to use it (even if you feel dumb).

@kiracheung Yeah absolutely, I'm assuming you're talking about how to make the team super productive and not about how I set up my home office... First, you need everyone on the team fully committed to being remote-first (aka – as asynchronous as possible). If you've got someone who's very used to working in an in-office environment or comes from a larger tech company and is used to spending all day on Zoom – you're likely going to fail unless they hated it and are totally bought into doing things a different way. Second, you need to WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. Make it a practice to have written docs on every initiative, every product change, every launch, everything. This is really the key that make async possible. At Canua, myself and our designer spend a lot of time writing as we're shaping the projects we'll work on. We collaborate with engineers on questions about feasibility or other potential solutions, etc. The net effect is that we have all seen and contributed to the product mission doc (what we call our product specs) before the engineers start building anything. You'd be surprised how much being forced to write everything down brings focus and clarity to each project. It's rare we start working on something and are surprised by some unforeseen thing. Lastly, ditch all the meetings. You should have the bare minimum standing meetings in the calendar. We only have 1 at Canua (our all hands, which happens every 2 weeks – we obviously also do 1:1s but those are different). People are completely allowed to jump on a quick call or do a huddle in slack to get quick feedback on something they're working on but we don't have standing meetings, by default. Hopefully that's helpful! Anything else you're curious about?

@erskingardner Wow thank you for such a detailed answer Jeff and absolutely agree with what you said. Having everything written down clearly is core to have everyone on the same page without meeting. Are there any templates you use for your specs to make sure all voices in your team are included?

@erskingardner thank you for such a detailed answer Jeff and absolutely agree with what you said. Having everything written down clearly is core to have everyone on the same page without meetings. It also makes your thinking process a lot clearer. Are there any templates you use for your specs to make sure all voices in your team are included?

@kiracheung Yes – we do have a simple template that we built ourselves (it's heavily influenced by my time at Intercom). Here's a quick video run-through of the doc: https://app.claap.io/canua/descr...