Looking at companies like Zapier, Gitlab or Automattic you come to realize that remote-work is not just an utopia, and thata a great company and a great product can be build on async work. Inspired on those great examples I created a guide for us at Piio.

The Ultimate Guide to Work at Piio

👋 Welcome!

The purpose of this document is to share with you the key elements of working at Piio, what tools we use and which are the main processes we have in place and any other element you have to consider on your day to day operations at Piio.

🧩 Communication

Everyone is missing one piece in their puzzle. Communication is key to understand what your colleagues need from you and what you need from them. Take the time to think what you need to communicate and how.

Rely on our tools

Slack Good for staying in touch and sync with your colleagues, but don't try to overcomplicate things.
Zoom Have your zoom account always ready, someone might need to call you or you may need to start a call with someone. It's a great complement for Slack but it might leave things you discussed during that call in the dark. Try to wrap up a call with a short Summary of the call over the Slack channel of your team.
- There's also a way to configure Slack to send a Zoom call request to someone, just install the Zoom app on Slack and follow the steps.

Hanlon's Razor

Hanlon's razor refers to the idea that we should always assume ignorance before malice. That is, if someone does something wrong, don't assume they purposely meant to hurt you. It's just as likely (perhaps more so) that they simply made a mistake.

🎧 Focus

Reply quickly to someone with the headphones emoji or set your status on slack to the headphone emoji when you need to focus on a task and you don't want to be disturbed.

The headphones emoji should be read as "don't get offended, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate and I really need some uninterrupted time to focus on what I'm doing."

Tip: You don't have to be listening to music while you have your headphones.

🎯 Priorites & Goals

Which tasks have the most impact? Understanding what's important will help you prioritize your tasks. Feel free to ask your teammates or your manager to understand what's most important at that time. Ask and set expectations for a task, how far do you need to go and how fast? Working intelligently helps you preserve energy and avoids fatigue.

🌤 Start Of Day

We are a remote team so we try to avoid daily meetings. Start Of Day is a way of telling everyone in our team how are you doing and if you need help with anything.

Start Of Day should contain a brief description of how was the previous day and bullet points with issues completed during the day and issues that are planed for today. It should not contain more than one paragraph and a few bullet points.

Rules

It should be reported through slack on the #standup channel.
It needs to start with SOD and date of the day.
Anyone that is related to any of the posted issues should be tagged in the SOD.

Template

***SOD - 02/20/2019***
Working on documents for new hires. Need help from @agus.
**_*Prev day*_
-** Issue with IST and WP plugin included in JIRA
**-** Working on new design for product page
**_*Today*_**
- Working on SOD rules
- Prepare onboarding for new hires

😎 Buddy

To help you navigate these new waters we'll assign you a buddy who'll be your go-to person to ask any question, really any, no limits. Your relationship with your buddy is like a lawyer, he can't disclose anything to what you say to him to anyone, unless he thinks is funny or you are endangering your or someone else's life.

Rules of Buddyism

Have 15 min check-in meetings every Monday and Friday during the first month.
Schedule one 30 min meeting on your 2nd and 3rd month working at the company.
Chat / Call them every time you need.

🔐 Privacy

Laptop

If you are not at your desktop, keep your laptop locked and with a passcode

Passwords & Credentials

Use LastPass to share passwords, API keys and any other type of credentials. Always. Disciplinary actions can be taken if you share credentials or sensitive information trough an unsafe channel.

📚 Mandatory Healthy Reads

Imposter Syndrome: Why You Have It and What You Can Do About It

A Science-Backed Guide to Taking Truly Restful Breaks

Not mandatory

Makers, Don't Let Yourself Be Forced Into the 'Manager Schedule'

When your coworker does great work, tell their manager