Async-First Work Culture: How to Build a High-Velocity Engineering Team
How to build an engineering culture focused on deep work, clear documentation, and autonomous execution over constant Slack notifications.
Async-First Work Culture: How to Build a High-Velocity Engineering Team
Most managers will opt to have quick meetings and quick replies in Slack[cite: 2]. In fact, pinging and status calls that are back to back destroy engineering momentum[cite: 2]. An async-first culture isn't a time zone concept, it's a more respectful approach to deep focus and a high level of clarity and structured communication, rather than noise[cite: 2].
Default to Public, Written Documentation
Project Stagnation happens when info is in their brain or in a private DM, when they go offline, or walk into a meeting[cite: 2].
- When making big feature decisions, write RFCs instead of holding a meeting: Technical design document or Request for Comments (RFCs)[cite: 2]. Do not need 45 minutes of alignment sync that is asynchronously driven, but give the team 24 hours to look at and comment on[cite: 2].
- Tickets should be specific: Should not be a title like "Fix login bug."[cite: 2] Should be very clearly outlined and have technical constraints such that any engineer should be able to reproduce and solve without having to ask 3 follow up questions to determine what to do[cite: 2].
Honour Asynchronous SLAs for the protection of Deep Work
Excessive notifications are the gravest obstacle to developer flow[cite: 2]. Let's say an engineer expects a response to a Slack message within 5 mins, then they could no longer wait for 3 continuous hours for the engineer to write complicated codes[cite: 2].
- Determine Urgency Classes: Establish response time expectations[cite: 2]. Use of a phone call or emergency alert shall only be used when there is a true production outage[cite: 2]. For all other PR review activities, non-critical questions, design changes, set reasonable time limits (4-8 hours) to protect deep work within distributed engineering teams[cite: 2].
- Batch communication: Engineers will communicate at regular intervals (e.g. at the start and end of the day) via Slack or email, rather than opening it throughout the day[cite: 2].
From Presence to Deliverables
Conventional office spaces can often be mistaken for being productive with visibility[cite: 2]. In an async culture, there's no true difference between active vs passive; whether a status bubble shows up or metrics are collected for mouse movement is moot[cite: 2].
- Measure sprints: Focus on what's being accomplished - closed pull requests, closed tickets, reliable deployment etc[cite: 2].
- Let them do their own job: They should be left alone, and set boundaries so they can be allowed to get over the finishing line without being "hand-held" by developers, fostering a healthy remote work culture[cite: 2].
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