As a remote company, communication is at the heart of how we work. Because we’re (generally) not in the same office, we need to be efficient and effective at communicating using the tools we have at our disposal.
You should ensure you read the Communication page on the Staff Handbook.
In addition to the practical and philosophical advice in the Staff Handbook, it’s important to be aware of how communication affects you as an engineer. As Human Made is a remote company, you need to have good communication skills and the ability to be self-directed. This requires you to effectively communicate progress, be open about difficulties you encounter and speak up where you see problems in architectural decisions or unrealistic task estimates.
If you spot problems or concerns with the way that a project is designed, implemented, or managed, it is your responsibility to share your concerns with the team. This also applies to other areas like the sales pipeline or wider Human Made conversations. Without communication about issues that arise, underlying issues cannot be corrected or improved for the next time.
Generally, we try to incorporate all feedback into decisions we make, even when those decisions are not necessarily the consensus. On projects, the project manager and tech lead are ultimately responsible for making the final call. Communicating concerns or problems as soon as possible will help inform their decisions.
This same concept applies across the company; we rarely make decisions without incorporating feedback from everyone, and we iterate on decisions based on feedback to constantly improve. Communication through our weekly updates and project retrospectives allows us to passively gather this feedback, but you should also actively give feedback when you see problems.
An ideal place to give feedback is during meetings or status update posts. This allows you to share the feedback and discuss potential solutions directly with the people making decisions. Your engineering manager is available to help you work through your concerns and work out how you want to share your concerns.
You should always feel comfortable sharing feedback publicly, but if you’d rather share it privately, you can talk to the relevent people in private; for example on projects, it would often be the project manager. If you are unsure who to talk to, your engineering manager will be able to help work that out with you. Larger concerns can always be raised to the Director of Engineering or CTO if needed, and interpersonal issues can be raised to the Director of People Operations or the partners.