Communication

Introduction

With team members across several countries, it's important for us to practice clear communication in ways that help us stay connected and work more efficiently.

To accomplish this, we use asynchronous communication as a starting point and stay as open and transparent as we can by communicating on Telepath Discord.

Our communication values

1. Assume positive intent. Always coming from a position of positivity and grace.

2. Form an opinion. We live in different locations and often have very different perspectives. We want to know your thoughts, opinions, and feelings on things.

3. Feedback is essential. Help everyone up their game in a direct but constructive way.

Golden rules

1. Use asynchronous communication when possible. Announcements happen on the appropriate Discord channels and people should be able to do their work without getting interrupted by chat.

2. You are not expected to be available all the time. There is no expectation to respond to messages outside of your planned working hours.

3. It is 100% OK to ask as many questions as you have - please ask in public channels! If someone sends you a handbook link, that means they are proud that we have the answer documented - they don't mean that you should have found that yourself or that this is the complete answer.

4. By default, avoid creating private groups for internal discussions.

Public by default

We make things public by default because transparency is core to our culture. The kinds of information we share falls into one of three buckets:

• Public - most things, including our product, roadmap, handbook and strategy.

• Shared internally - almost everything else, such as financial performance, security, and recruitment.

• Private internally - personal team information, i.e. compensation, disciplinary issues.

Information that is not publicly shared is in areas with complex signals that can impact our ability to sell, or are inappropriate to share more widely for personal privacy reasons.

Written communication

Discord

Discord is used for more informal communication. Use your judgment to determine the appropriate channel, and whether you should be chatting publicly (default) or privately.

Discord etiquette

Discord is used differently in different organizations. Here are some guidelines for how we use Discord at Telepath:

1. Keep #announcements open for company-wide announcements.

2. @channel or @here mentions should be reserved for urgent or time-sensitive posts that require immediate attention by everyone in the channel. (Examples: changing a meeting invite URL just before a meeting, or soliciting urgent help for a service disruption, where you're not sure who is immediately available)

3. Make use of threads when responding to a post. This allows informal discussion to take place without notifications being sent to everyone in the channel on every reply.

4. When possible, summarize multiple thoughts into a single message instead of sending multiple messages sequentially.

5. You don't need to tell people if you're away from your computer, especially on no-meeting days. There's no general expectation people are available to reply to messages in real time, including in Discord.

Google Docs and Slides

We mainly use Google Docs to capture internal information like meeting notes or to share company updates and metrics. We always make the doc accessible so you can comment and ask questions.

Please avoid using presentations for internal use. They are a poor substitute for a discussion on an issue. They lack the depth, and don't add enough context to enable asynchronous work.

Email

1. Internal email should be avoided in nearly all cases. Use Discord for discussion, and use Google Docs for anything else.

2. The only uses we have for internal email are:

   • Obtaining approvals for legal things

   • Sending some types of more official company documents (e.g. job offers, payroll forms)

   • Communicating with external partners

Writing style

1. We use American English as the standard written language in our public-facing comms, including this handbook. This extends to date formats (September 4, 2021) and defaulting pricing to the US Dollar ($39).

2. Do not use acronyms when you can avoid them. Acronyms have the effect of excluding people from the conversation if they are not familiar with a particular term.

3. Common terms can be abbreviated without periods unless absolutely necessary, as it's more friendly to read on a screen. (Ex: USA instead of U.S.A., or vs over vs.)

4. Do not create links like "here" or "click here". All links should have relevant anchor text that describes what they link to. Using meaningful links is important to both search engine crawlers (SEO) and people with accessibility issues.

5. We use sentence case for titles.

6. When writing numbers in the thousands to the billions, it's acceptable to abbreviate them (like 10M or 100B - capital letter, no space). If you write out the full number, use commas (like 15,000,000).

Internal meetings

Telepath uses Google Meet for video communications.

Use video calls if you find yourself going back and forth in an issue/via email or over chat. Sometimes it is still more valuable to have a 40+ message conversation via chat as it improves transparency, is easy to refer back to, and is friendlier to newcomers getting up to speed.

1. Most scheduled meetings should have a Google Doc linked. This contains an agenda, including any preparation materials.

2. Please click 'Guests can modify event' so people can update the time in the calendar instead of having to reach out via other channels. You can configure this to be checked by default under Event Settings.

3. Try to have your video on at all times because it's much more engaging for participants. Having pets, children, significant others, friends, and family visible during video chats is encouraged - please introduce them!

4. As a remote company we are always striving to have the highest fidelity, collaborative conversations. Use of a headset with a microphone, is strongly recommended.

5. Always advise participants to mute their mics if there is unnecessary background noise to ensure the speaker is able to be heard by all attendees.

6. You should take notes of the points and to-dos during the meeting. Being able to structure conclusions and follow-up actions in real time makes a video call more effective than an in-person meeting. If it is important enough to schedule a meeting, it is important enough to have taken notes.

7. We start on time and do not wait for people. People are expected to join no later than the scheduled minute of the meeting, and we don't spend time bringing latecomers up to speed.

8. It can feel rude in video calls to interrupt people. This is because the latency causes you to talk over the speaker for longer than during an in-person meeting. You should not be discouraged by this, as the questions and context provided by interruptions are valuable.

9. We end on the scheduled time. Again, it might feel rude to end a meeting, but you're actually allowing all attendees to be on time for their next meeting.

10. It is unusual to smoke or vape in an open office, and the same goes for video calls - please don't do this out of respect for others on the call.

Indicating availability

1. Put your planned away time including holidays, vacation, travel time, and other leave in your own calendar.

2. Set your working hours in your Google Calendar - you can do this under Settings > Working Hours. This is helpful as we work across different time zones.

Google Calendar

We recommend you set your Google Calendar access permissions to 'Make available for Telepath - See all event details'. Consider marking the following appointments as 'Private':

1. Personal appointments

2. Particularly confidential & sensitive meetings with third-parties outside of Telepath

3. 1-1 performance or evaluation meetings

4. Meetings on organizational changes