This is Part 3 of a 3-Part Series. If you missed our last post, 

It was 2014, and our CEO (Chas) and CTO (Frank) had been working side-by-side in New York, NY on the beginnings of Aptible. They were ready to grow the business and found a talented Product Designer to join. The only challenge was that said Product Designer lived in San Diego, CA, and he wasn’t planning on moving any time soon. Could an early stage startup successfully get off the ground with over 2,000+ Miles between its founding members?

The answer, we’ve learned, is a resounding yes. Not only did we hire that Product Designer (Skylar), but over six years later, he’s had an outsized positive impact on the business and now leads our Design Team at Aptible. Throughout that time, he’s also gotten married, had two children, and moved cross-country (not once, but twice)! Today, Aptible is proudly “Remote-First,” with fifty team members based in forty cities across North America. In retrospect, had we not prioritized people over geographical centralization since our earliest days, Aptible would be a completely different company today.

The Aptible Team at our Virtual Onsite, May 2020

We're passionate about building a diverse team of talented people who accomplish great things together, regardless of where they are. We know that our ability to achieve our mission is contingent on ensuring our team performs at a high level and making Aptible the best environment to support that kind of team. We can’t control what’s happening outside of Aptible, but we can be certain that we have a greater chance at long-term success if our center holds. This means that the core of Aptible—our team and its culture—must be strong, through every phase of growth.

But how do you create that center when there’s technically no center at all — no headquarters, and practically no physical assets? We believe it begins with being intentional about the culture we're trying to create, and taking the time to explicitly articulate what we mean by "us". Here, we share three tactics for scaling culture on a rapidly growing, distributed team.

Part 3 | Communications Architecture: Establish Norms for How You Come Together

If you’ve been following along in this three-part series, perhaps you’ve started to pick up on a theme: We believe that intentional culture design is necessary for creating a center that holds on a distributed team. And a large part of that design work lies in establishing clear expectations around what work needs to be done, and how it should be done.

At Aptible, we often refer to a set of “how we’ll work together” expectations as a social contract. And in establishing that social contract, we lean towards explicit expectations — those that are based on conversation and instruction, rather than those that are based on inferences and interpretations, or on assumptions and past experiences. As members of a fully distributed company, we have limited opportunities to develop inferences and assumptions about how we work (i.e. I can’t casually peek into a conference room to get a feel for how meetings are conducted here), so setting explicit expectations becomes critical to our success as collaborators. 

For teams that are transitioning to a distributed model for the first time — or teams that are looking to improve the way they work remotely — here, we offer our advice for establishing expectations and norms around how you come together as a company.

It’s one thing to give a new employee Slack and Zoom accounts, but it’s quite another to document and have a conversation about how they should use Slack and Zoom. Social contracts exist any time you interact with another person on these platforms — the variation in social contracts is in how explicit they are.

 represents our collection of expectations, and in it, we establish an explicit Communications Architecture:

For example, we’ve established a norm that everyone has their video on during all calls. On distributed teams where the most high-frequency communication is often textual, it’s critical to hash things out face-to-face on video calls — where you can read facial expressions and body language. We advise Aptilians that if they find themselves writing long messages in Slack or multiple exchanges over email, it may be an opportune time to get on a video call.

With that said, we’re sensitive to the fact that teammates are working across multiple time zones, and might not always be available to join a synchronous meeting. As such, we encourage everyone to record conversations in Gong.io or Zoom, and/or capture minutes in Google Docs or other shared resources. This helps us keep key stakeholders in the loop, while minimizing the number meetings overall.

In the absence of a ritual around gathering daily at a physical office, we work to create a predictable rhythm around how we come together at Aptible. We use a variety of meetings with different cadences and different scopes to help teammates feel connected, empowered, focused, and informed.

A Sampling of Recurring Meetings at Aptible

In an effort to create as clear of a drumbeat as possible, we work to hold meetings that stakeholders feel a strong need to attend. To this end, we encourage everyone to get clear on the goal of every get-together, distribute and review collateral in advance, identify clear roles (e.g. MC, Scribe, Timekeeper, etc.), minimize distractions and maximize focus on the conversation at hand.

Lastly, we recommend setting the expectation that all of this is, ultimately, is an experiment. If a recurring meeting is no longer serving its purpose, we want people to surface feedback and change what isn’t working — or to cancel it altogether and give people their time back.

A Snippet (Anonymized) of a Real Conversation at Aptible (via Slack)

Consider sending a short survey to solicit feedback from participants as soon as possible after “expensive” company-wide meetings like All-Hands or Offsite/Onsite Workshops: Was the information presented useful? Was the information presented engaging? What did you like about this? How could we have improved this? Then, use that feedback to continually refine how you come together as a team and ensure the highest signal-to-noise ratio.

At Aptible, we’ve seen meaningful returns on taking the time to establish explicit “how we’ll work together” expectations. While we’re proud of the 

, we know that this is really just the beginning. Establishing explicit expectations is a practice we continue to learn at Aptible — and the act of forming and continuously updating them brings us in closer alignment, even and especially when we’re physically apart.

Checklist: Create your own Communications Architecture

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part 3: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

This is Part 2 of a 3-Part Series. If you missed our last post, 

Part 2 | Values Interviews: Identify People Who'll Expand Your Culture

At Aptible, we believe that culture isn’t created through shiny offices and unlimited perks, but by building a team of people with whom our values resonate. That’s why we actively seek teammates who demonstrate alignment with the behaviors and skills we care about most — and make the difficult decision to let go of those who don’t.

To be clear, “alignment” here doesn’t imply that our personal values completely align with Aptible’s Values, nor does it imply that they are objectively superior to any other set of values. What we are seeking in prospective teammates is a willingness to commit themselves within the context of work to our mission to build trust on the internet, as well as the way in which we seek to pursue it as a team.

We believe that alignment with Aptible’s Values doesn’t imply a homogenous culture, either, but rather a dynamic one. We know that there are an infinite number of ways in which our colleagues can embody them, and celebrate the fact that each person will shape our culture with their own unique perspectives and experiences. This is how you scale culture on a rapidly growing, distributed team.

Aptible Team Members (From Left to Right): Albert Wong, Sarah Veirs, Chris Gomes

To this end, we incorporate a “Values Interview” into the recruitment process for every single open position at Aptible. Regardless of where the open position sits within the organization, no hiring decision can be made at Aptible without a Values Interview. Assuming that a candidate has met or exceeded our expectations for role-related knowledge/skills earlier in the recruitment process, a successful Values Interview is a strong indicator that they’ll receive an offer from Aptible. Here’s how we’ve built a Values Interview Program at Aptible, and how you can, too.

We conduct Structured Interviews at Aptible — which means that we use the same methods to assess candidates who are being considered for the same role — because 

. For each open position, we use the same interview questions, grade candidate responses on the same scale, and make hiring decisions based on consistent, predetermined qualifications.

Structured Interviews ensure that any variation in candidate assessment is a result of the candidate’s performance — not because an Interviewer has higher or lower standards, or asks easier or harder questions. We’ve also found that they create a better experience for candidates.

Unlike other stages of our interview process that focus on role-related knowledge, the Values Interview is a discussion focused on a candidate’s motivations and alignment with 

. After co-creating three “Core Values” — Pillars, Cultural Tools, Operating Frameworks — our People Operations and Leadership Teams developed a bank of 2-3 behavioral questions for each.

A behavioral question looks at how a candidate has handled a specific challenge in the past, and usually starts with phrases such as “Tell me about a time when X”. For the Values Interview, we intentionally avoided hypothetical questions, which evaluate how a candidate would handle a challenge they may not have encountered yet, and often begin with “Imagine that...” Why? Behavioral questions help us reveal a candidate’s patterns of behavior. And the more those patterns of behavior sound like Aptible’s Values, the more likely they’ll succeed at Aptible.

Create a Scorecard & Calibrate Assessments

To ensure that our Values Interviewers pull from the same bank of questions, we created a reusable scorecard within our ATS (Applicant Tracking System), Lever, as well as a supplemental template for notetaking in Google Documents. It’s critical that Values Interviewers maintain a record of well-documented, comprehensive feedback of candidate answers, so that all members of the Hiring Team can easily review and evaluate responses.

To provide Values Interviewers with additional guidance, we’ve documented examples of what “Good” and “Poor” responses look like. We encourage discussion and calibration among Values Interviewers, so that they’re increasingly confident and consistent in their assessments, as well.

A (Redacted) Snippet of our Values Interview Scorecard in Lever

Our Values Interviews are currently conducted by members of the Leadership and People Teams, but we’ve just launched a robust training program that will give any Aptible Team member the opportunity to lead a Values Interview. Our vision is to build a diverse cohort of participants who can provide candidates with insight into multiple disciplines across Aptible. We want every team member — irrespective of function, role, and seniority — to feel like an owner and an active participant in the endeavor of building the Aptible Team.

Trainees of the Values Interview Program are required to complete self-guided training modules, shadow Values Interviews, conduct mock Values Interviews, and be shadowed by an experienced Values Interviewer.

A Snippet of the Self-Guided Portion of Values Interview Training in Lessonly

Trainees will be evaluated for their ability to effectively conduct a Values Interview and develop an understanding of whether a candidate demonstrates the behaviors and skills we care about at Aptible.

A Snippet of our Scorecard for Values Interview Program Trainees

We’ve been conducting Values Interviews at Aptible for almost 2 Years now, and we’re still refining and reinventing how we conduct these conversations every day. Based on feedback from our Values Interviewers and Interviewees alike, we’ve overhauled our bank of questions, expanded upon our shared understanding of what good responses look like, and modified the agenda and flow of these calls over time.

But the utility and importance of these conversations endures: By creating space for candidates to engage directly with Aptible’s Values, we’re able to identify the people who are not only likely to succeed in their individual roles, but are motivated to help strengthen the core of Aptible — our team and its culture.

Checklist: Create your own Values Interview Program

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part 2: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

It was 2014, and our CEO (Chas) and CTO (Frank) had been working side-by-side in New York, NY on the beginnings of Aptible. They were ready to grow the business and found a talented Product Designer to join. The only challenge was that said Product Designer lived in Indianapolis, IN, and he wasn’t planning on moving any time soon. Could an early stage startup successfully get off the ground with hundreds of miles between its founding members?

Part 1 | Values, Pillars, Themes: Define the Behaviors You Care About Most

As a team, one of the most important things we’ve done together is co-create 

. We believe that it’s critical for every company to establish a common language around a set of shared attitudes about work — but we’re convinced that it’s even more critical on a distributed team and at an earlier point in its trajectory. In the absence of a physical HQ, employees have fewer opportunities to observe how their colleagues act on a day-to-day basis — and which of those behaviors get rewarded — so we have to put this in writing. Here’s how we’ve done this at Aptible, and how you can, too.

To develop a set of values that resonate with and are genuinely lived by your team, we recommend inviting every employee to participate in the process. At just twelve employees, we circulated a questionnaire (via Google Forms) of seven simple, open-ended questions that helped us consider the many ways in which Aptible already expressed what it values through its team, products, operations, communications, and beyond.

We collected and distilled this feedback (6,000+ words!) into eight high-level thematic buckets, with tentative titles for the purpose of discussion. Here’s an example of one of the themes that emerged in our conversations at Aptible:

“We’re committed to the team and to building something special, to riding the emotional ups and downs of a startup well, to having grit and grinding it out.” “I believe we've done a fantastic job of doubling down on people who work hard on their crafts.” “What I admire most is the level that everyone cares about what we do.” “Work Ethic: No one here is afraid of work.” “Persistence and Resolve” “We have a culture of consistently showing up to do the hard work when needed. This has allowed us to consistently do a lot with a little.” “Grit: Perseverance in Problem Solving” “Investors are always impressed with our capital efficiency and customers are impressed with how much we do with so few people, both of which are a function of discipline and perseverance. “Thinking Big Together” “I admire when we push through the discomfort to get to the essence of the issue. I've heard this referred to as ‘muddling through it together,’ or ‘wrestling with it.’” “When our smarts are combined with our tolerance for hard work, we are able to realize compounding gains in what we are able to achieve.”

While the Leadership Team took full ownership of the distillation process at Aptible, we think this could be owned by any passionate, cross-functional committee of ambassadors at your organization. We recommend sticking to fewer than 10 themes, though, to facilitate a focused discussion within your organization moving forward.

We used our annual Aptible Onsite as an opportunity to hold a “Values Workshop,” where we refined the themes together — which entailed eliminating or splitting out themes, and turning them into memorable phrases. After some context setting and examination of inspirational examples of company values (e.g. 

, etc.), we created groups and tasked them with crafting a Statement and Description for 3+ Themes in under 60 Minutes.

“This was good because it was tough,” said one Aptilian. “We had to go from some squishy, linguistic concepts and boil them down to real meaning. I also liked seeing that other groups came up with the same high-level concepts. We're aligned, ultimately and that was nice to see.”

A Sampling of Notes from our Values Workshop at the Aptible Onsite in 2018

The outcome of the workshop astounded us, both as a way to achieve alignment and yield statements that were just a polish or two away from a publishable state. “The ultimate results of the workshop — the different sets of values produced by each group — were very useful,” said another teammate. “Even though no group completed their Mission & Values 100%, we were able to surface some new and important themes in just the 2 Hours allocated to the workshop, and that's quite an accomplishment.” We were proud to share the first iteration of our values front and center on our Company Page, and sought opportunities to promote them daily.

Part of what it means to scale culture is being open to evolving it. After several months of invoking our seven values, we found that they promoted a strong culture, as measured by employee engagement — and that they resonated strongly with potential employees, as seen and heard in conversations with candidates. But there were too many. Candidates and Aptilians couldn’t remember them all! And not all of them could be used to shape decision making on a day-to-day basis.

As such, we solicited input from the entire team and assembled a cross-functional, volunteer-based “Values Working Group” to put a critical eye to Aptible’s Values and experiment with how to improve them. Ultimately, we edited and reframed them into three new “Core Values” — Pillars, Cultural Tools, Operating Frameworks — with examples and quotations that illustrate each.

How the Aptible Values 1.0 Map to Values 2.0

We’ve since published the Aptible Values v2.0 to our Company Page, along with a new section of our 

 that answers the following key questions: Why have values? What makes for a good set of values? What are Aptible's Values?

Aptible’s first set of values helped us define what we expect of each other, but ultimately reflected baseline qualities that teammates are expected to adhere to in a binary way: For example, we’re either committed to the mission, or we aren’t. Our newest set of values defines how we do things at Aptible and enable us to make decisions quickly.

If you haven’t begun defining the specific behaviors and skills you care about most on your team: Just start. When prompted, your colleagues will likely have a lot to say about the qualities of the people they want to work with and who will thrive at your company. You won’t get it right the first time around, and probably shouldn’t: The value in establishing these cultural tools lies in the conversations you’ll have about how well they support the culture you’re trying to build over time — a process of ongoing reflection and action.

Checklist: Create your own set of Core Values

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part I: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

Sydney Shea didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a Product Designer — she didn’t even know Product Design was a possibility. It took traveling down many paths, including earning an Architecture degree in college, to learn the skills and discover the opportunities that helped her get to where she is today.

Now a Senior Product Designer at Aptible, Sydney seeks to deeply understand the problems that our customers face, then solve them so those customers can confidently build their compliance programs. Read on to learn more about how Sydney got to Aptible and what she learned from the journey that brought her here.

This interview was originally conducted by 

, the professional network for women in technology.

I have been interested in design ever since I was a kid. I grew up in a pretty small town and although I was obsessed with colors, patterns, typography, packaging, poster design, I didn’t really know there was the possibility of a career there beyond a Bob Ross-style artist, which wasn’t for me. I certainly had no idea anything like product design existed. I got into capital D Design because a Design Editor at The Yale Record, the humor magazine I wrote for in college, desperately needed designers. That kickstarted a path that ended with me taking almost every design studio class Yale would let undergraduates into as well as becoming Design Editor myself for two years.

I read that you actually majored in architecture?

Yep, that’s right! Majoring in architecture taught me that I didn’t want to be an architect. I would have done a design degree, but Yale didn’t have one for undergrads, so architecture it was. It appealed to me because it was a different kind of problem solving, and you got to work with your hands which I loved (and still do). It was excruciatingly hard. I’m still glad I did it, though. My presentation skills drastically improved, along with time management skills and logic. It also taught me a lot of things that have informed my product design work; in both disciplines, my user is independently experiencing my designs. They have no idea what context I had or which decisions I made to get there. But unlike product design, if they can’t find the bathroom, I can’t fix it in the next sprint.

You mentioned getting into print design, but how did you discover product design?

, a company developing an enterprise authoring platform that allows you to hand draw in a digital 3D space for things like animation, architecture, and media and advertising. I was there for five years as the only non-technical team member, and for most of it my title was just Designer. I actually negotiated it to Product Designer in my last year there — titles can be just as valuable as a raise! I ended up taking on a wide scope of responsibilities under that title, including customer support. Handling that was kind of a lucky break. It gave me a deep sense of empathy for our users and provided a lot of opportunities to do my own research to try to improve their experiences.

I also got to participate in things I don’t think I would have gotten to go near in a larger company. For instance, I was our designated product demo-er while we were fundraising. That provided a lot of interesting business context, as well as really driving home to me how lopsided the VC industry is. I remember having meetings where our founder and I were the only women in wood-paneled boardrooms full of dudes in suits. Designing for 3D, especially a product like ours geared more towards users with a pen-and-paper than a 3D modeling background, was a challenge. What’s straightforward to design in a 2D drawing system starts to have a lot of sticky problems once you introduce another dimension. For instance, what would a user expect their pen width to do when they start drawing far behind the space where they started? It takes a lot of iterations to get to a solution for that problem that feels intuitive, like a natural extension of their normal sketching. And that’s really always my goal while designing — making people feel like they’re better, more capable versions of themselves.

I’d imagine it was quite a change to switch from a highly visual product like Mental Canvas to Aptible, where you’re in an industry as complex as security.

It’s definitely different, for sure. There’s a lot more text, for one thing! But ultimately I still have the same fundamental goal: deeply understanding the problem my user is trying to solve and trying to make that easier for them so they can be more confident about what they’re doing.

Is there anything different about design at Aptible, compared to the rest of your career?

There’s a heavy emphasis on feedback and collaboration, which I think is amazing. You’re expected to give and get productive feedback constantly. It took some getting used to, but as a designer I think it’s really beneficial because it forces you to not be too precious about designs. You can throw a rough sketch in Slack and someone will point out a really obvious flaw before you dedicate hours to building out the high fidelity versions, so it’s much more efficient. Often that early feedback results in a design that is nowhere near where you started, but is a much better solution. With collaboration, the context you can get from the team is really powerful. I feel like a lot of places pin in “user experience” to the final stages of the process but to me almost everything we do taken together is the user experience. If someone has an awesome call with their support contact or their bug gets fixed in a day, that’s part of their experience. And on the flip side, I can design the best product in the world, but if no one realizes it can help solve their problems because I’m missing all the other aspects of our business, then it’s meaningless. The other members of our team often have amazing insight into how I can best solve the problems I’m working on, and sometimes I have the opportunity to come up with design solutions to problems they just thought they were stuck with. Collectively it makes for a much stronger product and company.

It sounds like you know a lot more now than when you were first starting out! Is there any advice that you would give to your past self?

Stream of consciousness advice here: don’t overanalyze things so often. People watching you present something generally want you to succeed; nobody makes the effort to come to a presentation because they think it’ll be bad. Though it may not seem like it at the time, you might be more grateful for the jobs you didn’t get than the ones you do. Lean on your community if you need more context on things you’re struggling with - on that one, I sure wish I had something like Elpha when I was starting out! And lastly be genuine about what you’re passionate about. The most interesting opportunities I’ve had didn’t come from the times when I was trying to make myself “the perfect designer” but rather when I pursued what I found most interesting.

On Architecture, Product Design, and Building a Career: Meet Sydney Shea, Aptible's Senior Product Designer

At Aptible, we’ve spent years thinking about how to run a high-performing remote team. Key to our ability to make important business decisions and promote collaboration as a team is something Skylar Anderson, Aptible’s VP of Design (and our first employee) describes as “having a culture of knowing when to make things permanent.”

In this post, we’ll define how we think about permanence at Aptible, describe some manifestations of our ‘culture of permanence’ and explain how permanence both informs and is informed by remote work.

“If you enter something in Slack, it is basically gone. People may see it in the moment but there is no permanence to it. Similarly with Zoom, I think you can achieve more in 30 minutes on Zoom than you can in Slack. But it is also not permanent. You can record it but watching a video is not digestible.”

As a fast-growing, early stage startup, we constantly iterate through cycles of learning and executing: We know we need to make decisions quickly, and we work to understand the ‘why’ behind actions we take.

Because we are a fully distributed team, nearly all of our communication happens virtually over Slack, a text-based communication tool, which allows us to have dynamic discussions with individuals or groups of team members throughout the day; and Zoom, a video conferencing tool, which allows us to have face-to-face interactions that are invaluable to building strong connections within the team.

 to maximize effective communication on these platforms, but know that Slack and Zoom have some major limitations, too. Skylar put it this way: “If you enter something in Slack, it is basically gone. People may see it in the moment but there is no permanence to it. Similarly with Zoom, I think you can achieve more in 30 minutes on Zoom than you can in Slack. But it is also not permanent. You can record it but watching a video is not digestible.”

In other words, as useful as these tools are, we believe that they aren’t conducive to an exchange of information that is:

Just because something is written in Slack or recorded in Zoom, doesn’t mean that it is permanent — or documented in a way that will be beneficial to long-term learning within the team.

Teams can begin to combat the fleeting nature of text-based or video-based communication platforms — or even in-person conversations — using a variety of methods. At Aptible, we’ve experimented with the following tactics:

These techniques manifest themselves in a number of ways. For instance, Aptible creates  a private Slack channel for each role for which we are actively recruiting. We use these channels to bring together Hiring Managers, Interviewers, and the People Operations Team to discuss any questions about candidates, talk through recruiting process decisions, and to generally strategize about hiring for a given role. At the same time, we memorialize each stage of the process and our expectations for each role in a document that we call an “MOC” (Mission, Outcomes, and Competencies), which we bookmark in the respective channel. We also log all interview feedback and candidate information in our applicant tracking system, Lever.

Other examples of Slack channel naming conventions at Aptible include:

We work to build permanence with video-based content, as well. In January 2019, we launched a series of internal “brown bag” seminars where we discussed security and privacy management topics that our customers face. Naturally, we conducted these meetings over Zoom. Once the series concluded, we decided to build out a knowledge management library for the team, and all of those Brown Bag seminars — which likely would not have been recorded had they been hosted over lunch in a traditional office setting — served as the first pieces of content. To make the videos discoverable, we cut each video into more digestible segments, then tagged and organized them within Lessonly. Now, every time we onboard a new hire, we’re able to level up their understanding of our customers, product, and competitive landscape — without any additional time investment from our internal subject matter experts.

“There is value in getting on a call, but we save that for the point that matters most. When we do get on a Zoom call, we all already know the context and can get right down to making decisions.”

“Being distributed forces you to be more asynchronous. That has the benefit of requiring you to consider permanence," Skylar explains. "When you prepare to communicate, you are forced to pick tooling that favors asynchronous communication and gives you a broader audience.” Communication when remote is necessarily more intentional than in an office setting. Since team members can’t simply swing by someone’s desk or pull them into a conference room for a quick discussion, working remotely encourages them to think about how best to share a thought with or elicit feedback from a colleague. 

Before synchronously collaborating at Aptible, we work to document our ideas and make them accessible to stakeholders. As Skylar puts it, “There is value in getting on a call, but we save that for the point that matters most. When we do get on a Zoom call, we all already know the context and can get right down to making decisions.”

For our Design Team, eliciting feedback from colleagues cross-functionally requires combining a handful of tools that each solve a particular pain point. Figma helps the team share files of prototypes, while video walkthroughs in Loom or annotated PDFs can help to provide further context. “The process by which we share our designs needs to carry the context of what goes into those designs, because there isn’t one tool that can hold all of the necessary context,” Skylar asserts. “To combat this, we started creating a weekly design newsletter. The document includes links to problem statements, design briefs, video walkthroughs, and prototypes that live in other platforms. Over time, this tells the story of everything that’s happened with design, while organizing our work in a way that is great for broadcasting to other teams.” 

Aptible's Internal "Design Weekly" Newsletter in Figma

While a co-located Design Team may also use tools like Figma and Loom to solve specific problems over time, being remote-first at Aptible necessitates our use of a variety of tools at the same time. With our Design Weekly, stakeholders can easily access the context they need to make key decisions. And this process is not unique to Design: Aptible’s Product Team is in the process of collecting and sending out documentation at a weekly cadence, as well.

It’s impossible to deny that Slack, Zoom, and similar tools are not just useful but essential to distributed teams. That said, to effectively use these tools, it’s important to understand their limitations. At Aptible, working remotely provides us with the opportunity to be intentional about what we bring to the “water cooler” (i.e. casual, fleeting, unstructured thoughts) vs. what requires more durability, clarity, and precision.

We’ve learned that in order to build a collaborative environment, we need to experiment with how we share information so that it is accessible, discoverable, digestible, and actionable. This doesn’t mean creating processes that are inflexible or difficult to manage — but rather designing communications that facilitate rapid decision-making and execution, so we can continually move forward. 

How do you drive “permanence” at your company? What strategies have you found effective for fostering team learning? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at 

'Permanence' and Why it Matters for Remote Work: How We Document, Organize, and Share Ideas at Aptible

Here at Aptible, we've been fully distributed since Employee #1. We have colleagues everywhere — from Vancouver to New York — who've enjoyed the flexibility to work from home or a local co-working space of their choice. We invited Aptilians to share their workspaces and advice for making remote work really work for them.

Alex Kubacki, Customer Reliability Engineering Manager

1. I have set up one of the non-master bedrooms in our condo as my office and recreation room.

2. IN my workspace I most treasure my desk itself. The most treasured thing ABOUT my workspace is the large window for plenty of natural light, and view of a very quiet courtyard (I can see other people WFH this week!)

3. Get comfortable. Get a real desk chair. Like what you’d find in an office building, not Target or Office Depot.  Don’t neglect other details - your mouse, ambient light, or even your footwear can all be distracting in their own way.

1.  I work in a condo in Las Vegas, NV.  There is an alcove near the kitchen designed for a desk and shelves.

2. The most treasured object is a coin I received from the University of Texas at Austin upon obtaining my MBA.

3.  A) Have a context swap where you leave the house and come back.  I grab a coffee at Starbucks.  When I come home I’m not coming home but going to the office.  Similarly at the end of the day leave the house so you signal to yourself that you’ve left work. B) Make your bed, shave, take a shower and wear pants first thing. C) During working hours, resist the urge to shoot a quick game of pool, take a nap, hang out on the balcony.  Mentally commit to working during work time but make sure you have boundaries.

Bayley Adams, Customer Reliability Engineer

1. California->Berkeley->Studio Apartment->Closet, in said apartment. The only space available for a standing desk.

2. A photo my brother took of me hang gliding above him at sunset.

3. I've been WFH for all of 4 days, but here goes: Make up a routine, e.g. working from bed in the mornings, then getting up and fed and set up at your desk for the afternoon. The regularity of it helps.

1. I normally work from a nearby WeWork, but these are not normal times. I'm currently set up at my dining table, in my apartment in NYC.

2. 1). My Aeron Chair, which I recently purchased after a bout of bad back pain. It's made all the difference. 2) My coffee/tea mug from East Fork Pottery. Because I love ceramics! And because I think it's important to stay caffeinated and hydrated throughout the day.

3. When I first started WFH, I'd go the entire day without taking a single break — I was a sad mess. Structuring my day really helps: I create "Break," "Focus," and "Workout" blocks in my calendar and take them as seriously as I would any other meeting.

Catherine Zarra, Senior Software Engineer

1. I work out of my home office in North Kingstown, RI. 

2. I recently bought an essential oil diffuser shaped like a flower. I like that it’s pretty and functional. My dogs hang out while I work but it keeps my space smelling fresh. I also love the soft, fluffy rug under my desk because I never wear shoes when I work from home. 

3. Be flexible. There’s a lot of tips out there for working from home but it’s important to find what works for you. Experiment to find your best work from home conditions and be kind to yourself while you figure it out.

1. I work out of the apartment my fiancee and I share in the Mission, near SF General. I sit near a big sliding door with panoramic views of Bernal Heights, Sutro Tower, and Twin Peaks.

2. I love music and have a little music production studio next to my work desk. Making music lets me use totally different parts of my brain and skills, so it's nice to be able to walk up to my other desk and start creating something without overhead or setup time.

3. Top tip for WFH: make time for fresh air and light!

2. I can’t pick! Letter-opener samurai sword from my backpacking trip to Japan (my two best friends each have one too), binary clock from my sister, mangas from my aunt since I was a kid, every Lonely Planet I’ve ever owned, stuffed animals from all over… actually this sounds more like a kids room than an office…

3. Minimize distractions - even that pen on my desk gets twirled way too much…

1. I live in an open layout, 1 BR apartment in Detroit, and work in that main living/dining room area (living room is the green couch on the left, dining room table is on the right)

2. I love the giant window that runs the full width of the apartment. It's a northern exposure so always well-lit without ever having direct sunlight. That's not really a "thing" though, so: my second favorite is my OXO On 9 coffee maker + Zojirushi thermos. I used to be artisanal about coffee (V60, Chemex) but as I get older I just want good coffee with minimal effort. So, I brew a batch when I wake up, fill up 2 thermoses, and it's great quality coffee all day with a couple minutes of effort.

3. (a) Buy a standing desk AND a standing mat, and try to stand for at least 1 hour each day. (b) Get a solid coffee/tea setup. If you don't rely on caffeine, I don't know what to tell you. (c) Don't use your laptop keyboard. Try several keyboard/mouse/trackpad combinations to find out what's best for you. (d) (Bonus!) Make sure to tune your desk and chair height for ergonomics and to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. In particular, make sure your wrists are never angled down toward your desk (i.e., never an acute angle between the backs of your hands and your wrist).

1. Working out of my living room, in Brooklyn, NY!

2. Most treasured object is my coffee cup. I've had it since college and it has caffeinated me through many late nights and early mornings, beginning with my thesis!

3. One tip would be to make a schedule for yourself and stick to it as best you can! It prevents your free time from bleeding into your work time and vice/versa. Also, take advantage of not being in an office. Listen to music/podcasts out loud, have dance breaks, prioritize your physical comfort. My last tip is that if you share your space with a partner and/or baby, definitely make sure you have space to focus when you need to really get things done/take meetings.

1. I set up my desk in a spare/storage room in my house in Cumming, GA.  Still working on making it into an official “office”.

2. My most treasured object is my “bear” rubber duck (pictured above).  Every programmer needs a rubber duck to keep them company and mine makes me laugh when I see it.

Joe Nazzal, Sales Development Representative

1. Working from my dad's garage in San Bruno, CA.

2. My back roller is definitely pretty treasured right now. I'm not used to sitting down for so long all day and these folding chairs don't help.

3. I usually go into the office every day, so WFH full time has been a bit of a transition for me. I'd say having a routine is huge. Exercise, showering/getting dressed in the morning, breakfast. Scheduling breaks. And going for lots of walks. 

1. I have a dedicated room in my apartment/condo for my office. This is in Montreal, Quebec.

2. Honestly I have a lot of treasured things in my office hard to list them all. But my tops:

3. Have a morning ritual, make some tea/coffee, change into outdoorsy clothes! Lo-fi hip hop.

1. Working from my guest room in Dallas, TX!

2. My most treasured object changes, but I try and keep fresh flowers and rotate seasonal candles at all times. I spend a lot of time in my workspace and these put a smile on my face when I 'go' to work each morning.

Blog: Working @ Aptible

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part 3: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part 2: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part I: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

On Architecture, Product Design, and Building a Career: Meet Sydney Shea, Aptible's Senior Product Designer

'Permanence' and Why it Matters for Remote Work: How We Document, Organize, and Share Ideas at Aptible

Remote Work: Advice from Our Fully Distributed Team at Aptible

Focus on innovation.
Not Infrastructure.

Product

Resources

Support

Company

Blog: Working @ Aptible

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part 3: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part 2: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

Intentional & Explicit Culture, Part I: 3 Tools for Creating a “Center that Holds” on a Fully Distributed Team

On Architecture, Product Design, and Building a Career: Meet Sydney Shea, Aptible's Senior Product Designer

'Permanence' and Why it Matters for Remote Work: How We Document, Organize, and Share Ideas at Aptible

Remote Work: Advice from Our Fully Distributed Team at Aptible

Focus on innovation.Not Infrastructure.

Product

Resources

Support

Company

Focus on innovation.
Not Infrastructure.