Working Remotely
We are a remote team with offices in Berlin, San Francisco, Amsterdam and New York, and team members across Europe and North America. The Working Mode section of our Principles page describes the full setup: the Berlin week cadence, onboarding expectations, and why we work this way.
This page is about the practices that make remote work well in day-to-day reality.
Async by Default
The default is remote-first. That means communicating async wherever possible:
- Write things down. RFCs, decision logs, and project specs are how we stay aligned across locations and time zones. If it's not written, it didn't happen.
- Use
#team-asyncfor updates that don't need an immediate response. Save#team(notifying) for things that actually can't wait. - Don't create a meeting for something that can be a short doc or a Slack message.
Stay Unblocked
If you're stuck, don't sit quietly in a DM thread waiting. Post in Slack, start a quick call, or — when in Berlin — tap someone on the shoulder. Blockers should surface within hours, not days.
Video Calls
Mixed remote/in-person calls need a few explicit norms to work well:
- Raise your hand when you want to speak. People in the room naturally talk over each other; remote participants need to be actively called on.
- Turn your camera on by default. It makes a real difference for remote participants to feel present.
- Join from a quiet space. If you're in the office, use a meeting room or call from your desk with headphones. If you're remote, take calls from your desk.
Calendar
Mark your working location in Google Calendar using the location feature — your home city, and when you're traveling to Berlin. This helps everyone know when there's time-zone or in-person overlap, and avoids confusion about availability.
Home Office Setup
We expect everyone to have a setup that lets them do their best work from home. A reliable internet connection, decent webcam, and microphone are the baseline.
Make sure to join the all-company offsites
While we are remote-first, we do have two all-company offsites per year. Joining them is highly encouraged to get to know your direct colleagues in person and other team members.
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