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👔 The job description of a CEO: Five key roles you need to succeed.
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BUILDING IN PUBLIC 🔎

How Athyna Makes Remote, Work

Remote work, once the stuff of sci-fi novels, has blossomed into the full-fledged global movement of 'Remotopia laboralis' (/rɪˈmoʊt.oʊ.piə ləˈbɔːr.ə.lɪs/). The post-COVID phenomena has turned kitchen tables into command centres and pyjamas into the new power suits.

My startup, Athyna, has been remote since day one ~5 years ago and if anything, you could say we do it well. The gauge I would use in order to signify a company ‘doing work well’ is engagement scores. For those who don’t know the term, your engagement score is effectively your culture score.

Engagement scores of 80/100 are considered excellent. Ours at Athyna, are for the last three or so years, an average of 91. If 80 is excellent and 100 is perfection, we sit somewhere past the midway point between excellence and perfection.

Let’s take a look behind the curtain at how we make remote work work at Athyna.

Guiding principles

Let’s start at the beginning with some of the general remote work principles we live by at Athyna. While we have mission, vision, values, and more, and we have a lot of guidelines in our internal wiki, what I am about to outline are not documented formally anywhere. I am somewhat free-styling the following points. Having said that, these are the things we (/ I) believe to be the keys to remote work.

Trust is given, not earned

At Athyna you are given trust on day one. You can of course, lose that trust. But we treat people like adults and we believe people are inherently good. This means we do not (!!) track peoples time, ask them to check in and out, or subject people to any other belittling measures of the same ilk.

We don’t really have working hours either per se. Most will come in around the 9-5, sure, but we have always worked around the idea that if you deliver good work, in a timely manner, you are golden.

Hell, one of our PM’s was building product while hiking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. Shout out to Lucho.

Documentation first

We use Notion to document absolutely everything inside of the organisation. If it exists, and it is live, it is either built in Notion, or it is embedded (or at the very worst, linked) in the correct Notion page.

The idea is that, in any remote organisation, anyone should be able to find anything, within seconds. And it should really be inside of two search bars; Notion & Slack. We are not there yet, but we’d be close.

Documenting everything also means having less screen-time burden for the team. Nothing sucks the life out of someone more than meeting after meeting after meeting. You can minimise this by being documentation first.

We share one common language

There is very little flexibility in language at Athyna. We have team members who’s native tongue is Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Filipino, Romanian and more but we all share one common language — English.

I actually think it sucks how the Western World and English speakers will often think of themselves of Masters of the Universe.

What sucks more though is walking into a Google Doc, Notion page or Slack channel to carry on with your work and not being able to understand what’s going on. It’s a terribly un-inclusive feeling and it just sucks.

We make sure at Athyna, in all correspondences, big or small, that we speak the one language we all share. This is the one point that I have the least flex on. And although we have an entire team filled with people speaking 8.5/10 and above in English, we also have an internal English tutor for those who want to continue to sharpen their comms.

We do however have geo-centric channels (#team-brazil etc.) where people can talk shit about co-workers during the World Cup and other such events + anything else they may want to chat about.

Remote tech stack

Next, let’s go through the tech that helps us make sure the wheels go round. This is boring but possibly useful too. As far as as our key pieces of tech go I am going to segment them into three areas: Big Hitters, Necessary Evils and the Also Rans.

The Big Hitters

Notion — We do everything in Notion. Documentation, OKRs, product positioning, employee directory, pet directory, risk analysis, meetings, reports, advisor updates. If it can be done on any other app, we probably don’t use that app — we it in Notion.

Slack — This one goes without saying. I am interested to see the soon to be released Slack competitor by Once and the team at 37 Signals soon. Slack does seem to be a bit too distracting sometimes, but for now. It’s very core to what we do.

Loom — I actually really think the product of Loom keeps getting better and better. Big lover of Loom. Less meetings = happier people. That is much more possible with Loom.

Necessary Evils

Figma (and sometimes Miro) — Figma, and when we sometimes use Miro, may actually be rated a bit low. We love both FigJam and Miro for brainstorming sessions and also for a lot of our design work.

Zoom & Google Meet — We try our best to minimise meetings at Athyna, and when we do have them we make sure they are Speedy Meetings. Speedy Meetings save you on average of 17% of meeting time by presetting your 30 minute calls to 25, 45 to 40, 1hr to 50 minutes etc etc..

Google Sheets — Docs are banned at Athyna, as we live in Notion, and if it doesn’t require complex formulas we will usually use Notion database too. But for those sheets that are complex we still use Google Sheets.

Also Rans

While writing this post, I realised that we don’t actually have any also-ran tech. Sure, I could have gone back and edited this post, but I chose not to. Sue me!

Meetings & communications

I would love to say that we are one of the organisations who has close to 0 meetings, but we aren’t. We are working towards less and less meetings, however, each and every department has meetings. Let’s break down how we do meetings and what type of communication cadence we have with the entire company.

Departmental Meetings (weekly)

Every department will meet at least once weekly to discuss whatever is important to the department at that point in time. I think it’s important in a remote setting to have this meeting to get some face-to-face time every week.

Leadership Meeting (fortnightly)

This call is between senior leadership, being our department heads, and also all team leads and senior individual contributors. It’s a big call but I do like having everyone together in one place to discuss key issues. We structure it as follows:

• Icebreaker - One person comes with a question for the group. We spend 10 minutes here.

• Carryover actions - Next we move to any carryover actions from the previous meetings.

• The Big Issue - We choose one topic from the agenda to spend the most time on. We probably spend 20-25 minutes here.

• The remaining agenda - And finally we tick off the remaining items. Anything that is missed we try to attack async in Slack.

It’s worth noting that all agenda items are added to an #agenda-department channel in Slack with a paragraph or two of context so that everyone can mentally prepare.

All Hands (monthly)

Our monthly All Hands happen on the second Monday of every month and wrap up the month prior. I present these for the most part. We go through key metrics, good, bad and the ugly and the new hires, roles, charges etc. before moving on to a departmental presentation. Following our department presentation, Taina, our HR leader will speak on some people and culture pieces then we will finish with Q&A from the team.

Allies & Investor Update (monthly)

We send monthly investor updates to investors, allies and potential future investors to Athyna. My Chief of Staff, Bea, prepares these with me and they go out anywhere between the 1st day and the 31st day of every month, ha. But they always go out.

Agora Sessions (monthly)

Every month also, we have a special session we call our Agora Sessions, which is focussed on learning a skill from a member of the team. Think of it as somewhat of a lunch & learn. We have had astrology, cinematography, the synergy of hip hop & skateboard and even a cooking class with our very own Eliana Orfanudis.

Walk & Talk Meetings (weekly)

I thought it might be worth adding that some teams, including mine, like to use walking meetings in their weeks. Away from screens (unless otherwise coordinated), we will usually walk our dogs, drive down the shopping centre or go for a slow bike ride in the park.

If it’s good enough for Steve Jobs, it’s good enough for me. Another example of us betting on less screens making for happier humans.

Hiring & location-ing

When building remotely, it’s important to have a strategy around how, who and where you plan to hire (along with a compensation strategy - another piece coming soon). For us, we wanted to have hubs around the world. Places where, although remote, people could get together if and when the chance arose.

But we have slowed our hiring in Argentina for the moment to mainly by referral only, so that we can build out hubs two and three. Today we hire heavily through Brazil and have a significant team there.

The reason it’s important for us to diversify our team is that I never want people to feel less than inside of our company. And if we have 80% of our team in one location it starts to feel a little like that.

Building culture remotely

This is a really funny one for me. I vividly remember back in the early days of Athyna and having a conversation with Carmela, our first Head of Culture - me stressing about how we were going to bring the team together. Carmela shook her head at me and said something I’ll never forget.

The statement hits me like a tonne of bricks and it’s something I stand by today. I don’t think there is any link between building team engagement and seeing people in person. Seeing co-workers face to face is awesome. But it’s totally uncorrelated to building culture. At least this has been my experience.

Having said that … I am sure a lot of people find ways to fuck it up. Here are a few things that you can look at to make you are one of those who don’t.

Make everyone an owner

We give equity at Athyna to everyone, from executive to intern. And we don’t give options that someone would need to buy in order to access. We give RSUs.

Giving RSUs is the equivalent of gifting stock to your team, free of charge. Options for most young people are often prohibitively risky and/or expensive. They are bogus really. We give RSUs.

And we also build a second trigger into our plan meaning the shares don’t vest until a) time and b) liquidity event have happened. This means there is no taxable event (ever!) until someone had liquidity in their stock. BOOM!

Help peoples build their career

People are ambitious. Help them get to the next stage of their career. Whether that is within your org, outside of it, moving up a ladder or across to a totally different area. This is your job as the leader of an organisation. Help your people thrive.

We have had sales people turn into product managers, CS people move into culture, graphic designers turned UX and much more. Add to that we have had people with little to no experience grow into leaders of our organisation.

Research by PwC showed that 43% of employees leave their jobs due to a lack of career growth opportunities. While a ‘sideways’ move might not directly lead to promotions, it can demonstrate your commitment to career development.

Not only is it great for your people, it’s one of the things that, unless you are slightly evil, will fill your heart with little bundles of joy. Take this seriously!

Don’t f**k around

I could have called this title ‘Lead by example’ or ‘Act with integrity’ or any number of other titles but I simply would not have been able to use my favourite meme of this edition. This one.

In all seriousness though - your job is to be a leader. How you act is how your people will act. Our corporate motto at Athyna is ‘What Would Ned Stark Do’. And people get it. They are expected to act with integrity and do the right thing - at all times.

But the moment you don’t uphold your end of the bargain here, neither will your team. So stay true… be a leader.

Extra reading

• GitLab Handbook, All Remote - 2023

• The Remote Handbook, Tyler Denk - January, 2024 - (need to subscribe to read)

And that’s it! You can find more about how Athyna can help you to build a high-performing global team here.

TWEET OF THE WEEK 🐣 

I bet you didn’t know you could use Loom for lead magnets. No wonder Atlassian snapped them up.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

The future, or at least some semi-dystopian version of it is here ladies and gentlemen. Check out this in depth Vision Pro review, fresh out the over from The Verge.

TOOLS WE USE 🛠️

Every week we highlight tools we actually use inside of our business and give them an honest review. Today we are highlighting beehiiv. Plainly and simply the best newsletter platform on the market, bar none.

Substack is good for artists, Convert Kit is decent for the business of newsletters but beehiiv is #1.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

Here are the options I have for us to work together. If any of them are interesting to you - hit me up!

🌏 Hiring global talent: Check out my startup Athyna.
🧰 Want to outperform the competition: See our suite of tools & resources.
👀 Reach thousands of tech leaders: Advertise with us here.

And that’s it from me. See you next week. 🫡