How do you tell if a company is remote-first? Get them all into a room and wait.
In early 2017, before joining Automattic, I spent a few months at a small company that was historically distributed and had just opened an office in Poland. And they invited us all to come visit for a week.
Having only worked in a traditional office setting previously, the contrast was immediately noticeable. Silence. Even though we were all sharing the same physical space, nearly all communication happened through Slack. Only an occasional sigh or giggle would give away that there's more going on than meets the eye.
The benefit of having all information go through public and widely available channels is not to be understated. Especially after some of us went home, and some kept going to the office, nobody ever felt like they were being excluded from a conversation.
It might not seem like it's relevant to announce how your long weekend went to the entire company, and if you don't want to do that, that's fine. But it's gestures like these that help us build human connections that are necessary for high-performing teams.
Forming comes before performing. In remote settings especially, this takes intention. Don’t underestimate the power of showing up as a human, even if it’s just sharing what you did over the weekend.