Async-First Communication: The Future of Remote Engineering Teams

by SanjewaCommunication
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INTRO

The Shift That's Reshaping Engineering

Recent studies demonstrate that async-first teams achieve a 23% increase in productivity compared to teams that favor a lot of meetings. This isn’t just a trend—it’s a fundamental shift in how elite engineering teams operate.

As a software engineer who’s navigated both synchronous chaos and async clarity over the past years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how this communication paradigm transforms not just productivity, but the very fabric of team collaboration.
WHAT

What Is Async-First Communication?

Async-first communication prioritizes asynchronous workflows over real-time meetings. According to Preston W., asynchronous work is "a simple concept: Do as much as you can with what you have, document everything, transfer ownership of the project to the next person, then start working on something else".

Think of it as the difference between a phone call and an email—but applied systematically across your entire engineering workflow.

Documentation Over Discussion
Everything lives in written form first. Whether it’s a technical decision, a bug report, or a feature proposal, it’s documented before any synchronous discussion occurs.
Progress Over Presence
GitLab measures impact not activity, meaning team members are evaluated on outcomes, not on being online during specific hours.
Context Over Connectivity
Messages include complete context, assuming the recipient might read them hours—or even days—later.
WHY

Why Async-First Matters for Deep Work

Cal Newport’s groundbreaking book *Deep Work* introduced the concept of focused, uninterrupted, undistracted work on tasks that push cognitive abilities to their limit. Async communication is the infrastructure that makes deep work possible at scale.
The Deep Work Equation
productivity = 8_hours – meetings – context_switching – interruptions
In a traditional synchronous workflow, your productivity is calculated as 8 hours minus time spent in meetings, context switching, and interruptions, which typically results in only about 3 hours of actual focused work. In contrast, an async-first workflow calculates productivity as 8 hours minus planned collaboration blocks, resulting in approximately 6-7 hours of focused work.

 

Workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and only resume their interrupted tasks after 25 minutes. By batching communication into async channels, engineers reclaim these lost hours.
HOW

How to Write Effective Async Documentation

The Low-Context Communication Framework
GitLab implements a low-context culture where communication is precise and direct, with team members forecasting what questions may be asked and adding as much context as possible.
The Five W's Template
Every async message should answer:
  • What What are you proposing/asking?
  • Why Why does this matter?
  • When What's the timeline/deadline?
  • Who Who needs to be involved?
  • Where Where can people find more information?
EXAMPLE

Bad vs. Good Async Message

Bad
Hey team, can we discuss the API changes?
fastapi-testing-pytest-fundamentals
The Five W's Template
API Rate Limiting Proposal

Context: We’re seeing 429 errors from 15% of users during peak hours.

Proposal: Implement token bucket algorithm with 1000 requests/hour per user.

Why Now: Q4 user growth projections show this becoming critical by Nov 15.

Decision Needed By: Oct 30 (to allow 2-week implementation buffer)

Resources:

  • Current error dashboard:
  • Token bucket algorithm docs:
  • Implementation RFC:

Questions for the team:

  • Is 1000 req/hour the right threshold?
  • Should we tier this by user plan?
  • Any concerns with the proposed implementation?

Please add comments by Oct 27. If no major concerns, we’ll proceed.

BALANCING
The Decision Matrix

Balancing Sync vs. Async

Complex technical decisions often improve with async processing, as engineers can research and think deeply about implications.
When to Use Synchronous Communication
According to GitLab’s best practices, sync meetings are appropriate for: sales engagements, first-time meetings with external parties, one-way door decisions when stakes are high, complex initializations, emotionally sensitive topics, supporting direct reports in 1:1s, and celebrations.
When to Use Asynchronous Communication
  • Status updates Document progress in project management tools
  • Technical decision-making Write detailed proposals for review
  • Code reviews Provide thorough written feedback
  • Cross-timezone collaboration Any decision affecting global team members

Explore project snapshots or discuss custom web solutions.

More About Me
CASE STUDY
Real World

Case Study

GitLab's Async-First Success
GitLab operates with over 1,600 employees spread across 60+ countries, maintaining a 2,700+ page handbook that serves as their single source of truth. They became the first officeless company to go public.
Key Practices from GitLab
Handbook-First Documentation
Every process, decision, and workflow is documented in their public handbook before implementation.
Optional Meetings
Every meeting has an attached agenda document where team members can contribute asynchronously. Attendance is optional if you contribute to the doc.
Bias Toward Asynchronous
Team members are encouraged to question every meeting: “Could this be handled asynchronously?”
The Results
  • Scalability
    Successfully scaled to 1,600+ employees without communication breakdown
  • Inclusion
    Removes time zone barriers, making the organization more globally inclusive
  • Documentation
    Years of searchable decision history for new hires to learn from
Remote's Global Engineering Team
Remote’s customer onboarding team was their first distributed team covering the full 24-hour clock across America, Europe, and Oceania.
Their Async Strategies
Clear Time Communication
Instead of saying “lunchtime” or “9 AM,” they use specific timezones or UTC timestamps.

Selective Synchronous Work
When synchronous work is necessary, they coordinate using Google Calendar, and these meetings always have clear agendas and intentions.

Flexible Work Patterns
Some people prefer to work at night, and their asynchronous work allows that flexibility, supporting better work-life balance and even health management for team members with chronic conditions.
PITFALLS

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Pitfall Problem Solution
Pitfall 1: Over-Documenting Spending 2 hours documenting something that needed 15 minutes of discussion. Use the three-ping rule — after three back-and-forths, switch to sync.
Pitfall 2: The Async Ghost Town Messages go unanswered for days. Establish clear response windows and use @ mentions purposefully.
Pitfall 3: Losing the Human Connection Team feels disconnected. Leverage synchronous moments for informal communication such as coffee chats and team bonding activities.
Measuring Async Success: Key Metrics
  • Documentation coverage % of decisions documented
  • Knowledge retrieval time How quickly new hires find answers
  • Team satisfaction Survey scores on work-life balance
GitLab tracks improvements through percent reduction of minutes spent in synchronous meetings, percent increase in GitLab issue/epic/merge request usage, and improved ratio of meeting minutes to contributions.
The Future: AI and Async Communication
As AI tools evolve, async communication becomes even more powerful:
AI can help with:
  • Auto-summarization of long threads
  • Translation for global teams
  • Context extraction from historical decisions
  • Intelligent routing of questions to the right docs
As Darren Murph, GitLab’s Head of Remote, explains: “While many management philosophies prioritize the speed of knowledge transfer, GitLab optimizes for the speed of knowledge retrieval”. The question isn’t whether to adopt async-first practices—it’s how quickly you can implement them before your competitors do.

The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

Cal Newport Deep Work

Thank You for Spending Your Valuable Time

I truly appreciate you taking the time to read blog. Your valuable time means a lot to me, and I hope you found the content insightful and engaging!
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FAQ's

Frequently Asked Questions

No, it actually speeds it up. Research shows async-first teams maintain better alignment and decision quality while reducing meeting time by up to 84%. The key is that async allows people to respond when they're at their cognitive peak, leading to higher-quality input. Synchronous meetings often pressure people to make snap decisions without proper research or reflection.

The answer is intentional synchronous moments for human connection. GitLab saves synchronous time for informal communication like coffee chats and team bonding activities. The key is being deliberate by using sync time for relationship building, not status updates. Best practices include weekly optional virtual coffee chats, monthly team social events, quarterly in-person meetups if budget allows, and celebrating wins in video recordings shared async. The quality of connections often improves because you're not burning out your team with excessive meetings.

Async-first doesn't mean async-only. Establish clear escalation protocols where P0 critical issues like production outages or security breaches require immediate phone calls and Slack @channel notifications, P1 urgent matters such as customer-blocking bugs need Slack DMs with urgency tags and a 2-hour response time, and P2 normal items like feature questions or code reviews go through standard async channels with a 24-hour response window. Remote's engineering team notes that synchronous work happens sometimes, especially for coordinated deployments, but it's always planned and communicated in advance.

Start small and show results. Share the data that $xyz per employee per year wasted on inefficient meetings is hard to ignore, then pilot with your team by converting one recurring meeting to async for a month. Track metrics including meeting hours saved, decision velocity, and team satisfaction, and document learnings by creating a case study of your pilot. When approaching your manager, try this script: "I'd like to experiment with async-first practices for our team standups. Research shows teams reduce meeting time by 84% while improving decision quality. Can we try it for one month and measure the results?"

They actually onboard faster with proper async practices. Async creates years of documented decisions that new hires can learn from, enabling them to self-learn by sifting through archives to discover context. Advantages include comprehensive documentation where all knowledge is written down and searchable, self-paced learning so new hires can absorb information at their own speed, and historical context for understanding why decisions were made, not just what was decided. Best practices include assigning an async onboarding buddy for guidance rather than 24/7 availability, creating a structured onboarding path with all resources documented, scheduling regular but optional check-in calls for the first month, and encouraging questions in public channels where answers benefit everyone.

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