Team Culture
Apr 12, 20266 min read

Building a culture of deep work in a remote-first company

Marcus Rivera
Marcus Rivera
Engineering Manager at SaneHQ
Building a culture of deep work in a remote-first company

Remote work gave our team flexibility, but it also blurred the boundaries between deep work and always-on chat. We redesigned how we communicate so engineers could get blocks of uninterrupted time without disappearing from the company.

We replaced standing meetings with written updates, moved decisions into documents, and protected two daily focus blocks on the calendar. The result was fewer context switches and more meaningful collaboration when we did come together.

If you are experimenting with deep work policies, start small: pick one team, measure meeting hours before and after, and iterate weekly.

Marcus Rivera
Marcus Rivera
Marcus leads distributed engineering teams and writes about focus, async communication, and sustainable collaboration.

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