Our goal is that regardless of time zone, and regardless of when you joined the company, you will have access to all of the most critical information.

As a remote company with colleagues around the world, this is even more important. If someone on one side of the Earth has to wait for someone on the other side of the Earth to wake up, that’s inefficient! Everyone should have access to everything they need to take ownership and default to action. A “documentation first” work style helps us to get there.

“Documentation First” doesn’t just mean we strive to write documentation.

Instead, it means we write documentation first.

Say someone sends you a question: “How do I do XYZ?”

Instead of typing out the answer in chat, or in a comment, think:

1. Does this documentation exist?
2. If not, would this potentially help someone in the future?
3. If so, where should it exist?
4. Write your answer up as documentation.
5. Send that person a link to the documentation so they can now help themselves.
6. Repeat.

This is initially a lot of work. But, it’s an investment with compounding interest. When we hire someone in the future, they will have that much more information they can draw from to quickly get on board, understand the context of decisions, and then contribute—even if the person onboarding them is asleep or unavailable. It also allows for people in other time zones to pick up work and answer their own questions as they come up. With the right documentation, we can literally be working at all hours.

But, it takes some work up front. And, it requires that “documentation first” mentality.

<aside> 📖 Additional Reading: Documentation Principles, Asynchronous Work Principles, Remote Work Principles

</aside>