Building In Public

In the world of remote work, information is currency. Being an async, remote team means we don't have the luxury of hallway conversations or quick desk drop-bys. We had to find another way to maintain momentum and clarity.

The Silent Killer of Remote Teams: Information Silos

When we first launched Unkey in 2023, we fell into a common trap. Important conversations happened in direct messages. Critical decisions were made in calls with only a few participants. Knowledge became trapped in private channels, invisible to the wider team.

It's easier send a quick unstructured DM than to think about where a conversation should live. Yet this convenience comes with hidden costs that compound over time:

• Team members waste time asking questions that have already been answered elsewhere
• Context is constantly lost and needs to be re-explained
• New hires take longer to become productive
• Decisions lack diverse input

After a few months of this, we noticed something concerning. We were building silos in a company of fewer than ten people. If we couldn't solve this problem while small, how would we manage as we grew?

Our Public-By-Default Approach

At Unkey, "working in public" means shifting conversations from private direct messages to public Slack channels where everyone can benefit. This approach ensures that knowledge, decisions, and context are accessible to the entire team.

This doesn't mean eliminating private conversations entirely. Some personal or sensitive topics should not be in public, but the vast majority of communication isn't like that.

By defaulting to transparency, we create an environment where information flows freely, context is preserved, and everyone has the opportunity to contribute.

The Unexpected Benefits of Public Communication

What started as an experiment has become central to how we operate. Here are the benefits:

Ambient Knowledge Sharing

When conversations happen in public, everyone has the opportunity to absorb information passively.

This ambient awareness creates a team that's more informed and connected to the wider business than would otherwise be possible. We're hiring really smart people, but that's useless if they don't have the information necessary to make smart decisions.

Better, More Inclusive Decisions

Some of our best insights have come from unexpected sources. When we discuss infrastructure architectures in public rather than private channels, our engineers might offer a technical perspective we hadn't considered.

By making discussions visible, we tap into the collective intelligence of our entire team. People can choose to contribute or simply observe, but the opportunity to participate is always there.

Stronger Remote Culture

Perhaps most surprisingly, public communication has strengthened our company culture. In an office, culture develops through shared experiences – overhearing conversations, noticing how people interact, absorbing the environment. Remote work removes these opportunities for passive cultural transmission.

Public channels recreate some of this ambient exposure. New team members can observe how we communicate, what we prioritize, and how we solve problems simply by watching public discussions. This accelerates their onboarding in a way that private communications never could.

How We Implement Public Communication at Unkey

There is only one rule:

The challenges we found are mostly around making everyone aware and defaulting to public messages. It's natural to use DMs, we just have to rewrire our brains a little.

When someone DMs me with a question, I'll often respond: "ask in #general". Then they will copy the question to the appropriate channel and I will answer it there.

By now we're pretty consistent about asking in public channels in the first place, but a gentle redirect like that goes a long way. Nobody is trying to go against the system, most tools (slack in this case) just aren't designed to encourage you to talk publicly.

Challenges and How We Address Them

Working in public isn't without challenges:

Information Overload

With more visible conversations, notification fatigue is real. We're nowhere near that problem yet, but there are some simple ways to help:

• Encouraging liberal use of Slack's "mute channel" feature
• Setting clear expectations that no one needs to read everything
• Using thread replies to keep discussions organized

Psychological Safety

Some team members may worry about asking "dumb questions" in public. We actively work to create psychological safety by:

• Leading by example (I regularly ask basic questions in public channels)
• Celebrating questions as contributions to our shared knowledge
• Responding thoughtfully to every question, regardless of complexity
• Never making people feel inadequate for not knowing something

Getting Started with Public Communication

If you want to give it a try with your team, here's what I would do:

1. Start with intention: Explain the "why" behind public communication to your team
2. Lead by example: Move your own conversations to public channels first. Why should anyone do it if you don't do it?
3. Redirect gently: When private messages occur, kindly suggest moving to public channels
4. Be patient: Behavioral changes take time and consistent reinforcement

The Competitive Advantage of Transparency

This approach has influenced not just how we work internally, but also how we build our product. Unkey's API management tools are designed with the same principles of visibility and transparency that guide our internal communication. We believe teams work better when they have clear insight into what's happening – whether that's company communication or API usage.

For small, remote startups, information flow is everything. By making transparency our default, we've created an environment where knowledge flows freely, decisions are visible, and everyone has the context they need to do their best work.

If you'd like to work like this, just give it a shot, or visit unkey.com/careers.