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Dec 6, 2023 · 23m · founders-journal

How to Avoid Meetings & Build a Great Remote Culture

Sam Corcos · 15m spoken Alex Lieberman · 5m spoken
0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

In this episode of Founder's Journal, Alex Lieberman interviews Levels co-founder and CEO Sam Corcos on how to build an effective remote work culture using asynchronous communication, structured documentation, and ruthless meeting hygiene.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Alex holds 26.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Alex as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 1.0 Alex pushing back 1.3
05100:0010:0020:000:57–4:25 · Alex as informed peer 3/10 Why Remote Work Demands Asynchronous Communication Alex frames the shift to async work citing his own experience at Morning Brew and quoting Matt Mullenweg. Sam enthusiastically validates the quote and details why synchronous remote work burns out employees.4:26–9:28 · Alex as informed peer 6/10 Identifying When Synchronous Communication is Necessary Alex demonstrates strong analytical expertise by distilling Sam's examples into two distinct organizational principles: urgency and cultural signaling. Sam validates Alex's framework and adds alignment as a third principle.9:29–14:43 · Alex as informed peer 4/10 Structuring Effective Meetings and Company Transparency Alex prompts Sam on meeting hygiene and participant thresholds, drawing parallels to Sam's earlier points on communication. Sam shares tactical operational rules, such as having assistants automatically cancel agenda-less 1-on-1s.14:46–21:13 · Alex as informed peer 5/10 Async Mediums, Product Spec Templates, and Delegation Sam explains Levels' memo templates and offloading PM admin tasks to overseas executive assistants. Alex synthesizes this into a broader conceptual point regarding the future of automated and delegated knowledge work.0:57–4:25 · Guest teaching 2/10 Why Remote Work Demands Asynchronous Communication Alex frames the shift to async work citing his own experience at Morning Brew and quoting Matt Mullenweg. Sam enthusiastically validates the quote and details why synchronous remote work burns out employees.4:26–9:28 · Guest teaching 3/10 Identifying When Synchronous Communication is Necessary Alex demonstrates strong analytical expertise by distilling Sam's examples into two distinct organizational principles: urgency and cultural signaling. Sam validates Alex's framework and adds alignment as a third principle.9:29–14:43 · Guest teaching 3/10 Structuring Effective Meetings and Company Transparency Alex prompts Sam on meeting hygiene and participant thresholds, drawing parallels to Sam's earlier points on communication. Sam shares tactical operational rules, such as having assistants automatically cancel agenda-less 1-on-1s.14:46–21:13 · Guest teaching 3/10 Async Mediums, Product Spec Templates, and Delegation Sam explains Levels' memo templates and offloading PM admin tasks to overseas executive assistants. Alex synthesizes this into a broader conceptual point regarding the future of automated and delegated knowledge work.0:57–4:25 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Why Remote Work Demands Asynchronous Communication Alex frames the shift to async work citing his own experience at Morning Brew and quoting Matt Mullenweg. Sam enthusiastically validates the quote and details why synchronous remote work burns out employees.4:26–9:28 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Identifying When Synchronous Communication is Necessary Alex demonstrates strong analytical expertise by distilling Sam's examples into two distinct organizational principles: urgency and cultural signaling. Sam validates Alex's framework and adds alignment as a third principle.9:29–14:43 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Structuring Effective Meetings and Company Transparency Alex prompts Sam on meeting hygiene and participant thresholds, drawing parallels to Sam's earlier points on communication. Sam shares tactical operational rules, such as having assistants automatically cancel agenda-less 1-on-1s.14:46–21:13 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Async Mediums, Product Spec Templates, and Delegation Sam explains Levels' memo templates and offloading PM admin tasks to overseas executive assistants. Alex synthesizes this into a broader conceptual point regarding the future of automated and delegated knowledge work.0:57–4:25 · Alex pushing back 1/10 Why Remote Work Demands Asynchronous Communication Alex frames the shift to async work citing his own experience at Morning Brew and quoting Matt Mullenweg. Sam enthusiastically validates the quote and details why synchronous remote work burns out employees.4:26–9:28 · Alex pushing back 2/10 Identifying When Synchronous Communication is Necessary Alex demonstrates strong analytical expertise by distilling Sam's examples into two distinct organizational principles: urgency and cultural signaling. Sam validates Alex's framework and adds alignment as a third principle.9:29–14:43 · Alex pushing back 1/10 Structuring Effective Meetings and Company Transparency Alex prompts Sam on meeting hygiene and participant thresholds, drawing parallels to Sam's earlier points on communication. Sam shares tactical operational rules, such as having assistants automatically cancel agenda-less 1-on-1s.14:46–21:13 · Alex pushing back 1/10 Async Mediums, Product Spec Templates, and Delegation Sam explains Levels' memo templates and offloading PM admin tasks to overseas executive assistants. Alex synthesizes this into a broader conceptual point regarding the future of automated and delegated knowledge work.

speaking balance: gold is Alex, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Alex 63% · guest 37%0:00 · Alex 63% · guest 37%3:00 · Alex 4.8% · guest 95.2%3:00 · Alex 4.8% · guest 95.2%6:00 · Alex 38.3% · guest 61.7%6:00 · Alex 38.3% · guest 61.7%9:00 · Alex 15.2% · guest 84.8%9:00 · Alex 15.2% · guest 84.8%12:00 · Alex 32.5% · guest 67.5%12:00 · Alex 32.5% · guest 67.5%15:00 · Alex 12.9% · guest 87.1%15:00 · Alex 12.9% · guest 87.1%18:00 · Alex 21.5% · guest 78.5%18:00 · Alex 21.5% · guest 78.5%21:00 · Alex 25.1% · guest 74.9%21:00 · Alex 25.1% · guest 74.9%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:40 Critique of Slack as a synchronous trap

Sam forcefully rejects the common perception of Slack as an async productivity tool, calling it a synchronous tool masquerading as async that creates the worst of both worlds.

 Hardest push from Alex ▶ 6:31 Host reframes guest examples into core principles

Alex politely takes the lead from Sam's ad-hoc examples to test his own theoretical framework around urgency and cultural signaling.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:57 Explaining the necessity of async for remote scale

Sam articulates how trying to replicate in-office synchronous work over Zoom is inherently flawed and why true leverage comes from recorded, scalable async artifacts.

 Alex holds their own ▶ 6:40 Alex synthesizes urgency and cultural importance

Alex showcases his operator expertise by structuring the exact criteria that dictate when synchronous communication becomes indispensable.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicAlex as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementAlex pushing backWhy
Why Remote Work Demands Asynchronous Communication 3211 Alex frames the shift to async work citing his own experience at Morning Brew and quoting Matt Mullenweg. Sam enthusiastically validates the quote and details why synchronous remote work burns out employees.
Identifying When Synchronous Communication is Necessary 6312 Alex demonstrates strong analytical expertise by distilling Sam's examples into two distinct organizational principles: urgency and cultural signaling. Sam validates Alex's framework and adds alignment as a third principle.
Structuring Effective Meetings and Company Transparency 4311 Alex prompts Sam on meeting hygiene and participant thresholds, drawing parallels to Sam's earlier points on communication. Sam shares tactical operational rules, such as having assistants automatically cancel agenda-less 1-on-1s.
Async Mediums, Product Spec Templates, and Delegation 5311 Sam explains Levels' memo templates and offloading PM admin tasks to overseas executive assistants. Alex synthesizes this into a broader conceptual point regarding the future of automated and delegated knowledge work.

Statements from this episode (8)

Disclosure
Levels engineers typically average just three meetings per week
“If you were to look at the calendars of a lot of our engineers, it is Very common for engineers to have something like three meetings per week.”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 3:30
Disclosure
Levels runs two weeks of synchronous standups before transitioning to asynchronous
“We found for a lot of our projects, people might do two weeks of daily standups that are synchronous live Answer questions, get more context, higher velocity, and then they eventually transition into async standups, where at the end of the day, they just say, …”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 5:19
Opinion
Slack is a synchronous communication tool masquerading as asynchronous
“Slack is a, it's a synchronous tool that masquerades as an async tool. And so, you end up getting into these multi-hour conversations with your thumbs, where you're, like, waiting for five minutes for them to get back to you, and you're just staring at your ph…”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 9:00
Disclosure
Corcos cancels 1-on-1s with direct reports if no agenda is prepared
“If I have one-on-ones scheduled for all of my direct reports, but I've made it very clear and everyone's on the same page that a one-on-one calendar hold is not an entitlement. It is a hold so that I don't double book myself. And if there's nothing on the agen…”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 10:41
Disclosure
Levels shares recordings of all 1-on-1s and board meetings company-wide
“All of our meetings, including our one-on-ones are recorded and shared by default to the whole company. So our board meetings, generally speaking, are shared with the whole company.”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 13:34
Disclosure
Levels enforces a strict company-wide rule banning acronyms
“We also have a no acronym rule because I can't remember them for the life of me.”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 17:37
Disclosure
Levels delegates PM admin and retrospective drafts to Philippine executive assistants
“We've been working with our EAs in the Philippines to do a lot of that admin work, and so they, we've we taught them how to do the daily check-ins, how to do, they even write the first draft of most of our retros now, because they can see all the daily updates…”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 18:39
Insight
Correcting for too few meetings is easier than fixing meeting overload
“It's way easier to correct for. We don't have enough meetings. Let's try to schedule more of them than it is. How do I get out of this situation where I'm trapped all day in meetings?”
Sam Corcos Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 22:08
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