Asynchronous Work
Asynchronous work is the practice of doing knowledge work primarily through written, time-shifted artifacts (docs, threaded discussions, recorded videos) rather than synchronous meetings and chat pings expecting immediate responses. The key shift: response time goes from minutes to hours or days, but quality of communication goes from rambling 30-minute meetings to considered 5-minute reads.…
The trap
The trap is doing 'async theater' — sending a doc on Monday morning and expecting decisions by Monday afternoon. That's not async; that's sync with extra steps. Real async means trusting that an answer in 24-48 hours is fine for 90% of decisions. The other trap: managers who use async for 'individual contributor' work but force sync for any decision involving them. The result is a two-tier culture where junior employees do async and the leadership team operates by calendar — meaning leadership becomes the bottleneck on every meaningful decision. The third trap: confusing 'I sent a Slack message' with 'I communicated.' Slack is the worst of both worlds: synchronous in expectation, async in delivery, ephemeral in retention.
What to do
Adopt three practical defaults: (1) Default to docs, not meetings — for any meeting longer than 15 minutes, draft the doc first; if the doc resolves the question, cancel the meeting. (2) Use response-time SLAs explicitly — 'I'll respond within 24 hours' on most things, 'within 4 hours' for tagged urgent items. (3) Decisions live in docs, not in chat — Slack/Teams is for ephemeral coordination, not for decisions you'll need to find again in 6 months. Train the team on async-first writing: lead with the conclusion, then context, then options, then ask. The 6-page Amazon memo (Bezos's famous practice) is the gold standard — meeting time is for reading and questions, not presenting.
Formula
In practice
Stripe operates with a strong async-default culture (despite being primarily in-office) — one of the most distinctive features of the company is that nearly every meaningful decision starts as a written doc, often 5-15 pages, posted to an internal forum or shared with the relevant team 24-48 hours before any synchronous discussion. Co-founder Patrick Collison has publicly argued that the hour-spent-writing produces better thinking than the hour-spent-pitching, and the artifact compounds (future employees can read the original reasoning). Stripe's internal blog (Stripe Blog) and the public 'Increment' magazine are extensions of the same philosophy: think in writing, share the thinking, async-distribute the considered output. Stripe reached a $95B valuation while maintaining unusually high engineering velocity, often attributed to this writing discipline.
Pro tips
- 01
The 'doc before meeting' rule has a clean test: if the doc is good, the meeting becomes shorter or cancellable. If the doc forces a longer meeting, the doc was incomplete. Use the meeting outcome as feedback on doc quality.
- 02
Replace 'quick call?' with 'quick doc?' for 80% of cases. The phrase 'quick call' is almost always longer than the equivalent written exchange — and the written version is searchable and reviewable later.
- 03
For genuinely complex decisions, the right cadence is: doc Monday, async comments Tue-Wed, 30-minute decision meeting Thursday with everyone having read the doc and prior comments. This is faster than the equivalent 'let's schedule a 90-minute meeting next week and figure it out together.'
Myth vs reality
Myth
“Async work is for introverts and remote workers only”
Reality
Async benefits even fully co-located teams — Amazon, Stripe, and Square all operate strong async cultures while being primarily in-office. The benefit is fewer meetings, better decisions, and persistent decision artifacts. The 'async = remote only' frame misses 80% of the value.
Myth
“Async is slower than sync”
Reality
Async is slower per round-trip but dramatically faster per decision when measured end-to-end. A 'quick' 30-minute meeting that requires 8 people to align calendars takes 3-5 days of elapsed time. A doc with async comments lands a better-considered decision in 48 hours, with a searchable artifact.
Try it
Run the numbers.
Pressure-test the concept against your own knowledge — answer the challenge or try the live scenario.
Knowledge Check
Your team has 14 weekly recurring meetings totaling 11 hours/person/week. You want to convert to async. Where should you start for the highest-impact, lowest-risk conversion?
Industry benchmarks
Is your number good?
Calibrate against real-world tiers. Use these ranges as targets — not absolutes.
Knowledge-Worker Sync Meeting Hours/Week
Average synchronous meeting hours per knowledge worker per weekAsync-First (GitLab/Automattic)
4-6 hrs
Healthy
7-12 hrs
Average
13-18 hrs
Meeting-Captured
19+ hrs
Source: Hypothetical: composite of Microsoft Workplace Insights and similar studies
Real-world cases
Companies that lived this.
Verified narratives with the numbers that prove (or break) the concept.
GitLab
2011-present
GitLab operates as the canonical async-first organization. Their public Handbook (2,000+ pages) replaces the function of meetings, hallway conversations, and tribal knowledge. Decisions are made in GitLab issues and merge requests; new policies appear as Handbook commits with reasoning attached. The async discipline allows 1,500+ employees across 65+ countries to operate cohesively without anyone working off-hours to attend meetings in another timezone. The internal SLA for most decisions is 'response within 24 hours' — fast enough that decisions land, slow enough that any contributor on Earth has time to weigh in. The model is one of the few proof points that async-first scales to large engineering organizations without breaking down.
Handbook Pages
2,000+
Default Response SLA
24 hours
Timezone Coverage
65+ countries
Sync Meetings
Among lowest in tech
Async-first only scales when the organization invests heavily in writing — handbooks, decision docs, async-friendly tools. Companies that try to go async without the writing infrastructure get the worst of both worlds: slow sync and weak async.
Stripe
2010-present
Stripe is unusual in operating a strong async-first culture despite being primarily in-office. Co-founder Patrick Collison institutionalized doc-first decision-making early: nearly every meaningful decision begins as a written doc (often 5-15 pages) shared 24-48 hours before any synchronous discussion. The Amazon-style 'silent reading' meeting is common. Internal documentation is treated as a first-class engineering artifact. Collison has publicly argued that the time spent writing produces better thinking than the time spent pitching — and that the artifact compounds (new employees can read the original reasoning years later). Stripe reached a $95B valuation while maintaining unusually high engineering velocity, often attributed to this discipline.
Founded
2010
Valuation
$95B+
Doc-First Culture
Nearly every decision
Public Writing Investment
Increment magazine
Async isn't just for distributed companies. Co-located teams that adopt async-first decision-making get the same compounding benefits: better thinking, persistent artifacts, more inclusive decisions.
Related concepts
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Beyond the concept
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