"Team, say hello to Discord" - or how we're building our company culture one small step at a time

I wrote briefly about my company culture last year. I still stand by everything I wrote back then. We're now a bit more mature, growing well, and I feel pretty successful in the path we've set ourselves. I wouldn't say it's been easy or trivial, but it's been rewarding and educational.

We still operate primarily asynchronously. We still meet in person several times a year - I don't really keep track how/what/when, but one thing we've tweaked is that everyone gets a say. "Company Christmas trip - anyone up for it? If yes, where should we go?" style. I've let go of the idea that I or someone else would know best. Let's team up and figure it out.

Discord - isn't that for kids and gamers?

Well, yes, it is, I suppose. I've used Discord a couple of times in the past - mostly to dig out something weird, and a GitHub repo announces they've got a Discord server. You join, and it's like watching the Matrix - a gazillion messages, blinking screens, and endless audio, with robots screaming. I've /quit those faster than I can say "oatmilk cappuccino."

We use Teams for much of our internal communication. Channels? Nope. They are as empty as my biceps when I'm bench pressing to failure. Group chats are where it's at - there's a new group chat each time something new brews up. One of the recent ones is a chat for anyone interested in good discounts for gadgets.

We also use Teams for calls, with cameras and audio on, just like it's designed to be used. Meetings are kept to a bare minimum - 2 meetings/week, tops.

So where does Discord fit into this? Well, the idea was floated by a colleague of mine. "Jussi, we should have our own Discord server for all non-work-related stuff." But what do you mean - isn't non-work related an euphemism for "I'm free, and not working?" Not quite.

People commute home from daycare, to customers, or to their offices, or they work from the car in the evening, wrapping up one last task before the kids are released from their sports activities. As we say, it's sometimes nice to shoot the breeze or chit-chat with your friends.

I set up a new company-wide server in Discord, which was surprisingly easy. It lacks some controls I'd love to have, but it's perfectly great if you set some ground rules.

Ours are pretty simple:

• Do not talk about customers, do not mention customer names, do not spill internal secrets or confidential stuff
• Zero obligation to use this - but if you have the time, and feel like chatting, feel free to join whenever
• No texts, no anime memes - just pure audio and that's it

Adding one more thing

So far, it's worked well. I occasionally put on just my left earbud, put my phone in the pocket, and start folding laundry. We are a household of five, so the amount of laundry is sometimes exorbitant. It takes a while, or two. I hop on Discord, and it eerily reminds me of conference calls with plain old telephone systems back in 1991. People join, and sometimes hastily hang up when their attention is needed elsewhere. We've had so many laughs about things that aren't work. Perhaps tangential to work, like "hey so yesterday when I left the meeting.." style.

The one thing I wanted was a small notification that I could discreetly send to Teams when someone joins audio in Discord. That's because we've noticed that when one person joins, others are more likely to join as well - it's an online party then.

I sort-of vibe-coded/semi-coded my way through the Python library for Discord. Super simple stuff – wait for an event for audio join, and send a message via a small Teams bot. Perhaps someone would yell "it's an agent!" on LinkedIn, but in reality, it's a simple if-this-then-that bot.

The small Python program sits in a Docker container, waiting patiently for someone to join the audio channel. Once this happens, it posts a tiny adaptive card to a separate Teams chat, so as not to pollute the main chats.

Perhaps I could make it more beautiful, but tweaking the Adaptive Card template is akin to me learning Swedish grammar: painful, slow, and horrible for anyone who needs to witness it.

This tiny thing has helped people react, if they want to, if something's happening 'over there'.

But wait, why not just use Teams for this?

Ah, I was expecting this question. Because I asked it myself, too. The reason is that Teams doesn't have this capability.

It lacks a frictionless, lightning-fast way to connect to any device for an audio call seamlessly. Just this morning, I opened Teams only to get a pop-up asking me to pin Copilot to my taskbar. I don't have Copilot, or at least the Microsoft 365 Copilot license, so I don't want to pin anything there. I got the same question yesterday. I love Teams, and it's come a thousand miles since the first release, but for some things, separate software is just superior - like Discord for informal, ad hoc audio calls. No need to send calendar invites or schedule something.

The interface is clean if you choose not to go crazy with the configuration and addons. Just focus on the essence.

In closing

Are we ditching Teams for Discord? No, of course not. All our work revolves around Teams. Security incidents pop up there, private chats happen there, and literally all our business integrations are built for Teams. But non-work-related fun stuff works better if it's not chained within the enterprise look-and-feel of Teams. Discord is cute, entertaining, and enjoyable to use.

Also, and I cannot put my finger precisely on this, but Discord seems to suffer way less of the one-way radio-phone effect. Often in Teams, when you're talking and someone adds something to that, Teams sort of mutes you, and it feels like you're dispatching messages over the wire one-way only. Discord is so close to those beloved conference calls we did in the 1990s that I think that's the magic sauce.

And now someone might go, "Tell us another story, grandpa," and I don't mind at all.