The Essentials of Async Work Culture
Discover the benefits of async work, including enhanced focus, time zone flexibility, and reduced reliance on real-time meetings.
Contributions
Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.
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A review of the measurement-evidence and async-writing sections of this article found that most specific statistics, while attached to real researchers and companies, could not be verified against their actual published research, and one claim conflated two separate real Amazon practices as if they were one. The sections were rewritten to keep the real people, companies, and general findings while correcting or removing the specifics that did not hold up.
What the page claimedThe article attributed a '15 minutes on diversion activities' figure to Microsoft researchers Shamsi Iqbal and Mary Czerwinski, without noting that a related and better documented '23 minutes to refocus' figure actually comes from Gloria Mark's research; described Shopify's 2023 meeting purge as having 'crept back within six months' without a documented source for that detail; cited a 2021 Journal of Knowledge Management study of 200 software teams with specific percentage figures that could not be verified; cited an Intercom 'five completeness criteria' training program with a 40 percent improvement figure that could not be verified; and described Amazon's bar raiser hiring process as evaluating candidates on six-page narrative memo quality, conflating the internal six-page memo practice with a separate, shorter candidate writing exercise.
What was correctedThe section now correctly attributes the well-documented '23 minutes to refocus after an interruption' finding to Gloria Mark, who has collaborated with Iqbal and Czerwinski on related Microsoft Research work, describes Shopify's real 2023 meeting purge (led by COO Kaz Nejatian, publicly championed by CEO Tobi Lutke) using its actual reported early results rather than an unverified six-month rebound claim, describes documentation's value in accurate general terms rather than citing an unverifiable specific study, removes the unverifiable Intercom framework and statistic, and describes Amazon's internal six-page memo practice and its separate bar-raiser hiring writing exercise as the two distinct practices they actually are.
Why: Web searches for each specific statistic and case detail either found the real figure belonged to a different researcher, found no evidence the specific study or program exists, or found that two genuinely real practices at the same company had been described as one. Since the underlying researchers, companies, and general findings are real, the sections were rewritten to correct or remove the specific inaccuracies rather than deleting the material outright.
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