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Open and Async

The collaborative software development playbook for remote and distributed teams

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# Open and Async

> The collaborative software development playbook for remote and distributed teams

Open and Async is a book by Ben Balter, who spent more than a decade at GitHub, about thriving and advancing your career in remote and distributed software development. Drawing on that time at GitHub—a company that was remote-first before it was fashionable—it shows engineering leaders and individual contributors how to work in the open, default to async communication, and measure impact instead of hours online.

## Book details

- **Title**: Open and Async: The collaborative software development playbook for remote and distributed teams
- **Author**: Ben Balter
- **Publication date**: July 21, 2026
- **Formats**:
  - **Paperback**: $29.99, 576 pages, ISBN 979-8-9957542-1-3
  - **eBook**: $9.99, ISBN 979-8-9957542-0-6
  - **Audiobook**: $14.95, 11.5 hours, synthetic (AI) narration, ISBN 979-8-9957542-3-7
- **BISAC**: BUS071000 (Leadership), BUS085000 (Organizational Behavior), COM051390 (Software Development & Engineering / Tools)
- **Publisher**: Open & Async LLC

## Author

Ben Balter spent more than a decade at GitHub, most recently as Director of Hubber Enablement, where he helped thousands of GitHubbers do their best remote work. Earlier roles there: Chief of Staff for Security, enterprise PM, and GitHub’s first Government Evangelist. Before GitHub: attorney, Presidential Innovation Fellow, and member of the White House’s first agile development team. The US CTO once called him one of “the baddest of the badass innovators.” He holds a J.D. and an M.B.A. from the George Washington University and is a member of the DC Bar.

- [Website](https://ben.balter.com)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/benbalter)
- [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/benbalter.com)
- [Amazon author page](https://www.amazon.com/author/benbalter)

## Who it’s for

- **Engineering leaders** (VP Eng, directors, engineering managers, tech leads): build remote teams that ship without constant meetings, create a culture of transparency and documentation, and keep your best people.
- **Individual contributors** (software developers, senior engineers, tech leads without reports): get visible, effective, and promotable through written communication, async collaboration, and impact instead of presence.

## Key topics

- **Foundations and definitions**: Remote, distributed, open, async—what the terms actually mean and why the distinction matters.
- **The case for open and async**: The business case, the personal case, and why how you work matters as much as what you work on.
- **Core principles and mental models**: Parallelization, flow, impact over input, and optimizing for developer happiness.
- **Working in the open**: Why everything should have a URL, documentation as a superpower, and the rule of no surprises.
- **Asynchronous communication**: Speak like a human, chat responsibly, the etiquette of issues and pull requests, and when async isn’t the answer.
- **Adopting and transitio
…

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