Why Informal Networks Matter More Than Structure

Trust doesn't come from org charts—it comes from spontaneous coffee chats. Yuliia Pieskova shows how informal networks decide if your team adapts or breaks. "Anytime we get to some team, we get to some group of people, we become a part of that informal network and that also influences our behavior." - Yuliia Pieskova In this episode, I talk with Yuliia Pieskova about informal networks in software teams. We explore how spontaneous ties lift trust, speed, and quality in remote and hybrid setups. Formal charts set limits, people move work through friends. Yuliia shares stories from startups, hackathons, and product discovery where cross team groups watch users, swap ideas, then return with shared context. Remote work exposes old cracks yet levels locations and opens doors for new links. 00:00 Informal Communication in Companies 06:04 Empowering a Junior Developer 07:07 Power of Informal Networks 12:23 Trust Matters in Remote Work 14:35 Connecting Beyond Locations 17:40 Collaborative Product Discovery Trends 22:43 Building Trust and Relationships 24:38 Building Alignment for Teamwork 28:55 Addressing the Pink Elephant 32:08 Hope to Meet Soon 📘 Free e-book: The 7 success factors of software testing. 25 years of project experience in one 33-page workbook, now also in English 👉 https://tul.fm/ebook 🎯 Highlights: Informal networks run parallel to formal org structures and carry more weight in crises because they are built on trust, which formal processes cannot manufacture. Remote and hybrid work scale existing cultural problems rather than create new ones: teams that already had trust adapted more easily, teams that lacked it struggled harder. Product discovery improves when people from different backgrounds, including newcomers who carry no product history, learn from user feedback together and then return to their teams already aligned. Explicit alignment conversations, where team members openly discuss what good collaboration looks and feels like for them, prevent misunderstandings that would otherwise surface as conflict under pressure. Introverted team members form fewer but often higher-quality relationships, and a well-designed environment such as a hackathon gives them space to connect on their own terms without forced participation. 🔗 Links Blog Post for Episode: https://www.richard-seidl.com/en/podc... 🎙️ More from Richard Seidl Website: https://www.richard-seidl.com Linkedin:   / richardseidl   Podcast Software Testing: https://www.testing-unleashed.fm #softwaretesting #QA #informalnetworksinteams