Anduril COO Matt Grimm's Slack Strategy

Anduril Chief Operating Officer Matt Grimm has detailed his approach to managing the relentless stream of Slack messages at the defense technology company. With roughly 7,000 employees operating across 14 time zones, Grimm sorts his messages by unread status and recency to maintain situational awareness.

The strategy, while not perfect, allows him to "get the pulse of what's going on" during brief windows between meetings or while walking between buildings. Grimm's method represents a pragmatic solution to the challenge of enterprise communication at scale, where reading every message is impossible. His approach prioritizes efficiency and relies on the assumption that truly critical information will reach him through direct channels.

Grimm sorts his Slack messages using two primary filters: unread status and timestamp. When he finds himself between meetings, walking between buildings, or with five minutes to spare, he reviews messages in this specific order. This systematic approach allows him to process high volumes of communication efficiently.

The Anduril COO acknowledges that this method has limitations. "The strategy isn't foolproof," Grimm stated. With thousands of employees generating messages throughout all waking hours across multiple continents, complete coverage is impossible. However, he maintains that "it works enough to get the pulse of what's going on."

Grimm's technique focuses on channel reading rather than direct message monitoring. He trusts that if something truly requires his immediate attention, employees will send him a direct message rather than posting in general channels. This delegation of urgency allows him to focus his limited time on broader organizational awareness rather than individual issues.

In interviews, Grimm described how he often appears unexpectedly in various Slack channels, sometimes startling employees who didn't anticipate leadership presence in their discussions. "They will see me chirp in on some random thread in some random channel," he explained. The unexpected visibility often prompts reactions like "How the hell did you see this?" from team members.

This element of surprise serves a dual purpose. It demonstrates that leadership is paying attention to grassroots conversations while also creating an environment where employees understand their communications are visible across the organization. The defense technology company operates with significant transparency, and Grimm's random channel appearances reinforce that culture.

His presence in unexpected places also provides him with unfiltered insight into day-to-day operations, team dynamics, and emerging issues that might not surface through formal reporting channels. This bottom-up awareness complements his top-down management responsibilities.

The sheer scale of Anduril's operations makes any Slack management strategy challenging. The company employs approximately 7,000 people distributed across 14 time zones. As Grimm noted, "We're in like 14 time zones. They're just all day, every day, all the time."

This geographic distribution means that at any given moment, thousands of employees are active, generating a continuous stream of messages. The "all day, every day" nature of modern workplace communication creates a firehose of information that no individual could realistically process in full.

Grimm's sorting method is therefore not just a preference but a necessity. Without systematic filtering, the volume would be unmanageable. His approach reflects a broader reality in contemporary enterprise: communication tools have scaled faster than human capacity to process their output, forcing executives to develop triage strategies.

Matt Grimm has been with Anduril since its founding, having co-created the company with Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, and Joseph Chen. Before Anduril, Grimm worked at Palantir, another company known for its data-intensive culture. His background in data and defense technology informs his systematic approach to information management.

Grimm's strategy contrasts with other corporate leaders who have developed different methods for handling workplace messaging. Some executives, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, send long-form essays that create debate and document company history. Others, such as Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, intentionally create distance by keeping Slack off their phones to "actually tune out" when away from their computers.

Slack's own co-founder, Cal Henderson, has recommended ranking channels, setting strict response hours, and using video clips instead of meetings. These varied approaches demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to enterprise communication challenges. Grimm's method reflects his specific needs at a rapidly growing defense technology company where situational awareness across distributed teams is critical.