Past a certain size, many software organizations grow by looking beyond their headquarters to distributed sites and / or remote employees. Some organizations -- and almost every open source project -- have always been completely remote. What are the secrets of the organizations that use multiple localities and time zones to their advantage?
Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. By leveraging employees around the nation or around the world, these organizations find better, more diverse, and more motivated employees. We discuss the organization itself - how to form teams, give them scope, and manage their growth. We discuss communication strategies for getting the best out of far-flung teams, as well as how to foster and maintain the human bonds and empathy critical to good work.
You will take away actionable insights to help create -- or improve -- your remote teams.
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New York
San Francisco
Tel Aviv
Shanghai
Singapore
Seattle
Palo Alto
WeWork’s Distributed Technology Teams
Montréal
Salt Lake City
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You do not often interact
face-to-face with the
people that you work with
-- Dave Copeland, The Effective Remote Developer
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Organizations that are able to make
remote working patterns effective
will have a significant and growing
competitive advantage.
-- Martin Fowler, Remote versus Co-located Work
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People Benefits
• Draw talent from entire nation / world
• Supply and Demand
• Parallel Hiring
• Geographic Hedge
Hire Across Geographies
• Flexible location and work hours
• Geographic and cultural diversity
• Neurodiversity
Diversity and Inclusion
• Location
• Employee Satisfaction
• Productivity
Retention
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People Challenges
• Local recruiting norms
• Local labor laws – hire, fire, severance
Local Hiring
• Local market compensation
• Local compensation norms
• Local benefits – medical care, pension
• Local market currency fluctuations
Local Compensation
• Regulation
• Taxation “nexus”
Local Regulation
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Onboarding
• Cohort bonding
• Company / team culture
Onsite
• Role / team mentor
• Culture mentor
Mentor / Buddy System
• Structured program
• Recorded Deep Dives and introductions
• WeWork Developer University
Structured Onboarding
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Productive Workspace
• Video
• Audio
• Internet Connectivity
Infrastructure
• Comfortable desk, chair, etc.
• Home office
• Coworking space :-)
Physical Space
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Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
-- Paul Graham, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
Standup
WORK
Meeting
WORK
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
Meeting
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Time Management
• Respect maker – manager schedules
• Develop a productive routine
Flow Time
• Meetings at “breaks”
• Office Hours
• Do Not Disturb
• Consciously manage interrupts
Setting boundaries
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Employee Benefits
• Location
• Commuting
• Proximity to family, etc.
Geographic Flexibility
• Integrated home and work
• Caregiving
• Time flexibility
Work-Life Balance
• Flow time
• Personalized work environment
Productivity
These benefits also apply to HQ employees, too!
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Employee Challenges
• Regular travel
• No commute == no exercise
Geographic Flexibility
• Integrated home and work
• Time management
• Solitude and Isolation
• Mental health and social connection
Work-Life Balance
• Static work environment
Productivity
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Managing Remote Teams
• Empathy
• Career advancement
• Set an example
Remote Managers
• Clarity on goals, outcomes, priorities,
tasks
• Written communication
• Time management and accountability
Structure
• 1:1s are sacrosanct, both direct and
skip-level
• Not a status meeting
• Praise in public, correct in private
Management Behaviors
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Business / Domain Alignment
<Business
Domain>
● Aligned around a business
problem
○ Clear goals and metrics …
○ … that matter to customers!
● Well-defined area of responsibility
○ Single application / service or set of related
applications / services
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Leveraging Remote Teams
• Single team is in a single site OR
remote-first
• Product Area can span sites; team
cannot
All Local OR All Remote
• Local autonomy and control
• No global “primary”
Work Distribution
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Leveraging Remote Teams
• Round-the-clock triage, progress,
resolution
• Oncall handoffs
Follow the Sun
• Local presence
• Customer empathy
• Local implementation / customization
Close to Customers
• Hiring and onboarding
• Engineering practices
• Tools and frameworks
“Natural Experiments”
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Managing Time Zones
• Optimize overlap times
• Trade off inconvenience
• Watch DMs at off hours
Respect Time Zones
• Working hours
• Do Not Schedule
• Flow time
Respect Calendars
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Effective Asynchronous Communication
• Clarify the *why*
• Clear structure
• Straightforward language
• Be careful about misinterpretation
Clarity
• Repetition
• Repetition
• Repetition
Overcommunicate
• Culture of “ask in public”
• When in doubt, ask
• Be open to feedback
• Be specific about the feedback you
want
• Assume good intent
Feedback
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Meeting Discipline
• Clearly state the purpose of the meeting
• Pre-reads
• Meeting template
• Cancel meetings without agenda (!)
Clarity
• Actively moderate
• Manage time and agenda
• Expect people to come prepared
Discussion
• Decision
• Continued discussion
• More investigation
• Etc.
Explicit Action / Next
Step
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Meeting Etiquette
• Respect time zones
• Video link in every meeting by default
• Ideally, everyone behaves as remote
Respect Remotes
• Meeting minutes
• Recording / Transcription
Enable Offline Catch-up
• Allow time for chatting, social bonding
• Make small talk
Foster Social
Connections
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The only way to have real
talk is to have small talk.
-- Dave Copeland, The Effective Remote Developer
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Meeting Etiquette
• Model that it is OK to clarify and ask
questions
• Model that it is OK to backtrack
• Pregnant Pauses – stop and ask for
feedback
• Active Listening – what I hear you
saying is …
Psychological Safety
around Questions
• Interruptions are not rude
• Explicitly yield the floor
• Develop a convention for “raising your
hand”
Psychological Safety
around Interruptions
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Travel
• Establish clear travel expectations
• … for employees, management, finance
• Make and renew social bonds
• High-bandwidth communications
Clear Expectations
• Kickoffs
• Close Collaboration or Brainstorming
• Embedding / Ambassadors
Regular physical
meetings
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Summits / Retreats
• Social bonds and connections
• High-bandwidth communication
• Non-normal work together
Goals
• At least quarterly
• Planned well in advance
• Rotate locations
Regular Cadence
• Strongly encouraged, with reasonable
exceptions
• Accommodate introverts and
neurodiverse
Attendance
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Summits / Retreats
• Prioritize fun and team-building
• Connect with business partners
• Mix of central organization and team-
wise organization
Social Bonds and
Connections
• Hackathon with theme
• Internal conference
Collaboration
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I sense a growing reluctance amongst the best
developers to accept the location and commuting
disadvantages of single site work. This is
increasingly true as people get more experience,
and thus more valuable. You can either try to ignore
this and accept the best people who will relocate for
you, or you can explore how to make remote
working patterns more effective.
-- Martin Fowler, Remote versus Co-located Work
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Resources
● The Effective Remote Developer, Dave Copeland, QCon New York 2017.
● Working Remotely and Managing Remote Teams, Charles Humble, Aginext 2019.
● Eventually Coordinated Teams That Ship, Andrew Montalenti, NY CTO Summit
2018.
● Leading Remote and Distributed Engineering Teams, Katie Womersley, Eric
Muntz, Tim Armandpour, GitPrime Panel 2019.
● Build a Distributed Team at Scale, Christian McCarrick, CTO Summit 2019.
● Managing Distributed Teams, Bryan Helmig, Software Engineering Radio 2019.
● Remote versus Co-Located Work, Martin Fowler, 2015.
● 11 Remote Workers on the Strategies They Use to Bond With Co-Workers, Lisa
Rabasca Roepe, 2019.