High-Performance Remote and Distributed Teams Randy Shoup VP - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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High-Performance Remote and Distributed Teams

Randy Shoup

VP Engineering

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@randyshoup

Background

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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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Remote is …

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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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Remoteness Spectrum

Single site Multiple sites Remote-first

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Remoteness Spectrum

Single site Multiple sites Remote-first (1995-2006)

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Remoteness Anti-patterns

Centralized HQ control Site + Satellite Remote

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• 1. Hiring and Onboarding

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Talent is evenly distributed;

• pportunity is not.

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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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• 2. Employee Productivity and Health

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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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• 3. Leveraging Remoteness

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Full-Stack Teams

Idea Development Quality Operations Idea Development Quality Operations Idea Development Quality Operations

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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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• 4. Communication

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The half-life of trust is six weeks

• - Steve McConnell

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Critical Tools

• Video
• Chat
• Docs
• Source control
• Project tracking

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Communication Styles

Written Communication In-person Conversation

Slow Rapid Intentional Effortless Lower-bandwidth High-bandwidth Persistent Ephemeral Different places / times Same place / time

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• 4. Communication
• Written Communication

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What problem are you trying to solve?

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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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• 4. Communication
• Meetings

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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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40

• 5. In Person

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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
• rganization

Social Bonds and Connections

• Hackathon with theme
• Internal conference

Collaboration

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Concluding Thoughts

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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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New York San Francisco Tel Aviv Shanghai Singapore Seattle Palo Alto

Questions?

Montréal Salt Lake City

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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.