Working remotely with 150+ people

In our case, we make sure that single source of truth is either a GitLab issue, for anything related to implementation or the handbook on our website for organisational matters [0].

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#5

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 2:13 PM UTC

It's a nice list but could be a little more specific.

I have worked in purely remote teams and I found them to be highly functional. You need a certain type of self reliant people though and really strong leadership. Somebody has to make and have the power to enforce certain decisions that affect everybody.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#6

Post by joeguilmette » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #5

It's a nice list but could be a little more specific. I have worked in purely remote teams and I found them to be highly functional. You need a certain type of self reliant people though and really strong leadership. Somebody has to make and have the power to enforce certain decisions that affect everybody.

Can you describe in more detail what really strong leadership looks like in a remote work environment?

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#7

Post by jobvandervoort » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 2:18 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #5

It's a nice list but could be a little more specific. I have worked in purely remote teams and I found them to be highly functional. You need a certain type of self reliant people though and really strong leadership. Somebody has to make and have the power to enforce certain decisions that affect everybody.

I strongly agree about requiring self-reliant people. I actually wrote about this shortly after posting this on medium [0], but the TL;DR is that you (as manager) should make it extremely clear what is expected of everyone and that people should be very self-sufficient / independent.

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/2017/01/03/set-expectations/

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#8

Post by codingvelocity » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 2:22 PM UTC

While i'm not 100% remote (i'm part of a small regional office that has a massive head office in another part of the country, but I can work from home). Something i've found incredibly important is jumping on video chat. There's something about seeing someone in a video while you talk to them that reminds you "hey i'm working with other humans, i should respond with a level of empathy i'd expect in return"

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#9

Post by neebz » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 2:23 PM UTC

We focussed a lot on async collaboration and unfortunately we get issues of team associations. You just miss out on any water cooler talk and struggle to build relationships with individual employees. This impacted our employee turnover massively even though we gave competitive salaries, flexible work hours and work-from-home.

Re: Working remotely with 150+ people

#10

Post by jobvandervoort » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

neebz wrote: post #9

We focussed a lot on async collaboration and unfortunately we get issues of team associations. You just miss out on any water cooler talk and struggle to build relationships with individual employees. This impacted our employee turnover massively even though we gave competitive salaries, flexible work hours and work-from-home.

We do a few things to alleviate this, I'm not sure if they are enough for scale:

1. Daily call with everyone where we talk about our private lives for the most part (30m call, 28m private life talk: everyone has to tell something they did for fun last week)

2. Very active chat, with many non-work channels

3. A 'watercooler' hangout, where people join to just casually talk over video chat