Working Remotely

Organically

We’ve been distributed from day one. Our only requirements are that our team be available for our morning scrum, that they track both their billable…

We have been a virtual environment from day one, so it was a decision that was organically reinforced by its own success.

Absolutely, but it takes a little more work and doesn’t happen as organically as it would in an office. We have a #water-cooler channel in…

Absolutely, but it probably takes more time. The “watercooler” conversations might have to happen in a chat room, and company-related extracurricular discussions and the like…

Absolutely, although it takes a lot of hard work and conscious effort. You simply have to be honest about the challenges of working remotely, actively…

With great attention and intention! The little things really make a difference, such as acknowledging birthdays and work anniversaries on our company-wide Slack channels, or…

Our head of community in the U.S., Kevyn Klein, is critical for this process. She understands our teachers so well because she talks to them…

(a) At the start of our weekly one-on-one calls, we take a few minutes to talk about something that we are enjoying being involved with…

If you’re thinking about remote work, consider all your options. Coworking centers are super trendy, but may not be the best fit for every company.…

Go all in, if you’re going to make the leap. In order to select and build the tools, systems, habits, and culture that really enable…

Just because a distributed organizational structure has worked well for us, it may not be the right decision for everyone. Always begin with the end…

One of the biggest challenges of running a remote company for me personally has been to remember to have a life outside of work. I…

Finding and vetting qualified editors from around the world to meet the volume demand during busy periods has been one of our main challenges. Because…

Communication across time zones means things can take longer than you would like. For instance, if I send an email on Monday at 3 p.m. to…

We love Google for Work! Google Hangouts are a great way to connect face to face with teammates on a video call or to quickly reach…

We’re proud “dog-fooders” of our own products– we use Twist exclusively for all team communication, and Todoist to turn our team communication into actionable items.…

We use all the normal apps like Email, Slack, Skype, Github. And the not so common P2. But at the end of the day, it’s…

The biggest things that have changed are directly related to scalability – the routines and policies we maintained as a team of six people just…

We developed a concept of core hours and started to avoid hiring from locations where the core hours are during the nighttime. We did this…

We found quickly that being fully distributed wasn’t going to work well for us. We missed seeing each other in person and the rare times…

We offer some flexibility in work schedules so that team members can have somewhat of a normal schedule, but we also require work hours to…

Our team works asynchronously and communicates largely via Slack, which keeps us organized across 17 time zones. Keeping an up-to-date shared calendar is also very…

This is likely the largest challenge we face as a remote company.  I don’t like making people stay up late or get up super early…