Managing Remotely

We don’t have any overarching rules or norms, other than to ensure that mandatory meetings are remote-friendly. Each team sets their own norms as necessary.…

No.

No, yuck. Responsible people do what they know needs to be done.

In the earlier days when the team was ~15 people, we would gather the whole company together for week-long (Mon-Fri) retreats in different locations 4…

I’d say that it’s important to organize the retreats with time in advance to make sure the team works smartly together (discuss ideas and works…

Yes! We organize three all-company events per year. One focused on working together on specific company projects, one focused on training, and another focused on…

As a whole company we have bi-weekly video calls every other week and we get together in-person 2x a year for all company meetings.

This is not a requirement, and due to the global distribution of our team, it is difficult to coordinate. We do use regional industry events…

We only do one formal meeting each year, a 4-day annual retreat that tackles some operations-level work, but is mostly for play and social time.…

Weekly updates are detailed reports we receive every Friday that outline what each team member accomplished during the week and their focus for next week.…

As an organization, we hire really driven people, set clear and ambitious goals, and check in on them regularly throughout the year, both formally and…

In many cases, it is activity in Slack, commits to source control, responses to clients, etc.  It’s challenging, but from experience of working in traditional…

It is critical to have open communication and no silos.  Everyone should be able to communicate with anyone and be open to reply quickly.

As Skillcrush continues to grow, we make it a priority to stay connected with each other and dedicate time to all of the team-building activities…

Actually having one. A relationship doesn’t mean reading standups in a Slack channel. You have to put in the work to meet regularly with each…

Creating a healthy balance between trusting our team members to manage their work time and monitoring their activity. We have team members use time management…

Not being able to have regular face-to-face one-on-one meetings with people is a bummer.  Nothing beats grabbing a lunch, beer or coffee with someone and…

Developing cultural sensitivity and acumen that allows one to manage their own style and preferences so they can connect with different people around the world.

Each team that is working for a client takes responsibility for all the issues: financial stuff, agreements, customer relations, etc. Thanks to our policy, people…

Informal water-cooler style conversations about company goals and vision. People want to work for a company where they like the product, trust the management, and…

Keep everyone in the loop, whatever it is. Also talk to them about private things and regularly ask how they are doing! Because it is…

Everyone does BYOD, mostly because everyone has different preferences and environments that make them most effective, but we will sponsor apps at times.

We provide equipment to our remote employees.

We currently provide company equipment to our employees.

We have an open time off policy, which translates to take the time off that you need. We ask each person to discuss time off…

We have a fairly standard PTO plan for full-time [A]gents.

Remote working is great because you have the luxury of not using vacation days while traveling if you don’t want to.  Our policy is that…

Accountability. The fear that people would simply flake, walk off into the distance, play video games instead of work. Sure they came true. And then…

The biggest fear is “culture cracks” as our CEO calls it. Since we do have such a significant amount of remote team members, it is…

As is the trend with other remote companies, we worry about workplace culture. It’s a bit harder to foster when you only see one another…