Working Remotely
140 companies answer 6 questions
Working remotely comes with unique day-to-day challenges. From the initial step of implementing remote policy to nurturing company culture while operating remotely, we ask leading remote companies to share how they approach running their distributed teams from an operational level.
How did you implement a remote work policy?
We did not implement a remote work policy. Building a distributed company was our intention from the start. Dr. Chris Waters (my co-founder) and I…
Organically. Appen has been operating mixed remote and in-office teams for many years.
It was our policy from the beginning!
Can a remote-friendly company have a healthy culture?
Yes, absolutely, but this includes a lot of work. You have to agree on values and hire for attitude, not (only) for skills. An in-depth…
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…
It can. Culture is half core values, and half what everyone puts in. We keep our core values prominent and everyone gets it. We encourage…
How do you nurture your company’s culture in a remote work environment?
Goodway tries to have our own level of perks and rewards that are equally as desirable and beneficial to remote employees. We use a program…
We train our new employees on our company culture, which is based on Accountability, Visibility and Respect. We have weekly onboarding meetings for all new…
The best thing we do, I think, is our yearly meetup. It’s a very democratic meetup, meaning that we vote on everything—where we want to…
What advice would you give to a team considering to go remote?
We succeed at making remote work by being deliberate about our communication process. We have work-related communication tools, like Slack and Google Hangouts, as well…
Remote work naturally leads to results oriented working practices and management. This is good for everyone. Make sure your communications are good and improve your…
Teamwork cannot suffer after changing your workplace philosophy, so it’s important to have the team be involved since the planning stage. Also some face-time is…
What challenges have you encountered building a remote team?
One of the biggest problems is finding a team to build the application with the right skills at the right cost who are available when we…
The biggest challenges are logistical and infrastructure based, much the same as any company, I’d imagine! Unique to us as a distributed company are the…
Planning around time zones may be our biggest challenge. For example, when two people are working on the same project, one in Australia and the…
What are the most effective tools for remote team communication?
These seem to come and go a little. Slack has been a game changer for us especially with the addition of video chat on demand.…
A combination of online tools such as email, video conferencing, and real-time messaging apps such as Slack brings everyone together at The Cheat Sheet.
This depends on the team, since each team within GitHub decides how they want to organise and coordinate their communication. Most of our communication is…
What has changed about how your remote team operates?
We have gotten closer as a team as we grow. We have new technology that connects us instantly and we have grown more as a…
We introduced using a wiki to keep all internal processes and documentation organized. We used to use Google Drive and Google sites, but it was…
Technology is constantly changing and improving the way we interact remotely.
How does your team address different time zone challenges?
Currently, we hire only within the UTC-1 to UTC+3 time zones. Our core working time is between 10am-3pm (Berlin time) and during this time everyone…
Everyone is respectful of everyone else’s time and situation. However, if there is an important meeting scheduled at a normal time in EST, but very…
Our entire company is online from 3pm-7pm GMT which means we have a 4-hour window for all hands meetings, daily standups, and the off-hand meeting…
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