We didn't start as a remote first company, to be honest. In the beginning, we thought we should try to hire as many people as possible in the same location. We had a very hard time finding people who were equally interested in CI/CD as we were and also fit our other requirements (certain skills, value alignment, etc.). That was probably the main driver to become more flexible and eventually resulted in us hiring in multiple locations and then everywhere between certain time zones (PT <=> CET).
I think that the biggest challenges with a remote setup are around communication and building personal relationships. Communication gets easier and easier with tools like Slack, Google Hangout, etc. and dev-focused companies are having a slight advantage in my opinion (simply more used to chat based communication).
Building personal relationships is hard. What we do is making sure that our whole team does a lot of 1on1s with each other and also talk about non-work topics. That's only half of it, though. Meeting in person is key. We try to make sure that everybody at least 1x every 3 months sees some of her/his co-workers. E.g. we just had our Customer Success + Product team in Boulder/Colorado for a week and Customer Success + Engineering + Product will meet in Lisbon/Portugal in January next year.
Glad that you are happy with Codeship. Please let me know if we can do anything better :)
Yeah, seems like the biggest advantage to becoming remote is having more access to applicants.
Awesome that you have your teams meet up; I think that's key to building relationships, too.
Not sure how many junior devs you have, but do you have any advice for building up/supporting junior devs who are remote?
Since you're asking if there's anything you can do, there is one thing I would like, and it'd be great if the Slack notifications/webhooks linked to the GitHub commit, too. :) It would save me a click. 🙃
We haven't hired any junior team members remotely so far. That's primarily because we don't think that we as a team have figured out how to best support them. I hope that we will be able to do so, soon. We successfully moved junior team members from an "office setup" to be remote.
I think articulating guidelines for working remotely is key for junior team members, especially if they don't have any remote working experience. E.g., making it clear that they have to work in a dedicated space (at home or in a co-working space) or guiding them when it comes to work-life balance. If you are at home the whole day, it can be challenging to know when to stop working.
Additionally, I would focus on giving those junior team members more face time with the more experienced team members. E.g., flying them to other team members more frequently, especially in the beginning.
Thanks for the feedback - I forwarded it to our team :)
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As a remote first company, what were some concerns that you had starting out and how did you work through those issues?
Also, Codeship has been the first CI I've used, and it's been a pretty great ride so far!
We didn't start as a remote first company, to be honest. In the beginning, we thought we should try to hire as many people as possible in the same location. We had a very hard time finding people who were equally interested in CI/CD as we were and also fit our other requirements (certain skills, value alignment, etc.). That was probably the main driver to become more flexible and eventually resulted in us hiring in multiple locations and then everywhere between certain time zones (PT <=> CET).
I think that the biggest challenges with a remote setup are around communication and building personal relationships. Communication gets easier and easier with tools like Slack, Google Hangout, etc. and dev-focused companies are having a slight advantage in my opinion (simply more used to chat based communication).
Building personal relationships is hard. What we do is making sure that our whole team does a lot of 1on1s with each other and also talk about non-work topics. That's only half of it, though. Meeting in person is key. We try to make sure that everybody at least 1x every 3 months sees some of her/his co-workers. E.g. we just had our Customer Success + Product team in Boulder/Colorado for a week and Customer Success + Engineering + Product will meet in Lisbon/Portugal in January next year.
Glad that you are happy with Codeship. Please let me know if we can do anything better :)
Yeah, seems like the biggest advantage to becoming remote is having more access to applicants.
Awesome that you have your teams meet up; I think that's key to building relationships, too.
Not sure how many junior devs you have, but do you have any advice for building up/supporting junior devs who are remote?
Since you're asking if there's anything you can do, there is one thing I would like, and it'd be great if the Slack notifications/webhooks linked to the GitHub commit, too. :) It would save me a click. 🙃
We haven't hired any junior team members remotely so far. That's primarily because we don't think that we as a team have figured out how to best support them. I hope that we will be able to do so, soon. We successfully moved junior team members from an "office setup" to be remote.
I think articulating guidelines for working remotely is key for junior team members, especially if they don't have any remote working experience. E.g., making it clear that they have to work in a dedicated space (at home or in a co-working space) or guiding them when it comes to work-life balance. If you are at home the whole day, it can be challenging to know when to stop working.
Additionally, I would focus on giving those junior team members more face time with the more experienced team members. E.g., flying them to other team members more frequently, especially in the beginning.
Thanks for the feedback - I forwarded it to our team :)