Its been over three years for me as a remote manager and for a while now I have been thinking about the impact of remote work on engineering excellence.
Notwithstanding the many headline grabbing tweets and comments by tech titans and billionaires, I always find myself at a more practical crossroads.
I have worked in office, at home and everything in between. I have taken the bus to work, train to work, cabs to work (thank you Grab!) and driven to work through annoying mazes of traffic (No thank you Mercer Merge) - trust me when I say, I know the value of working from home for diligent creative professionals.
Its not about working in pajamas as much as working 60 - 70 hours without worrying about parking, traffic, picking up your kids or finding time to eat a healthy lunch. —> Makes the individual super productive!
There is always the con as well - it’s hard to co-ordinate and get everyone on the same page and **confirm** that they are on the same page. The larger the group - the more the communication overhead. —> Makes the team less productive!
I have the good fortune of having a talented group of individuals and managers reporting to me who want to do a good job - how does one get them to work hard.. work smart and work together.
I would be lying if I said that I have the perfect 7 step plan to manage a high performance team remotely - I am (just like everyone else) learning on the job.
There are some things I have picked up though - that I think have to be invariants. When I hear companies and execs talking about “relentless pressure” or “intensity” to achieve productivity - it gives me a lot of pause.
Would I (or anyone) be able to to good quality creative work on finicky systems if folks decided to ping me 8 times a day for updates and give me anxiety?
The most important invariant in managing high performance remote teams (for me), is that organizations have to learn ‘How to apply Pressure without Heat’.
How do you make sure people are pushing themselves without worrying about someone looking over their shoulder?
How do you encourage people to take risks without worrying about getting reprimanded if it doesn’t work out?
How do you make sure there is some process to track progress without micromanaging?
In nature, there is a fundamental relationship seen between temperature and pressure and, keeping other variables constant, it’s impossible to move one without touching the other.
It’s the same with people. I guess that means the title of this post is a bit misleading - you cannot have pressure without heat but I do believe you can have more pressure without burns.
In the in-office setup, managers and leads have historically had a variety of inexpensive levers to make sure people are staying on top and being productive.
In person 1-1s, standups, kick offs, retros - which serve a very useful purpose in making sure folks are on top of things and encourages seamless knowledge transfer.
White boarding sessions and quick chats which are extremely useful in unblocking people who may be stuck on issues.
Most importantly - celebrating wins are super easy! (Just order a pizza.. ) Maintaining momentum is relatively easy and often taken for granted.
A reasonable manager can keep their team running by just running these touch points well. In a remote setup however,
standups/large meetings are quite boring and difficult to engage with. The guy with the camera turned off - is definitely checking his emails or scrolling twitter.
quick chats are asynchronous and digital whiteboards are.. trash.
celebrating a win is a slack message - that gets noticed by diff people at diff times. It’s like a sad Mexican wave - which never really gets going.
A reasonable manager cannot keep their team running in the remote setup by sticking to old formulae. If you are an EM who moved from in-person to remote management.. you MUST have realized this by now - even if company executives have not.
Remote work has changed the layout of teams and there are no cheap touch points anymore. It’s easier for folks to focus - but harder for teams to deliver.
I have been trying to run a tight ship for the last few years and there are a few things I feel are necessary (but unfortunately) not sufficient conditions for running highly productive remote teams.
(a) Role Models.
More than ever before, Role models have become an absolute necessity in a team structure. A highly functional developer (a 10x-er or a bar raiser as they are sometimes called) is in a position to truly inspire folks.
If you have a team of at least 5 engineers - quickly identify who your role model is.. (if you don’t have one - hire someone you know ASAP).
Reinforce the behaviors you want to see by using the example of your role model - make it clear to your team why you think ICs should do ‘X’ or avoid ‘Y’.
My observation is that “mentoring” as a whole has basically deteriorated in the remote era - it’s been replaced completely by “watch and learn”.
If it is clear for the team that person X is the one to watch and learn from - teams get up leveled very quickly.
*ADVICE* - If you are a young/fresh grad/intern engineer, you have to adjust your expectations around how you will be nurtured in the new workplace. I got the benefit of dozens of hours of confidence boosting 1-1s and feedback sessions - that is too expensive in the remote or even semi-remote setup. Don’t wait for your managers to tell you this… learn how to do by observing.
(b) Ground-up Processes.
You remember that thing every manager/executive in every company talks about and never delivers? Instead what you get is a standard process for how things are done and should be done at XXX Inc.
*HOT TAKE* There is no way (or need for) company wide consistency in team processes.
Stop enforcing doc standards, stand up standards, sync up standards, Jira standards - there are no two teams that are similar enough to need the same internal processes. Let the teams decide how they want to organize themselves - just tell them what you want.
I usually ask teams: I want to track your top 3-4 projects per quarter and your annual roadmap. How can I track that?
Teams figure out what they can put out and I follow along and give feedback if I cannot understand details. (There is always a role model team that I can point to if a team is struggling with their processes)
Yes - I track 8-9 diff things and
No - I have not collapsed under the weight of having to remember where to look for things.
A lot of execs/companies like standard things because it makes their job slightly easier - I have found that this standardization makes life a bit sucky for ICs… I do not value my time so much so that I would make everyone else in the company adopt a standard for my sake. Ship products … not process.
(c) Challenging Vision
You remember that OTHER thing every manager/executive in every company talks about and never delivers? There is no way to build anything as a remote team without an amazing, challenging shared vision.
Just a doc will not do.
Just a slide deck will not do.
Just a voice over on a town hall will not do.It has to be amazing and challenging.
Every tech executive wants a world class team of PMs, Designers and Engineers building out great products - but usually they put in an hour’s worth of effort into a deck highlighting a meh vision that gets a little splash of color thanks to some designer who had a spare cycle.
There is an inherent mismatch in expectations here - leaders need to put in some hard yards to put together a tight vision that excites and challenges the team. Leaders should test out their vision with folks, get feedback and tighten the message.
It’s a once a year effort (usually) that can set the tone for all teams - it is a very critical deliverable.
If you aim at nothing, you hit nothing!
SHAMELESS PLUG: Thankfully I work at a company that does buy into creating engineering excellence with a remote team. I also have a strong voice in helping nurture that environment.
Please do look at https://www.avalabs.org/careers and reach out if you want to join us on our journey!
Thanks for writing the article. The suggestion of role model was a learning moment for me. How do you build strong collaboration and bonding in remote teams?