Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Growing and Managing Distributed Teams
Search
David Copeland
October 26, 2018
Technology
0
340
Growing and Managing Distributed Teams
David Copeland
October 26, 2018
Tweet
Share
More Decks by David Copeland
See All by David Copeland
The fewer the concepts, the better the code?
davetron5000
4
830
Programming a Time Machine
davetron5000
0
700
Database Design for Beginners
davetron5000
2
640
The Effective Remote Developer
davetron5000
0
400
Developer of Experience after 3.5 years of SAAS and PAAS
davetron5000
1
580
Can Time-Travel Keep You From Blowing Up The Enterprise?
davetron5000
0
510
Rails, Postgres, Angular, and Bootstrap: The Power Stack
davetron5000
0
790
Threads & JRuby: the simple alternative to evented
davetron5000
2
4.4k
Don't Fear the Threads: Simplify Your Life with JRuby
davetron5000
17
6.5k
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
アプリケーションの中身が見える!Mackerel APMの全貌と展望 / Mackerel APMリリースパーティ
mackerelio
0
440
libsyncrpcってなに?
uhyo
0
120
【5分でわかる】セーフィー エンジニア向け会社紹介
safie_recruit
0
24k
テストを実施する前に考えるべきテストの話 / Thinking About Testing Before You Test
nihonbuson
PRO
13
2k
Azure Developer CLI と Azure Deployment Environment / Azure Developer CLI and Azure Deployment Environment
nnstt1
1
120
[zh-TW] DevOpsDays Taipei 2025 -- Creating Awesome Change in SmartNews!(machine translation)
martin_lover
1
640
Streamline Cloud-Native App Development Using CDEs
saeedzf
0
850
人とAIとの共創を夢見た2か月 #共創AIミートアップ / Co-Creation with Keito-chan
kondoyuko
1
700
AIとSREの未来 / AI and SRE
ymotongpoo
2
1k
やさしいClaude Code入門
minorun365
PRO
31
24k
AIコードエディタは開発を変えるか?Cursorをチームに導入して1ヶ月経った本音
ota1022
1
700
Oracle Database オプティマイザ・ヒントの活用
oracle4engineer
PRO
1
140
Featured
See All Featured
Automating Front-end Workflow
addyosmani
1370
200k
Java REST API Framework Comparison - PWX 2021
mraible
31
8.6k
I Don’t Have Time: Getting Over the Fear to Launch Your Podcast
jcasabona
32
2.3k
Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design
aarron
273
40k
The MySQL Ecosystem @ GitHub 2015
samlambert
251
12k
BBQ
matthewcrist
88
9.7k
Imperfection Machines: The Place of Print at Facebook
scottboms
267
13k
Intergalactic Javascript Robots from Outer Space
tanoku
271
27k
Reflections from 52 weeks, 52 projects
jeffersonlam
349
20k
Practical Tips for Bootstrapping Information Extraction Pipelines
honnibal
PRO
19
1.2k
Templates, Plugins, & Blocks: Oh My! Creating the theme that thinks of everything
marktimemedia
30
2.4k
A Modern Web Designer's Workflow
chriscoyier
693
190k
Transcript
GROWING & MANAGING DISTRIBUTED TEAMS Dave Copeland Director of Engineering
@ STITCH FIX @davetron5000
STITCH FIX Wants to Look Good Style Profile Stylist Warehouse
•Customer Experience •WMS •Buying/Planning •Customer Service •Styling •Payments •etc.
GROWTH & DISTRIBUTED TEAM 2013 $secret (but not much :)
Revenue Engineering Team Me IC HQ 50% Remote 50% 4 Engineers
GROWTH & DISTRIBUTED TEAM 2013 $secret (but not much :)
Revenue Engineering Team Me 2018 $1.2B IC Tech Lead UK Expansion 2014 $73M Manager 2016 $730M Director HQ 33% Remote 66% HQ 50% Remote 50% 4 Engineers 180 Engineers IPO!
WHY? Larger & More Diverse Hiring Pool Practices for Scale
HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area
HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country
! or World
DIVERSE TEAMS PERFORM BETTER Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriklarson/2017/09/21/new-
research-diversity-inclusion-better-decision-making-at-work Inc https://www.inc.com/greg-satell/science-says-diversity-can-make- your-team-more-productive-but-not-without-effort.html
HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country
! or World
HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country
! or World
HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country
! or World
Co-Located PRACTICES THAT SCALE Works Ad-Hoc
Co-Located Breaks Down Fast ☹ PRACTICES THAT SCALE
Co-Located Structure & Organization Required PRACTICES THAT SCALE
Distributed Structure & Organization Required PRACTICES THAT SCALE
Distributed These Structures Scale PRACTICES THAT SCALE
THINGS TO BE AWARE OF Benefits laws • Contractor laws
• Tax nexus Please work with an HR professional
EMPATHY CLEAR EXPECTATIONS FEEDBACK
…the capacity to understand or feel what another person is
experiencing from within their frame of reference… —Wikipedia EMPATHY
WHAT IS A DISTRIBUTED TEAM LIKE? •No instant communication •Not
awake/working at the same time •No illusion of productivity •No automatic humanization Not Physically Present
AND HOW TO USE THEM ESTABLISH CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION
ASYNCHRONOUS CHANNELS Your Team Outside World Pacific Mountain Central Eastern
Aleutian Atlantic
ASYNCHRONOUS Email Shared/Collaborative Documents (e.g. Google Docs) Text Chat Code
Your Team Outside World Pacific Mountain Central Eastern Aleutian Atlantic
SYNCHRONOUS CHANNELS
SYNCHRONOUS Text Chat Video Chat In Person
HOW TO USE THE CHANNELS Aware Respond Escalate How aware
are you of information coming into the channel? How quickly do you respond to requests? When do you escalate to a higher- bandwidth channel?
PAVE “COW PATHS” AT FIRST ITERATE VIA EMPATHY, OBSERVATION, AND
FEEDBACK
EMPATHY CLEAR EXPECTATIONS FEEDBACK
Hiring Onboarding Day to Day SCALING
HIRING Hiring is assessment—assess for ability to work remote Ensure
they understand the ways of working
ONBOARDING Empathize - they will never be more alone than
their first day Also: never more open to feedback Clear goals • Constant Contact • Lifeline
DAILY LIFE What do I do? How do I do
it? Did I do it right? What happens next?
FEEDBACK IS HARD •Programming is a not a profession of
critique or review •Text & Asynchronous Feedback is hard Cultivate a Culture of Trust, Empathy, and Authenticity
TRUST Capability Can you do it? Consistency Can you do
it reliably? Motivation Are you doing it for the right reasons?
CAPABILITY Objective and clear assessment of work product, level, etc.
CONSISTENCY Create a stable environment for execution —a level playing
field Beware “HQ bias” and “Timezone bias”
MOTIVATION Be transparent about yours Never guess at someone else’s
Always assume good intentions
OBSERVE & COACH
HUMANIZE BY MODELING & ENCOURAGING AUTHENTICITY & EMPATHY
What We Are Discussing What’s going on with me? (Authenticity)
What’s going on with you? (Empathy) HUMANIZE ANY CONVERSATION
THIS STRUCTURE SCALES WHEN DEMOGRAPHICS HOLD
People in New Situations That Stretch You
Ways of Communicating Assess Candidates Onboard Feedback SUMMARY
WAIT… ISN’T THIS JUST “RUNNING AN ENGINEERING TEAM”?
YES…BUT MORE EXPLICIT MORE OFTEN SOONER THAN YOU THINK
EMPATHY CLEAR EXPECTATIONS FEEDBACK