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
360
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
860
Programming a Time Machine
davetron5000
0
720
Database Design for Beginners
davetron5000
2
660
The Effective Remote Developer
davetron5000
0
410
Developer of Experience after 3.5 years of SAAS and PAAS
davetron5000
1
600
Can Time-Travel Keep You From Blowing Up The Enterprise?
davetron5000
0
520
Rails, Postgres, Angular, and Bootstrap: The Power Stack
davetron5000
0
800
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
実践アプリケーション設計 ②トランザクションスクリプトへの対応
recruitengineers
PRO
2
160
Yahoo!広告ビジネス基盤におけるバックエンド開発
lycorptech_jp
PRO
1
270
OpenAPIから画面生成に挑戦した話
koinunopochi
0
150
Goss: New Production-Ready Go Binding for Faiss #coefl_go_jp
bengo4com
0
1.1k
kintone開発チームの紹介
cybozuinsideout
PRO
0
73k
LLMエージェント時代に適応した開発フロー
hiragram
1
410
モダンフロントエンド 開発研修
recruitengineers
PRO
2
320
つくって納得、つかって実感! 大規模言語モデルことはじめ
recruitengineers
PRO
20
5.8k
退屈なことはDevinにやらせよう〜〜Devin APIを使ったVisual Regression Testの自動追加〜
kawamataryo
2
470
あとはAIに任せて人間は自由に生きる
kentaro
3
1.1k
人を動かすことについて考える
ichimichi
2
320
【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
30k
Featured
See All Featured
Done Done
chrislema
185
16k
"I'm Feeling Lucky" - Building Great Search Experiences for Today's Users (#IAC19)
danielanewman
229
22k
Being A Developer After 40
akosma
90
590k
Statistics for Hackers
jakevdp
799
220k
Java REST API Framework Comparison - PWX 2021
mraible
33
8.8k
The Pragmatic Product Professional
lauravandoore
36
6.8k
Understanding Cognitive Biases in Performance Measurement
bluesmoon
29
1.8k
KATA
mclloyd
32
14k
StorybookのUI Testing Handbookを読んだ
zakiyama
30
6k
Optimising Largest Contentful Paint
csswizardry
37
3.4k
What’s in a name? Adding method to the madness
productmarketing
PRO
23
3.6k
Designing for Performance
lara
610
69k
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