Add the blog post about remote management office hours
This commit is contained in:
parent
f054b4824c
commit
13df9b3e30
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Hosting Remote Eng Management Office Hours"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- management
|
||||
- remote
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Suddengly managing a remote engineering team may seem like a daunting situation,
|
||||
one which many people are suddently finding themselves in as tech companies
|
||||
institute sudden "work-from-home" policies in response to the Corona virus.
|
||||
If you find yourself in this situation [don't
|
||||
panic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWeuUwpEQfs). Managing remotely is not
|
||||
significantly different than managing in-person, and your already existing good
|
||||
management and communication habits will greatly help. Nonetheless, I thought I
|
||||
might be able to help newly remote managers [by hosting an open office
|
||||
hours](https://twitter.com/agentdero/status/1235291001671110656),
|
||||
with the first experimental session yesterday in the afternoon PST.
|
||||
|
||||
I am not sure what is the right cadence might be to host these in the future,
|
||||
but if you're interesting, I wouldn't mind your feedback on this [doodle
|
||||
poll](https://doodle.com/poll/ekttgd4uakvbshhn).
|
||||
|
||||
I did not, and will not record these meetings, as I want to ensure that it's a
|
||||
safe space to share ideas. The notes however are safe for sharing, and are
|
||||
listed below. I have also included some of the brainstorming notes I did ahead
|
||||
of the office hours at the bottom of this post. Those potential topics would be
|
||||
good to dive deeper into for future office hours if this idea works out.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Notes
|
||||
|
||||
* Managing across a massive timezone spread, e.g. Taiwan to Kiev
|
||||
* Easier working with people that are already familiar with self-directed open source project processes
|
||||
* Having people working on non-overlapping projects helps quite a bit
|
||||
* “Any changes an org needs to make to support remote workers, benefits the entire group”
|
||||
* Removing gatekeepers enables remote people quite a bit, but also in-office people
|
||||
* Sometimes worth focusing on _zero_ overlap, and having everything written down between people
|
||||
* Things that might be able to go back and forth over a couple hour period might otherwise take a few days, given the back and forth
|
||||
* Managing cross-team dependencies when different teams have different priorities
|
||||
* (In FreeBSD Foundation) Being selective on the kinds of projects that are taken on which have limited external dependencies
|
||||
* Investing in automation and tooling can have a broader improvements for decoupling dependent teams or people
|
||||
* Lots to learn from open source communities and how they work together
|
||||
* Growing a remote team from scratch
|
||||
* Defining the job requirements is important to have the right level of details but not overly vague and not overly specific
|
||||
* Having a co-op/intern pipeline helps quite a bit
|
||||
* Leads to a very long hiring pipeline, significant investment
|
||||
* Great to hire early-career people
|
||||
* Concerns about hiring early-career people into remote work
|
||||
* Challenging to draw the lines between “work” and “life” can be especially difficult for those new to professional life
|
||||
* Discussions worth having with people who are later in their career who are transitioning to remote
|
||||
* It can definitely work, so long as the engineering manager understands the level of effort involved to help the employee succeed.
|
||||
* Helping the employee learn the right boundaries for asking for help, escalating, etc
|
||||
* Learning the right judgement for asking to help
|
||||
* Feeling like you’re able to ask for help, having that psychological safety to ask for help or admit limitations
|
||||
* Not everybody will feel comfortable vocalizing “I’m stuck” or “I don’t know”
|
||||
* Not everybody knows when to stop “sitting and trying to solve” the problem
|
||||
* “It’s amazing the lengths I went to, to not disappoint somebody when I was just starting out”
|
||||
* Helping the team understand one another as people, rather than just some IRC nick that reviews my pull requests
|
||||
* Remote hiring concerns
|
||||
* Logistical concerns: handling the potential influx of candidates from a large audience
|
||||
* Without much of a hiring process in place already, there’s a challenge to finding people without much of a organizational infrastructure to perform a “bigger” interview process
|
||||
* Need to share the Automattic (?) approach for “try-before-you-buy” on hiring people on 90-day project-based contracts (Tyelr to find the link)
|
||||
* How many initial rounds would you do for each offer
|
||||
* 15:1 for Tyler
|
||||
* Lots of variance depending on the type of position, some roles will self-select for a smaller pool of candidates.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Potential Discussion Topics
|
||||
|
||||
### Remote-friendly Collaboration Tools
|
||||
|
||||
* Standups and daily rituals
|
||||
* Pair-programming when you’re not in the same place
|
||||
* Video conference tools
|
||||
|
||||
### Running effective remote meetings
|
||||
|
||||
* Meeting notes in Google Docs / Confluence
|
||||
* Everybody on the “live-edit” mode, contributing as we go along
|
||||
* Video-on
|
||||
* Meeting leader to recognize speakers
|
||||
* Avoiding one speaker dominating the entire discourse
|
||||
* Handling “partial-remote” meetings.
|
||||
* One where a group of people are in an office, and everybody else is remote
|
||||
* Always explicitly ask for responses/questions from remote people before people in the room.
|
||||
* Headphones required:
|
||||
* Participants not using headphones cannot hear social cues of others speaking, and will bowl over the discussion
|
||||
|
||||
### Managing Performance
|
||||
|
||||
* Working across timezones and adjusting expectations on responsiveness
|
||||
* Code-review cycle times, etc
|
||||
* Helping developers manage their home work environment
|
||||
* Reducing distractions / maintaining focus
|
||||
|
||||
### Dealing with fear/concerns related to Corona
|
||||
* Empathy while avoiding overhyping or fear-mongering is challenging
|
||||
* Managers have a dual responsibility to be true to their employees, but to also represent the company and help dutifully enforce company policies. Can be a tricky line to walk in emotionally charged situations
|
||||
* Different people will be affected differently
|
||||
* Those from or with family in China, Iran, etc, may have a much different view or level of concern than somebody based in the suburbs of North America
|
||||
* Face-time is important
|
||||
* Email or Slack blasts might get the information out, but communication is a two-way street. Making time to listen is just as important.
|
||||
|
||||
### Remote Interview Pipeline
|
||||
|
||||
* “Whiteboard” oriented interview sessions
|
||||
* Moving interviews with candidates into a fully remote session
|
||||
* Preparing the interviewers for a remote interview, especially if they’ve never done it.
|
||||
|
||||
### Remote Fun and Not Strictly Work Related Things
|
||||
|
||||
* Important to maintain the “social glue” of the team even if you’re not all in the same place
|
||||
* Talk about “Bring Your Own Beverage” Google Hangout to just talk about cats, kids, and anything not work related as a team
|
||||
* Multiplayer games to unwind.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
layout: tag_page
|
||||
title: "Tag: remote"
|
||||
tag: remote
|
||||
robots: noindex
|
||||
---
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue