Managing a widely distributed team

Companies more and more embrace working in a distributed environment. While it allows for attracting talent and working with great people around the world, it also means it comes with new challenges.

Based on my experience as an engineer manager at GitHub for a team of 20 people across 3 continents in 7 countries, 6 states in the US and 7 timezones I would love to share the things we do to build a strong and cohesive team. Would like to share how we embrace asynchronous workflows where we can, use synchronous time we do have very effectively and meet up in person regularly as well.

Transcript

1. Managing a widely distributed team Dirkjan Bussink @dbussink
3. Senior engineering manager Principal engineer
4. Why?
5. First some context
6. 28 people
7. Original from 5 continents
8. From 11 countries
11. !"#$%& ' (
14. Psychological safety https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/
15. Meet in person
16. Regular cadence
17. Use the time together well
18. Long time strategy
19. Team structure
20. Iterate on collaboration processes
21. No day to day development
22. Do non work activities
23. Grab dinner together
27. Keep talking
28. Continue to build trust in 1:1s
29. Talk to people regularly
30. Non work video chats
31. Virtual water-cooler
32. Be timezone aware
33. Asynchronous communication
36. No instant gratification
37. Unblock others
38. Don’t block yourself
39. Over-communicate
40. Use restraint
42. Hardly anything is urgent
43. “Durch Einfach Liegen Lassen Erledigt”
44. Use timezone spread
45. Recap
46. Everyone is distributed Work hard on building team bonds Enable asynchronous workflows Use the power of distributed teams