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BUILDING REMOTE CULTURE KERALA BARCAMP X - 1ST OCTOBER, 2017

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MYSELF HARISANKAR P S ▸ Ruby on Rails Developer ▸ Open Source Enthusiast ▸ Kerala Ruby User Group Manager/Meetup Organizer ▸ Entrepreneur/Businessman

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I AM THE FOUNDER AND CEO OF Ruby on Rails Dev Shop based in Kochi We love working in Ruby on Rails

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TEXT WHAT DO WE DO? ▸ We provide our expertise and skills to helps companies solve engineering problems ▸ Build products and Solutions ▸ Scale their Businesses ▸ We are group of experts rather than a software service company - in the sense we do less budgeting or proposals , but do more coding and engineering.

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TEXT WHAT I WANT TO SEE RED PANTHERS BE IN THE LONG RUN ▸ Hire the smartest people in the world ▸ Hire people who are passionate about Engineering and software ▸ Build and contribute to Open Source Softwares ▸ Work on challenging engineering problems ▸ Foster more software innovations for humanity

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TEXT WHY I WANT MORE REMOTE? ▸ Hire people across the Globe (US, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Australia, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Taiwan, Laos) ▸ Reduce cost I spend on infrastructure and increase renumeration per candidate ▸ Have more happy employees ▸ Reduce employee attrition ▸ Have more time for myself/my future GF/my future wife/and our future 4 kids and dog ▸ Travel and learn new human languages in addition to the computer languages I learn.

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SO HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THIS?

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BY BRINGING MORE INNOVATIONS ON HOW SOFTWARES ARE BUILD AND RUN BUSINESSES

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BY THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

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LOT CAN BE SAID ABOUT THAT, BUT TODAY WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT

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BEING REMOTE

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TEXT NOTE: ▸ Remote is not just work from home ▸ Its more like being able to work from any where other than your office ▸ Your local CCD can be a good work place, which has a cute girl at the counter who 
 keeps refilling your coffee
 mug.

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HISTORY ▸ Concepts of remote working has been there for a long time. ▸ For some companies it works ▸ For some companies it doesn’t ▸ But the world is changing. Its moving on from being a benefit to becoming a requirement.

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TEXT ▸ The world always had the technology to let someone work remote. ▸ We have phones ▸ computers are cheaper ▸ Internet is getting better ▸ Most of all, everyone have one room at their home where they can work peacefully.

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TEXT ▸ But despite having the best and greatest in technology some companies are not able to pull it off. ▸ Eg: Yahoo!! Who cited the reason, to bring on more innovation. REMOTE DOESN’T WORK

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TEXT REMOTE WORKED GREAT ▸ Automatic - the company behind wordpress ▸ 37 Signals - the company who build basecamp, which lead to the creation of Ruby on Rails ▸ Hub Staff

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SO HOW COME IT WORKS AT SOME PLACES AND IT DOESN’T WORK AT OTHERS?

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CULTURE

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THE AURA OR THE SPIRIT OR THE AMBIANCE OF YOUR COMPANY SHOULD ENCOURAGE BEING REMOTE.

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“IF YOU RUN YOUR SHIP WITH THE CONVICTION THAT EVERYONE’S A SLACKER, YOUR EMPLOYEES WILL PUT ALL THEIR INGENUITY INTO PROVING YOU RIGHT.” ― Jason Fried, Remote: Office Not Required TEXT

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“YOU CAN’T LET YOUR EMPLOYEES WORK FROM HOME OUT OF FEAR THEY’LL SLACK OFF WITHOUT YOUR SUPERVISION, YOU’RE A BABYSITTER, NOT A MANAGER. REMOTE WORK IS VERY LIKELY THE LEAST OF YOUR PROBLEMS.” ― Jason Fried, Remote: Office Not Required TEXT

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LET ME TALK ABOUT HOW WE CAN MAKE A REMOTE WORKING CULTURE.

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TEXT I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT: ▸ Things that we have done ▸ Things that we are implementing ▸ Things that we want/will be implementing in future

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TEXT 1. SINGLE AND OPEN COMMUNICATION CHANNEL ▸ Use a single tool common across teams Eg: Slack, FB Workplace, Skype (if you are small team) ▸ Encourage people to always post in public and in group chats, instead of private messages ▸ Bring about some daily slack practices

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Red Panthers Slack General Channel

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TEXT ▸ We encourage people to greet everyone when they start for the day, mention AFK when they leave their system (even for a minute), BAK when they are back and Signing out when they are done for the day. ▸ Respect these messages, we won’t disturb this person (like tag or call him) if he has mentioned he is AFK ▸ We also strictly discourage sarcasm, though we are known to over use emoji’s and gifs ▸ We also have a habit of making a slack channel for everything

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TEXT 2. ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO WORK CROSS PROJECT ▸ People who work together in a single project are closer than people who work on different project ▸ They will still be close if they were in the same office ▸ But that won’t happen if they are never in office ▸ So make them work together on certain types of works ▸ In our case writing and reviewing blogs ▸ Working on open source, fixing bugs, etc

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TEXT 3. ONE DAY WORK FROM HOME A WEEK ▸ We were not a remote company when we started, infant we are not a 100% remote company even now ▸ So you can encourage people to work from home one day a week ▸ For people who are far from their hometown can use this to go to their home town on a Thursday and come back on a tuesday. ▸ Helping them avoid the weekend rush, bring some sanity to their mind and also help them save money ▸ Make sure you monitor their work when they start doing this so that they know what we expect when they are working from home

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TEXT 4. DEFINE THE WORK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE ▸ Having an undefined work would hinder going remote ▸ You need to define what you expect from someone every day, every week, every two week, every month ▸ Don’t blame them for not meeting the deadline, discuss what
 can be done ▸ SCRUM or AGILE is the perfect practice for REMOTE ▸ Have an issue tracker - with all the issues ▸ A wiki that have answers to everything - even the admin username and password

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TEXT 5. DEFINE YOUR TOOLS ▸ We use hubstaff to track time ▸ We use slack to communicate ▸ git for source code management ▸ trello to plan releases ▸ Pivotal Tracker for individual issues

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TEXT 6. HAVE REMOTE EVENTS OR ONLINE GET TOGETHERS ▸ Organise online gaming contest ▸ Fantasy Football or cricket league ▸ Web based talks ▸ Fastest man on the keyboard contest

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I am the current champion

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TEXT 7. HIRE PEOPLE WHO ARE COMFORTABLE OR HAVE A REASON TO BE REMOTE ▸ Take on a couple of experienced people who have worked remote before ▸ They will help set up the pace for the change in the company ▸ They can also be inspiration for others

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TEXT 8. MAKE IT A BLAST WHEN THE WHOLE TEAM GET TOGETHER ▸ Bring your whole team to attend a conference ▸ Encourage your team mates to present at conferences and submit for it as a team ▸ Have a generous conference budget set aside for it

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TEXT 9. HAVE 1-2-1 CALLS WITH YOUR TEAM OFTEN ▸ Ask your team-mates to call one another ▸ Have your project manager call their team mates ▸ Have the founders call everyone ▸ Assign a mentor or a companion for everyone have them call more often ▸ Each time asking more about how they are working, have they done something interesting lately (started a diet, regular at GYM, etc) ▸ Do video calls as often as possible as well

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TEXT 10. GIVE OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK ON NON PROJECT RELATED STUFF DURING COMPANY TIME WHILE REMOTE ▸ Long title I know ▸ But let them learn a new programming language, or work on some tutorials or work on their hobby project while remote and on companies time ▸ You can ask them to blog about it or take a presentation about it for the rest of the people so that the time spend has more return ▸ It builds a trust.

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TEXT MORE GOTCHAS IN GENERAL ▸ Be ready to have setbacks or failures. Its better to fail fast. ▸ Have an open mind ▸ While having video call ask everyone to get on their own system even half the people are in office ▸ Respect when people say they are not available ▸ Bring in more communication with clients and manager - better to have a fixed time of day dedicated to it

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TEXT ▸ Encourage more casual interactions ▸ Encourage them to attend conferences and events ▸ Keep talking about your remote experiment with everyone so that you get more ideas and feedback.

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TO CONCLUDE

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TEXT ▸ The age of huge multi national service companies and full service firms are going to end ▸ Not today but one day soon. ▸ We (service company) are loosing people to products companies and startups ▸ So we need to innovate the way we work and deliver ▸ So that we can keep our people, ourselves and our clients Happy.

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“WHEN IT COMES TO CHALLENGING TIMES, I OFTEN SAY, ‘IF IT WAS EASY, SOMEONE ELSE WOULD BE DOING IT.’” – Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni, Founder & CEO, Balsamiq TEXT

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[email protected] FB.COM/CODERHS TWITTER.COM/CODERHS +91 8547-810-845 IN CASE YOU WANT TO GET IN TOUCH WITH ME

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Thank you ந"# നnി ਤuਹਾਡਾ ਧ'ਨਵਾਦ ಧನ#$ದ ధన ଥା# େଯାଉ ہیرکش ধন বাদ આભાર धन्यवाद अनुगृिहतोऽिस्म