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

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

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

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. 

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 

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. 

SO HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THIS? 

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

BY THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX 

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

BEING REMOTE 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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 

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 

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

CULTURE 

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

“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 

“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 

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

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 

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 

Red Panthers Slack General Channel 

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 

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 

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 

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 

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 

I am the current champion 

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 

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 

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 

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. 

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 

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. 

TO CONCLUDE 

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. 

“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 

[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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