Growing and Managing Distributed Teams

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GROWING & MANAGING DISTRIBUTED TEAMS Dave Copeland Director of Engineering @ STITCH FIX @davetron5000

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STITCH FIX Wants to Look Good Style Proﬁle Stylist Warehouse •Customer Experience •WMS •Buying/Planning •Customer Service •Styling •Payments •etc.

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GROWTH & DISTRIBUTED TEAM 2013 $secret (but not much :) Revenue Engineering Team Me IC HQ 50% Remote 50% 4 Engineers

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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!

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WHY? Larger & More Diverse Hiring Pool Practices for Scale

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HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area

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HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country ! or World

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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

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HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country ! or World

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HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country ! or World

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HIRING IS A FUNNEL Your Metro Area The Whole Country ! or World

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Co-Located PRACTICES THAT SCALE Works Ad-Hoc

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Co-Located Breaks Down Fast ☹ PRACTICES THAT SCALE

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Co-Located Structure & Organization Required PRACTICES THAT SCALE

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Distributed Structure & Organization Required PRACTICES THAT SCALE

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Distributed These Structures Scale PRACTICES THAT SCALE

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THINGS TO BE AWARE OF Beneﬁts laws • Contractor laws • Tax nexus Please work with an HR professional

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EMPATHY CLEAR EXPECTATIONS FEEDBACK

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…the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference… —Wikipedia EMPATHY

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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

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AND HOW TO USE THEM ESTABLISH CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

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ASYNCHRONOUS CHANNELS Your Team Outside World Paciﬁc Mountain Central Eastern Aleutian Atlantic

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ASYNCHRONOUS Email Shared/Collaborative Documents (e.g. Google Docs) Text Chat Code

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Your Team Outside World Paciﬁc Mountain Central Eastern Aleutian Atlantic SYNCHRONOUS CHANNELS

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SYNCHRONOUS Text Chat Video Chat In Person

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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?

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PAVE “COW PATHS” AT FIRST ITERATE VIA EMPATHY, OBSERVATION, AND FEEDBACK

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EMPATHY CLEAR EXPECTATIONS FEEDBACK

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Hiring Onboarding Day to Day SCALING

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HIRING Hiring is assessment—assess for ability to work remote Ensure they understand the ways of working

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ONBOARDING Empathize - they will never be more alone than their ﬁrst day Also: never more open to feedback Clear goals • Constant Contact • Lifeline

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DAILY LIFE What do I do? How do I do it? Did I do it right? What happens next?

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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

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TRUST Capability Can you do it? Consistency Can you do it reliably? Motivation Are you doing it for the right reasons?

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CAPABILITY Objective and clear assessment of work product, level, etc.

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CONSISTENCY Create a stable environment for execution —a level playing ﬁeld Beware “HQ bias” and “Timezone bias”

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MOTIVATION Be transparent about yours Never guess at someone else’s Always assume good intentions

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OBSERVE & COACH

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HUMANIZE BY MODELING & ENCOURAGING AUTHENTICITY & EMPATHY

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What We Are Discussing What’s going on with me? (Authenticity) What’s going on with you? (Empathy) HUMANIZE ANY CONVERSATION