Building Stripe’s Remote Hub: Scaling Distributed Teams @chimeracoder Aditya Mukerjee Systems Engineer & Remote Hub Site Lead Stripe

Why should remote work be our long-term strategy, instead of a short-term contingency? @chimeracoder How do we work effectively as remote teams?

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The best practices for operating remotely at scale are the best practices for operating at scale, period. @chimeracoder

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“We’ve thought about remote work, but it just leads to problems” @chimeracoder

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(Note: please don’t swallow radioactive materials at home) @chimeracoder

Working at home during a pandemic is different from “working remotely” @chimeracoder

Remote Hub: Year 1 Goals 1. Expand the breadth of teams hiring remote engineers 2. Improve work experience for remote engineers 3. Recruit and hire more remote engineers @chimeracoder

Data & Methods @chimeracoder Goals Hypotheses Results

Goal #1: Expand the breadth of teams hiring remote engineers @chimeracoder

Hypothesis: Managers and teams are more comfortable shifting to remote work when they feel there is an established path @chimeracoder

Data: Collate a guide of the common practices already used by teams working remotely @chimeracoder Data: Adopt these practices as a team as a prerequisite to opening up to remote work

Result: Nobody wants to feel like a guinea pig, but everyone wants to try something new @chimeracoder

Goal #2: Improve work experience for remote engineers @chimeracoder

Hypothesis: A remote landing team can help cement your team’s culture @chimeracoder

@chimeracoder Data: 3-month pilot of San Francisco engineers working from home

Hypothesis #2: Being distributed remotely is not that different from being distributed across offices in different cities @chimeracoder

Data: Video calls are not a barrier if everyone is calling in separately @chimeracoder Data: Adopt asynchronous tools for code review, project management, product development

Data: On-call rotation that are well-scoped and sufficiently documented can be covered remotely @chimeracoder

Result: Building a remote hub means building great remote teams @chimeracoder Result: The best engineering workflows create discoverable records Result: Remote work is a forcing function for good engineering practices

Goal #3: Recruit and hire more remote engineers @chimeracoder

Hypothesis: Most engineering roles can be hired remotely, as long as the team and manager are committed to it @chimeracoder

@chimeracoder Data: We codified and simplified requirements for working remotely

Result: By the end of 2019, Stripe had nearly 200 remote engineers in roles across the company @chimeracoder Result: As of today, all Stripe engineers are working remotely

@chimeracoder Result: Being set up for remote work at a small scale meant we were prepared to scale it up rapidly when needed

Summary of Findings • Remote work is a forcing function for good engineering practices • If an engineering role can’t be done remotely, ask yourselves why? • Be methodical and rigorous. Identify and amplify what’s already working. • Working at home during a pandemic is different from “working remotely” @chimeracoder

Thank you! Aditya Mukerjee @chimeracoder https://github.com/ChimeraCoder