Building Distributed Systems in Distributed Teams

At Elastic — the company behind the open source tools Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash — everything is distributed; both the company and all our products. Building distributed systems is notoriously hard ... building a distributed team even more so.
This talk dives into the details how Elastic is thriving on its distributed model:

* How Elastic started to be distributed by design.
* What our shared values are and what we have learned as we progressed and grew to our current size.
* How a day of an Elastician can look like.
* What we are using in terms of tooling.
* How we hire and onboard new employees.

Transcript

2. Who is working from HOME?
3. Who is working from a COWORKING SPACE?
4. Who is working from an OFFICE?
6. Who can work from home for 1 DAY / WEEK?
7. DEVELOPER
8. CLUSTER
9. UNSTRUCTURED, DISTRIBUTED, DIVERSE
10. Q: https://sli.do/xeraa A: https://twitter.com/xeraa
11. ~ 900 ELASTICIANS
15. Elasticats̴Elastronauts̴ELKompadres̴Elastics̴Elastigons̴ Elasticers̴ElastiCoolians̴Homo Elasticus̴Elasticitizens̴ {elastician}̴Elasticodians̴The Elasticrew̴Elasticons̴ Elastonians from Elastonia̴Elastic Dudes / Elastic Dudettes
16. 34+ COUNTRIES 30+ LANGUAGES 19+ TIME ZONES 16 OFFICES
17. Distributed By Design
19. DISTRIBUTED NOT REMOTE
20. X-SCHOOL
22. ALWAYS ON
23. (CROSS) TEAM TIME BUGPOOL, FIXITFRIDAY, OFFICE HOURS,...
24. RELEASE PARTY
26. PROCESS PER TEAM
27. ENGINEERING ALL HANDS SALES KICKOFF
29. Values
30. ELASTICSEARCH TEAM DEVELOPMENT CONSTITUTION https://github.com/elastic/engineering/blob/master/development_constitution.md
31. TECH PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION
32. TECH DESIGN FOR TODAY! USE ABSTRACTIONS WITH CARE
33. TECH BUILD FEATURES IN ISOLATION
34. TECH REMOVE FIRST, FIX LATER
35. TECH ONLY ACCEPT FEATURES THAT SCALE
36. TECH BE FAST BY DEFAULT; SLOW IS OPTIONAL
37. PEOPLE BE KIND
38. PEOPLE EMPATHY FOR PASSION
39. PEOPLE REPORT ABUSIVE COMMENTS
40. Source Code HTTPS://WWW.ELASTIC.CO/ABOUT/OUR-SOURCE-CODE
42. Whatever you’re hustling for, take note: most people/companies are shut down until ‘18. That means you get 2 extra weeks to outwork your competition.
43. That’s 3.8% more time. For perspective: Usain Bolt won his gold medals running 1.2% faster. These 2 weeks are a gift. Get to work. — https://twitter.com/NathanCHubbard/status/ 942882853494202369
44. If I read this madness I want all my engineers to take 2 extra weeks off to make sure we are 6% behind but healthy! That would be a massive win! — https://twitter.com/s1m0nw/status/943021874086383616
45. Elastic will be providing 16 weeks of 100% paid parental leave during the first year following the birth or adoption of a child — whether you are a mom or a dad
49. MY EXPERIENCE
50. ELASTICIANS ARE TRUSTED
51. DO THE RIGHT THING
52. YOU VOLUNTEER
53. SOMETIMES YOU ARE VOLUNTOLD
54. COMMUNICATION IS OPEN & PUBLIC
56. NEW PRODUCTS JOIN THE FAMILY
57. Downsides
58. SHARE THE PAIN OF TIMEZONES
59. COMMUNICATION CAN FAIL
60. CULTURES ARE DIFFERENT
61. DECISIONS CAN DRAG
62. Day
63. CRAZY
64. FLEXIBLE
65. TRADITIONAL
66. Tools
67. SYNC
68. ASYNC
70. TEAM & TECH LEAD
72. PM PART OF ENGINEERING
73. Hiring
74. OH: It's not "hard" skills vs "soft" skills - its "technical" vs "professional" skills. — https://twitter.com/freakboy3742/status/907032201497255942
75. AGE, GENDER, LOCATION, RACE,... IS JUST AN ATTRIBUTE
76. 1,000+ CV PER WEEK
77. NO BULLSHIT INTERVIEWS
78. 500 TO 600: 5M 600 TO 700: 3M 700 TO 800: 2M
79. Numbers
81. INDICATOR ARRIVALS: 130 DEPARTURES: 9
82. Conclusion
83. Vianney Chevalier, https://twitter.com/vianneytwins/status/997125952835653633
84. Vianney Chevalier, https://twitter.com/vianneytwins/status/997125952835653633
85. Who wants to work from AN OFFICE?
86. Who wants to work from HOME?
87. NO GOING BACK
88. https://www.elastic.co/about/careers
89. QUESTIONS? Philipp Krenn̴̴̴̴̴@xeraa