Managing A Remote Team Of Engineers

Transcript
Things are going really, really well for someone and they're going to go for promotion in the next year. Document everything early and often. And if things are not going well and you've noticed it's a pattern of behavior, also document it because you will need a paper trail for hr.
Kelly VaughnWelcome to the Ladybug podcast. I'm Kelly.
Emma BostianAnd I'm Emma. And we're debugging the tech industry.
Kelly VaughnWell, hello.
Emma BostianHow you doing?
Kelly VaughnI am doing great. I'm totally not tired at all.
Emma BostianWelcome to my life. I'm about to have my second kid in literally a month and I'm like, well, I think actually for me, pregnancy tired is worse than parenting tired. But we'll find out shortly.
Kelly VaughnYeah, you absolutely will be finding out shortly. By the time this podcast is released, actually, you will already be finding out.
Emma BostianIn any case, today we're not talking about being tired, but we are talking about something that is very relevant to me in my job and it is also very relevant to yours, and that is managing a remote team of engineers.
Kelly VaughnI have always managed a remote team, Always. My entire career. I had a physical office space at a local co. Working space for my agency, but my engineering team was fully remote even then. I've just always been. Always. I, I worked at an office for my fellowship or my, My. Yeah, it was a fellowship at the cdc and that was the last time I went into an office. Oh, my school office. How about you then?
Emma BostianYou're well prepared for this discussion. I have also only ever managed a team of remote engineers, but that is also because this is my first engineering management job. So yeah, I, my team is seven engineers split across European time zone. So I have like one in Berlin, one in Amsterdam, one somewhere in Spain in a very small town that I don't remember the name of a few in Stockholm, but even those of us in Stockholm, we don't come into the office. So we are remote friendly.
Kelly VaughnYeah, I, my team right now post reorg is they, they, they span from California to India and it has been like that since pre reorg as well. Yeah, it's almost like I need to actually like count but like it was a 50, 50 split before and it like there was one point when I actually just started my work day at like 6am and then I took like a two to three hour break in between and then came back to work for the west coast hours.
Emma BostianThat's nuts. Yeah. The time difference is it can be a real work life balance killer, but it can also enhance your work life balance. If that's the type of lifestyle that you prefer. And we'll talk about work life balance later in this episode. But perhaps we can start by discussing how do we even set the foundation for success for remote teams?
Kelly VaughnYep. At the, in my opinion, and this is, this is kind of how I, how I've always approached this successfully. Running, like managing a team of remote engineers requires a lot of trust and open communication. You need to trust that your team is going to be able to deliver because you're not sitting there watching them do their work and nor should you, because they are adults and you are an adult and we should all be adults about this whole thing. But with that, you need to make sure you have very clear lines of communication set up and how you communicate synchronously, asynchronously. Like all of that. All of those rituals need to be established early on because if you're not super clear what the expectations are for a particular individual on your team upfront, then it's going. You're going to have a bad time.
Emma BostianYeah. And I think it's not just what expectations you have for the individuals on your team, but what expectations do your team have of one another? Because we talked about this in a previous episode. I don't remember which one, but we talked about like a ways of working activity or like a how to work with me doc. And this is something I definitely recommend with remote teams is like, how do we all individually work? Like, for example, I leave work at 4 every day because I have to go get my child from school. And other people have like different things going on in their lives that they need to account for. So doing something like that is really helpful in terms of what the expectation is. And even like, you know, what as a team do we expect? Right. So like I expect everybody to be at stand up. It's not optional. Or I expect that if you're going to be away from your computer for longer than 45 minutes that you just post a message in Slack or at least update your status. Yep. So, yeah, getting on the same page is very important.
Kelly VaughnYeah. And I'm, I'm very flexible with your working hours. So long as you make, you're making meetings and you're getting your work done, it's what I tell everybody. It's what is expected of me as well, where so long as nothing is falling behind, I don't care which hours you're working. If you find that you hit your groove like in the after, like late afternoon or one of my engineers wants to start work at 6am and end early. I'm okay with that. So long as they're not missing meetings.
Emma BostianYeah, that's how I feel. I tell them like, I don't. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm like, I don't care where you are and when you get your work done, so long as it gets done and it gets done well. And like you're an active participant. And frankly, if you're doing, you're exceeding expectations or you're performing well on expectations, I'm not going to question you. It only becomes a real problem to me if things are not getting delivered or you're not showing up. And in those instances, it's a very uncomfortable situation to address retroactively. And it's something that you probably should set the stage with proactively to have to avoid those discussions in the first place.
Kelly VaughnExactly, exactly. So how do you prefer to communicate with the team?
Emma BostianAnything that's not time sensitive and not like earth shattering. Like when I say that I mean like a raise or a promotion or a reorg. Like those are like life changing things. Right. I like to use Slack to communicate asynchronously. Of course. I give us some news. Like if someone's waiting on a promotion and I get the news, like I'll ask them if they can hop on a call and I will give them context as to why because getting the whole hey, can you hop on a five minute call with your manager? Is not fun. I definitely prefer written communication because I feel like less gets lost in translation and then you have something to refer back to. But for bigger conversations, I definitely prefer one on ones over video call and then using the agenda like we have a shared Google Doc that we use with notes with any outcomes.
Kelly VaughnYeah.
Emma BostianHow about you?
Kelly VaughnYeah, I mean I'm the same. Slack is going to be where most of our communications happen. I am more than happy to hop on a quick video chat if it's just easy to easier to explain something to me over. Over video. Even if like. Or just like huddle on Slack. Like I don't, it doesn't have to be informal. Any kind of big conversations absolutely should happen face to face, whether that good news or bad news. Like if it's, you know, a performance related thing, we're going to have a conversation about that as well. Um, and then I'm pretty like strict about my one on ones. I'm okay with moving them if need be. I just don't want to cancel them because I think that it's important that you know, as, as Part of building trust. Like my, my team needs to be able to know they have access to me. And when you have so many direct reports, you have to like I have to split mine to be bi weekly and not weekly. And, and I want them to know like in their quote unquote off week they can still reach, they need something from me. So that is typically how we handle most of our communication. It is, I mean it's fairly asynchronous. I want to again respect their time and we are working in different time zones and so I will, I will make adjustments to my schedule to make sure they can access me if need be, provided that it's within reason. Like if you're capable of talking to me at 1pm Eastern time, but you would rather talk to me at 8:00pm Eastern time or we're talking at 1:00pm Eastern.
Emma BostianYeah. You have to set your own boundaries as well. Of course.
Kelly VaughnYeah.
Emma BostianSo you had mentioned building trust, which frankly is like step one of becoming a manager. But yeah, I guess. Well, we touched on having regular one on ones. I also don't like to cancel and I have asked to cancel. Like right now I'm preparing to go on seven months of parental leave and I only have like five weeks to finish the rest of my work and I'm only working three days a week. So my schedule is pretty compact and I'm doing like hour and a half long goal setting sessions with everyone for the upcoming six months. So my replacement has context and can match people with projects that align with their goals. However, that means, you know, I might not have time for a 30 minute one on ones if we already have FaceTime that week. So I, you know, but I think the biggest thing is if you let people know why you're asking. Hey, like for me it's, it's not like I'm just going to flat out cancel. It's like here's my schedule. If you're comfortable canceling this week, just let me know. And as long as you're not doing it all the time, I think it's totally fine.
Kelly VaughnCompletely agreed. Completely agreed. And I also follow a very specific structure for my one on ones that I like. We use Lattice internally, which is a fantastic HR tool. Hashtag not sponsored. But I really like their one on one format. So there's basically a section for agenda items that I want to talk about. Agenda items that they want to talk about. A like any kind of decisions that are made. Like, like action items, they've got that section. You can assign it to the Right Person. And then there's a shared notes section that you can both add to. And then there's also a private notes section. And that private notes section is so incredibly useful to have for just keeping like, track of like, behaviors and other comments they make on this side. Like if there might be a personnel issue, for example, I'm going to put it in the private section and not the shared notes section. And they're getting really combative all of a sudden. Or if we have like a tough conversation about like how they're, you know, not necessarily their, their performance, but their behavior. Like, are they getting, you know, really defensive? Are they going through something? Like, I want to put those in the private notes because I don't need to. They don't need to see all of those. Yeah. Which has been really helpful. And you know, I use this for like the regular one on ones, but I also like any kind of like ad hoc meeting as well. I'll just like pop, you know, I'll create a new one within lattice. And it looks like the regular one on one agenda. But I can just say we're talking about this topic. It has come handy. It's been really useful for like, unfortunately, many times anytime that I've had to let somebody go for some reason, I have like a paper trail of the conversations that I have with them. I had one person say, like, you never had performance related discussions about me, like with me. And I'm like, okay, but how about these four dates where we talk about them? And here's, here's what you agree to do and here's what I agree to do. Like it's right, it's right there. You can't, you can't lie about it.
Emma BostianYeah, that's really important. Like, we'll probably touch on this more towards the end of the season with the difficult conversations or the hard parts of the job. But you need to document things. Should you notice. Well, either one way or the other, like, things are going really, really well for someone and they're going to go for promotion in the next year. Document everything early and often.
Kelly VaughnYep.
Emma BostianAnd if things are not going well and you've noticed it's a pattern of behavior, also document it because you will need a paper trail for hr. So yes, having notes is very important. We love notes also, I think as an, just as a note, like you should always make an effort to recognize and celebrate your achievements of your team and your individuals remotely. This can be quite tricky. There are several, like platforms that we've used for team building but also just to like do it like celebration. Like we use Airbnb experiences. Like if somebody gets a promotion or just a really good job or has like a 10 year anniversary, we can get together and do. I think we did like bake New York style cookies with a chef or we did making pastas with the Italian grandmas via Airbnb experiences and they were a lot of fun.
Kelly VaughnThat's fun.
Emma BostianBut yeah, celebrating achievements remotely can be a lot trickier. But it's just, if I would say it's more important than when you have a team in person. It's so easy to celebrate in person remotely. Takes a little bit more effort.
Kelly VaughnYeah, I like, you're right. It just had to be very. You have to be very intentional about it. I. I've also done trivia, which is fun. Um, we've done the. Have you played like the Wikipedia hopping page? No. Where you like, you have to start on a specific page and find a way to end on another specific page and see how many clicks it takes you to actually get there by clicking through the other links within Wikipedia. It's so fun. It's really fun. Like it's my kind of fun game. We've also done virtual escape rooms as well.
Emma BostianYeah, yeah, yeah, we've done those too. Those are fun. And then there's like another platform called Luna park, which I hadn't heard about before, but we use it and they have like fun games, all different kinds of games, like trivia or Virtual escape rooms. Like a platform with many games on it and they come out with new ones all the time, so we enjoy doing those.
Kelly VaughnInteresting. There's also a Lunar park in Coney island, apparently.
Emma BostianOkay, I didn't know that. But we like. I don't know how it is at your company, but we do regular social events every two weeks on Fridays with our two other like sister teams that we work with just to make sure that all of our team members get chance to interface with one another in a fun setting. So like we've done geoguessr competitions, which is so fun.
Kelly VaughnThat's fun.
Emma BostianYeah. And every social event. So every two weeks it's like one of the different teams takes on ownership of like we've done fall guys. I think that's what it's called. Yeah, lots of different games.
Kelly VaughnCool. Yeah, I like that. I like finding new games to play with this. They're like you, like you said, you have to be really intentional about it. You can't just.
Emma BostianOh, there's one I have to mention. I forgot about It. There are two, actually. There's Gardic phone and then there's Gardic.
Kelly VaughnOh, I love Gardik.
Emma BostianThey're so fun. I always confused them, but I think Gardic phone is the idea of, like, what is it? Like, telephone or whatever where.
Kelly VaughnYeah, you have to.
Emma BostianIs that the one where you're drawing pictures based on what someone else has written?
Kelly VaughnWell, I. The gardec IO is similar to, like, telestrations, I think, where you're drawing. I think actually, I don't know the difference between the two of them. Okay.
Emma BostianWell, anyway, they're both fun, and I just know one's like, oh, write a really random sentence and it's like, oh, like Kelly riding a dinosaur in Coney island eating a hot dog. And then the next person gets that phrase and they have to draw it in picture form. And then the third person has to write a sentence based on what the second person has drawn. And then by the end, you have to see what it was. It was. It's so much fun.
Kelly VaughnIt's so funny. Yeah, it's such a trip.
Emma BostianAnd then there's like, the other one is like, you're. Somebody is getting a prompt or a word that they're live drawing, and everybody's watching them live draw. And there's a chat where you have to, like, put in what the phrase is of what they're drawing, and you can see, like, other people getting it live.
Kelly VaughnIt's. I think the first one. The second one's Gardec IO.
Emma BostianYeah, I think so too.
Kelly VaughnThere's also a. An online version of Cards Against Humanity that you can play that is a. Okay, that can be work friendly. We've done that. And then in, like, we have random Slack channels where we have, like, a daily. Would you rather that somebody posts? And then we also do a weekly, like, gif of the Week, where there. Whoever, like, won the last one comes up with a prompt, and then everyone has to send a gift from giphy and then they vote on. Oh, wait, that's so fun. It is really fun. I won. I'm trying to think through my prompt now.
Emma BostianI'm stealing that. We'd have, like, a question of the day where anyone can post a question and they get really fun. So, like, I remember, I think it was our product manager asking, like, does water from the bathroom taste different than water from the kitchen and why or why not?
Kelly VaughnOr, like, I post a picture of.
Emma BostianLike, five different forks and I'm like, which fork is the right fork?
Kelly VaughnAnd a lot of discussions I like the, like, I posted a picture of, like. Oh, God. What's the game called? Like, the. The backyard soccer game. Like the little PC game from a long time ago where it's like a bunch of kids and I'm like, choose your player. And that's all I say. Some people get it, some people don't. It's very specific. There's one more game that I wanted to mention that I cannot for the life of me remember. It's like a music game, though, where you form. I think it's literally called Music League, where you form, like, a group of people. And then each week there's a theme, similar to the gif of the week. There's a theme for which music. And then you choose a song and it builds a playlist, and then they vote. They vote on which song kind of like, meets the prompt. The best.
Emma BostianThat's adorable. I feel like I need to steal that too.
Kelly VaughnAnd it's like an app you can install, so it's on your phone.
Emma BostianThat's awesome. Okay, well, we're gonna link all of these in the show notes in case you're wanting to use them with your team. But I think the biggest takeaway here is that fun is important, especially with remote teams and building in the scheduled time for fun. Whether that's like a Slack prompt that, like, has something come through in one of your social channels or. Yeah, actually something that we did as well, like last year or two years ago. I don't know if you've seen the American office. Many of us have, but the Dundees, like, this, the silly awards ceremony that Michael Scott puts together. I did essentially our version of the Dundees. I don't remember what I called it. And they were obviously all safe for work, but it was. I made, like, awards for everybody. It was quite fun.
Kelly VaughnI love that I've. I should do that sometime with my team.
Emma BostianIt took a lot of time, but it was fun.
Kelly VaughnYeah. It's also tough when you're so far apart geographically that, like, getting people. That's one of the things, like, with my team, like, when you're so. Like the time zones are so different. I can't say, like, we're gonna do this on Friday afternoon because that's gonna be like, Friday evening for people in Europe, for example. And I'm like, I'm not gonna make you, like, hang out with me on Slack at 6pm on a Friday.
Emma BostianYeah.
Kelly VaughnI mean, you couldn't make any.
Emma BostianLike, something else you can do to get engagement is like, I made a Google form with like six different poll questions. And I'm like, which meme was the best of 2024? And everybody got to vote on their favorite meme that had been posted. And then like, you can do that kind of thing asynchronously or like vote on who you think had the most contribution requests on GitHub in the past year. And then it's fun to see like, the outcome versus, like, what people thought it would be. And that can be done asynchronously as well.
Kelly VaughnSo that's fun. Yeah. Okay. Other ways that you can collaborate, I think one, this is kind of getting back into work and perhaps less fun, but like pairing. Less fun pairing and code reviews. Like when we're working through a very gnarly project, for example, like rebuilding authorization. This is not a project that one engineer does by themselves. And this is the kind of thing that requires a lot more people to be involved or at least one other person to be involved. And being able to pair or at least like review PRs together. It also kind of allows you to kind of build relationships with them at the same time, which I think is a really, a really helpful thing. Also, you can just learn a lot from your peers and like, problem solving.
Emma BostianPairing is very valuable, especially remotely and especially if you have more junior team members, but also for everyone. Because mental health starts to tank when you realize you're not meeting your colleagues for extended periods of time and like, you're just working in isolation.
Kelly VaughnYeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Emma BostianSomething else that we do, we do a lot of knowledge sharing. We do this thing called Desktop University once a year. I think we've had three years in a row now. And it's essentially like two days, half day sessions where people will post like, hey, I'm interested in Learning more about GraphQL or accessibility or this technology. And people can sign up to give talks for those to help people. And we record them all now. We have an online library of all of these resources so that when we get new hires or interns or embeds, come sit with us. They have a library, Internet.
Kelly VaughnI love that. That is such a good idea. And it also helps people learn how to present.
Emma BostianYeah, it does. It's fun. It's. Yeah. I would recommend it planning that into your capacity because it is definitely a good use of your time.
Kelly VaughnYeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's kind of talk through the downsides of a remote team and what is uniquely challenging for us. I commented on this earlier. Time zones are really tough for me because There are basically 12 plus hours difference from my two farthest geographically distributed engineers. That means that some people end up working together more than others. That also means that for our, like, our customer base is US Centric, but our engineering team that happens to be in Europe and India, they're mostly offline by the time our customers are, like, actively using the system. And that means that the burden tends to fall a little bit more on the US Engineers to resolve bugs and outages and so on, because they happen to be online the same time that the customers are online. And it gets really tough to balance that. And I have to be very cognizant as a manager to be like, okay, who is, who's responding most to these, these outages as they're happening, and how do I. How can I make sure I take care of them? Because the, the last thing I want them to do is feel that undue burden to the point where they're getting burned out and they want to leave.
Emma BostianMm, yeah, that's a big deal. We don't necessarily have that because we have on call rotations, like in different time zones. So you're not going to be on call more than a certain amount per month. But yeah, time zones can be super challenging. I don't think we have the same challenges. I think, yeah, I, I don't really have much to add in that way, but I can understand how that would be very challenging. Yeah.
Kelly VaughnAnd, and with that, you know, there, there comes a challenge with work life balance. You know, when you have people going into an office every day, you can see generally when they're working and when they stop working, because, you know, people end up leaving the office at the same time or around the same time, whatever. When you're working remotely, you have to be very mindful of when your engineers are working. And I'm not saying, like, making sure they're working short. You'll occasionally have people who are like, there will always be the person who takes advantage of whatever you want, but they're. I'm more worried about the people who are overworking. Yeah, I see them creating poll requests at 2am their time, or like, like responding to messages on slack, really late or on the weekends or, you know, and as the manager, I need to be setting an example for this. So I need to be the one who is not asking them questions late in the evening or on the morning. I need to schedule messages because if they see me asking them questions, I am modeling that behavior to them to say, this is okay, or this might even be expected of you to be responding to me at, you know, 7, 8pm in the evening, when you should very much be enjoying your. The light side of the work life balance at this point. So part of this is. Is being mindful about how you are, you know, presenting yourself for the company and for your team. And part of it is setting boundaries, respecting those boundaries for yourself, enforcing those boundaries, but also respecting, like, helping your team establish those boundaries as well. It does not come naturally to everybody, especially people who are earlier on in their career or who are a little bit more sensitive to feedback or who are more on the, like, perfectionist side of the house. They're the ones you have to worry about the most who will struggle to set boundaries or at least struggle to actually, like, enforce those boundaries for themselves.
Emma BostianYeah. Yeah. I've had to tell people, like, to go home early because I can see that they've been. No, not in like a mean way, but it's like, if I notice that you're there on the weekends, I'm like, hey, why are you working weekends? You need to leave early today. Or like. And of course, I'm never going to force someone to leave early as. So long as it's not becoming a. A consistent problem, of course.
Kelly VaughnYeah.
Emma BostianBut I always tell people, like, I don't expect you to be sitting at your computer for 40 hours a week. A lot. A large part of your job gets done, like, when you're not sitting in.
Kelly VaughnFront of your computer.
Emma BostianSo, like, go for a walk or, like, leave early or go to social events that the office is having or whatever it is. I don't work 40 hours a week at my desk. Like, a large part of my job happens subconsciously. As well.
Kelly VaughnIt does. Or on my phone as I'm walking around wherever I happen to be.
Emma BostianYeah. But, like, if I have a team member who's like, oh, I need to. I'll be gone for like two hours or an hour and a half to take my kid to the doctor. They're sick and I'll make up the hours tonight. I'm like, go take care of your kid. Like, you are an overachiever. Like, you've put in way more than your time. Go take care of your kid and don't come back. Like, you're fine.
Kelly VaughnYeah, you don't have to. You don't have to make up those hours. I'm not asking you to make up those hours.
Emma BostianI mean, all the time, every week.
Kelly VaughnIt'S like, okay, yes. Then we're on conversation. Yeah, yeah. Or if there's something that happens to be Like, a very, like, tight deadline. Like, we have to hit a particular deadline. I might need you to flex. But if you're flexing every single day of every single week, it's no longer flexing. That is your work. Like, your working style.
Emma BostianYeah.
Kelly VaughnOr the culture that I have set for the team.
Emma BostianI think for me, the hardest part about managing a remote team is not knowing whether someone is struggling mentally or how to deal with somebody's mental health that is perhaps not in a good place remotely. Because often people, if you're not around them, you might not notice that they're having a hard time. And if you do notice they're having a hard time, it can be really hard to connect virtually. Yeah, that's kind of the biggest challenge that I've had to deal with.
Kelly VaughnYeah, I, I, it is tough, and it's, it's something you have to be really intentional about to check in with them on a more personal level, see how they're doing. You know, I've had, I've had team members go through some really traumatic experiences in the time that I've been managing them. And I happen to be a trained therapist, but I am not their therapist.
Emma BostianYeah.
Kelly VaughnAnd that is a very important line that I need to draw to say I am happy to have a conversation with you about this. I will help connect you with the resources you need. Also, you know, we have, like, our EAP for, like, if you have our, our company insurance, you know, you can find a therapist to that as well. But, you know, for our international team, like, I' I'm more than happy to, like, walk them through how to find resources to get help, but I am not their therapist. I am their manager.
Emma BostianYeah.
Kelly VaughnAnd that line can get blurred really quickly.
Emma BostianIt can, and it can be really tricky, but you've got that. Yeah. You've got to be able to set boundaries.
Kelly VaughnYeah. Again, setting them and enforcing them is so incredibly important. Um, I would say the last one that, that is probably worth noting on the, on challenges is, is conflict. You know, we've talked about conflict a lot over the course of this, this season, and just like, the communication. But, like, when you're dealing with conflict with somebody, maybe it's like you and a colleague or you and one of your direct reports or two of your direct reports, managing that conflict remotely becomes a lot more challenging because you can't really see them necessarily. And, you know, nuance gets lost over text. Like, if you start ending your sentences in a period, are you mad at me or am I a millennial? I Don't know.
Emma BostianYeah.
Kelly VaughnAnd so learning how to, you know, have those conversations remotely is a really important skill to build as a manager. I have had situations where, I mean, I've, I've talked about this in one of our previous episodes about how difficult it was to not eye to eye with one of our, my, my PMs that I worked with. And we don't live, we live across the country from each other. It's not like I can go show up to her house with like a six pack of beer and be like, hey, let's hash this out. That's not realistic. Like, we have to be able to have this conversation remotely. And in my opinion, I try to avoid having text based conversations. This has to be like a face to face conversation when it's actually a conflict that needs to be addressing. Because I don't want to, I don't want to feel like I'm using slack as a crutch to like hide behind it. Do I need time at times to like, gather my thoughts? Sure. And I am also okay if I'm, if I'm getting heated in a conversation, I'm more than happy to just kind of like take a step back and be like, hey, like I need five minutes to, you know, just kind of gather my thoughts. Let's, let's regroup in like five to 10 minutes.
Emma BostianI think that was kind of the last big challenge that I've faced as well. Yeah. I think remote teams do require a bit more intention with collaboration, with building trust, navigating some of these challenges, but they're not going to be necessarily so vastly different unless maybe the time zone differences is vast, as we've just discussed, they're not going to be so inherently different to the role than an in person team.
Kelly VaughnYeah. And I will say, you know, since 2020, a lot of people have gotten experience managing or being on a remote team. So you should have a general idea of how this kind of works. Now the one thing I will caution is if you have a hybrid team, some people are in office and some people are remote. You have to be so much more intentional about making sure those who are remote are being brought along because innovation happens at a lot faster rate face to face. This is just a known fact of humans working together. And it's really easy to make a decision when you're just like grabbing coffee as you know, you're talking with somebody and then you forget that not everybody is in the room for that conversation and they can feel really left out. And so I just caution you if you have a hybrid team or some people are in office and some people are not, make sure you're being intentional about bringing everybody along.
Emma BostianYeah. I think my opinion is hybrid teams need remote friendly processes first. Agreed. Yeah. So on that note, I think that's a good place to wrap up here. But I'm curious, what is your resource of the week?
Kelly VaughnSo I. On the theme of managing remote teams, I called out Zapier's guide to remote work because Zapier has always been geographically distributed and they have a lot of really, really good, like, deep, well thought out topics on remote work from automation and teamwork. And for managers, there's tons of resources on being a manager on like a remote team and working with your peers and how to set up workspaces, tooling. Like, there's so much good stuff in here. I cannot say enough great things about.
Emma BostianWell, it looks great just at first glance. Oh, my gosh, I need to get through this. My resource is a resource that I can't personally recommend as I've never read the book, but it's called you'd're Not Listening by Kate Murphy. And it was given to me by a fellow engineering manager, not because she thinks I don't listen, but because I think I don't listen. I think many people in this day and age are more concerned about listening to respond versus like, listening to listen.
Kelly VaughnYes.
Emma BostianWe're more concerned with what we're going to say next and less worried about what the person speaking to us is trying to say. So I think this is a book that's great for personal lives as well as professional lives, especially in a remote setting.
Kelly VaughnExactly. Exactly. Yeah, We. We all tend to listen to hear and not listen to listen.
Emma BostianYeah. With that, we're happy that you are listening and thank you so much for making it this far. And we are. Yeah, a little over halfway through the season now. So we are.
Kelly VaughnYep. Excellent. So thank you for listening. Find us on your favorite podcast, which you're probably already on because you're listening to us right now. Leave us a review. We like reviews. We like nice things. Please say nice things about us and find us on YouTube and social media as well. We'll see you next week.
Emma BostianSa.
Remote work is here to stay—but managing a distributed engineering team comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. In this episode, we dive into what it takes to lead remote engineers effectively. From building trust and maintaining team cohesion to running productive async meetings and handling time zone differences, we cover the key habits and tools that make remote engineering teams thrive. Whether you're leading your first remote team or refining your remote leadership style, this episode is packed with practical insights you can apply right away.
- 02:56 Setting yourself up for success
- 03:20 Communication
- 08:46 Building trust
- 30:30 Collaboration and innovation