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The DEV Team is now 100% Distributed

Jess Lee on October 10, 2019

As the title suggests, we are excited to share that the DEV team is now fully distributed! We’ve gone through a few iterations of how we work (offi...
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rhymes

Love this post! I wouldn't be at DEV if they weren't remote first.

I'm one of the three that works outside the US (from Italy) so if you have any questions about that fire away and if you feel you need to ask them in private, my DMs are open!

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Peter Kim Frank • Edited

It's amazing to get to this point.

It definitely wasn't easy to transition from a fully co-located team to a fully distributed team. At the same time, it was only going to get harder and harder as we continued to grow. We are so excited to be able to work with a team made up of talented contributors from all around the world.

Quick shout-out to @zach and @binarylogic and the rest of the team at Timber for being great roommates at our most recent office.

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Utkarsh Talwar

Happy to hear about this, Jess! You guys have come far. I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts in detail about a few things:

  • How did your internal processes evolve with time to accommodate this fully distributed culture?
  • How do you prioritize asynchronous work?
  • How do you deal with time zone differences, especially when a critical, time-sensitive element is involved?
  • What are your collaboration tools of choice? And do you think the choice really matters much?

There's so much more I want to ask, but that's it for now. I'd love to see an in-depth post that hopefully answers all of these questions and more.

Congrats on being fully remote. Cheers! 🥳👨🏻‍🎤

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Will G

I'm also very interesting in all of the above! maybe a follow up post is in order?

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Lukas Hermann

Yes, please! Exactly my questions, too!

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Tracy Chou 👩🏻‍💻

Congrats!!

Echoing some questions from other commenters, I'm curious to hear if you have tips and tricks on making async work well. How much timezone span do you have, and does that impact your workflow?

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Patrick Schoeps

Thanks for sharing your journey to a completely distributed team! I also work remotely and I had a question about what you mean by supporting asynchronous work. Do you take a more hands off approach to time management, and track employee progress based on task completion? Or do you utilize some kind of punch in/punch out system like Toggl or Slack status to track who is online/offline and to keep up to tabs on how many hours people are working? Thanks for the write up!

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Alex Sarafian • Edited

I think the key part is here

We took steps to make sure that all team members, in the office or at home, were always on an even playing field.

This is something that most companies forget about because the remote is not about hiring the best talent but just cost. But software engineering requires people collaboration and that requires tooling which is not cheap when being distributed even among different offices. Unfortunately the original promotes of the remote and distributed office overlook this aspect, forget about the hidden cost and preparation and at the end manage to make things worse in all aspects.

Thanks for sharing.

If I was a developer I would had applied :)

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Ben Fox

Congrats, I've been doing 100% remote since 1999 and LOVE it. The largest company I started grew to 135+ people and I have no plans to do it any other way, if you know how to communicate most of the challenges fade away :)

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Zach Sherman

Sad to see you go but very happy for you all!

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Andrew Jackson

Awesome post! Very inspiring and warm. The whole time reading I was thinking “This is so cool!” I love this platform and I really would like to work on your team. I definitely will apply. Thanks for sharing. ;-)

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Yechiel Kalmenson

This is so tempting...

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Jeremy Schuurmans

Do it ...

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Reinaldo Coelho Sartorelli • Edited

In the enContact team we are all remote too. We are 7 people working from 3 different states on Brazil. And in the same state we are all remote by long distances.

Your history remember a lot us.

Succeffull to us :-D
It´s a great opotunity work full remote.

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Shoji Takashima • Edited

That is really interesting, a fully distributed team sounds like everyone needs great communication. Do you think that slows the the amount of work that is done?

On another note, I applied, but I received an error, which prevented the form from submitting and after a couple refreshes, I was able to apply. I am not sure if the form went through though. If someone can let me know I would appreciate it!

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

documentation documentation documentation.

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Charles Anim

Excited to see the tremendous growth of DEV. Will be checking out the available roles

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Ben Halpern

Good luck in the application Charles!

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Stargator

That's very cool, how do you balance salary with the cost of living in different locations. Basically, does that play a factor in the pay someone earns?

For example, Looking at the pure numbers Maynard, the intern, may be viewed as highly skilled/senior, but looking at his cost of living in downtown DC or New York may show he is just getting by.

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 • Edited

I've been remoting for 10 years on and off. I like keeping on call generally with other co-workers but I find keeping video camera on just uncomfortable and feels like a faux pas. I feel like if you were to have video on, it would be screen sharing.

Always seems like people are in one camp or the other.
Its like tabs vs spaces.

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Saurabh Daware 🌻

Thank you for sharing this story! It is super inspiring 🌻 and good luck with DEV, you all are doing great job🦄

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'''⌐(ಠ۾ಠ)¬'''

If I'm lower-to-none in one part of your stack, but decent in another part of the stack, is that also acceptable to apply?

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Si

If you ever look at a job spec and think "should I apply", the answer is always yes.

If your immediate reaction isn't "oh shit, I don't know any of what they're asking for" - apply.

Worst case - you don't get the job.

Good case - you learn something from the interview process.

Best case - you get the job.

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Ben Halpern

Fully agree. Sometimes it's hard for us to communicate the nuance in a job listing, but yes, we are looking for help in different parts of the stack and you don't have to be an expert in everything.

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Nick Taylor

It’s my own experiences, so not a one size fits all, but I wrote about this a while ago if you’re interested.

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💾 bun9000

Hugely motivating. Love to see this. Ty for sharing!

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Michaela Greiler

Remote work for the win. Thanks for sharing your remote journey.

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Erik Dietrich

Congrats on the shift, and welcome to the remote-only club! As the owner of a business that is likewise remote-only, I may be a bit biased, but I love it and would never look back.

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Francisco Quintero 🇨🇴

Dev rocks :)

Awesome software 🤟🏽

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LONG

You've been doing a great job!

How do you survive? How do you afford food? Only through sponsors and listings?

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Andrew Bone

🎉🎉🎉

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Dale Nguyen

It's a great and inspiring story @jess Lee. Hope that you will find great talents soon.

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Edison Ade

Proud of what you guys have accomplished. Totally love it here. Keep winning

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Willem Wijnans

Welcome to the club 🧡🧡

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Eric Ahnell

Wow! Lots of effort, but even BETTER results. Stay strong DEV!

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Ben Halpern

:)

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Simon Holdorf

This is so awesome, congrats and thanks, DEV Team :)

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Anthony M.

That's really cool. I work remote but there are still a lot of pains that our company has to deal with to make it more efficient. It's inspiring to see what the DEV team has done!

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Doaa Mahely

This is really cool!

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Pan Chasinga

Congrats on setting the bar for the next generation of cooler workplaces.

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Enrico

No developer advocates or relations... Yet...