Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
Once you've accepted "remote" developers as a hiring-solution, you're typically no longer in need of your employee-pool even being commuting-distance to satellite offices. When you implement the above strategies, your remote workers can be pretty much "anywhere" (with the primary limiting factor being timezone dispersal).
Andy covers the fully remote perspective in a complementary post to this one. I definitely agree that once you start down the road of satellite offices and non-co-located teams, the step to fully remote is a small one. It does make things like company culture harder to cultivate, namely since it becomes more complicated and logistical to do things like company happy hours or board game nights. It's not impossible to still have a strong culture while fully remote, it just requires a bit more/different effort.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
Working in an area like the DC metro area, unless your central office is located in an entertainment district, cultivating company culture is difficult.
I know with our company, they try to have regular, "team-building" get togethers. However, because the office is located out in an office park in the deep suburbs (but not in an area with a ton of entertainment opportunities), most of the events tend to be even deeper into those suburbs. This is fine for the people that live out in the deeper suburbs, but, for the people that don't, it means piling an even longer drive on top of a drive that's already long due to both the absolute-distance traveled and the nightmare traffic around here. It ends up being, "well, it's great that you're trying, but, I can't really participate in those events" …which can be alienating rather than team-building.
Very, very true. We are located in the Rockville area, which puts us not too far removed from entertainment options, but we do have a few folks that have an hour+ drive from Baltimore, Frederick, or out in Virginia. For those, it definitely makes our choice of external events a little more challenging. We make an effort to cycle around to different events that are closer to some of those areas to give an even opportunity for everyone to attend. For example, we went indoor go-kart racing as a team a few months back up closer to Baltimore, and recently our team went to an indoor skydiving place a bit north of the office more central to most of our members. We haven't had an event in Virginia for a while, but there's been murmurs of a possible paintball event or such out there.
Realizing that not everyone is capable of traveling to these events all the time, we make an effort to ensure our offices are equipped so that our people can enjoy their breaks and before/after work time as well. In office we have people that will come in and play a game of pool, ping pong, or shuffleboard before everyone else gets in, or end their day with a game instead. Our break areas are equipped with various game consoles and arcade cabinets for when people need to blow off steam or just relax a bit.
At the end of the day, there's only so much that you can do with static locations and "local" events. With a largely or fully remote team, your options come down to "online" events or games, or possibly flying everyone out to the same location for a big event from time to time. Obviously that requires much more logistics, but I've experienced that at other companies in my past.
I think fully remote teams end up with that type of "internet buddy" camaraderie that develops among people that have never met face to face but play the same games online together, or participate in the same online communities together for years after years. And sometimes, that bond can be stronger and more "real" than people you know in person. I have several friends I've known for years, yet never met in person, through games and tech-related chats that have been ongoing for damn near a decade at this point that I would consider just as much a friend as people I've grown up with. Those "online" friendships and coworkers can certainly work, it just takes a certain type of person, and vice versa. Most people can learn to thrive in either environment, it just takes time, effort, and knowledge of common pitfalls to help you avoid them (like the lack of human interaction you can fall into as a remote employee. Some people are fine never seeing speaking to another person directly, some need that face to face interaction from time to time).
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
...And it also takes having a central office staff that understands "we're a mostly-remote company" and consider the optics of offering events that are effectively only available "in the office". I mean, it's great that you want to create a home-y atmosphere, but when the primary beneficiary of "team-building" exercises are the overhead staff and not the actual dispersed teams, those events can become antagonizing.
Valid point, and something we'll certainly need to keep in mind as we expand and include more fully-remote employees in the mix. Presently, I believe we're somewhere around the ratio of 100 to 1. Thank you for your feedback and insight, I'm sure it will come in valuable in the coming months/years.
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Once you've accepted "remote" developers as a hiring-solution, you're typically no longer in need of your employee-pool even being commuting-distance to satellite offices. When you implement the above strategies, your remote workers can be pretty much "anywhere" (with the primary limiting factor being timezone dispersal).
Andy covers the fully remote perspective in a complementary post to this one. I definitely agree that once you start down the road of satellite offices and non-co-located teams, the step to fully remote is a small one. It does make things like company culture harder to cultivate, namely since it becomes more complicated and logistical to do things like company happy hours or board game nights. It's not impossible to still have a strong culture while fully remote, it just requires a bit more/different effort.
Working in an area like the DC metro area, unless your central office is located in an entertainment district, cultivating company culture is difficult.
I know with our company, they try to have regular, "team-building" get togethers. However, because the office is located out in an office park in the deep suburbs (but not in an area with a ton of entertainment opportunities), most of the events tend to be even deeper into those suburbs. This is fine for the people that live out in the deeper suburbs, but, for the people that don't, it means piling an even longer drive on top of a drive that's already long due to both the absolute-distance traveled and the nightmare traffic around here. It ends up being, "well, it's great that you're trying, but, I can't really participate in those events" …which can be alienating rather than team-building.
Very, very true. We are located in the Rockville area, which puts us not too far removed from entertainment options, but we do have a few folks that have an hour+ drive from Baltimore, Frederick, or out in Virginia. For those, it definitely makes our choice of external events a little more challenging. We make an effort to cycle around to different events that are closer to some of those areas to give an even opportunity for everyone to attend. For example, we went indoor go-kart racing as a team a few months back up closer to Baltimore, and recently our team went to an indoor skydiving place a bit north of the office more central to most of our members. We haven't had an event in Virginia for a while, but there's been murmurs of a possible paintball event or such out there.
Realizing that not everyone is capable of traveling to these events all the time, we make an effort to ensure our offices are equipped so that our people can enjoy their breaks and before/after work time as well. In office we have people that will come in and play a game of pool, ping pong, or shuffleboard before everyone else gets in, or end their day with a game instead. Our break areas are equipped with various game consoles and arcade cabinets for when people need to blow off steam or just relax a bit.
At the end of the day, there's only so much that you can do with static locations and "local" events. With a largely or fully remote team, your options come down to "online" events or games, or possibly flying everyone out to the same location for a big event from time to time. Obviously that requires much more logistics, but I've experienced that at other companies in my past.
I think fully remote teams end up with that type of "internet buddy" camaraderie that develops among people that have never met face to face but play the same games online together, or participate in the same online communities together for years after years. And sometimes, that bond can be stronger and more "real" than people you know in person. I have several friends I've known for years, yet never met in person, through games and tech-related chats that have been ongoing for damn near a decade at this point that I would consider just as much a friend as people I've grown up with. Those "online" friendships and coworkers can certainly work, it just takes a certain type of person, and vice versa. Most people can learn to thrive in either environment, it just takes time, effort, and knowledge of common pitfalls to help you avoid them (like the lack of human interaction you can fall into as a remote employee. Some people are fine never seeing speaking to another person directly, some need that face to face interaction from time to time).
...And it also takes having a central office staff that understands "we're a mostly-remote company" and consider the optics of offering events that are effectively only available "in the office". I mean, it's great that you want to create a home-y atmosphere, but when the primary beneficiary of "team-building" exercises are the overhead staff and not the actual dispersed teams, those events can become antagonizing.
Valid point, and something we'll certainly need to keep in mind as we expand and include more fully-remote employees in the mix. Presently, I believe we're somewhere around the ratio of 100 to 1. Thank you for your feedback and insight, I'm sure it will come in valuable in the coming months/years.