Running an effective remote team

For the better part of my tenure at PlanetScale, I was working out of India while PlanetScale’s primary team was based out of Mountain View and slowly growing all over the world. Here are some work ethics I learned and grew to respect, and cherish during my time there.

Points for consideration

Give everything a 24-hour window to resolve

This enables people in other time zones to contribute to the discussion. This obviously cannot always be adhered (e.g. certain fixes or updates are merely rubber stamps and do not concern everyone).

Reduce synchronous online meetings

Not everyone is capable of joining meetings late into the night. These meetings also lead to knowledge not being written down for other team members to read and provide feedback on.

Create extensive paper trails

Defocusing online meetings in favor of written communication leads to better comments and more context for everyone trying to understand and catch up on decisions being made post-facto.

Prioritize lengthier feedback over constant back and forth

Discussing and asking questions on Github issues and pull requests and other documents (e.g. Google Docs) provides the ability to see a project/feature as a whole, in-time collation of decisions that are being made and keeps the entire team in the loop.

Don’t summon people on realtime communication platforms

I feel most people have an implicitly understanding of this but mentioning someone on slack beyond regular work hours will not lead to a faster resolution. At the same time, asking someone to resolve something on Slack is bound to get lost and is detrimental to points raised before.

Conclusion

These strategies have enabled me to counter fatigue, misdirection, loss of information, and enabling everyone in the team to feel connected and responsible towards the product.