Jose/remote culture

_posts/2025-04-20-remote-culture.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Remote culture from experience
+excerpt_separator:  <!--more-->
+categories:
+  - Life
+tags:
+  - Learning
+---
+
+Take this post with a **teaspoon** of salt. It reflects my own experience in remote organisations, your mileage may vary.
+With that out of the way, lets get started.
+
+TL;DR:
+  * Focus on your onboarding, it has to be meaningful and crafted with intention
+    * A newcommer should have sessions about the company, market, and strategy
+    * Their first week should have meetings that touch all the important parts of the company
+    * Their sessions should have a clear agenda, and clear owners
+    * They can have a buddy assigned to help them navigate their first week / work
+  * Document everything, knowledge should be shared and there shouldn't be "that person that knows about it"
+    * Documentation needs to be a part of the work process and the definition of done
+    * Everyone should contribute to documentation without fear - by editing directly, or asking questions
+  * Promote good culture, encourage people to connect
+    * Allow virtual coffees or virtual meals
+    * Trust your employees to do their job and take the right decision
+
+To give some context, I have been working remotely since COVID-19. Granted it's not long, but 5 years and three companies later I have seen a few things:
+  * Org-1: A fully in-office company that moved to WFH
+  * Org-2: A fully remote company that was setup from day 1 like that
+  * Org-3: A remote-first company that has an office you can visit if you want
+
+In the spectrum of synchronous-asynchronous, they also fall into slightly different places:
+  * Org-1: was fully synchronous, people were expected to work their timezone hours
+  * Org-2: was mostly synchronous, but had many people in different timezones in EU and some in North America. There was also lots of personal life flexibility, meaning asynchronous work also happened
+  * Org-3: was mostly synchronous too
+
+I am writing this post because I keep seeing post after post of CEOs and People managers saying that returning to the office is the most important thing in the world.
+The whole attitude seems to be like: _be there or be square_.
+
+The most recent example I came accross was a post that said that for any intern or person at the start of their career, they *need* to be in the office for those "watercooler moments".
+The claim being that those are the best networking moments, and the moments where the intern can learn.
+
+But more generally, the arguments I see revolve around something like "increased bandwidth", "company culture", "the perks of being in an office".
+
+While I don't dispute that there is more bandwidth when people talk in person, a lot has to be said about good culture,
+and learning. Remote companies can be great places to work in, and provide valuable learning experineces.
+
+The remote company only sees it's flaws enhanced, and that is why it needs to work hard to have good processes in place,
+and make sure everyone is aligned.
+
+This doesn't mean that *all* companies should be remote. But it does mean that when companies want to be remote, they can't just move their people into their own homes and hope for the best.
+
+Out there, there are great software companies that are fully remote, that we can take inspiration from.
+If they can be extremely successful under that model, why can'hope for the best.
+
+Out there, there are great software companies that are fully remote, that we can take inspiration from.
+If they can be extremely successful under that model, why can't others?
+
+Look at: Automattic (Wordpress et al.), GitLab, Dropbox, Github, HashiCorp, etc..
+
+Gitlab, for example, even provides [documentation](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/) about how they are remote.
+
+Help is available, you can learn from others, and if in doubt ask for help.
+
+## Onboarding
+
+## Documentation
+
+## Culture
+[draft - onboarding]
+
+Onboarding new talent into the company is a crucial part of its growth.
+The goal is for them to hit the ground running because as a company we want them to provide value quickly.
+However, we look at onboarding tasks as a checklist, and a hindrance on other productive members of the team.
+We don't give onboarding nearly as much attention as we should.
+
+This is espeically noticeable in remote companies, obviously. Noticeable because our face-to-face time is limited,
+and the bandwidth we have for communication is smaller than in the office.
+This should **not** serve as an excuse to move back to the office, it should serve as motivation to **improve**
+the onboarding process. Where should we put our efforts in?
+
+I think good onboarding hinges on three pillars: the intro meetings, the tools for the job, the documentation.
+
+The intro meetings
+
+The intro meetings should me more than a hello to colleague that works in a specific team / area.
+Ideally they should have a standard that gets improved after each new hire.
+The intro meetings should aim to build business and development context in the new hire.
+This means talking about:
+  * the company, its history and how we got to the current day.
+  * our clients, current and prospective
+  * strategic vision and goals