8200km, 8 years, 1 team 🌎
6 Lessons from a remote team at StepStone, for work-from-home teams during COVID-19
StepStone runs job boards in 50 different countries with over 72 million monthly visitors. As a part of the Axel Springer Group, it’s also a member of the Global Axel Springer Developer Community.
When Robert & Roberto first started working together as remote teammates 8 years ago, internet quality was so bad in El Salvador, even emails took forever to send. Robert & Roberto had just become part of the same team, but unlike many teams they were separated by 8200km and an ocean from day one. And the only way to communicate was through a horrible internet connection.
“Robert was not even a face — due to the 5Mbps” Roberto explains, both of them laugh. The 5Mbps internet connection was the best internet-service the team of 30 developers in San Salvador (the capital city of the Central American country of El Salvador) could get 8 years ago. It was really bad.
Despite the bad internet quality, they made it work. Interviewing them all these years later, uncovered 6 incredibly valuable lessons for all of us — now that we’re all part of remote teams due to COVID-19.
#1 “Be consciously empathetic”
Working together remotely is hard. It’s the tiny interactions with colleagues that make working together fun, but can also diffuse misunderstandings, and help debug conflicts before they get too heated.
One of the most important lessons, Roberto & Robert learned, revolves around empathy: “You have to be consciously empathetic”, Roberto explains.
Empathy of course is important, but often not easy to get right — luckily Robert has a great tip for bringing more empathy into our written communication: “Imagine that’s the first thing people read in the morning”
Like that empathy becomes fairly easy — just ask yourself: If I would read the message I’m about to send first thing in the morning, how would I feel about that?
#2 “Try to be helpful”
Developers are trained in dealing with systems of logic. So for us it’s far too easy to end up in “who’s right and who’s wrong” debates without much middle ground, that can cause considerable frustration inside the team.
Roberto suggests an alternative: “Try to be helpful”. He says it comes from El Salvador being a very “service oriented” culture, and points out how it made bridging communication gaps so much easier. Being irritated by what somebody says or writes will happen — and it happened to Roberto and his team. But instead of getting angry and annoyed, they instead tried to get to the bottom of what the other person needed which helped get to a solution faster.
#3 Planning processes are always WIP
Even after 8 years Robert says they exchange “either too much information, or too little”. It’s funny — I somehow always assumed that remote teams are perfect at this.
But obviously they also have to constantly adapt. Planning processes have to be constantly improved. They’re never finished — they’re always a work in progress.
It was kind of refreshing actually to see that nobody is perfect at this.
#4 Be open to being wrong
Conflicts will happen, endless discussions do occur, and mistakes will be made. In all of these cases, Robert shares an important learning in resolving these potentially emotional moments as a team: “Be open to being wrong”
It not only helped them diffuse potentially difficult situations, it’s also something that helped them stay productive.
“Be as open as possible, be as personable as possible” is his second advice in that area — show people you’re a person who also doesn’t know all the answers and can be wrong about stuff. Making mistakes all of the sudden becomes a chance to help each other out to find a good solution together.
#5 Rewriting code? Do it together!
Mistakes happen. One of the mistakes, Robert wishes he had avoided, came right when they first started working together: Robert had given feedback on code that had been written in El Salvador, but because of the time-difference of almost a complete workday, just implemented the feedback himself.
So when the guys in El Salvador came into the office that morning, they found that their code had been completely changed. An incredibly painful experience.
Today, code feedback often is given interactively, by sharing a screen via MS Teams and pair-programming an improvement — together.
#6 Pool Parties Help
Over the years Roberto and some of his colleagues have visited Ireland a few times to be present for important kickoffs, and Robert was one of the more frequent visitors in El Salvador over the years.
When I ask them about their most fun moments over the years they both agree it was the moments when they physically came together. Apparently the pool parties in El Salvador’s hot climate went pretty crazy. I’m having a lot of fun listening to Roberto & Robert describing the good times they’ve had together.
And yes, don’t we all need a few cold ones in a pool right now? What seems like “non work” on the surface turned out to be an important bonding experience, bringing remote colleagues together to become a remote team.
Maybe now more than ever, it’s important that we remember to get together as teams (safely of course — so probably outside) to bond and share good times together away from our screens and homes.
I’m looking back at this interview with gratitude and a smile on my face. Our Axel Springer Developer Community is much more international than I thought, and it’s cool to see how even for weird times like COVID-19, there’s people in our community who can help us deal with it through their experiences.
And in case you’re wondering: No, the Irish are sometimes still impossible to understand with their lovely Irish accent — no matter how much practice Roberto and the rest of his team in El Salvador have had over the years.
Connect to Robert & Roberto:
Robert on LinkedIn
Roberto on LinkedIn
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Hi, I’m Jonas and I’m currently building up a Global Axel Springer Developer Community. Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Newsletter to get a fresh story like this every Monday and to receive details on how you can join our global developer community ✌🏻
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