Operations at Buffer and Founder of Remotive, Rodolphe Dutel
Hello here!
Our guest for today is Rodolphe Dutel, Operations at Buffer and Founder of Remotiveio.
Here’s more from Rodolphe:
Hi, I’m Rodolphe — I joined Buffer in 2014 to help with Business Development. Today, I’m also part of Buffer’s People team, where I look after Buffer’s Operations.
I’m based in Paris, France, and I’m lucky to travel over 50% of the time — I love working from the road!
In my free time, I run Remotive.io, a newsletter sent to over 15,000 remote workers.
You can follow Rodolphe on Twitter here.
Rodolphe, thanks for joining us today! 😊
Thanks, Alfred — Hi everyone 😊
I’d love to kick start the chat and let the community take over.
1) Since you travel quite a bit, I’m curious where you are at now.
2) How did you get into remote working? — Alfred Lua
1) I’m in Paris, France, where I live at most time — I got here yesterday after a 26 hours journey that took me from Maui>Honolulu>LAX>Paris, and I woke up at 3:00am local time this morning 😊
2) I started in 2013 whilst travelling and backpacking, then joined Buffer in 2014 and have been doing various projects — including Remotive.io — on remote work since 😊 (special thanks to Alfred who has helped doing wonders on Remotive.)
Working remotely
Where do you think have companies to improve if they want to hire remote workers? And where do you think you have to improve to be a better remote worker? — Sabine
Great one, Sabine! I sense that creating an inviting environment for Remote workers can sometime be a challenge, it’s very interesting to be as transparent as possible (just like on this channel) so that applicants can get a cool What You See Is What You Get feel for it all 😊
To be a better remote worker, I sense that two things are super key — trust and empathy: Trust within your teams, and trusting your own abilities will help you start and stop your day with a lot more ease — Empathy since it helps communicating better with others (we never quite get full context while working remotely), and towards yourself to understand that your energy level changes every day — no two days are the same 😊
I agree, Rodolphe! I can imagine that especially when you want to apply as a remote worker, it’s hard to get a “feel” of what it will be working with this company. Buffer is doing a great job on that. — Sabine
Yes, Sabine — we’re spending a lot of time thinking through our Journey page and diversity overall to make Buffer an inviting place for all 😊
Also, Rodolphe— I’m going to add to what you mentioned about trust and empathy. Outside of Buffer, when supporting your Remotive community, what are some of the challenges that you hear people — employers and remote workers — sharing about trust? — Ann Diab
Hey, Ann, trust is interesting since we can’t quite put a number on it, or even have a common definition on it — it’s about defaulting to the thinking that people will do the right thing if given the choice to be in an environment that makes them happy — especially when thinking about management/leadership, it really shapes up — Managers will command where Leader show the way and inspire. It’s quite a learning experience for us all 😊
Trickiest situations often happen in partially remote team where it’s even more important to be intentional about culture, communication and productivity when you have people in the office and others at home 😊 (like InVision, Trello, and FormStack).
What is your best piece of advice for people transitioning from a traditional office, to full remote work? — Matt Aunger
That would be to try how that feels to you, possibly by taking small steps and doing it half a day per week, then increasing. It feels key to understand that “remote work” is not “lonely work”, as most of us can decide to work from co-working spaces if they feel like it (I’m at one myself just now 😊). Also, often people have had similar questions when they start going remote, I often point back to Remotive.io for tips, hehe 😉
As a follow-up to Matt’s question, what’s something that you know now about remote work, that you wish you knew when you started working remotely? — Chelsea Wallace
That would be understanding how you work, meaning when you are most productive and when you feel like chilling on YouTube (hehe, Casey Neistat fan here — I watch his Vlogs everyday!) is really helpful, especially when we step out of a 9–5 when we’re expected to work while being in the office. Trying to do more in less time while giving people a good experience (= being available) and not overworking (= being there 24/7) is certainly a cool learning.
Side note — and anyone else interested in learning about shifting work patterns to one that works best — this book I just finished reading (Now You See It — How Brain Science Technology Will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st Century by Cathy N Davidson) goes into this topic a lot — learning about how our cultures set us up to value certain things that get our attention, to get to school at this time, to turn off our mobile devices, etc etc and how this is just not at all setting us up for the way our world is now working — Ann Diab
Under what circumstances do you think a particular person is not a fit for remote work? And what skills do you think can be developed to change that (or, conversely, what aspects would keep them from transitioning into remote work)? — Valery Sykes
I sense that culture fit (= how well someone fits in in the team) and attitude (how willing are you to perform from day 1 as a self-motivated team member) can’t quite be taught — all else that is skills related can probably be taught or shared — as a follow up read really recommend this one:
Remote Team
Do you think that going through Buffer Bootcamp for every possible future employee is essential to make remote work work? — Sabine
Yes, Buffer Bootcamp does feel very critical to our success, consistently observing 2/3 people graduating and 1/3 people moving on — feels great to get to know each other before committing on both sides (dating style 😉). Many other companies (Basecamp, Invision, Zapier, and Baremetrics) who work remotely also ask you to complete a project of some sort before coming in, “bootcamp style” 😊
More about Buffer Bootcamp here:
Have you ever told someone, “Yeah, maybe remote is not the thing for your company?” What clues are present when you just know a manager/founder would not be a fit to hire a remote workforce? — Ann Diab
Interesting! 😊 I sense that remote work is a consequence of a strong culture and a trusting environment — many non-tech jobs have been allowing remote year for decade (accountants, teachers when grading papers, architects…) — I do sense that remote can’t quite be used as a perk you may have just like adding free lunches/gym subscription because it impacts everything in your company 😊
My sense is that remote work can’t quite fix existing problems at a company — it’s rather something to all agree on and try! Also, bringing remote to existing in-office team is more challenging than starting off remote, and hiring for remote all the way through 😊
Formstack is an exception — they were 7 years old when they decided to go fully remote for everyone on the team, now, none of the company’s leadership even lives in the city where 50% of its employees call home (Indianapolis).
I don’t know if you’re involved in the hiring process but can you share any tips on the hiring process of a remote worker? — Sabine
I’ve been lucky to look into about 1,000 applications to Buffer last year, I find this post super helpful:
And if you feel like learning how the hiring person gets to decide, I’d would recommend this article by Josh:
And, as a follow on to Sabine’s question, do you have any tips on establishing communication channels & frequency within a remote team? — Chelsea Wallace
I sense that tools and frequency of communication varies a ton depending on how big you are 😊 Slack is a great idea for everyone, then more than 10 people team often to daily stand ups, then larger team often split up in smaller units 3–4 people — now that Buffer has 80 people, teams are rarely larger than 5–6 people 😊 We use Dropbox Paper, Zoom.us and Slack heavily 😊
Remote working tools
What items are a personal must-have for your remote work (besides laptop, phone, notebook, etc.)? — Rachel Wynn
Nice, Rachel — I personally really enjoy my notebook as planning on paper has a special dimension that helps me get organized beyond what I write on my laptop 😊 Noise cancelling headphones (Bose C25) have been a game changer and I’m also excited about my Roost laptop stand that should be in the mail very soon. Other than that, running on MacBook Air 13'’ 😊
1. How do you manage everything effectively via a 13” screen on your Mac? I love my 2nd monitor at home to spread things out so find working on my laptop out and about at times a little awkward — but want to learn to love the small screen on the go!
2. What’s your advice for file management on the go / while travelling? Do you carry an external hard drive as back-up + rely on web based platforms (eg. Google Drive/ Dropbox) for file access on the go? I think having your laptop die or stolen while travelling would be my worst nightmare so am regularly reassessing my current processes for such things to be prepared for the worse 😊 — Kat Loughrey
1. Yes, I use to be on MacBook 15'’ with an extra 23'’ on stand plus Bluetooth everything. I find that working on a smaller environment forces me to only do a few things and have less “legacy tabs” open — this being said, I don’t design/code or do extensive CM, I mostly to video calls/chat/emails 😊 that may change quite a bit 😊
2. I’m a Google fan, so I use Gmail on 2 factor authentication and Google Drive for everything, DropBox for all things Buffer and 1Password for all things login — never had my computer stolen but had many failed on me and today I have n0 backup disk or physical copy, which I guess is both scary and liberating! I’ve got backup codes if my phone gets stolen, and arguably can recoup all my passwords online if my computer get stolen — it would still be very, very unfortunate and tough!
I’ve been curious about the Buffer remote communication stack -
1) Has the Buffer team switched to Slack from HipChat?
2) I noticed in a recent interview that you mention using HQ. Has this replaced iDoneThis, or are you still using iDoneThis? — Ann Diab
We moved from HipChat to Slack after 4 years of HipChat in November 2015. Interestingly we use to pay $2/user/month with HipChat and we’re now at $12/user/month with Slack 😊
We partially moved to Slack because it feels like a 2015/2016+ tool, and we’ve seen so much usage (including in this community) that we felt like embracing it.
We’ve also happily used iDoneThis.com for 3 years before building an internal version, affectionally named “HQ”. We’re currently pondering how to craft HQ best so that it reflects how we’ll account for goals and achievements through 2016 that is through the OKR method. More about OKRs here:
I’m definitely familiar with OKRs but I am really intrigued by HQ!! Similar, I imagine, to Automattic using P2 and then running from there. Thanks, Rodolphe! — Ann Diab
Yes, HQ has been created for Buffer and is a friendly neighbour from our colleague’s Dan project — Timezone.io. We still need quite a bit of work to make it on point, as it was initially built for Buffer as we were doing self management 😊
Others
Congrats on Remotive, I’ve often found myself scouring the listings looking for opportunities. What are your plans for Remotive moving forward? — Matt Aunger
Thanks, Matt — nice to meet you too 😊 Remotive.io is my side project, and I find it very interesting, as it now gathers 15,000 people on its list and we’ve just signed a 6-month partnership with Toptal, also worked with Slack, WeWork, Invision and others.
We’ve listed 270 companies working remotely and are aiming to up the number of jobs listing from a current 100 to possibly 300–500 jobs, all fully remote and at startups (as oppose to large companies, which is also great yet not our aim) 😊 Also considering crafting a product/white paper gathering the best ideas/articles/tips we’ve sent in our 55 editions 😊
What would you say is the biggest challenge of being transparent when working on a product that isn’t ready yet from a business development point of view? — Stephen'Bern' Banham
Hey Stephen — interesting, I guess it may depend from what we feel like “ready for BD is” — my gut is that there’s no downside to share as much as possible to find feedback and guidance. I’ve certainly tried to share all learnings myself and it has resulted on more press, advices, mentoring opportunities, and sometimes sales 😊
If you take a humble, helpful stance on any issue and offer to help others learn too, I find that you always gain tons of learnings and overall personal value 😊
Thank so much for joining us today and sharing your wisdom on remote working, Rodolphe! I learnt a lot about remote working which is definitely helpful for myself! 😉
Thank you all who joined us for this Live Chat and asked great questions too! ❤
Thanks everyone for this cool chat!
(There were many great side conversations during the Live Chat too, which are hard to include here. Be sure to check them out in #ama 😊)
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