Building bridges: Collaboration between San Francisco and Dublin
Lessons learned working on product design remotely
Most of Asana’s design team is located in San Francisco. I live in Dublin, Ireland. I am five thousand miles (eight thousand kilometers) away from my team. 24/7. And although I know I am part of the team, sometimes it’s hard. Living eight hours in the future makes things complicated.
Landing in Dublin
In December of 2015, after a year and a half working in San Francisco, I moved to Dublin. At that time I was working on both the mobile and monetization teams. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t the best way to start working remotely…
A lot of people in our San Francisco office don’t arrive until 10am. That means that only at the end of my day do people start showing up online and being available for meetings.
Being on two teams meant I had to sync with two entirely different groups of people — people I couldn’t meet with until 6pm. On top of that, we have “No Meeting Wednesdays.” On Fridays, I leave the office around 6pm because I want to have a social life. So that leaves Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays between 6pm and 8pm for meetings.
Since I couldn’t walk over to the project managers’ or engineers’ desks and chat briefly any time I wanted, it meant that those few hours were precious.
Even worse, it took time to adjust the team meetings so I could attend. Many of them were set during the afternoon in San Francisco, because when they were created we didn’t have to consider time zones just yet. Not to mention the sheer quantity of meetings I had.
You see where I’m going, right?
Meet and eat
This proved to be very hard for me. I spent many nights having dinner in front of my computer (and virtually in front of my San Francisco-based colleagues) at 8pm, while we talked about our projects.
I wasn’t the first remote employee located in Europe, but it seemed that being a remote engineer was more practical than being a remote designer. I’m not saying it’s easier. But I believe that the communication requirements are different and collaboration can be more asynchronous.
So we tried copying some engineering methods.
Code review for design teams
I like humans. And talking. When I worked in San Francisco, more often than not I would stand up and ask for feedback in person if I could find a designer who was available (which meant “bothering” Paul all the time because he sat next to me). Or paste the designs on Slack and see what people thought. It was a very organic, informal, and quick way of receiving input about ideas and concepts. But grabbing a ten hour flight from Dublin to gather in-person feedback was not a realistic option. We needed a different way to review each other’s work.
At its very simplest, code review is a method used by engineers to check each other’s code. By making sure at least two or three people go through the new lines added to a program, you minimize the risk of errors, while showing the team what you’re working on.
We created a design review project in Asana. At any given time, any designer could create a task there, and attach their designs. In the task description they would define what type of feedback was needed, and create at least three subtasks, assigned to different designers — later on we added project managers too — to gather feedback.
Upon receiving one of these tasks, you would check the designs and give feedback. If two other people already gave feedback, you could ignore it and move on with your life.
This proved to be a great way of fixing that missing quick feedback link.
Project manager and designer sync time
Since we had such limited time overlap we decided to switch from two teams to one, and I stayed in the monetization team.
One thing I took from the mobile team, though, were the almost-daily syncs with the product manager (PM). We noticed that most valuable thing we could do was a daily quickly sync. It only required 15 minutes which meant we could have an informal meeting to clarify any feedback that we shared while the other one had been away.
Currently I work with three different project managers on the monetization team. But by having near-daily syncs we manage to keep a fast pace and clarify doubts quickly — sometimes even before they arise.
I’ve come to the conclusions that the issue wasn’t working with different project managers, it was working with two teams. Keeping the pace with two complete different projects with no overlap or background meant I had to be in big team meetings more often.
Every team has weekly syncs, relevant meetings, design reviews, and so on. So, multiplying those by two made it almost impossible to be everywhere, especially considering we only had six hours of actual weekly meeting time.
The human touch
My personality, extroverted and histrionic, helped me build a bridge and virtual presence with my colleagues. But despite that and our friction-free feedback loops, they weren’t enough.
We hired new designers, new project managers, new engineers. I knew about them, and they knew about me. Only communicating through text on a screen and the occasional formal meeting is not a good way of getting to know someone. And all the emojis and gifs in the world can’t fix this — believe me, I’ve tried.
After some months, Mat, our New York-based designer,and I realized we still felt disconnected. Our solution was to create a new meeting: Design Hangz. Every Thursday, the whole design team would meet with no agenda to discuss about the relevant events of the week, propose changes that didn’t fit in a formal design critique (see my previous post), or any other design-related topic. In these meetings we’ve discussed big redesigns by some companies, welcomed new members to the team, and it’s been critical to connect designers across San Francisco, New York, and Dublin. By making an effort and meeting with no agenda we were forced to bond.
Being myself while being away
Then there’s the other thing.
I spent almost two years in San Francisco building friendships and being my noisy, funny self. In that time I managed to prank Tyson repeatedly by putting confetti on top of his immaculately maintained desk while he was in meetings. I even recruited colleagues to put confetti on other people’s desks once or twice so he had no idea who the prankster was.
I also used to buy Oreos now and then — which was also a secret, because it’s against our sugar policy. Nobody tell Dustin. I shared them with the team, because I wanted to win their affection by giving them sugar (it worked).
And I organized karaoke nights every now and then.
Those little things helped me engage and have fun with my teammates, and they simply weren’t possible anymore. So I had to adapt.
I left the confetti hidden in the San Francisco office and every so often asked my colleagues there to keep putting it in Tyson’s desk. Which made the prank even better because he’d never suspect me, being that I was 5,000 miles away.
I also spontaneously sent Oreos to the team a couple times from Dublin.
As for karaoke, when I visit San Francisco (once every three months) I try to organize a night at the mic. Last time, we had the biggest group yet. They’re a special event since they don’t happen as often.
Two sides of the team coin
There seem to be two sides to working remotely: productive side, probably the most important, and the personal side. The productive side required adjustments. And in our case it took trial-and-error. Nowadays I feel way more confident, happy, and accomplished than when we started. And I believe teams have adjusted to the new situation by pushing and pulling our schedules around.
On the other side, you have personal effort. You might doubt of the impact it has, but I do not. I used my sense of humor and sugar to build up my presence, and keep being a part of the team.
If your colleagues and peers can’t see your face every day, it’s only natural you won’t come to their minds as easily as someone who works right in front of them. I often reach out to create personal connections with my teammates. Now I can tell you Nick and Paul are growing beards, while Dean shaved his. Buzz got a second cat for a while. And Mat was hooked on Westworld.
Small talk, as simple as it may seem, is a key component of human nature. And in my case it helps me being present, be part of the team, and have empathy towards my friends and colleagues.
Nowadays, being remote for me doesn’t stand in the way of being an effective teammate. All of this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of my managers and colleagues, and everyone’s effort to adjust to this unique situation.
To all my coworkers at Asana: thank you for helping.
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