Into the Unknown: A Remote Onboarding Story

Pre-Covid Flashback

Every Sunday since April, my wife Amy and I have sat on the couch staring at our computers. We begin “aggressive negotiations” (no, not the kind with a light saber, but close). We each block 4–5 hours per day on our calendars, Monday-Friday, with the subject “Tentative — Charlotte” or “Lunch — Charlotte”. This is our new normal, but I can’t help reminiscing about the old normal.

Charlotte is our four-year-old daughter. Over the past couple years, she’s grown accustomed to spending her action-packed weekdays with amazing preschool teachers who help her along with experiencing rich interactions with other little humans.

A normal morning could start by listening to her favorite teacher try to impersonate Josh Gad’s reading of “The Day the Crayons Quit”. Then, she may have a tough choice of an intentionally messy art project or playing outside.

A choice of outdoor play could morph into all the little humans pretending to be pirates, as one of the teachers leads them on a swashbuckling treasure hunt. As the four-year-olds play along, with a “shiver me timber” here and an “arr matey” there, their faces light up as they discover jewels the teacher has conspicuously sprinkled across the large “tan bark” yard.

Some summer days, when it’s a scorcher out, Charlotte may find herself climbing up the play system — laughing uncontrollably with her little buddies — as water from a hose comes splashing down by a teacher encouraging them to go down the makeshift water slide. Amy and I especially appreciated these water play activities on days where Charlotte has decided to ramp up her fun-o-meter by stomping in the school’s mud pit or covering herself and her friends in the color of their favorite “PJ Masks” character (a show on Disney Jr, which is the 4-year-old equivalent to The Avengers).

Covid storm brewing

As Charlotte continued to play at her preschool in blissful ignorance , Amy and I were faced with a tough decision as we watched the global pandemic tide roll in.

When I started thinking about the topic of this blog post, I tried to reflect on my decision-making as 2020 began. So, I wrote down some key global pandemic dates, interleaved with some personal events during the time I was contemplating the risk of transitioning to a new job. I’m hoping some of you can relate to that retrospective feeling of: “What was I thinking?”

Jan 13: Get an email, asking if I’d like to build a bank.
Jan 28: Varo Phone screen
Jan 30: W.H.O. declares a global health emergency
Jan 31: USA foreign travel ban begins
Feb 3–7: Travel to Chicago for work
Feb 6: First Covid-19 death in USA
Feb 7: Varo phone interview
Feb 19: Varo onsite interview
Feb 23: Covid-19 surge in Italy
Feb 26: Phone screen with Varo CTO
March 2: Daily Covid-19 meetings at big bank
March 6: Varo offer arrives!
March 10: Follow-up call with Varo CTO
March 11: Resign from big bank
March 13: USA declares a national emergency
March 15: First social distancing rules arise
March 19: W.H.O. declares Covid-19 a global pandemic
March 30: Most states order stay-at-home directives
March 31: First day at Varo!

The New WFH

Before joining Varo, I was lucky enough to adapt to remote work life after a few years of practice while I was employed at a big bank. Before moving to the Bay Area after Amy received an offer to move West for her job, we were living in Chicago. I spent four years remotely managing a global tech team. In 2016, transitioning to remote work seemed very foreign and cold. The time zones were difficult at first, with regular 6 am PT meetings with teams who were usually 2–7 hours into their workday. However, when I reflect on those early mornings and the blur of caffeinated beverages… wow, what I wouldn’t do now to replace some of my current Covid worries — including child care — with waking up at the crack of dawn. But, more on the child care later.

The most notable difference between remote work at my previous job compared to remote work at Varo was the occasional personal interactions. Previously, I could rely on traveling every couple months for face-to-face meetings. The recurring trips to Chicago, New York, and London were an exercise in social catharsis. Since the financial trading sector is a strenuous and highly competitive (some would even say, dysfunctional) work environment, it was especially beneficial to renew relationships with long-term colleagues and develop a high degree of trust with new ones.

Even though I support cross-region teams, especially when it relates to broadening the talent pool and satisfying a maturing operation model, I’ve found no substitute for periodic in-person human interactions. Sure, some of our grandparents are able to use FaceTime and maybe even reply to a text with an emoji, even though most of them (including myself) were born before personal computers became mainstream. However, humans evolved to build bonds based on innate behavioral patterns that involve interpreting body language, subtle inflections and tones, and picking up on other mannerisms which cannot be easily digitally digested. Also, conflicts tend to be reduced and resolved more quickly when everyone is in the same room. Whenever I would book a work trip, I’d always arrange for a team building activity, like an Escape Room or after work drinks. Simple bonding activities like these always served to reinforce positive feelings and a foundation of unity, which was cemented in the minds of all involved for months and years to come.

So, a week before my Varo start date, a fear of the possibility of only digital work interactions causing manic paranoia was becoming a reality.

However…

Two days before my start date, a laptop arrived in the mail. And, after vigorously scrubbing the box and all the contents with disinfectant wipes, a feeling of liberation started building, and it finally hit me. A new chapter was starting and I thought to myself, “Now, you’re part of something that can actually make a difference.” I went from a feeling of providing little-to-no societal value building proprietary trading applications for a big bank and trading firms, to being given an opportunity to make tangible positive economic progress in our customers’ lives. It’s a great feeling to know you can be part of real change when it comes to leveling some asymmetric playing fields, especially from within a system that traditionally thrives by maximizing profits at the expense of economic exclusion for so many of our fellow citizens.

The repetitive sense of belonging for new Varo teammates has been a huge success. I congratulate and thank everyone for the ongoing diligent efforts of inclusion. Clearing the path of all the large obstacles allows relief to new hires to start focusing on individual ways to remotely thrive. For instance, having a variety of meetings already lined up on day one with teammates who all offered their ongoing support has let me refine soft skills for the long haul, like fine-tuning precise ways to ask questions, maintaining an unwavering thirst for knowledge since you can’t just lean over have a teammate point to their screen, and keeping energy high.

The technology tools and development stack is very important in Varo’s ability to streamline the onboarding process and boost team productivity. The days of walking to someone’s desk to ask a question may take a while to come back. As a result, everyone has embraced the adoption of modern enterprise team collaboration tools. Communities (channels) of all types continue to grow and thrive within our internal digital space, which has been very refreshing for new joiners. Also, the modern technology stack and micro-service architecture enables a huge productivity boost. The ability to create and tear down relevant parts of an environment locally, is a huge improvement over heavy monoliths which are exponentially longer to build and deploy. What would take months of onboarding at other companies with a legacy technology stack takes only days at Varo. And since we at Varo invest in continuous improvement, we are always proactively pushing for more automation and better tools and processes, with the goal of reducing the overhead even further. It’s also worth mentioning that we embrace a fail-fast culture where everyone is given tools geared toward agility. But we must maintain the collective mindset that this added agility cannot compromise the integrity of bank culture, which must stay hyper-aware of financial regulations.

It’s unbelievable to think that I have never met most of my teammates in person, besides the few who took part in my onsite interview. While new joiners, like myself, try our best to navigate the virtual landscape, a special thanks is also due to managers who have helped pave a seamless path to integrating into the company culture. And, when you step back and think about the coordinated effort, across every team involved in the onboarding process (People, IT, Platform, Engineering, etc.), it’s been an amazing feat to leap over the logistic and administrative hurdles that could have caused some real delays.

You all rock!

Adding 20+ Hours/Week of Day Care to a 40–50 Hour Work Week

As we figure out the new normal, I’d like to share with you my perspective of working under the same roof with a small child who is normally being looked after by a “professional.”

This is just my slice of daily not-so-silent isolation, and I’m hoping to give a voice to others who can relate. Also, I do sympathize, with unique experiences I continue to hear from others.

8:58am

Charlotte: “I’m still hungry.”
Me: *trying to ignore*
Charlotte: “Dad… I’m still hungry.”
Me: *trying to ignore, but remembering she’s 4*
Charlotte: “Daaaaaad… I’m still hungry!!”
Me: “It’s 9 am, and you just had pancakes, a muffin, and a yogurt. I have to host a meeting in 2 minutes.”
Charlotte: *starts crying*
Me: *I tag Amy’s hand, as if we’re professional wrestlers*
…

11:55am

Charlotte: *opening my office door unexpectedly, during a video meeting*
Charlotte: “I’m done with Zoom story time with Ms. Molly… Now what?”
Me: *trying to find the mute button*
Me: “You had a snack 30 minutes ago. I’ll be down to make you lunch in five minutes.”
Charlotte: *whining*
Charlotte: “I’m hun-gry”
Me: “I’ll be down in five minutes. Just wait five minutes.”
Charlotte: *now crying*
Charlotte: “I need a snack!”
Me: “Um… Amy???”
…

1:31pm (after 90 minutes of Charlotte spending “quiet time” playing a game she made up: Paw Patrol vs. My Little Pony)

Me: “Time to do Zoom ballet with Ms. Jodie”
Charlotte: *whining*
Charlotte: “I don’t like ballet!”
Me: “You begged for us to sign you up. Please do it. It’s live and started one minute ago.”
Charlotte: *starts crying*
Charlotte: “No! If you make me, I’m just going to sit there and not do anything.”
Me: *FML*
…

4:00pm
Amy: *tags my hand again*
Amy: “Charlotte can’t watch TV yet, since she’s behind on her activities”
Charlotte: “Dad, can I watch Paw Patrol?”
Me: “No. You haven’t done drawing, Play-Doh, or your alphabet workbook yet. You choose.”
Charlotte: “How about Clone Wars?” (since she knows I like that too)
Me: “No. You haven’t done drawing, Play-Doh, or your alphabet workbook yet. You choose.”
Charlotte: “Workbook.”
Me: “Okay, there is a god.”
Charlotte: “No, wait. Play-Doh.”
Me: “Okay, sounds good.”
Charlotte: “First, snack.”
Me: *now crying*
Me: “It’s going to be a long night catching up on work.”
…

To be fair, Charlotte must be very confused why her world no longer contains those blissful days of playing pretend pirates or dowsing herself with paint among her 50 other classmates and teachers.

Finding Equilibrium

Amy and I try our best to offer a balance of growth experiences through play and learning. We find ourselves creating a reward system for completing activities that engage the mind and involve exercise. As I write those lines, it’s hard even for me to know if I’m referring to Charlotte, or Amy and I. But, seriously, adding structure tends to free up enough time to find pockets of work productivity. Then, when we find ourselves sinking, we split off in the evening to catch up, after our “angel” has entered a dreamland of unicorns and pixie dust.

We’ve found some relief, reconnecting, and recharging through family activities like yoga, bike rides, card and board games, and a routine of “say out-loud three good things that happened today” around the dining room table. We also remind ourselves how, despite the horrors this pandemic has brought, there’s a silver lining in that it’s given our family the opportunity to bond and connect on a deeper level.

It’s been, well, both frightening and enlightening.

Continued Support

A wave of gratitude washes over me when I continue to witness Varo executives, along with many of my colleagues, show genuine empathy which would be hard to match at other companies.

We continue to hear and read the courageous messages from Varo leadership at the highest levels, in direct relation to the multi-faceted challenges of 2020. I imagine it must be difficult to balance public sentiment alongside achieving the Varo mission in these turbulent times. The ease of executing these messages with such sensitivity is something I can safely say many of us respect and admire.

I hope we find ourselves back to the old normal sooner than we expect. The exuberance of reuniting with old friends and colleagues, as well as breaking down the virtual walls that add layers to the already existing main defense mechanisms ingrained into the human psyche, will be a most refreshing feeling, indeed!

When I reflect on the first half of 2020, I realize how much we’ve adapted during this unprecedented global experience. In our solitude, I’d like to hope we’ve found solidarity when it comes to taking care of our Varo family and serving our customers who are more in need than ever.

I’m very excited to be part of this journey, and I’m hoping to meet you all in person one day!

Disclaimer: The opinions of the author are their own and not endorsed by Varo Bank, N.A. Member FDIC