Things I’ve Learned While Onboarding Remotely as a Tech Team Leader.

During the Covid-19 global pandemic, in the middle of Israel’s lockdown, I changed my workplace as a team leader. The purpose of this blog post is for me to reflect on the way I handled things — what went well, and what I could have done better in retrospect in hope it might help others.

How it went down

In 2020, I was working as an Engineering Manager leading a team of eight senior backend developers. I LOVED my team and my job (well, most of the time). In October that year, leadership decided to move the ownership of our projects abroad and we were offered other positions in the company.

This path led me to consider several interesting positions in other companies, while the positions offered to me in the company I worked for did not meet my professional aspirations at that time (what actually changed closer to my departure, but that’s another story).

I chose a position as a Team Leader in Fiverr, leading a full-stack team with backend orientation. We are the (very!) proud owners of core components and have many interfaces with other teams. So I started my new adventure remotely during another lockdown in Israel. All equipment was delivered to me via a courier company and I did not see the office and people for a few weeks. Some members of my team I did not see physically for several months.

The Challenges

I’m one of those people who feel uncomfortable when changing my workplace. In addition to that, I was about to start a leadership position being “the new person” to the company. But start working remotely, without being able to talk to people face-to-face, going over to their desk saying, “Hey, can you take a look?” made it all the more challenging for me. Like everyone else, I was working remotely in my previous company, due to Covid-19, but I had already established a relationship with my colleagues as we had physically worked together before the pandemic.

Not only that but the new system has hundreds of micro-services with so much code, based on a cool architecture implemented in Fiverr but most of it is in Ruby — an amazing verbose language that I don’t “speak.”

The good, the bad and the ugly

My team is amazing — strong team players in a huge and complex domain, and they knew how to run the business fairly well long before I joined. The people in Fiverr are so nice and welcoming, and the company itself is very pampering. I took ownership of the domain and the team since, like, my second week, but — the baseline and a lot of the context was still missing for me.

The onboarding process in Fiverr is very structured. In addition, I asked my manager for reading materials ahead of starting. However, the onboarding period was difficult for me due to the remote-mode. Asking for help, you say? Well, as the team leader I wanted to remove obstacles for my team and not take up too much of their time so I was asking for less help than I should. But that’s totally on me. And so the first few weeks were not a huge success on my part.

What I did to tackle this and what went well for me

1. It’s all about the people #1 — As a team leader, my main responsibility is to manage a team. Of people. This is agnostic to technology, organization or physical location. This was my “safe zone” so I tackled it first. I set up 30 minutes with each team member on my first (remote) day. I wanted to get to know them, learn what motivates them and what they want to improve and took notes. I took a “team first” approach, which helped me function as a valuable team member. This made me feel like I’m part of something already.
2. Own it! — I wanted to be the owner of my domain, so I wanted to know my team’s components and areas of the product. I searched for documentation and a person from my team took it to the next level and organized our Google Drive better for me. That was amazing and helpful. I kind of knew what I was getting into and took ownership of the situation. I did not blame anyone for decisions I made. That also helped me feel in control.
3. Learn from history — What I did might sound a little unorthodox: the organization relies heavily on slack with many informative channels. Although I was overwhelmed in the beginning, it presented an opportunity for me. I went over last year’s messages in the team’s internal channel to get the “vibe” of the team. Who joined and who left, what they’ve discussed, what went well and what not. I have a fairly good memory, so it helped me get context to issues raised months after I joined. I got a lot of insights from it. I also did the same on the team’s alerts channel to summarize recurring issues.
4. It’s all about the people #2 — When the lockdown was lifted, I could go to the office. It was not official that we were going back to the office, it was purely optional and so I started to go twice a week. This was a really good decision, and the one I’m most happy about. It made me connect, I was talking to people, making allies, and I had so much fun in the process. It was easier to get to know the key players, enjoy small talk and also leverage this to get things done — because it’s all about the people. It was easier to ask for assistance, it was fun providing advice or helping new recruits. Really, *best decision ever*.
5. Keep quiet(er) for 2–3 months — Although I’m a seasoned developer, I was a noob in Fiverr. I also had no experience in either Ruby or Kotlin, the system architecture was unfamiliar and the way the code was written was different. I had A LOT to say, on so many occasions, right from the beginning but I kept quiet. I am not a person with the audacity to criticize without knowing the full context, the history or what went down. Hence, I learned and I listened carefully. I came to a point of being aligned with the company’s architecture and vision, knowing enough about the history to feel comfortable to speak my mind. I chose when to say something and when to remain quiet, but my opinion was much more solid and I felt that I was heard! It was fun.
6. Connection before content — My team owns core components of the services, with many dependencies on and with other teams. Yes, it’s hard to move fast alone, but it also has a lot of advantages: I was being part of the bigger picture and I was able to understand faster what’s going on, and attend the other team’s design review. For those who aren’t in that position, I can suggest “crashing” into design reviews, just ask a fellow team leader or two to attend theirs and you’re all set. I was able to present myself briefly and after a few of those I guess people knew who I was.
7. Make an impact — I took a subject I’m passionate about, which is Engineering Culture and came up with an agenda — to make it more dominant in Fiverr. I found out what we already have, where the gaps are (in my opinion) and started talking to people to find others who share this passion. That led to great results: I presented to the leaders of our engineering organization and got them on-board with the plan. As a bonus I’m working with our Brand Manager to make more magic. It helped me connect to people, it motivated me and it led to several good places in my professional life both in the organization and outside it.

What I could have done better, in retrospect

1. Plan for better results — I could have planned my course of action better. In terms of the general experience, it might have been helpful for me to talk to other people who made this move during Covid-19 (I know I’m not a snowflake). Talking to other people about that might have helped me prepare. As for the company’s engineering , although I sat down to learn tech-topics prior to starting my job in Fiverr, I did not read Fiverr’s engineering blog or watched Fiverr engineers’ lectures. I believe this could have made a better starting point for me.
2. All aboard! — As I mentioned, I made a deliberate decision to not go full-power with my onboarding plan. I did my onboarding as planned and it was important for me, but I decided not to ask my team many questions and to allow them to focus on the tasks at hand. In retrospect, I should have planned the time better, or found a way around it. These days, I’m actually improving my team’s onboarding plan to make it more self-served and structured in order to reduce the time spent by other developers onboarding new members (adding recorded sessions, more hands-on and documentation).
3. Ask for the right help — I should have asked for help sooner. There were people there that offered assistance and I said “No” even though I needed help. I did not say no because I was too proud; it was only much later that I identified what kind of help I needed. This was a waste of time on my part; understanding what I needed sooner would be better.
4. Control the information — Talking about the many (many) channels in slack — I was swamped. I missed important messages and I wasn’t sure how to get the information I needed although I was always connected. What helped me through this was one of my team members, who tuned my slack settings with me according to his suggestions and what I needed. Small things like splitting the channels to different topics, tweaking the alerts and adding triggered emails improved my productivity.
5. Always come prepared — I found myself in many meetings without even knowing who the people are that I’m meeting. After a few of those, I understood that coming prepared to the meetings is very useful and brings better results; not even knowing who I’m meeting with is a big no-no.

I started a new leadership position in a new company during lockdown, remotely. It was very challenging, but I grew from this experience and I am happy for the opportunity to share it with others.

Fiverr is hiring in Tel Aviv and Kyiv. Learn more about us here.