Management

More and more businesses have started realizing the benefits of remote work, including increased productivity, decreased employee turnover rate, and reduced absenteeism.  These benefits have made hiring remote software developers a significant preference.

However, the needs of remote working engineers are different from those of office workers, and this applies to their onboarding process as well.

Here are ten ways you can make your remote onboarding program successful:

1. Maintain equal prioritization of software developers working in-office and remotely

   Onboarding remote and on-site employees together is a challenging task. Ensuring that all new software developers feel comfortable and sufficiently welcomed to participate and ask questions is essential.
   Create an inclusive environment where everyone can see the onboarding presentation and hear what the presenter and other participants say. Place microphones and cameras to cover the entire space to make sure that everyone can learn effectively.

2. Eliminate stress with a structured approach

   Provide the new hires with information to help them understand their role and how they can be successful. 
   • Give them a brief overview of the software development team’s goals and KPIs.
   • Outline your company’s appraisal process.
   • Talk about their potential career path. Let them know what resources you provide that can help them grow.
   • Have a conversation about how high-level decisions are made within the company.

3. Host get-to-know-you sessions

   Onboarding is not only about sharing information about the company. It’s also about getting to know each other.
   During your onboarding program, you can conduct random breakout sessions to give your remote employees the chance to talk to their coworkers and build relationships.

4. Make your onboarding process fun!
   

   A presentation format can become monotonous quickly; however, you can’t afford to let your software developers get distracted while you’re sharing important information.
   To ensure your new hires don’t burn out with too much information, you can make your onboarding program fun by gamifying a few sessions with trivia and more. 

5. Encourage new hires to participate

   While providing information about your organization is essential, you also need to encourage software developers to ask questions. However, new hires are more guarded during this phase and may not feel very comfortable doing so.
   Hiring remote working software developers comes with the added challenge of being proactive and constantly encouraging them to participate. For example, you can set Q&A sessions where people can vocalize queries they may have had during the presentation.

6. Play some music!

   It is a struggle to keep your energy up during hours of presentations. You can play some music during your session breaks to help your remote-working employees feel refreshed. This way, they are ready to focus when the session starts again.
   At Turing, we encourage employees to add their favorite regional music to a Spotify playlist. This practice helps everyone realize the diversity of the team and feel more connected.

7. Cater lunch

   New hires feel special when the company goes out of its way to show them how much they care. You can arrange to deliver lunch to your remote employees. If that seems like too much of a hassle, you can let them enjoy a free lunch of their choice and cover the cost.
   This small touch will encourage them to feel even more connected to the company during the second half of the presentation.

8. Host happy hour

   While the get-to-know sessions can help participants engage with their coworkers, you can’t host these sessions for long.
   You can arrange for an informal after-work meeting to conduct games, ice-breaker sessions, or simply get a cup of coffee and talk to your coworkers.

9. Create an accessible resource library

   During the onboarding sessions, the information you share will be pretty extensive, especially for software developers unfamiliar with the company. As a result, it can be difficult for them to retain and recall everything necessary.
   You may find it helpful to create a resource library with vital information and documents and share it with your new hires. Such a library will make it easier for them to look for information when they need it without asking others about it.

10. Make it memorable

    Regardless of where the software developers reside, you can always do something to make their onboarding program memorable. Sharing company-swag like t-shirts and coffee mugs or putting together a ‘welcome to the company’ kit, including branded stickers, diaries, and more, can be an excellent way to get started.

Summary

Creating a welcoming remote employee onboarding experience is essential to ensure you set your software developers up for success from day one. 

Therefore, while hiring remote software developers, it’s vital to create a clearly defined onboarding process. This process helps them gain a better understanding of their responsibilities and makes them feel valued. 

If you’d like to know more about how you can make your onboarding process successful, you can read the complete article here. 

But before working on creating an excellent onboarding process, you need to find and hire skilled and experienced software developers. If you’re looking to hire remote developers for your team, Turing can help. 

Turing’s automated platform lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Access a talent pool of the top 1% of  1M+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in your time zone. There’s no risk. 

Turing offers a free two-week trial period to make sure your developers deliver to your standards.

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

Joel Spolsky published a blog post in 2000 titled The Joel Test specifically for engineering managers. It is a series of quick and easy ‘yes or no’ questions that measure the quality of software engineering teams.

Despite being 20 years old, The Joel Test is still relevant today to judge an engineering team’s technical mastery. However, William Hill, senior software engineer at New Relic, noticed the test’s lack of consideration towards a team’s social culture and values.

Therefore, William developed a new list of questions that engineering managers can use to evaluate the culture and inclusivity of the modern-day engineering teams. 

And of course, he aptly named it The Will Test.

The Will Test

The Will Test includes nine questions focusing on judging a company or team’s social culture and inclusivity. 

1. Does the company have engineering managers or leaders from the minority community?
2. Does the company provide access to resources for maintaining your mental health?
3. Is there an established Code of Conduct?
4. Is the organizational hierarchy clearly defined? 
5. Is there a clearly defined path to promotion?
6. Does the company invest in career growth? 
7. Does the company make use of diverse recruiting channels?
8. Is there a dedicated DE&I team?
9. Is there a formal internal membership program?

• Does the company have engineering managers or leaders from the minority community?
  In 2017 a study by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showed an underrepresentation of women and people of color in executive positions. According to the report, within 177 of the largest San Francisco Bay Area tech firms, the percentage of Black men and women in management was just 1.5 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively. Minority engineering leaders give other minorities the strength to believe they can succeed, too.
  Without minorities in positions of power, the organization’s effort to encourage diversity and inclusivity doesn’t fulfill its objective. 

• Does the company provide access to resources for maintaining your mental health?
  In a fast-paced, high-pressure corporate world, burnout is a serious problem. Add in the stress the pandemic has brought on; burnout can significantly impact engineering teams. On top of this, minorities face another league of mental health issues like impostor syndrome and microaggressions. Engineering managers can help their team deal with these issues by ensuring access to the right mental health resources.

• Is there an established Code of Conduct?
  Bullying and harassment can take different forms in today’s workplace.
  Engineering managers need to ensure that their best-performing engineers do not take undue advantage of their reputation and walk all over their coworkers. If they’re pushing their best work at the expense of others, that’s a red flag.

• Another major red flag is employees making culturally insensitive or sexually suggestive or offensive comments or gestures without any fear of consequence. Regardless of size, it is crucial to have a well-written Code of Conduct that lays out the standards of professional conduct.
  William suggests implementing a Code of Conduct like Linux kernel developers to improve the team’s culture of inclusivity.

• Is the organizational hierarchy clearly defined?
  While having a flat organizational structure isn’t bad, several prominent companies, including Buffer, Github, and Medium, tried this approach but gave it up.
  Establishing control without a structured hierarchy is difficult. A minority in engineering needs to know the different levels to understand how to execute certain activities. A flat organizational structure creates ambiguity, leading the minority to speculate about the lack of transparency within the decision-making process.

• Is there a clearly defined path to promotion?
  Defining a path to promotion relates to the previous organizational hierarchy point. Hierarchies allow engineers to understand what they need to do to rise through the ranks. How you manage your promotions can make or break your company’s culture.
  And thus, having a clearly defined promotion process with set expectations helps minorities justify the outcome of their appraisal. 

• Does the company invest in career growth?
  It’s not just about finding and hiring diverse talent; it’s also about retaining them. Unfortunately, minority engineers are usually at a disadvantage when it comes to office politics.
  In this scenario, engineers are more likely to stay with an organization when they feel like the company cares about their personal and professional growth. 

• Does the organization make use of diverse recruiting channels?
  Focusing on schools with high academic and social prestige is not the only way to find talented engineers. You can take advantage of automated platforms like Turing to recruit engineers from underrepresented communities. According to William, annual tech conferences like NSBE, Afrotech, Grace Hopper, and Tapia can also be good places to find highly skilled engineers.

• Is there a dedicated DE&I team?
  Having a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team is essential for any organization. If you don’t have one, then promoting diversity and inclusivity within the company usually falls onto the minority engineers in your team.
  Given that this is not a part of their job and consideration of their effort is not part of the appraisal process, this increased responsibility simply adds to the workplace inequality.

• Is there a formal internal membership program?
  A study by Heidrick & Struggles states that 30 percent of women and 32 percent of minorities found their mentoring relationship to be extremely important.
  A diversity-focused internal mentorship program addresses the issues faced by these groups. Furthermore, it focuses on creating equal opportunities for their growth.

Diversity has many different dimensions— age, race, gender, disabilities, and more, and so does inclusivity. Therefore it may be a challenge for engineering managers to measure the success of an inclusion or diversity program. While The Will Test isn’t perfect, it will give you a comprehensive understanding of where your company stands. In addition, you can adapt The WIll Test to address any underrepresented group.

If you’d like more information about The Will Test, you can read it at LeadDev.

Building a business that allows every engineer, regardless of their race, color, gender, or any other factor, to feel included and reach their potential should be an ultimate goal.

Are you looking to hire talented software engineers regardless of their race, age, color, gender, etc., and only on the basis of their talent? Try Turing teams. Turing allows you to hire dedicated software development teams, monitor them, and track their progress. 

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

“Every software development team must engage in knowledge sharing. It’s crucial when bringing engineers on board for your project or firm,” says Balázs Balázs, former engineering manager at Facebook. As a team leader, you must choose the most efficient ways to share knowledge. You should also ensure that the team has the necessary time, resources, and encouragement to participate in the knowledge-sharing process.

Here’s how you can do it: 

Pick the best knowledge sharing methods

Balázs uses two principles to evaluate knowledge-sharing methods and ensure effective communication:

• Prioritize active over passive
  

  Documentation is essential, but organizations often overvalue it, says Balázs. It’s a passive sharing method, and so it doesn’t encourage human i nteraction, he explains. On the contrary, multiple employees interacting with information is an active and dynamic approach to knowledge-sharing. And thus, Balázs prefers this method of active knowledge-sharing over plain old documentation.

• Be pragmatic

  Balázs says that most people don’t consider the cost of documentation; they simply feel compelled to document everything. Knowledge-sharing comes at a price. So, consider your circumstances, weigh the cost and benefit, and choose your approaches carefully. There are no uniform principles here, Balázs adds. 

Encourage engineers to take part in knowledge sharing

It is crucial to foster an environment that encourages employees to ask questions. Create a psychologically secure environment for your team where everyone is free to voice their opinions. Nobody should be ashamed to confess they don’t understand something. Such employee proactiveness will make your knowledge-sharing system less expensive.

Balázs also recommends promoting knowledge-sharing through rewards. For instance, Facebook Workplace facilitates knowledge-sharing through ‘likes’. This way, employees publicly commend members who invest a lot of effort in knowledge sharing. 

The second trick is to make it fun. For instance, Facebook employees get to travel across its global offices for free, depending on the business need. This is a great way to make knowledge-sharing enjoyable.

Incorporate documentation into your onboarding 

Onboarding provides an opportunity to integrate the new employee into the company. Balázs advises organizations to develop their onboarding process in a way that encourages new employees to interact with the rest of the team. 

He also advises new joiners to take part in the documentation process. Leaders can assign the task of updating documentation for an ongoing project to new employees, he explains. This practice encourages them to interact with other team members. And thus, it breaks down communication barriers and makes the new members get over their nerves. 

Your knowledge-sharing process determines the success of your organization. It’s critical to ensure that everyone in the firm lives and breathes it. Create an environment that’s highly open and transparent. If employees are always aware of what is going in the organization, minor inconveniences and bumps along the way will not impact their productivity and morale. 

Are you struggling to vet software engineers/developers on your own? Turing can help. Turing’s automated platform lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Access a talent pool of the top 1% of 1 million+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone. There’s no risk. Turing offers a free two-week trial period to make sure your developers deliver to your standards.

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

Source: Codingsans

All great engineering managers are continuous learners, excellent communicators, and efficient problem solvers. But that’s not all. According to Jean Hsu, former engineer at Google and Medium and the current VP of engineering at Range, a good team leader is much more than that. 

In this blog, Hsu talks about some traits that make up for great engineering managers.

Key takeaways:

Working on the right things for maximum impact

Engineering managers must always prioritize the right tasks for the maximum benefit of the company. According to Hsu: “There are so many things one can work on in an early-stage startup. Thus, it is important to determine where you are most useful and where you want to grow while balancing other things. For example, when I joined Range, I spent the first few months dividing my time between IC work and codebase. However, soon, I realized this was not the best use of my time. Instead, I should be working on top of the funnel acquisition, leverage networks of engineering leaders, and bring them to Range.”

She further adds that there are few processes to support new ideas when you are on a leadership team. Generally, people do what they think is good for the company. “It is basically like a lot of different projects taken by individuals hoping to make an impact. So  I think it is necessary to navigate how you can serve the company as well as meet your targets in the proper manner,” Hsu explains. 

Comfortably dealing with uncertainty 

Engineering managers confidently navigate through uncertain times and motivate their teammates to face the unknowns. Hsu says: “During my time at Mia, I was in a situation where my team was not delivering, and while we were working to fix it, my initial thought was we are failing. But then I realized I am just in a phase where I am unsure what to do to turn this team around, but I will figure it out. Once I had reframed my thoughts, I went from feeling stressed to being excited to tackle this challenge.” 

And thus, she says that it is essential to look for situations that provide the right learning curve to deal with problems in the future.

Hsu further adds that engineering managers must realize there is a lot they can do and a lot they cannot do. Therefore, they must learn to live with uncertainty and treat it as a part of their life. “There will be things that are outside your control, but if you keep stressing over it, then it will be draining on you. So, figure out the things in your control and place faith in your abilities to overcome the challenges. Then, by formulating a strategy that can steer you and your team towards success, you will be showing that you are comfortable navigating uncertainty at any stage,” she concludes.

Preparing teammates for future  

Understanding what employees need not just from their current role but from their career itself is what engineering managers must do to prepare them well. Hsu elaborates further: “When I joined Range, I told all the engineers here that I like being at Range, but at some point, we will move on. [I also asked them that] when they do [move on] what will they be interested in working and how can we best utilize their time here. This practice helped me learn more about their interests and what they would be more inclined to work towards.”

She adds: “Some people want to take the more traditional management path like staff engineer etc. So, understanding the reason behind their decision and learning what interests them about this particular role can help you present the right opportunities.” 

Allowing employees flexible work-life balance

Engineering managers must always try to create a healthy work-life balance for their team. Hsu notes that with many companies changing their policies to have a remote-first culture in place, there will be a significant talent reshuffle. “Employees will prefer companies which have a proper structure in place to facilitate seamless office and remote work. Post-pandemic, a lot of people like me are looking for a healthy work-life balance [with] hybrid work options,” she adds. 

She further continues: “For engineers, since the work is suited for asynchronous back and forth, they can increase their productivity while working remotely. Engineering managers must understand the impact of the policies on the company and employee productivity and well-being. [It is] only then can they retain and attract top talent.”

High-performing engineering managers instill an action-oriented mindset into everything they do. They focus on doing the right things as well as getting things done. They know how to set a vision and convey expectations. But most importantly, as Hsu notes, great engineering managers actively listen to their team members’ concerns and address them by building a cohesive working environment. 

Are you an engineering leader looking to scale your team? Turing can help. Turing’s automated platform lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Access a talent pool of the top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone. There’s no risk. Turing offers a free two-week trial period to ensure your developers deliver to your standards.

Source: Manager’s Club

Growing organizations need inspirational leaders to steer them towards success post-pandemic. According to Facebook’s engineering leaders, flexible work hours, greater empathy, and communication can help organizations guide their teams through this phase. 

This post dives into the key strategies that helped Facebook cope with organizational change amidst the pandemic.

Key takeaways:

Embrace empathy and personalized communication 

Leaders must be more empathetic towards their team members to build a sustainable work culture and ensure high productivity. 

According to Mudit Goel, Director of Engineering for Real-Time Communications (RTC), everybody has a different situation at their home which we must not forget. “I’ve seen kids pop into the middle of a meeting to hug their parents. I’ve seen fire alarms come through, and I’ve seen a person I was talking with attacked by fire ants! We all have to find ways to work with others’ constraints,” he explains.

Jerome Pesenti, VP of AI, agrees: “As leaders, we need to show a lot of empathy for what people are going through and allow everybody to have as much of a normal life as possible, given the circumstances. Being mindful of what teams are experiencing is the key to staying calm, offering guidance, and showing support.”

Lead by example, and don’t hesitate to reach out for help

Jerome further adds that it is essential for leaders to live by example. “Many leaders on my team and across the company have shown that they need to adjust their regular schedule. We need people to find balance in a new and sustainable way. Find what works for you and makes you most productive,” he shares.

Surupa Biswas, an Engineer Director of Facebook’s Developer Infrastructure Group, agrees with Jerome. She says it has been quite a revelation to see people accept help from all corners of the company, and she too has taken to it. Biswas adds: “Facebook has such a big company growing on all fronts; still, all of us here feel like we are a part of a big team working together.”

Fierce prioritization in the face of uncertainty

Prioritizing relevant work and linking it to a core mission can help teams stay motivated. Focusing on business goals for organizational change will not be enough to help teams adapt. Leaders should balance both—empathy and inspiration. 

Ning Li, VP of Engineering of Facebook Apps, says while it is essential to address new challenges, leaders focus on what is critical in the moment. According to her, it is okay to cancel certain projects as long as you focus on what’s relevant. 

Li elaborates further: “For example, our team’s pivot to support small businesses is crucial right now. We’ve reprioritized our work, so our services run well for the businesses that need them. This stays true to Facebook’s mission.”

Share and utilize productivity insights

Sharing and utilizing productivity insights helps employees who are starting in an environment that is new to them. Engineering leaders should also test and sharing productivity hacks alongside their teams.

Goel also shares how leaders can learn from their teams. “Many people are facing similar challenges, and we’re all learning from each other. We tell each other about the different things we’re trying while working from home, and we talk about which one’s work. We also discuss the specific problems we’re facing and share how we’re overcoming them,” he explains. 

For Biswas, creating a new schedule has been very helpful. “I try to have all of my critical meetings between 8:00 am and noon,” she adds. That way, she has more time throughout the day for her personal activities. 

Not just Facebook but organizations worldwide are experimenting with novel management practices to adapt to a distributed workforce. As more and more organizations shift to remote work culture, leaders need to develop new ways of empowering their team members. Most importantly, they need to understand that the future of work requires a flexible, high trust, inclusive and compassionate culture.

Read the complete article.

Are you struggling to recruit skilled software developers since the pandemic? Turing can help. Turing’s automated platform lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Access a talent pool of the top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone. There’s no risk. Turing offers a free two-week trial period to ensure your developers deliver to your standards.

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

A few years ago, Google came up with a hypothesis that managers add nothing but an extra layer of bureaucracy to its system. The organization tried to prove the same with Project Oxygen. Quite contrary to the expectations, the analysis revealed that managers were intrinsic to Google’s success. 

Based on these findings, the tech giant identified five essential characteristics that make up for a great manager:

They are good at coaching and decision making

The command and control style of leadership is no longer effective. The most efficient managers act and think like coaches. They don’t solve problems on the spot but use them as examples to enhance their team’s problem-solving skills. Good managers know that they’re facilitators and not problem-fixers. They consistently share their knowledge with the team members so they can grow professionally and develop leadership skills. 

The absence of solid decision-making can paralyze an organization. And thus, great managers are excellent at making decisions and executing plans. They weigh their options carefully, but once they come to a decision, they stand behind it diligently.

Don’t micromanage. Do create an inclusive environment

Great managers do not micromanage employees but empower them to take control of their projects. Such empowerment gives employees the freedom to explore and learn from their experiences. Research shows that empowered employees have higher job satisfaction than others. Moreover, managers who empower others are seen as more influential and inspiring by their subordinates.

All employees want to feel a part of the broader team mission. And thus, high-performing managers strive to create an inclusive environment where anyone can ask a question, experiment, and propose a new idea. Such managers promote team cohesion through empathy, and they exhibit genuine concern for their team members. They are actively engaged in their employees’ success and happiness at work. 

The best managers are good at communication and collaboration

Effective communication is intrinsic to high-performance management. Often, managers lose sight of this and fall prey to a top-down approach. Great managers don’t just give directives; they communicate performance expectations to employees with utmost clarity. This way, every team member knows their roles and goals in the organization. Beyond this, great managers listen to their team, accept feedback, and implement it wherever possible. 

In a remote business world, collaboration skills are a top priority. Lack of collaboration can hamper a team’s productivity. Great managers know that their team is not an independent unit, and thus, they always find ways to collaborate across teams to enhance the overall output. 

They are productive, results-oriented, and have a clear vision

Great managers make productivity a priority—they are efficient delegators and contributors. They consistently measure results and keep the processes to a minimum by equipping employees with productivity-enhancing tools.

Efficient managers have a clear vision for the organization. They have clarity on the goals and objectives required to get there. Most importantly, such managers include employees in the strategy and vision-building process instead of imposing it on them. As a result, these team leaders foster commitment instead of compliance and lead the team towards a shared vision of success. 

The best managers have critical technical skills and promote career development

Managers increase their credibility when they practice what they preach. As a result, Google believes that great managers have expertise in the same technical skills their employees must possess. This way, they can guide them through tasks and remove roadblocks. 

Lastly, the best managers care about their employees’ careers and growth as much as they care about their own. They provide consistent, constructive feedback to their team members to help them achieve personal and organizational goals. They contribute in ways that help employees thrive in the organization.

Great managers bring out the best in their team members. But being a great manager is so much more than just managing and delegating tasks—it’s a continuous learning process. It is about mobilizing employees, identifying and developing their skills, and channeling them to meet organizational goals.  Most importantly, becoming a great manager is about becoming a great leader and driving other employees towards excellence.

Are you struggling to hire skilled and experienced remote software engineers who are adept in technical and soft skills? Turing can help. Turing’s automated platform lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Access a talent pool of the top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in your time zone. There’s no risk. Turing offers a free two-week trial period to ensure your developers deliver to your standards.

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

Source: Business Insider

A good work culture gives equal growth opportunity and voice to every employee. Daniel H. Pink, a renowned author, who has penned several books on workplace culture, says that employees are happier and more productive when they have autonomy, mastery, and purpose in their work. Successful tech companies across the globe have modeled their culture, keeping these principles in mind.

Let’s take a look at five such companies: 

Netflix: freedom and responsibility go hand-in-hand

Netflix has a unique engineering culture where every developer is accountable for what they write— they run their program and fix issues if any. As a company, Netflix is known for the freedom it gives its employees.

In addition to this, the online streaming platform has no policies on vacations or clothing. Employees take as much leave as they want; the company doesn’t keep track at all. 

Netflix hires people based upon nine values: Judgement, communication, impact, curiosity, innovation, courage, passion, honesty, and selflessness. It believes that when responsible people get freedom, they thrive on it, supporting a culture of creativity and self-discipline. 

GitLab: praise in public, criticize in private

GitLab follows a ‘dogfooding’ process. The employees at the company use their products to see whether they’re useful in real-life situations. What’s more, the company doesn’t overlook boring ideas when they come to the table. On the contrary, it cultivates boring ideas because it believes they result in easy maintenance. 

In addition to this, GitLab envisions a workplace where caring for others is a priority. As a result, the remote-first organization ensures that all employees share positive feedback publicly and relay negative feedback in the smallest setting possible. GitLab also believes in creating a culture of diversity, inclusion, and belonging where everyone can thrive. 

Facebook: adapt and improvise

Facebook believes in ‘releasing fast, failing fast, and learning fast.’ So, taking inspiration from Mao Zedong, the social media giant created a ‘Little Red Book’ that contains the core values that drive the company. For example, one page from the book reads: “If we don’t create a thing that kills Facebook, someone will.” And thus, the California-based company motivates its employees to be a part of their fast work culture, knowing that greatness and comfort cannot coexist.  

Another page from the book reads: “There is no point of having a 5-year plan in this industry. With each step forward, the landscape you’re walking in changes.” Subsequently, the organization believes in creating and working towards 6-month plans based on its vision for the next 30 years. 

Buffer: transparency is the key

Buffer is on a mission to thrive through transparency. All the insights related to revenue, salaries, code, etc., are open to the public on Buffer’s transparency page. One can also look at how its employees’ wages are calculated and give feedback for the same. Buffer even reveals how it spends its earnings. The company states that for every 10$ dollars you pay, just $0.46 is the actual profit. 

Apart from this, the organization is keen on celebrating diversity. It maintains a diversity dashboard that lays out all its employees according to their gender, ethnicity, language preferences, and much more.

In addition to these values, Buffer promotes positivity and self-improvement and encourages its employees to work smarter and not harder. 

Basecamp: work-life balance is essential

Basecamp bases its core values on excellence, experimentation, honesty, and kindness. The organization has less than 50 employees to reduce complexity and promote efficiency. In addition, it nurtures a culture of charity and encourages its employees to give back to the world.

One of the organization’s areas of focus is employee happiness and health. Supporting this concept, Basecamp has summer hours from May 1 to August 31, during which employees observe a 4-day work week from Monday till Thursday only. The company also provides a monthly fitness stipend, massage allowance, and a community-supported agriculture allowance encouraging employees to buy local produce. Similarly, it encourages its employees to have a maximum of 40-hours of work per week and 8-hours of sleep a night.

A strong work culture ensures that good talent is appreciated and retained in the workplace. Freedom, responsibility, transparency, employee well-being, and giving back are some of the significant pillars of the work cultures of some successful companies across the world. Taking inspiration from these values, organizations can build a culture that promotes organizational and employee growth. 

Are you looking to hire skilled, pre-vetted remote developers that will align with your work culture seamlessly? Turing can help. Turing’s automated platform lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Firms can hire from a talent pool of top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone.

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

Source: Techbeacon

What’s the secret to boosting motivation within engineering teams? Equity Theory says Jared Silver, a former growth engineering manager at DataCamp, and engineer for ed-tech companies Mystery.org & Quill.org. 

In this article, we’ll use a famous experiment with capuchin monkeys to understand how Equity Theory drives motivation (or demotivation) in engineering teams and explore proven methods to cultivate enthusiasm in groups. 

Capuchin monkeys understand equity theory; engineering managers should too

Silver recalls an instance where he helped his team raise a million dollars in charity, quadrupling their fundraising goal for the year in the first quarter. In return, his boss offered to buy him a board game, which left him discouraged and deflated.

The Equity Theory of Motivation proposes that fairness produces motivation; managers can achieve high workplace motivation when employees consider reward commensurate with effort. For instance, when offered a board game for his accomplishments, Silver asked himself: “Is a board game sufficient reward for helping raise a million dollars?” 

Equity Theory further poses that an employee views a situation as inequitable when their peers receive superior rewards for the same degree of effort. Silver offers an example of Equity Theory in action: Frans de Waal and Dr. Sarah Brosnan’s famous experiment on how capuchin monkeys perceive fairness. 

In the study, researchers offered two capuchin monkeys cucumbers as compensation for completing the same task. While receiving the same reward, both monkeys were content to finish the job. However, when the second monkey received a superior reward, a grape, the first monkey stopped working. Having recognized inequity in reward distribution, the monkey modified his behavior to suit the prize. 

Two Monkeys Are Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal’s TED Talk

The same holds for engineering teams. Engineers will scrutinize your decisions to allocate resources through the lens of equity theory. If they perceive an unfair distribution of “rewards,” they might follow the example of the first monkey and either work less, pay less attention, or worse, quit.

Identify your team’s grapes and cucumbers

Silver reasons that different forms of reward—be it recognition, compensation, or opportunity—hold varying degrees of importance to various engineers. Moreover, social psychologist Roy Baumeister found that individuals experienced greater satisfaction when performing activities consistent with their values or themes. 

To that end, Silver describes the engineering manager’s primary task as understanding what each team member values and accordingly allocating minimum cucumbers and maximum grapes, i.e., more meaningful rewards and less trivial ones. Silver further outlines two of his favorite ways to understand his team’s needs: 

1. Career narrative templates can spur growth and create lasting change

Silver considers career narratives to be a crucial tool in helping teammates grow professionally. Dr. Richard Boyatzis’ Theory of Intentional Change helped Silver incorporate a roadmap for positive, lasting change within his career narrative template. The three steps of intentional change include:

• Identify who you want to become.
• Find the gaps in your skill-set.
• Develop a plan to bridge such gaps.

Keeping this insight in mind, Silver created a career narrative template to understand his teammates’ current career stages, their long-term goals and objectives, and the career path to get there.

2.   Brag documents can help identify each teammate’s core motivations and interests

Silver uses brag documents, i.e., a record of each engineer’s achievements, to understand how they view and value their work. He begins every 1:1 session by asking teammates to share the accomplishments from the past week that bring them the most pride.

At one instance, when his team completed a giant refractor to payment logic, each teammate put forth different reasons for feeling accomplished. While some were excited about making improvements to technical architecture, others took pride in the business impact their technological innovations would bring in. Such insights helped Silver assign projects based on each engineer’s core motivations and interests.

In sum 

The capuchin monkey experiment demonstrates the importance of equity theory, i.e., the idea that workers like maintaining a balance between their efforts/rewards and the efforts/rewards of their peers. When team members perceive inequity in reward distribution, they change their behavior to restore balance. Since each engineer assigns their unique value to different forms of reward, managers should attempt to understand which rewards motivate which team members by using tools like career narrative templates and brag documents. These tools help you better distribute resources based on each member’s motivations. 

Are you looking to build a team of highly motivated and driven remote software engineers? Turing can help. Turing is an automated platform that lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Your company can hire from a talent pool of top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone.

For more information, visit Turing’s Hire page.

Source: LeadDev

Leading a remote engineering team requires the manager to be on a constant lookout for techniques that can boost efficiency without expanding the cognitive load of the group. According to a survey conducted by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the number of remote engineering teams has increased from 13 percent in March 2020 to 74 percent in March 2021. This rise has sent managers across the globe scrambling for the best ways to oversee their teams.

This article dives deeper into the issues facing remote engineering teams and how managers can help develop bonds and increase clarity and productivity when their people no longer work in the same location.

Prioritize video conferences over messages to build connections

The biggest challenge of remote work is the loss of serendipity from being in the office. Distributed teams miss the opportunity to have casual dialogue that builds bonds between employees and contributes to company culture. In addition, inconsistent communication within engineering teams can lead to inefficient design, development, testing, and release. And thus, efficient communication tools are crucial for ensuring seamless engineering operations.

Though video conferences don’t provide the ease of in-office communication, they are more efficient than text messages as they convey body language and tone. Remote engineering managers should encourage team members to turn on their cameras in video meetings. This way, team members get a chance to better engage with each other. Thus, regular video conferences can aid in creating a virtual culture of connectivity and collaboration among globally distributed teams, reaffirming the message that everyone is working towards the same goal.

Document everything for complete clarity

A remote engineering job is technical and has no room for error. Therefore, the need for clear written guidelines is acute, especially when the team members work across time zones. If the instructions are not clear, the engineering team may lose a day of work waiting for further clarifications. Continuous, back-and-forth cycles like these are highly inefficient and disruptive. Standard instruction manuals, with explicit guidelines, can help avoid such cycles as ample details lead to fewer misinterpretations. Hence, it is essential to document everything as clearly as possible. Similarly, it is good to replace whiteboards with document-based processes as it helps distributed members understand the organizational goals and objectives clearly. 

Developing clarity with written communication minimizes lost work and is a skill all remote engineers should develop. Additionally, engineers should be encouraged to preempt questions by sharing their written instructions with colleagues for honest feedback. This way, all the probable queries are addressed before the message reaches a larger audience. 

Have a detailed agenda for scheduled meetings

Scheduling conference calls or meetings often feels like the simplest way to connect across boundaries. Unfortunately, remote-first organizations often send out generic meeting invitations that may not be relevant to every proposed attendee. Too many of these meetings, when scheduled one after the other, can become overwhelming. Thus, remote teams should spend an adequate amount of time preparing for the video conference calls to make them as efficient and result-driven as possible. It is equally important to evaluate the current progress toward milestones and other action items of the meeting. An explicit agenda comprising an overview for attendees and a list of expected outcomes must be shared among all remote members before scheduled meetings. 

This way, even employees who won’t be attending a particular meeting can get an idea of its scope and share their questions or suggestions concerning the organizer asynchronously. These practices can help make synchronous meetings much more productive and avoid redundancy. As a result, remote teams can hold only those necessary meetings to get things done that otherwise cannot be accomplished asynchronously.

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It takes intentionality and effort to build a solid all-remote engineering team. An excellent remote manager must demonstrate genuine faith and confidence in the abilities of their team and offer support wherever needed. Having regular video calls for engagement, documenting processes and communications for better clarity, and scheduling meetings with explicit agendas can help engineering managers manage distributed teams efficiently. 

Read the complete article.

If you’re having trouble managing your remote engineering team, Turing can help you almost immediately. The automated platform enables companies to hire senior, pre-vetted software developers with just the push of a button. Firms can hire from a talent pool of top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone. With Turing, managing remote developers is simple, efficient, and secure. 

Does your organization care about its employees’ mental health? Does it take measures to improve it? If yes, do your people know? Research suggests that many employees feel their employers do not empathize with their mental health. A Forbes study, for instance,  revealed that 82 percent of American tech employees felt burnout while working remotely. Eighty percent of workers said they would consider quitting their current position for a job that prioritized employees’ mental health. Another study by Oxford’s Saïd Business School found that happy employees are more productive. 

In this article, we’ll look at why employees feel neglected, what’s happening as a result, and how organizations can buck the burnout trend:

Frequent dialogue helps alleviate feelings of isolation

Remote workers report loneliness as their biggest challenge. Research shows that loneliness can drive employee burnout and turnover. Organizations should encourage casual dialogue between employees as it helps tackle the feeling of isolation associated with remote work. Managers should focus on building a culture of connection through regular check-ins. Virtual coffee breaks and “watercooler” channels can help in promoting break-time chatter and collaboration. Virtual lunch hours, where employees log-in and have their meals together, could also be an excellent way to improve social connections. Similarly, using communication platforms to create a sense of community can help develop positive engagement in remote workforces. 

Conduct regular mental health surveys and sessions

Many employees share that they don’t receive the support they need to manage work stress. Mental health surveys help identify signs of mental distress in employees and provide insight to restructure organizational policies to boost talent well-being. Frequent check-ins with experts can help prevent stress and burnout among employees. They can also equip remote employees with tools to create a healthy and productive workplace. Including mental health coverage as part of health care plans can also be an effective strategy to improve workforce mental well-being. Managers should ensure that shame and stigma don’t stop employees from using their mental health benefits to seek treatment. Rather, management should encourage and normalize the use of these services.

Encourage regular breaks and time-offs

Remote employees work the equivalent of 1.4 extra days per month compared to their in-office colleagues. What’s more, remote employees often feel guilty about taking a break from work. This inability to unplug can affect their mental health, leading to burnout. And thus, a remote work schedule must consist of breaks at regular intervals. Thirty-seven percent of remote workers said that taking frequent breaks helped them refocus and relax. Encourage employees to reserve time on their calendars for a workout. Organizations can also offer fitness stipends to help employees cover costs related to their physical activities.

Let employees choose their working hours

Rigid work schedules reduce employee creativity and heighten stress levels. Seventy percent of employees said that flexible working makes a job significantly attractive, whereas 90 percent revealed it helped boost their morale. A majority of them also said that flexible hours helped reduce stress and increase productivity. Flexible schedules allow employees to work when they are the most productive. They establish a healthy boundary between work and home. 

What’s more, they can help in reducing employee turnover in the long run. Managers should work with remote employees to set measurable and achievable goals for these schedules to run seamlessly. Goal-setting will move the organizational focus from the number of weekly hours put in by the remote employees to the weekly output they’re delivering.

Provide mental health training to managers and leaders

Remote workers often worry about their performance because of a lack of facetime and feedback. Furthermore, nearly 40 percent of global employees said no one at their company had asked them if they were doing okay. These respondents were 38 percent more likely than others to say that their mental health had declined since the pandemic. 

Managers must demonstrate empathy with their employees. They should have regular one-on-ones with their team members to see how they are holding up. A sense of community is more likely to develop in organizations where leaders share their experience with mental health. This way, employees feel that there is a genuine and collective interest in their well-being. 

Organizations have a responsibility to support their employees’ mental wellbeing. Workplaces that promote mental health are likely to reduce absenteeism, increase productivity, and benefit from the associated gains. A WHO report states that for every US$ 1 put into scaled-up treatment for employee mental health, there is a return of US$ 4 in improved health and productivity. In addition, practices like flexible hours, regular check-ins, and mental health training can help create a healthy and stress-free work environment.

Turing is an automated platform that lets companies “push a button” to hire senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Firms can hire from a global talent pool of top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone.

One in five Americans leaves their job due to bad company culture. The cost of this turnover is around $223 billion, according to a report on workplace culture. Replacing an employee costs up to 150 percent of their annual salary and has consequences on productivity. What’s more, 88 percent of job seekers say that having a healthy work culture is vital for organizational success. Organizations that want to succeed in the remote work era must ensure that employees feel valued to prevent them from switching jobs for better work culture. 

Key points for building a healthy remote culture:

Idea meritocracy and recognition lead to greater productivity.

Organizations with a culture of recognition are 2.5 times more likely to see enhanced employee engagement. Similarly, 90 percent of workers say recognition motivates them to work harder. Therefore, recognition from managers (or lack thereof) significantly impacts performance and workplace culture.

It is equally important to build a culture that implements and celebrates good ideas. This way, remote employees feel motivated to deliver high performance. A culture based on meritocracy promotes psychological safety, transparency, and permission to speak freely regardless of position. It prioritizes collaboration over competition. It empowers employees equally and overturns the arrangement where ideas from the highest-paid team members receive all the attention. It encourages remote employees to be vulnerable with one another. With such a culture in place, employees can share crazy ideas and freely differ from those they dislike, despite the absence of a shared physical workspace.

Setting clear goals leads to employee stickiness and accountability.

Establishing clear performance goals helps in improving employee engagement and decision-making. Engaged employees are 87 percent less likely to quit their organization. On the other hand, disengaged workers are 60 percent more likely to make errors in their work. 

A high-performing remote workforce is a product of transparency. Leaders and team members are most efficient when they have a good understanding of the company vision. Breaking the vision into smaller objectives can make it easier to track and manage progress. Using this method, business owners and managers can gauge if a goal is on its way to being completed on time or if it needs reevaluation. 

Employees are more committed to their work if they feel like they would hamper the team’s performance by lagging behind. This belief ensures that they are well-aligned with their colleagues’ tasks, leading to greater accountability. 

Daily rituals and regular feedback improve team performance.

Twenty-four percent of employees would consider quitting their jobs due to inadequate performance feedback. As opposed to this, employees who receive weekly feedback are 2.7 times more likely to be engaged at work. To build a healthy and sustainable remote work culture, managers must have regular check-ins with their teams. They should be sensitive to the needs of individual remote employees and find clever ways to keep them engaged. 

While delivering feedback, managers should address how the employee’s current contributions have helped achieve organizational goals and suggest ways to improve them. Good feedback highlights an employee’s strengths as well as weaknesses politely and strategically. Employees are more responsive towards business goals when they feel appreciated by their organization. 

Building a culture of constructive feedback shows employees that their opinions are respected in the workplace. Remote organizations should encourage employees to share feedback on the work culture and make adjustments accordingly. This practice helps in improving employee experience for future hires. 

Turing is an automated platform that lets companies “push a button” to hire and manage senior, pre-vetted remote software developers. Firms can hire from a global talent pool of top 1% of 700K+ developers with strong technical and communication skills who work in their time zone.

For more information, visit the Turing Hire page.