►
Description
The current status quo in running and scaling out teams is to have everyone work in the same or at least in different offices. With the rise of open source, a different model of working and collaborating has emerged that is adopted by more and more companies, especially as they struggle to hire talent, build diverse teams and keep up with economies of scale that haven’t existed before.
In this talk Mathias Meyer, CEO of Travis CI, will share some of our learnings as we grew our team and pushed our team’s distribution further. The talk will focus on how to structure communication in distributed and remote teams, the tools that are available today to increase collaboration while also increasing visibility, and on the challenges of working across multiple timezones and countries.
After this session you will be better equipped with tools that can help your team adopt a more asynchronous and inclusive culture of working, and you’ll walk away with ideas on how to structure communication and collaboration in distributed teams in a way that helps local teams as well.
About GitHub Universe:
GitHub Universe is a two-day conference dedicated to the creativity and curiosity of the largest software community in the world. Sessions cover topics from team culture to open source software across industries and technologies.
For more information on GitHub Universe, check the website:
https://githubuniverse.com
A
My
name
is
Matthias
I
work
at
a
little
company
called
Travis
CI
and
today,
I
want
to
talk
a
little
bit
about
how
we
built
and
scaled
up
and
distributed
and
inclusive
team.
A
lot
of
this
talk
came
out
of
feedback
from
my
team
was
directly
I,
sent
out
a
survey
leading
up
to
this,
so
you'll,
heal,
you'll,
hear
firsthand
stories
of
what
we're
doing
to
to
run
and
maintain
a
distributed.
A
So
you
probably
know
Travis
CI
from
something
like
this
and
you'll
see
those
all
over
github
it's
as
a
continuous
integration
platform,
very,
very
popular
with
open
source
projects
and
we're
a
German
based
company.
And
you
know
a
lot
of
thank
you
like
our
business
is
rooted
in
Germany
and
quite
a
few
of
the
founders
are
from
Germany
as
well.
A
But
as
soon
as
you
leave
it,
you
know
interesting
things
happen
when
cultures,
when
cultures
come
together,
some
of
the
perspectives
I'll
be
talking
about,
are
rooted
in
us
being
a
european
and
german
business.
So
I
apologize
for
those
up
front,
but
I'm
happy
to
talk
about
these
afterwards,
because
is
you
know,
there's
interesting
differences
between
particular
between
work
and
work
cultures,
but
even
you
know
cultural
backgrounds
with
people,
even
though
europe
and
the
US
for
example,
or
both
you
know
both
have
a
Western
culture,
there's
still
very,
very
interesting,
but
subtle
differences.
A
That
I
want
to
talk
about
today,
and
this
is
also
what
I
will
be
focusing
on
in
the
song.
I'll
be
focusing
on
differences
between
the
u.s.
and
europe
/,
germany,
because
it
can
be
a
very
stark
contrast
in
a
certain
way
and
these
examples
that
I'm
talking
about
they
happen
in
different
different
ways
and
different
incarnations
between
different
cultures.
A
So
they're,
just
good
just
good
examples
to
work
off
because
of
all
they've
also
been
an
important
part
of
the
feedback
I've
gotten
from
the
team,
so
our
headquarters
is
located
in
Berlin,
which
is
also
where
I'm
from
and
your
haven't
heard,
the
story
of
Travis
CI.
Yet
it
started
out
as
an
open
source
project
in
2011
it
was
launched
in
February
2011
as
a
CI
platform
for
open
source
projects.
A
Had
you
know
very,
very
small
adoption
couple
hundred
projects
were
using
it
by
the
end
of
two
thousand
two
thousand
eleven
a
couple
of
thousand
by
the
end
of
2012
and
now
were
well
a
couple
of
ten
thousand
that
are
using
it
every
day.
It
was
originally
developed
and
worked
on
by
a
very,
very
active,
open
source
community.
So
that
is
that's
truly,
where
our
roots
are.
An
open
source
is
a
good
example
in
a
good
model.
A
In
a
lot
of
ways
to
build
a
distributed
team
on
as
the
business
were,
bootstrap
and
the
company
was
created
or
officially
created
in
early
2012,
because
people
were
were
wanting
to
use
the
same,
the
same
thing
that
we
have
for
open
source.
They
wanted
to
use
that
for
their
internal
projects
as
well
and
from
the
very
GetGo
we
worked
in
a
very
distributed
fashion,
as
I
said,
like
we
one
of
the
early
builders
of
of
Travis
CI,
whereas
someone
from
Germany
and
someone
in
New
Zealand.
A
So
from
the
very
early
days,
we
had
these
interesting
times
own
problems
and
time
zone
problems
are
usually
you
know
the
most
interesting
ones,
and
we've
tried
to
stick
with
those.
It
hasn't
always
worked
out
well,
but
you
know
we're
getting
back
there.
One
thing
I
want
to
quickly
talk
about
is
the
name,
so
everyone
know
Bob
the
Builder.
A
A
Occasionally,
though
we
get,
we
have
interesting
interesting
things
happen
where
we
cover
a
lot
more
time
zones.
So
the
one
extreme
is
in
New
Zealand
time
zone
and
the
other
knee
other
extreme
is
the
hawaiian
time
zone
that
happened
earlier
this
year
and
it
effectively
lit
to
someone
to
people
on
our
team
being
almost
at
the
exact
same
time
of
the
day.
But
two
different
days
apart
and
we
have
we
have
one
of
the
one.
A
So
there's
interesting
problems
that
come
up
with
that.
So
out
of
that
team.
Well,
we
have
ten
different
native
languages
and
in
total
there
15
different
home
countries,
I'm
always
staggered
by
these
numbers,
because
it's
still
only
40
people,
it's
still
a
relatively
small
team
when
we
started
building
it
out
as
a
company
and
we
started
hiring
her
first
people
we
saw
interesting
things
happened.
A
We
had
a
distribution
that
was
fairly
focused
on
europe
and
berlin
in
particular,
and
we
also
we
had
a
couple
of
people
over
here
in
the
US
was
actually
two
in
the
very
in
the
very
early
stages,
two
to
three,
depending
on
how
people
move
back
and
forth
and
a
couple
of
those
you
know:
move
move
to
Berlin
because
I
want
it
to
be
closer
to
the
team
and
over
time
we
realize
we
need
to
push.
We
need
to
push
again
for
a
more
remote
team.
A
First
and
foremost,
because
we
have
a
really
really
large
customer
base
in
the
US
and
we
didn't
feel
like
we
could
serve
them
all
enough
when,
with
every
one
of
us
being
in
being
in
Europe.
So
one
of
the
one
of
the
goals
for
us
a
higher
remote,
was
to
build
out
a
team
over
here
in
the
US.
That
team
now
is
fairly
big.
That's
quite
a
few
of
them
here
and
the
other
goal
we're
looking
at
was
to
increase
the
diversity
in
our
team
in
the
early
stages.
A
So
this
talks
about
inclusive
team
and
I
want
to
talk
about
why
and
why.
This
is
important
for
diversity
in
this
I'm
going
to
quote
my
friend,
yan
Leonard,
who
just
very
recently
put
this
up
in
a
talk
that
he
gave
to
have
diversity.
You
need
to
build
an
inclusive
company
culture.
You
cannot
have
diversity
when
you
don't
think
about
all
the
people
that
work
in
your
company
and
try
to
include
as
many
of
them
as
possible
and
I
would
extend
that
a
little
bit.
I
would
also
say
that
include
an
inclusive
company.
A
A
Not
everyone
is
required
to
work
from
the
Berlin
office
and
many
people
just
work
from
home,
even
though
they're
in
Berlin,
because
an
office
can
still
be
a
big
distraction,
so
it
neither
is
everyone
actually
required
to
come
into
the
office,
it's
handy
for
us
and
for
some
it's
not
as
handy
for
others.
It's
just
you
know.
Basically,
everyone
is
free
to
structure
the
day.
However,
they
like
and
where
we're
also
add
now,
is
that
we
have
fifty
percent
women
on
our
team
and
of
those
of
those.
A
Thank
you.
It's
direct
result
of
the
work
that
we've
done
in
the
last
two
years
and
this
basically,
what
I
want
to
talk
about
today,
so
I
want
to
walk
talk
about
three
challenges
when
it
comes
to
both
distributed
and
inclusive
team.
One
of
the
first
one
is
very
obvious
one.
Its
communication
well
you're,
not
in
the
same
office,
interesting
things
happen
and
there's
interesting
things
you
need
to
take
into
account
and
want
to
talk
a
little
bit
about
those.
The
second
one
is
different
cultural
backgrounds.
A
As
I
said,
we
have
15
different
15
home
countries
and
people
currently
residing
in
nine
different
countries
with
10
different
native
languages.
That
leads
to
well
interesting
things
that
come
up
but
they're.
You
know
things
that
we're
dealing
with
I
want
to
talk
about
those
as
well,
and
the
last
one
is
how
building
an
inclusive
culture
affects
the
company
culture
as
a
whole.
So
I
want
to
start
with
communication.
A
We're
using
a
lot
of
you
know
we're
using
a
good
set
of
tools,
but
the
most
important
one
that
we're
using
our
github
in
slack.
So
I
want
to
focus
a
little
bit
on
each
because
we
use
a
couple
of
other
tools.
We
use
Trello.
We
assume
in
google
hangouts
for
video
communication
for
face
for
face-to-face
chats.
We
use
Google
Docs
here
and
there
and
we
use
screen
hero
for
screen
sharing.
A
Zones
show
up
at
a
reasonable
good,
tight,
a
reasonably
good
time
of
day
and
make
sure
that
everyone
actually
can
do
that,
especially
when
it's
when
it's
spending
nine
different
time
zones
select,
we
use
it
also
heavily.
For
you
know:
Chet,
ops
and
I
want
to
talk
a
little
bit
about
that
and
for
Incident
Response.
Those
have
become
very
interesting
use
cases
of
what
we're
doing
with
it
and
how
that
affects.
You
know
working
in
a
distributed
team
from
the
chat
up
the
perspective,
all
of
our
deploys.
A
We
run
all
of
us
a
lot
of
our
stuff
on
Heroku.
All
of
our
deploys
happen
in
slack
and
in
slack
everyone
can
deploy
that
the
ability
of
to
deploy
for
everyone
on
the
team
helps
increase
both
visibility
of
what's
going
on,
of,
what's
going
out
of
production
or
to
staging,
but
it
also
removes
entrance
barriers
for
new
developers
and
for
junior
developers
in
particular
like
when
you
know,
when
you
join
a
new
team,
you
don't
have
to
learn
any
new
Chloe,
complex
workflows
and
as
a
junior
developer,
you
also
don't
that's.
A
After
now,
after
narratives
was
fixed,
a
lot
of
engineers
hop
on
and
also
send
responses
out
to
customers
for
paging.
We
still
use
a
good
old.
You
know,
good
old
mechanisms
know
if
you
knew
this
guy
he's
very
big
into
beepers,
so
we
still
get
pages
via
phones,
but
one
thing
we
recently
started
doing
is
to
rework
our
on-call
rotation
and
specifically
to
take
location
into
account.
So
this
good
combination
of
all
these
Europeans
there's
Europeans
available
at
this
time
of
day.
A
One
thing
that
set
out
that
we
set
out
to
do
set
out
to
have
from
the
very
early
days
of
our
company
was
have
to
have
a
blameless
culture,
because
nobody
benefits
from
blaming
people
for
mistakes
or
for
production,
outages
failures,
happen
in
complex
system
and
travis.
Ci
is
a
fairly
complex
system.
There's
a
lot
of
moving
a
lot
of
moving
parts
involved,
and
you
know
Gamble's
and
mistakes
are
a
normal
part
of
business
and
it's
okay
to
make
those,
and
the
other
part
of
that
is
it's
very
easy.
A
To
put
you
know,
a
problem
that
happened
to
unto
a
single
person,
but
in
complex
systems
that
includes
technology
and
businesses
and
organizations,
you
usually
have
more
than
one
contributing
factor.
There's
no
there's
no
such
thing
as
a
root
cause.
There's
always
multiple
things
coming
together,
compounding
into
whatever
happens,
and
the
good
part
about
a
blameless
culture
is
that
it
fosters
learning
and
learning
continuous
learning.
A
Continuous
improvement
is
one
of
our
company
values,
so
we
cannot
have
learning
when
we
focus
on
mistakes
at
single
people
on
the
team
make
so
the
other
part
I
want
to
talk
about
is
github.
Our
roots
are
in
open
source.
Travesti
I
started
out
as
a
github
project,
and
so
we
do
this
day
organized
a
lot
of
things
around
github
and
get
up
issues
in
particular,
and
also
most
of
our
development
happens
out
in
the
open,
because
wall
Travis
CI
is
still
at
the
very
core,
nope
and
source
project.
A
A
lot
of
our
components
are
open,
so
you
can
follow
along
a
lot
of
the
development
that
happens
on
wall
across
all
the
repos
that
we
have
available
as
open
source.
In
addition
to
that,
we
use
internal
issue
tracking,
to
you,
know,
manage
backlogs
to
manage
work
in
progress
and
a
couple
of
other
things.
A
So
timezone
specific
is
an
interesting
one,
because
we
now
have
teams
that
work
in
the
European
time
zones,
but
also
in
an
American
time
zones
that
do
handoffs
that
do
a
handoff
from
one
time
zone
to
the
other,
and
that
leads
to
interesting.
You
know
an
interesting
pinball
effect
like
someone
finishes
a
piece
of
work
documents,
what
they
finish
and
pick
it
up.
It
gets
picked
up
at
the
other
time
zone.
It's
pretty
neat.
A
What
we've
also
done
is
we're
using
we're
using
github
issues
for
onboarding
for
onboarding
new
employees,
our
remote,
the
people,
remote
people
are
a
team
they
can.
They
can
come
to
the
ER
Berlin
office
for
onboarding,
but
that's
optional.
We
can
flow.
We
fly
ever
one
in
if
they
would
like
to,
but
not
everyone
is
able
to
do
that.
So,
the
first
weeks
when
someone
joins
the
team,
they
work
with
their
team,
specifically
and
after
that
we
put
them
into
customer
support
rotation.
A
That
happens
usually
remote
and
has
a
long
history
of
at
Travis
CI,
because
in
our
company
pretty
much
everyone
does
customer
support
and
everyone.
Our
team
should
feel
the
customers,
pain
and
customer
support
is
just
a
key
part
of
our
company
in
our
product
and
it
helps
bring
a
lot
of
visibility
of
what
our
customers
are
experiencing
to
everyone
on
the
team,
we're
also
using
github
issues
to
book
travel.
You
know
like
conference
tickets
in
particular
conference
flights.
A
A
So
you
know
when
we
have
plans
when
we
need
plans
in
the
office
or
when
someone
we
need
new
toilet
paper,
even
there's
an
issue
that
gets
filed
here
and
someone
will
buy
the
toilet
paper.
So
the
neat
thing
about
github
issues
and
having
most,
if
not
all,
of
the
repositories
that
we
have
available
to
everyone-
is
that
it
creates
a
lot
of
visibility.
So
people
can
basically
opt
in
to
what
they're
interested
in
I
want
to
get
updated
about.
What's
happening
with
our
office.
A
Yet,
but
that's
something
we're
working
on
and
overall
distributed.
Teams
need
to
accept
that
there's
a
tax
in
communication,
not
everything
can
be
instant.
Things
need
to
be
asynchronous,
and
that
can
be
you
know
it's
can
be
a
change
when
you
have
a
question
or
when
you
have
an
issue,
there's
not
always
going
to
be
someone
around
to
answer
that
question.
Immediately
so
they
can
be
lags
or
delays
in
feedback
on
pull
requests
or
feedback.
You
know
on
on
Britain
form
and
feedback
in
writing
general.
A
It
requires
a
lot
more
work
and
effort
than
giving
feedback
and
giving
feedback
on
something.
Someone
is
working
on
face-to-face
or
an
aura
forum,
and
the
thing
is
that
this
is
completely
normal,
open
source
projects
where
you
know
where
we're
coming
from
wear
like
a
ton
of
projects
are
using
get
up
for
and
why
is
it
not
normal
in
companies?
A
One
of
the
question
I
would
like
you
to.
I
would
like
to
leave
you
with
today,
so
the
general
rule
for
distributed
teams
is
that
it's
not
written
down,
it
doesn't
exist.
Any
decision
that
happened,
face-to-face
or
you
know,
happened
between
two
people
that
were
just
talking
about
it
and
that
decision
is
not
documented
anywhere.
It
probably
happened,
but
not
enough
people
know
about
it
most
of
the
time
and
we
use
Google
Docs
a
lot
to
collaborate
around
written
text,
but
we
also
use
get
up
for
work
us
to
do
the
same.
A
So
as
part
of
that
feedback
survey,
I
got
an
interesting
summary
of
this
of
what
had
what
is
going
on
with
communication
in
distributed
teams
effectively
less
oral
communication
means
you
have
more
accidental
documentation
because
more
things
are
tracked
in
slack
channels
or
get
up
issues
they're
already
written
down.
It's
just
definitely
a
benefit
and
they're
a
lot
easier
to
turn
into
docs
than
having
conversations
over
the
last
two
years.
A
We've
improved
our
internal
documentation,
a
lot
I'll,
you
know
in
part
based
on
accidental
documentation,
but
it's
still
not
enough,
and
if
it's
not,
you
know,
if
it's
not
channel
enough,
this
can
lead
to
a
lot
of
scattered
documentation
as
well
and
lots
of
good
at
github
repositories,
with
lots
of
issues
that
are
not
always
easy
to
edit.
You
know
it's
not
always
even
easy
to
find
stuff
in
there
and
one
thing
to
work
on
that
and
that
we
started
this
year
is
to
have
a
builder's
manual,
which
is
our
internal
documentation.
A
We've
we've
had
a
lot
of
active
wiki's
over
github
repos
and
we
started.
We
started
converging
all
of
them
into
a
single
source
of
truth,
which
includes
stuff
like
in
our
company
values
and
our
product
roadmap
bits
about
our
culture,
security,
engineering
and
all
that
kind
of
thing,
because
even
distributed
teams
need
centralized
documentation.
A
A
The
other
interesting
github
repo
that
were
that
we're
using
is
called
how
we
work,
and
that
is
I,
look
at
it
as
our
culture
repo.
This
is
in
this
repo.
We
talk
about.
You
know
things
that
are
going
on
in
the
company
or
what
can
we
improve
in
our
company
changes
in
our
development
workflow
or
we
have
discussions
around
cultural
things
or
processes
workflows.
For
example,
we
had
a
discussion
about
opening
salaries.
We
had
discussions
about
code
of
conducts
for
both
internal
and
for
open
source
projects.
A
We
had
discussions
about
improving
our
on-call
rotation
and
that
leads
to
interesting,
hangs
like
the
discussion
about
our
team
values.
As
you
can
see,
it
started
all
this
okay,
it
started
last
year
at
2015
and
I
started
this
discussion,
and
a
lot
happened
in
that
I
basically
closed
this
issue
just
earlier
this
year,
and
this
is
like
so
this
is
this.
This
whole
discussion
has
70
comments
was
like
an
interesting
progression
of
well
years.
Weren't
thinking.
What
do
you
think?
So
there
was
lots
of
clay.
A
There
was
lots
of
opinion
sharing,
there's
like
both
existing
and
new
employees
shared
their
opinions.
Well,
this
is
how
I
view
our
values-
and
this
is
you
know
this-
is
how
I
view
our
bellies
and
new
employees
were
saying.
Well
yeah.
This
actually
sums
up
our
bellies
pretty
well.
This
was
a
great
example
for
a
wood.
A
Redhead
has
called
inclusive
decision-making,
which
effectively
means,
if
you
want
to
make
a
decision,
you
make
sure
that
you
get
as
much
feedback
from
your
team
as
possible
before
you
before
you
end
up
making
that
decision
and
inclusive
decision
making,
in
particular
benefits
a
lot
from
having
many
and
diverse
perspectives
and
like
we
do
that
in
several
ways.
Some
you
know
some
people
send
out
surveys.
A
You
know
it's
like
I'm
working
on
this
thing
and,
like
I,
have
a
couple
of
questions
that
I
would
like
to
have
answered
from
as
many
people
on
the
team
as
possible
to
make
sure
that
I
can
take
as
many
things
into
your
account
or
that
I
can
take
all
of
the
all
of
the
teams,
perspectives
into
account,
and
then
people
start
building
whatever
the
end
result
is
supposed
to
be
based
on
that,
you
know,
collect
more
feedback
from
the
team
and
eventually
the
decisions
made
well.
This
is
it.
A
This
is
what
we're
doing,
but
usually
what
happens
is
this
is
not
you
know.
The
end
result
is
not
stuck
it's
a
version
of
what
we
consider
it:
a
version,
1
point
0
and
effectively
we
keep
iterating
on
it.
The
feedback
cycles
are
a
lot
longer
when
it
comes
to
cultural
issues,
but
I
still
consider
it
something
like
Katinas
integration
for
company
culture.
A
A
We
had
the
we
had
a
custom,
slack
emoji.
We
have
a
lot
of
those.
We
had
a
custom
slag
emoji,
which
was
called
freedom,
and
that
was
alias
to
the
US
flag
waving.
That
was
like
an
internal
meme
where
you
know,
which
you
know
we
were
just
joking
about,
come
traveling
to
the
US
Kenny
experience,
all
the
freedom
was
just
an
internal
meme
and
you
know
no
offense
in
all
of
that.
It
was
just.
A
It
was
one
of
those
things
that
developed
in
early
stages,
but
didn't
feel
you
know
you
have
to
just
had
to
explain
to
people
and
one
of
our
employees
someday
turn
that
embed
custom
emoji
into
this
because
and
I
quote,
freedom
isn't
associated
with
a
single
nation,
but
with
freedom
struggles
of
all
people,
so
that
happened
completely
out
of
the
blue.
That's
whatever
employees
just
changed
and
let
everyone
know
well,
I
did
this
thing
and
here's?
A
The
other
part
there's
a
very
recent
one
is
well
this
is
there
a
slack
profile,
and
you
know
based
on
discussions
and
things
that
happened
recently,
one
of
our
employees
added
a
gender
pronoun
box.
You
know
this.
We
have
a
lot
of
boxes
now
under
its
lack
profile,
but
this
was.
This
is
a
very
recent
addition
just
to
make
sure
that
everyone
can
both
set
up
and
that
everyone
can
find
out.
A
What
is
the
preferred,
pronoun
that
someone
would
like
to
be
would
like
to
have
used
when
you
know,
then,
when
someone
is,
someone
else
is
referring
to
them
when
someone
else
is
talking
to
them,
and
so
the
important
part
of
that
is,
and
about
also
having
inclusive
cultures,
that
you
need
to
empower
everyone
to
be
able
to
make
those
kinds
of
changes.
Inclusiveness
starts
at
the
top,
but
everyone
should
be
able
to
change
the
culture
to
be
more
inclusive
and
which
what
goes
along
with
these
memes
is
that
scaling
distributed.
A
Culture,
in
particular
requires
that
you
documented
these
internal
memes
like
the
freedom,
one
or
other
things,
I'm
sure
everyone
here
who
works
in
a
company
can
can
think
of
a
beam
or
an
acronym
or
a
technical
term
that
not
everyone
might
know
about,
and
that
can
be
confusing
to
new
employees.
It
can
be
confusing
to
junior
employees
in
particular,
and
it
could
it
can
make
them
feel
very
included
if
they
don't
know
what's
being
talked
about,
so
we
started
documenting
them
in
in
our
internal
documentation.
A
So
the
other
thing
we
recently
started
doing,
which
was
also
a
mole,
a
change
request
effectively
from
one
of
our
builders,
was
Friday,
lightning
talks,
so
every
two
weeks
and
for
the
purpose
of
sharing
and
learning
more
of
what
each
of
us
is
working
on
and
what
each
of
us
you
know
is
thinking
of.
We
now
have
these
bi-weekly
talks
where
people
can
say:
hey
I
want
to
talk
about
this
and
they
have
like
15
minutes
where
they
can
talk
in
front
of
the
wall.
A
Whoever
wants
to
join
in
unlisted
to
join
in
and
listen
to
the
talks,
and
then
it
that
is
very
cool
that
just
started
very
recently
and
I,
unfortunately,
didn't
haven't
had
time
to
join
in
on
those
yet
but
I'm
very
much
looking
forward
to
that
and
the
last
bit
that
we're
doing
is
a
company
off-site.
This
is
not
a
very
special
thing,
for
you
know
for
any
normal
company,
but
for
a
distributed
company.
A
Excuse
me,
it's
still
very
important
and
very
valuable
to
get
everyone
on
the
team
together
at
least
once
a
year
and
have
them
hang
out
together.
Work
together,
learn
together
and
just
have
a
good
time.
So
we
have
our.
We
have
ours
coming
up
in
a
couple
of
weeks
and
I'm
very
much
looking
forward
to
that.
So
one
of
the
challenges
I
want
to
talk
about
is
cultural
diversity.
A
As
I
said,
we
have
people
from
very,
very
different
countries,
and
that
leads
that
leads
to
challenges.
Is
a
wrong
word:
it
leads
to
learnings.
We
put
it
that
way
and
one
someone
from
our
team
member
one
of
our
team
members
put
together
in
that
survey
that
I
put
out
and
to
describe
how
distributed
teams
and
diversity
play
together,
and
they
said
that
distributed
teams
increase
the
chances
of
diversity
due
to
having
people
from
different
cultures
and
backgrounds.
A
Now,
there's
a
lot
of
companies
are
distributed,
who
you
know
are
distributed
throughout
the
US
or
say
throughout
Europe,
but
as
soon
as
you
go
beyond
that,
there's
a
lot
more
that
you,
after
your
team
and
it's
a
great
benefit
and
I
want
to
focus
a
little
bit
on
two
sides
of
that
one.
You
know
the
side
of,
as
I
mentioned
earlier,
Germans
and
the
differences
between
German
and
US
culture.
So
this
is
a
German.
A
Germans
tend
to
be
more
reserved,
maybe
slightly
awkward
I,
don't
know,
I'm
a
German,
so
I,
maybe
I'm
awkward.
We
don't
really
small
talk
a
lot.
You
know
we're
very
direct.
We
just
either
tell
you
that
if
we
don't
like
something
will
tell
you
if
we
disagree
with
something
will
tell
you,
whereas
in
the
u.s.
it's
a
little
more
like
this.
A
You
know
over
here,
you're
a
lot
more
enthusiastic
about
things
and
you're
also
a
lot
more
polite,
and
there
was
an
interesting
thing
that
happened
just
a
couple
of
weeks
ago,
which
I
just
want
to
outline
as
how
these
things
are
different.
So
we
were
just
going
to
leave
this
up
because
it's
so
good.
A
We
were
at
a
leadership
retreat
a
couple
of
weeks
ago,
and
so
we
did
a
survey
on
something
and
like
it
was
a
team
survey,
and
so
there
were
like
a
couple
of
questions
and
these
were
the
options,
so
it
was
basically
you
could
either
select
good
grade
or
needs
improvement,
so
as
Germans
we're
like
well,
this
needs
improvement
and
then
the
the
answer.
That
was
the
answer
to
a
lot
of
things,
because
it's
like
you
know
we're
engineers
for
German
engineers.
It's
like
this
can
be
a
lot
better.
A
There's
a
lot
more
that
we
can
do
in
this,
and
so
the
the
facilitator
then
sent
wow.
This
is
where
this
looks
really
bad.
Everything
needs
improvement.
You
should
be
at
great,
or
at
least
it
good
at
all
of
these
things
and
it's
Germans
were
like
well.
If
you're,
you
know,
if
need
improvement
is
really
the
worst
thing
then
we
actually
need
a
scale
like
this
needs.
Improvement
to
Germans
is
more
it's
in
the
middle.
A
You
know
this
is
ok,
but
we
can
still
work
on
it,
and
so
our
next
survey
is
probably
going
to
have
more.
You
know
more
different,
more
different
options,
so
yeah
that's
derivitive
or
slides.
It's
a
lot
more
complicated
than
that,
but
yeah.
That
was
an
interesting
experience.
We
now
have
a
much
better
understanding.
What
needs
improvement
means
means
really
really
bad
the
thing
about
the
distributed
communication
and
writing
in
particular,
is
that
tone
and
nuance
can
look,
can
get
lot
easier,
because
text
doesn't
convey
emotions
very
well
and
you
can
read
things
into
it.
A
You
can
say
all
this
Ludo.
This
sounds
really
passive-aggressive
or
this.
You
know
this
person
must
be
really
upset,
but
you
know
this
and
there's
a
possibility
that
emotion
is
actually
hidden
in
that
in
text
or
that
it
can
be
interpreted,
interpret
interpreted
into
the
text
and
in
addition
to
that
parsing
language
in
real
time,
especially
for
non-native
speakers
can
be
a
real
challenge.
A
So
there's
a
lot
that
can
get
lost
in
writing
and
I'm
pretty
sure
you'll
have
you
had
that
moment
when
you
were
in
a
slack
channel
and
you
were
writing
something,
and
you
saw
that
thing
at
the
bottom,
rich
that
several
people
are
typing
which
caused
you
probably
a
lot
of
stressing.
I
really
need
to
get
my
answer
out.
A
It
should
really
say
several
people
are
frantically
typing,
because
that's
that's
usually
what
those
people
are
doing,
and
so
so
again,
like
a
cool
someone
from
our
team
member
switched
a
handle
on
trazer
around
and
said
never
attribute
to
malice
or
stupidity
that
which
is
adequately
explained
by
a
missing
perspective.
This
is
a
perfect
summary
of
written
communication.
A
You
can
read
a
lot
of
things
into
it,
but,
or
you
can,
you
know
see
you
can
shake
a
little
there's
a
lot
of
emotion
in
this
or
this
person
must
be
really
upset
or
I'm
really
offended
by
what
that
person
wrote,
but
usually
or
in
quite
a
few
cases,
it's
a
missing
perspective.
It's
like
I,
you
know
you
don't
fully
know
you
don't
have
the
entire
context
of
that
person
might
be
thinking
or
experiencing
or
feeling
at
any
given
time,
and
the
additional
problem
in
there
is
that
English
is
a
very
ambiguous
language.
A
There's
I
mean
even
I
get
confused
by
how
many
how
many
different,
like
you
know
in
meanings,
a
single
word
can
have
English
as
old
as
our
company
language,
and
it
always
has
been
because
we
started
out
as
an
open
source
project.
But
if
you're,
not
a
native
speaker,
meanings
can
get
easily
lost.
If
you
haven't,
you
know,
watch
a
lot
of
friends
or
you
know
other
these
kinds
of
these
kinds
of
TV
shows
that
teach
us
Europeans.
You
know
the
way
is
over
here.
A
Those
meanings
can
it
easily
lost.
Colloquialisms
is
not
something
that
you
know
in
Europe,
we
learn
in
school
where
I
learn
Oxford
English
in
school,
and
it's
like
well.
This
is
the
exact
meaning
of
this
word,
there's
no
other
meaning
and
that's
it,
and
especially
as
a
native
speaker,
it's
easy
to
interpret
or
read
into
things
that
non-native
its
native
speakers
right
things
that
you
will
that
you're
more
aware
of
you
know
that
you're
aware
that
there's
fillet
there's
this
other
meaning
of
this
word.
A
You
know
we're
really
really
famous
for
compound
words
and
I
have
a
long
list
of
a
good
collection
of
compound
words,
and
this
is
one
of
the
shorter
ones,
and
so
one
thing
that
has
been
established
as
a
practice
that
our
team
is
asking
questions.
It's
okay
to
ask
questions.
Are
a
team
no
matter
what
it
is
about
like
if
you
have
a
question
about
a
certain
part
of
a
wrap
or
a
code
base
or
a
production
system,
or
if
you
think,
there's
a
certain
meaning
that
some
person
might
not
be
completely
familiar
with?
A
You
ask
more
questions
and
it's
okay
to
do
that
before
you.
They
assume
anything
double
check,
double
check
and
ask
that
person
to
verify
that
you
know
what
you
understood
is
actually
what
they
were
trying
to
say
a
lot
of
the
time
you
know
going
back
to
the
Hanlon's
razor
interpretation,
a
lot
of
the
time
they
probably
didn't
and,
as
the
last
part,
I
want
to
talk
a
bit
a
little
bit
about
work.
Culture
because,
like
weird
German
company
and
you
know,
work
cultures
are
interested
different
and
interesting
ways
as
being
a
German
company.
A
A
So
building
a
company
in
building
a
company
in
different
over
different
countries
or
even
different
continents
can
be
very,
very
challenging
in
that
way
because
all
of
these
work
cultures
clash
together
and
you
need
to
figure
out
a
way
how
to
deal
with
them.
So
one
example
is
like
Europeans,
take
two-week
vacations
easily
and
they're,
just
like
at
the
end
of
their.
You
know
the
day
before
they
go
on
vacation
is
like
I'm
out,
you
know,
don't
call
me,
don't
email
me
I'm
not
going
to
read
it,
whereas
in
the
u.s.
A
it's
a
lot
more
common
to
take
long
weekends.
Take
your
phone
you
check,
email
I
will
do
an
anonymous
survey
after
this.
Who
still
does
those
things
and
well,
you
know,
there's
other
weird
stuff
that
because
shops
are
closed
in
Germany
on
Sundays,
which
confuses
a
lot
of
people
are
visiting
Germany.
But
you
know
that's
an
entirely
different
thing
so,
two
years
ago
we
you
know
we
had.
We
had
what
you
know
what's
considered
here,
an
unlimited
vacation
policy,
which
was
we
had
it
for
very
different
reasons
than
it
is
usually
used
over
here.
A
We
actually
did
one
want
people
to
take
vacations
and
not
have
to
worry
about
how
much
they
have
to
take,
but
two
years
ago
we
we
figured
out
that
you
know
it
doesn't
actually
happen
a
lot
as
often
as
we
would
like.
So
instead
we
mandated
vacation.
You
know
it's
a
very
normal
thing
in
Europe,
actually,
like
you
get
25
days
per
year
in
Germany,
for
example,
and
your
employer
has
to
well
go
out
of
their
way
to
make
sure
that
you
can
actually
take
them,
and
so
we
change
it
to
that
and
quite
successfully.
A
So
I
would
say
at
this
point:
I
actually
want
to
run
it
a
little
bit
of
data
analysis
on
how
we're
actually
doing
this.
But
this
is
one
of
those
examples
where
we
took
something
that
we,
you
know.
We
know
from
European
work
culture
and
rather
than
you
know,
do
different
things
in
different
countries.
We
say
it.
This
is
someone
that
everyone
should
be.
It
should
be
getting
in
the
company
because
in
clusive
work,
culture
doesn't
just
come
from
giving
your
people
perks
and
great
benefits.
A
A
The
other
example
is
salaries
and
cost
of
living
when
you're,
even
when
you're
hiring
in
the
like,
even
if
you're
spreading
out
over
the
US.
You
have
interesting
differences,
especially
between
here
and
other
parts
of
this
country,
and
salaries
in
Europe
are
very,
very
different
levels
and
over
here
as
well.
So
one
thing
we
build
we
started
working
on
last
year
was
a
salary
framework
which
addresses
location
factors
in
different
countries
and
even
a
different.
You
know
some
parts
of
the
country
as
well
as
normal
market
rates
and
what
we
also
build.
A
In
addition
to,
that
is
a
career
ladder
to
say,
to
give
people
an
indication
of
how
can
I
well
effectively?
How
can
I
get
a
raise,
but
even
more
important
than
that?
How
can
I
personally,
how
can
I
personally
grow
in
the
company?
What
kind
of
what
what
needs
to
have
and
what
do
I
need
to
do
what
what
kind
of
berry
Nina
do?
A
So
summing
up
we're
not
a
remote
first
company,
it's
wasn't
necessarily
our
official
goal.
It
is
one
thing
that
we
strive
towards,
but
there's
still
a
difference
between.
You
know
our
Berlin
HQ,
which,
because
we
have
in
HQ
we're
actually
extending
the
HQ,
because
we
hired
a
couple
more
people
in
that
and
over
there
and
the
remote
employees
occasionally
yeah.
So
if
people
in
the
Berlin
HQ
sometimes
get
different
kind
of
perks
as
people,
it
would
work
remote.
A
Speaking
about
distributed
teams
in
general,
your
mileage
may
vary
vulvar
I.
This
is
all
of
this,
has
worked
for
us
and
distributed
teams
aren't
really
for
everyone,
but
they
can
help.
You
build
a
lot
more
inclusive
and
a
more
diverse
company.
That's
the
learning
that
we
took
away
from
this
and
I
want
to
thank
you
to
my
team,
because
they've
been
incredible
and
giving
me
insight
into
the
actually
coming
up
with
this
talk.