GitLab Working at GitLab, 13 Jun 2019

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Creating a Mindful Remote Startup Culture

Description

To attend one of our AWS Loft events, visit us at one of our many locations - https://amzn.to/2F74h00
GitLab Co-founder & CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, Thrive Global CTO, Cheryl Porro, and InVision Vice President, Mike Davidson, sit down with Stewart Aslop, host of the Crazy Wisdom podcast, to discuss the relationship between building a startup and the unrelenting stress it can cause on remote workforces. From meditation apps to 20-min virtual coffee chats, the panel shares how getting creative and instilling a mindful culture can break down silos with remote teams, promote employee well-being, and boost engagement.

The panel also shares lessons learned from their journey to a high-growth startup, tips on staying motivated, and how to stay sane in a not always sane environment.

A

Really packed panel here, we've got Cheryl who's sort of the book sales fourth force for about seven years, and now, starting at a smaller company, got Sid who's built a company of about five hundred people. All remote and he's got some really interesting things to say about that and then Mike from envision, which is also another remote company, the kind of the best practices. It's really excited to do this.

A

My I started this because I run a podcast called crazy wisdom where I interview people about the relationship between stress and creativity, and so this is kind of in that. In that whole vein, so we're gonna start with just some brief introductions for everybody. So she'll go and get started with you sure.

B

I'll, go real, quick on that, so I actually spent 13 years at Salesforce started as an engineer was with the Salesforce comm for about eight and a half years before, moving to Salesforce org.

B

So at Salesforce, org I grew of a team about started about six engineers who a hundred all distributed mostly working from home, and we build products for nonprofits and educational institutions and then in September, I left that comfy job and went to a startup and I'm growing a distributed remote team starting at six we're at about twenty and our you know and we're focus on stress and burn up. So that's it's nice to be able to walk the walk.

C

I'm Sid I'm, co-founder CEO at get laugh before get laugh. I had a few other companies. The most interesting one to talk about is where we build recreational submarines. U-Boat work still sells the most recreational submarines. Every year, we'd get lap, it got the project, it's an open-source project. It got started by my co-founder in the Ukraine. He was living in the house without running water, but his biggest priority in life is having better collaboration, software at work. They didn't have money for it and they want to toast it themselves.

C

So we made that three hundred people joined him. I saw the project, I thought: hey there, there's a business there and I sent him an email like hey. Do you mind if I start comer realizing your project with the implied subtext? So if you're not gonna get anything and he sent an email back, that's totally fine, just make it more popular, which I thought was great, and the year later he tweeted out. I want to work on, get live full-time and we agreed on the price.

C

I went to the local Western Union money office and they said you want to wire money to the Ukraine from the Netherlands. Do you know this person, or is this someone you met over the Internet?

C

That's how we got in business together, get Lappas.

C

When we came to you when I came to the US, it was nine people we fit in one house and one car amount of you during Y Combinator, but now we're 500 people in more than 50 countries without a headquarter. That's.

D

Great, my name is Mike Davidson I am a head of partnerships and community at envision a design prototyping company software. Hopefully people in this room use. We may be the largest all remote company in the world, we're pretty close to some more. It's awesome automatic we're sort of eight we're somewhere between 800 and 850 people at any. Given time, no offices anywhere, even our CEO, works out of his apartment in Brooklyn. So this is the first time that I've been in a remote situation.

D

I've never been a remote employee before I've been there for about seven months. So it's a new situation for me. I'm a designer by trade I got my I got my start in print design. Then I moved over to interactive design worked at ESPN, Disney started a company called news. Vine back in the day invented a font. Technology called sipper that maybe some people in this room have used and then I built.

D

The design team at Twitter in San Francisco several years ago, worked there for about three and a half years and then got I, wouldn't say: I got to the burnout stage, but I got close enough where I wanted to like leave my job and move back up to Seattle and take two and half years off, which is what I did so I think it nice two and half year vacation and now that envision and I'm excited to tell everybody would have learned about remote work. Yeah.

A

I'm really interested in getting into that a little bit later, because both Sheryl and you have taken sabbaticals and I want to talk about the importance of rest and how important that is for creativity but sure let's go ahead and get started with you. What is your definition of burnout so.

B

When I think about burnout, so I actually suffered burnout five years ago and when I think about it, it is you know it sort of manifest as inability to get a good night's sleep being really tired, being grouchy, very irritable, maybe having sort of physical manifestations I had a physical manifestation when I get really stressed out, I get like eczema and I had it erupt sort of all over my face during that period, so my body was just screaming you're burnt out and I think in particular it startups and being at one now.

B

You know: startup burnout is about trying to do too much with too little and then not necessarily having the tools in place to be able to kind of manage that for sure yeah.

A

And that Keith were boy another guest on my podcast. He talked about the importance of having good outputs for your input. So if you keep on putting inputs in without getting outputs, that's a key sign that you're, probably experiencing burnout and then said you mentioned on earlier podcast that you had a stressful situation, maybe not burnout, but there was sort of a physiological thing that happened. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah.

C

At a certain point, I was pretty stressed out: I had to let go an executive who was otherwise like doing great, but it wasn't the fit for the business and I was super stressed out about the situation and it cost me to tense up. I said like this: behind my computer and at a certain point, I I couldn't look less, oh right anymore. My like my neck, totally tensed up, they thought I went to the massage and they thought I was joking.

C

When I said how much I could turn left and right, it makes matters worse. I also was walking very little because we're all remote I did everything from my apartment and there's a condition where your feet start hurry. If the soles of my feet hurt like I, walked on my hands like I, couldn't walk for more than like 100 meters and then my repetitive strain injury also started playing up, which is always like a bit of a bore boundary condition. So I felt, like my body, was like just letting me down like that.

C

I really had to learn how to separate I'm not responsible for the result, like it's a started, I'm responsible for kind of how I deal with things and like I'm responsible for my actions that I cannot, on my own, be responsible for the result. There's a lot of things that factored into that and I had to make that distinction and get more comfortable with stuff not being the way it should be. So.

A

A key thing to essentially remember is to know what you can and can't do, basically what you are responsible for them, where you are yeah.

C

Don't don't make your responsibilities bigger than it is, although you're the CEO you're responsible for everything at the company there's also a bit of Stoicism worried the world will fight things that you you cannot. You can only be responsible for how you react to them, not that they happened in the first place, absolutely I.

D

Think it's I think it's really interesting to hear everybody's different definitions of burnout, because I was having a one-on-one with one of my designers this morning and I told him hey I'm doing this panel on burnout today, Danny could burnout stories what's burnout and he was like what are you talking about burnout? Are you talking about fatigue, because those are two different things to me.

D

He said like fatigue is generally what you feel you you feel like you're getting burned out, but actually you're, just getting fatigued, and it's interesting to hear like his definition of burnout was like you.

E

D

You get to the point that you can't actually do any work anymore and you don't want to do anymore what work anymore. So your creativity is SAP. Your energy is sapped.

D

It goes far beyond just being tired at work, so like I, think when people colloquial colloquially refer to refer to burnout, sometimes they're, just talking about I'm bored with my job or I'm, a little tired and like what I'm hearing from you like it's interesting, because it's like physical symptoms, right and so like I, think that's a really good kind of line to draw like if you're, if you're, feeling physical symptoms from from the work that you're doing like it's time to kind of step back and look at. Why you're feeling that way! Yeah yeah.

A

And actually looked at the definition by WebMD of burnout and they also talked a lot about alcohol use if you're using alcohol a lot to kind of like stylee.

D

Recommend rest great burnout, avoider yeah.

A

Instant energy, so Mike I'd love to talk more about like triggers like what are your stress triggers if you have any or yeah.

D

I think, like I'm, a pretty low stress guy honestly, like I as I've gotten older I've, gotten less stressed out as a person I think as a high schooler I was like clinically stressed, I was like a really bad. Kid got suspended from school all the time like borderline criminal honestly and then, when I got to college, it was like alright I'm in control of my life, a little bit more like alright. This.

D

This feels a little bit better and they're, like with each with each new job that I've taken I, think I've just become more chill I. Think some of that is just general like rotting of the brain honestly guy. Getting when you get when you get older, you know, music doesn't sound quite as good anymore.

D

The drugs aren't as fun as anymore as they used to be, but but the upside of that is the the the the lows don't hit you as much anymore, at least for me either like I feel like I live a little more I have like more ballast in my life right, like I. Don't allow the lows to affect me as much as I used to I.

D

Also, unfortunately, probably don't think that, like as you go through life, and you have all these stressful experiences, especially early on your career, is like maybe you're doing your first startup, you may think like this is gonna kill me and like really, it's probably not gonna kill you, but it's gonna teach you coping skills for every other job that you have for the rest of your life and and you're gonna. Get to the point where, like nothing scares, you anymore, I think that's!

D

The goal really is like to get to a point in your career where, like you're, never surprised and nothing scares you anymore, but in terms of like triggers for me, I, don't know like it always freaks me out a little bit. What I know that there are teams at the company that are not aligned? So if I know like engines off working on something over here and design, is working off on something we're working on something totally different and they don't even want to get to the same end.

D

State like I, just see that like trainwreck happening in advance- and it really kind of like stresses me out so like lack of alignment, I think within teams and around the company is sort of my biggest like stressor, would say so.

A

Said I want to take that to you, how would you kind of establish alignment with your teams? How do you work on that for your team's.

C

The first thing is to prevent alignment as much as possible like prevent the need for alignment and not prevent alignment, but the need for alignment. So we've taken great care to make sure that certain functions are. We have a clearly defined on the overlapping responsibilities, for example our sales development representatives. They do kind of outbound marketing.

C

They approach people, whether they're interested in getting loud many people place them in sales, which makes sense because they are great future account representatives, so they're kind of a talent pool for that they need to be close to the to their account people, but what they're really creating is creating pipeline and they're creating pipeline is a marketing job. A marketing should be able to make that trade-off.

C

Am I gonna create pipeline by purchasing more ads or by doing hiring more STRs, and if you put that in the same function, they can make that trade-off without having to consult with another function. So that's the first thing like wherever you can don't have the need. Then, of course it's very important that the company as a whole is aligned.

C

If you, if you look, if you google, get lap, okrs you'll find our OPRS and see how we try to make sure that that's everyone is working on similar initiatives for the quarter that support each other. Another thing is what we do is stable counterparts. A lot of companies have kind of dotted lines where you're kind of reporting to this person, but also kind of to that person. We want to be super clear that you have only one boss, so you can go, go, get lap or chart.

C

You can find our entire or chart there's only a single line allowed, but what we do try to do is to make sure that, although the designers report to design manager- or in our case we call them you access they report to you, UX manager, they tend to work with the same engineers.

C

So everywhere we try to have stable counterparts, and if you, google, get lap product you'll find like we've defined many different teams, I think we have probably 30 teams or something to find there now and in every our different groups and in every team. There's like people are either all part of such a group, or they they are the UX person that helps the people that make version control. So if people are always dealing with the same counterpart, there's much more opportunity for trust and trade-offs and context in communication and.

A

It seems like transparency is a huge way that you guys kind of establish alignment among the company as a whole. You guys have these company meetings like All Hands meetings, all through YouTube, basically right yeah,.

C

So, for example, want to keep everyone informed on what's going on in the company and four times a week, we do a group conversation or someone has a big slide deck about. What's going on and in that function can be, finance can be, sales can be an engineering function and they don't present the slide deck. They can't record a video front if they want, but- and we spent 25 minutes with a Google Doc where people wrote down their questions and they answered those questions.

C

That's how we spend our time in that meeting and like about half of them. I live streamed to YouTube in public, say if you, google, get app unfiltered you'll find the channel and it has like multiple posts every day and about half of them. You can only find if you're logged in because there's some confidential information like customer names and things like that, we're not. We have to come up with someone else before we can make it public. So we keep it private.

D

I just want to +1 your statement on stable teams like I, think there are a lot of companies out there who have the opposite mentality. That I told me agree with with your philosophy on that. There are companies that think that tech workers should be interchangeable, robots where you should be able to just kind of like move. This engineer over here move this designer over here move this p.m. over here.

D

They should all be able to work with each other and, like my experience, has been like you lose a lot of time by doing that, like the trust that it takes time for a team to build trust among amongst themselves and if you're gonna split people up every three months and make them more with different people, you've just lost all of that trust that you've built over those three months, and so we can't treat our co-workers like robots.

D

We have to treat them like human beings and I think that is still that's a philosophy that I think is still undecided, especially in this area of the world. I think another thing: I'm.

C

D

At Amazon I'm, pointing it I'm putting it this area, the tech, the tech.

C

World I think another thing: what we're seeing is we want people, especially remote to be a manager of one take responsibility for their own work, so we don't do project managers. There are no project managers, it's up to the people in the team to do that together and if that doesn't work, we see it as a problem with the the people that have to work together, but we're not going to install a boss, because then you get a cross-functional team and if you have a cross-functional boss, that means your boss doesn't really understand your work.

C

That means your boss cannot assess your output, and that means your boss is going to steer by input and that's what we want to avoid want people to be value according to their output number, not how many hours they put in or how late they stay up. So.

A

What's what's your thoughts on that show coming from you know, you've got experience in a big company and then it's more it's more yeah.

B

Yeah yeah I I used to sort of have this um issue where I had some colleagues that at the big company worked at that I would say that thought of people as washers or dryers or washer/dryer combination. You know it's just everyone was just like a robot that you could kind of put in place and that I definitely not the point of view that I sort of approach, my work and my work with engineering teams, because we all bring our whole selves to the office every day and I try to create.

B

So what gets me very excited is when every individual can really bring their authentic selves and be who they are and feel like, respected and understood and loved and cared for and then produce amazing work together and you know, do great things. That's sort of my goal so I'm a bit touchy feeling as far as the engineering managers go I'm all within the bounds of what's acceptable, of course, but that's sort of my approach and I have I think by fact of being distributed. You have an opera.

B

They have a very diverse team like a lot of diversity of thought backgrounds. You know religious backgrounds, etc. So I actually love that challenge and work really hard to make sure the team, for example. If if someone is like afraid of someone else or say put off by someone or maybe they had like a slack fight and there's like an escalation, it's always just like listen I want you to meet together, get to know each other like understand each other. Okay, I know you're all like each one of you.

B

I've spent time with our good people well-intentioned. If you just get to know each other, everything's gonna be okay and then after you do that, if you're still having issues come to me, but yeah, the slack fights we gotta stop right.

B

D

One like really easy thing to do if your company sort of sort of is on the like. Treating people like robots side of the fence is stop using the word resources. We're talking about human beings, don't ask for engineering resources. As for engineers, don't ask for design resources, ask for designers, it's a really simple thing and it gets people thinking in terms of human beings. If you want resources, you want books, you want machines, you want like inanimate objects, but if you're asking for more people, ask for more people, that's.

A

A really good plan so thrives mission. Thrive, Global's mission is to promote well-being and created mindful workplace. What does it mean to be mindful in a business context, sure.

B

Sure so you know it's where thrive global. We are we're sort of a you know: a media technology company. That's really trying to bring science back, behavior change towards ending the stress and Berna. You know globally. So it's a pretty big problem, and so what's exciting is my team. You know the team that I'm growing right now is really focus on building the platform and the apps that are gonna drive, behavior change, so what we're doing is actually pretty tricky.

B

You know getting people to take actions and steps that are good for them and, generally, you know I think there's like a number of about 10% compliance which, with such programs and apps and things because you know it's easy for us to kind of slide back into what is our normal status.

B

So it's an interesting and compelling challenge for us and then we're bringing this to companies where we're trying to kind of walk the walk and live what it means to thrive. So we talked about it as thriving at thrive and it's not about being chill or laid-back it's. You know. The message is for people when this is what is with me and I'm excited about, because it's not that I'm trying to kind of be super.

B

Lay back like I want to make stuff happen, but I want to make stuff happen, not at the expense of my health and not at the expense of my happiness, not at the expense of my relationship with my daughter. You know, there's a lot of caveats to that. So mindful business for us is about looking at the data looking at the science that shows that stress and burnout leads to poor decision-making. It leads to lack of employee engagement.

B

You know attrition health issues, and so it's kind of stopped a time to stop the madness is the way I look at it. Tactically for us. You know we practice mindful meetings, so no tech in meetings unless you're the presenter or you're dialed in remotely so all laptops it or closed phones are put away. You know we take a lot of notes I like to draw so it's actually kind of works.

B

For me, we practice, oh the other, mindful meetings mindful moment, so we're encouraged to speak up when we're kind of overwhelmed or feeling burnt out encouraged to like take a moment in the day to you know, breathe deeply. We practice mindful communication, so this one is really important. We call it compassionate directness and so it means sort of just like airing stuff immediately and not you know, thinking in the back, your head, like, oh, that, was really dumb and then go telling your friend at the watercooler like Oh someone. So did something dumb.

B

You just kind of say: hey that thing you did and give the feedback, but it needs to come from a place of compassion and care, and that's where trust comes in right and that, if you you in order to give those messages to people, you have had to invest in building a trusting relationship. So, yes, having kind of teams that know how to work together and trust, each other is really I. Think important for performance, yeah.

A

You bring up a good point. Is that I think we're all here to essentially create something of value, and how do we create something of value without losing ourselves and losing our health and so said? Could you talk a little bit? How you've created this, this massive company, you and you and your partners- have created this massive company? How have you kind of walked that line of making sure that you take care of yourself so that you don't kill the Golden Goose? Yes,.

C

C

Have we want managers of one, so we want people to to manage themselves them their attention.

C

We do some things may be a bit different, for example, in meetings. Ours are almost always via zoo meeting. We use Google Docs extensively to kind of whiteboard together, there's a lot of indentation, but for example, we also make it explicit that you don't have to be in that meeting like if you just want to lurk in that meeting and do something else do email, that's totally fine. We don't require your attention, we're not the boss of your attention. That's up to you where you place your attention and we don't think it's bad.

C

If someone asks you a question is ok, you repeat: I was doing something else, I think in general, there's there's too much time spent in meetings and wasted in meetings. I. Think one of the great thing about remote meetings is that you can do something else. If that part of the meeting isn't relevant to you and in the end it's about effectiveness like if you can do more with fewer hours. You're gonna have more hours in your own time.

C

Someone sent me slack message at the end this morning who worked at a company. He worked at a company before that you'd think based on the product. They saw that you do. They do remote really well, but he quit that company came to us because he thought we did remote better and he was he wanted to confirm that. Yes, that was the case. He has more time with his family now ever had and I think that is the flexibility to kind of take time off.

C

Word take time off when there there is a need for that and be flexible, and that is really great yesterday, my my DEA that supports me that supports me. Cset. Can I take tomorrow afternoon off and I say we have to call it is like I said.

C

Why are you asking me this, like all our directions, are super clear, you're, the boss of your own time, you it's fine, that you inform me that you take time off, but why it's really bad, that you're asking me she's, like oh yeah, sorry I know, but it's it was so different that my last job, so it takes, takes a while to get used to it. I think, especially like the competing I'm working longer hours is something very ingrained, especially in North America.

C

So, for example, in our thank you channel, we say you can thank people, but you can never thank them for working outside of office hours, because we don't want people to compete on that, and it happens from time to time. It's not that nobody ever works outside of office hours. Don't thank them for that in a public forum, because that's we don't want that example to be set. Yeah.

A

And that's a really good point, which is essentially, we've got to start measuring output as opposed to input which you've mentioned a couple times and that's something that goes against a lot of what we're taught here, which is especially in San Francisco, which is measure input. I'm gonna, basically signal to people that I'm that I'm putting all this input in when it doesn't really matter as much yeah.

D

I'm a couple one was: it was interesting hearing you talking about like not working. You know after hours too much we actually we actually keep Sabbath hours at invision. So basically the entire company closes at 12 p.m. every Friday and technically you can be work. I guess after that, but.

E

D

Pretty much nobody's doing work from 12 p.m. Friday to sundown Saturday Sabbath is generally viewed, viewed as a Jewish thing, but, like you, don't need to be Jewish to observe a Sabbath and, like it's I, think it's becoming a more acceptable, interesting thing to try if you're looking to sort like change up your workweek a little bit. So it's been interesting for us like it's. Definitely a perk like when people. When we talk to people about joining the company will eventually keep Sabbath hours. People are like wow I've, never even heard of that.

D

So it's it's useful for us. It kind of gives everybody the last half of Friday off, which is really cool to you, especially in the summertime.

D

So that's like one suggestion, I, also interesting about meetings to events and it's interesting coming from a conventional company where you're working on-site- and you have so many meetings all day, moving to a remote environment that makes heavy use of slack there's so many times where I find myself like I'm typing out and I'm typing out a recurring I'm typing out an invitation to a recurring meeting that I'm about to start with a group of people and I'm going to say: hey, let's, like touch base every two weeks about this thing and then like I, get to the end of the thing before I actually create the meeting I'm like.

D

Why am I even creating this meeting I? Don't we don't need to meet every two weeks? We can just like get each other updates and slack, and you don't realize how many times you are just like creating these rituals of meeting that possibly aren't necessary with the technology that we have today. I have a love-hate relationship with slack like there are times that I love it. You know for things like that, and there are times that I absolutely hate it.

D

I have no idea if it's making me a more effective or less effective leader, but that is one thing that it does, that it does really well. Is it eliminates the need for some of these ritual meetings that we get bogged down with a lot at work.

A

What are your thoughts Cheryl on meetings and thrive, and particularly because you half of your team here is in San, Francisco and then half of your team is in New York, correct, yeah,.

B

Yeah I mean I would say we use meetings mostly to connect. You know, as because we are kind of these various groups and we kind of come together and the idea is you, you know you opt into the meeting you can't opt out, but wanting to give your full attention. So a lot of the times we're just surfacing problems and working on problems together and get them getting perspective. So there's not your typical status updates. I. Don't really do that.

B

Those are more kind of sent out and we make use of slack and then you know and just regular sort of stand-ups and things like that. So we try not to have too many meetings there. We started to adopt the like vayzosa memo idea because they're, you know they're, given the media aspect of the business. There are a lot of writers, and so we tend to kind of write everything out. So not a lot of slides, more memos, I'll and that's actually been kind of nice.

B

For me, you can really put your thoughts all out on paper. You know, send it out to your colleagues.

B

They can kind of read it and think about it, get questions prepared and then you can have a very quick discussion as opposed to what you were describing right, where the traditional thing where the person sits there and presents the slides and reads from the slides and then you know you spend an hour kind of being presented at how valuable is that we're trying to shortcut that experience as well and really use the time more for discussion and helping each other out. Somebody.

D

I read a tip once from somebody that said like you, should rename all of your meetings to review. So, basically everything is a review and if you have nothing to review, you have nothing to meet about yeah and like forces you to have an agenda, it forces you to think about, like what meetings are actually interesting and which ones aren't I haven't tried that myself, but it was so.

A

I just want to ask the audience a raise of hands how many of you guys are either in a remote work or are considering remote work so yeah more than more than half that's really interesting and how many of you have experienced burnout.

A

That's really interesting. So then said I want to talk to you about hiring practices. Maybe we can get some good examples of hiring practices for remote companies and how that works specifically and yeah.

C

I think a great thing about remote is that you can hire everywhere. We certainly try to do that.

C

We won one of the contentious. Things is sometimes what do you pay? Do you pay local rates, or do you pay everyone? The same rate we think paying market rates, so local rates is the better thing. Otherwise, you're, probably overpaying some people under paying other people and both have problems.

C

It's a big advantage to hire any like 90% of the.

C

World.The in San Francisco in the hiring centers, it's super super hard to find people all the big companies are opening satellite offices and all the usual places like Berlin, but for a lot of people. If you want to live somewhere in the mountains an hour or two away from the big town, your options are way more limited and for those people like the option to work at like a fast kong startup we're one of the few options around. So we have a very great proposition.

C

So it's a question of reaching a lot of people with that message. It's also I think, although that succeeds, and we get like 13,000 applications a quarter. We do augment that with reaching out to people most people most great. A lot of great people are not actively searching, so we do have recruiters everywhere, but we also have recruited in in Russia in Africa, like also in the less common places. What.

A

Happens if one of your workers moves to another place, that's jeepers, yeah.

C

So they have to renegotiate with the company. We don't. We do not owe them a contract, they can stay their intent and we'll try to make an offering and so far we've been able to make that work every single time. But it's not an entitlement except for one thing: if someone wants to move to the Netherlands after working for us for a year and they're, not on a performance improvement plan, that is that right.

A

D

I was curious to ask both of you like. Have you you've been in a remote situation longer than me, like, I have found that we have to hire generally pretty senior people, not all principle level. People necessarily, but like it's hard for me to imagine, managing a like a very junior designer in a remote environment, because I found that at least in design, more junior people need to be checked in on every day. I need personal.

D

You know a lot more personal coaching, a lot more kind of like you know, just in person face to face time- and you know it's nice because, like I had a company like envision, we have so many senior people that we've been able to hire because of what you said. You can hire all around the world, but I also worry like what does that mean for all the younger inexperienced people who are growing up?

D

As you know, it experienced engineers and experienced PM's and experienced designers like if the world is moving to like a mostly remote model. What is where, where are their jobs, like is? Are they going to be kind of crowded out by the fact that we can now find really senior designers in the Ukraine and in Russia and in Israel and in Hawaii?

D

You know wherever actually place, probably very expensive, but uh you know I when I think about like the beginning stages of my career, like I treasure the in-person relationships that I had with like amazing. You know creative directors and I think about what that would have looked like if I was talking to them remotely on a zoom call and I, don't know if I would have enjoyed it. I don't even know if I would have stayed in the field so like.

D

If we, if we really are building a world that is gonna, be mostly remote or largely remote soon. How do we make sure that we're still bringing up our art, the the new generation of people into our field, I? Think.

C

We struggle with this, but I, don't think for the remote reason we were I was in such a debate on Twitter I think two weeks ago and and someone from the company who saw it chimed in like he's, had a better he'd learn more at get laugh quicker than at other companies. So I think you can totally learn people I teach people remotely. The the problem we face is that we're growing really really fast, so engineering focus engineers focus on product will grow from 200 to 500 this calendar year.

C

That is like more than doubling it's two and a half. That's that's pretty rapid pace and we find that we do that growth that requires so much focused on hiring and other things that we're not able to have internships or junior people. That's very sad! That's the biggest source of more diverse people into the industry, but also into our company.

C

So that's a big challenge, so one hand I, hope the growth doesn't slow down, but when it slows down, this will want to be one of the great things that come straight, that we'll have more time for that and.

A

So Cheryl you're you're you're in a smaller team now and you guys, are hiring right. What are your thoughts on this hiring situation? Yeah.

B

I mean similar, let's see because there were a lot of different topics. Let me think of what was is more relevant I mean similar for us just due to our size. It's hard to bring on Margie near people and I do miss that having come from a big company, oh we could, you know I think we were having hundreds of interns every summer and I love that and just sort of like growing our own talent was just so satisfying.

B

You know, I had interns, I'd start at Salesforce who ended up, you know still being with the company a decade later. You know principal engineer: CTO is like things like that, and that's very gratifying to to see people grow in such an amazing way, so I'm hoping that we'll get there that will continue to grow and I'll have the opportunity to to bring on folks that are newer in their career.

B

Otherwise, you know: I'm I I see a lot of benefits to remote, hiring and remote work for us. You know, for when I was at Salesforce, org and now at thrive global. You know there are so many tools to be able to kind of do the interview and in sort of understand where people are.

B

You know, communication skills are really key. I love your this notion of manager of one. We really look for folks that are going to be able to kind of manage their time that are very motivated. You know, communicative diligent, you know hard-working humble, like these are some of the qualities and we've had a lot of success. Just bringing on folks from like all over that are very productive.

B

You know in doing great, so I think I see only benefits and they get to also benefit from just sort of like being out well, there's pros and cons. You know you're sort of outside the kind of office swirl that can happen which can help for focus in in productivity. But then sometimes you miss out on that on that office of connection. So we do try to bring everyone together periodically. We just had all the engineers in town a few weeks go, you know from all over, so that's helpful, so.

A

You guys do in person kind of quarterly yeah and say: do you guys do the similar thing right? You guys have kind of whole team meetups in a specific location to get that.

C

A

C

Do that every nine months we bring everyone together for a week. We do it in a fun location. Like last one was in in in South Africa and Cape Town. We had it in Crete. Next, film will be in New, Orleans and.

D

C

D

For giving me ideas, because our last two were in Phoenix in LA, so those are next on my list now.

C

Okay, cape town, cape town was amazing. We try the only time you can use a projector is at the opening and the closing ceremony during the week. The only people who can use a projector are our customers who sometimes attend. Oh, but it's we don't try to make. You sit through presentations the whole day. So for two three days we do excursions. We go visit like the the the scenic spots, go, go, explore the town and then for three days we do kind of an unconference and the topics are not contributed by management.

C

It's mostly like individual contributors who propose things, and then people kind of vote or say what they want to attend. There's no things. You have to attend you're free to attend what you want and it's to to focus that week, not on like rolling out a new sales plan or stuff like that, but focus on creating those connections between people that they can then carry in to the new year and then do all the other stuff we do to promote connections.

C

For example, we encourage people to do coffee chats where they just plan 25 minutes on someone's calendar, and we we have a daily breakout Cole, where you chat with the same group. But you talk about life outside of work to make to serve as kind of an Abu stew, dose informal connections.

A

So my I've read a lot of your blog posts and one of them talks about you talking to talk about yourself as an extrovert, and you were worried about making the switch to to a remote thing because it seems like that would be a place where an introvert would thrive. How can you talk about some of the challenges you've faced and how you dealt with them? Yeah.

D

Yeah I mean I, like being around people, I mean I like being in rooms full of people I like being in offices. What can I say and so I never really wanted to work remotely and when I was interviewing at invision, every single person that I interviewed with said the same thing, including Hillary, in the back of the room.

D

She said you, you aren't gonna, think you aren't, you think you're, not you think it's not gonna work and you think it's you're, not gonna like it, but three weeks in you're, never gonna want to work anywhere any other way again, and it's true like when you can. We can chop off in entire portions of your day that you would have spent like driving to work.

D

Me I shower five minutes before my first meeting of the day, like probably too much information but like it, is amazing how much of your life you can get back when you're working remotely, but you do but to your point, like you, do sort of miss that human connection and there's only so much of that human connection that you can get like through Xoom calls.

D

So you know my biggest advice, for that is like you've got to change up your surroundings, like we have a, we have a policy division where we give everybody hundred dollar coffee cards every month and they just reset to a hundred bucks every month and the idea is like we want to encourage you to change up your your your work surrounding. We don't want you working at home all the time we want you working at home. Sometimes we want you working at the we works that we have around different cities.

D

Sometimes we want you working at your local coffee shop, so you can meet local people in your neighborhood that you don't know we want you meet. We want you going across town. If you feel like going across town and working at another coffee shop, I feel like you can still. You can still get that kind of human connection. If you don't like make yourself a shut-in inside inside your own house, so like I, think if you're thinking about working remotely and you're your idea working remotely is I'm just gonna.

D

Let go too might go into my basement and then eight hours a day there and then come up and be done like that. That's gonna be miserable, so I don't think that that's a healthy, like a healthy environment at all, but I will say like to you know to sense point like we do the yearly All Hands meetings as well. We call them.

D

I are ELLs in real life and there's they're so fun, because you feel like you're meeting 800 of your long-lost friends, and it's just a week of like connection and and fun and II say it was a time that I said this was a few weeks ago and I said myself like wow I wish I could work in physical proximity to these people every day. Wouldn't it be great and then it might next thought was like none of these people would be working at this company.

D

If it wasn't a remote company, I wouldn't be talking to somebody from Nigeria I wouldn't be talking to somebody from China I wouldn't be talking to somebody from you know. Indonesia I wouldn't be talking from to all these people who come from all around the world because we wouldn't work here if we lived in safe air if we were located in San, Francisco or another or another company, so you sort of gotta like take the good with the bad. It's definitely not all good I.

D

Also I, don't know about how you how you to feel about this, but like I, have learned to tolerate slash, sometimes like video meetings. I always hated them now, I kind of like them, but I'm like binary, if I'm as soon as I reach. My like third hour of video meetings in the day, I'm like this is terrible. This sucks I don't want to do any more of these, so everybody has their own kind of like appetite, I guess for video meetings.

D

Mine is maybe like two and a half three hours, but but I think that's. A large part of this panel, too, is like none of the advice that you get from. Any of us is gonna, be Universal everybody's different, so don't go into. You know don't go into this thinking that there's like a silver bullet. That's gonna work for everybody in this room and.

A

That also applies to stress as well yeah.

D

A

Nobody's stresses are the same totally. It's totally individual thing, so I wanted it open up to you Cheryl before we start taking questions to the audience. What are your thoughts on this kind of introvert and extrovert, adapt to remote work.

B

Yeah I mean you know, for me: I think, regardless of introvert expert. What's important for me is like I was saying earlier, just creating this opportunity for everyone we kind of show up as their authentic selves I've. Actually, you know when I first started in my last experience. Having a remote team and I had a lot of remote direct reports which was new for me, I thought it would be a little bit more challenging and sort of maintaining the relationship, but I've got I found some ease in creating connection through video. That I didn't expect.

B

I spent a lot of my time on video calls I'm. Okay with it, you know that's just sort of my I. It's been many years now and have been able to like have these amazing moments like I.

B

Had one moment where, with someone was a I was new to the company I'm on the team and and I'm having a video chat with an engineer who is upset and we're supposed supposed to talk about architecture and I would in there was getting this like back at me and started to talk about architecture, and then I was like okay.

B

This isn't gonna go anywhere, I need to figure out what was going on and so I just sort of like pierced through this screen and was like okay, what's going on like I need to know, and then I always whenever I get into like a deep conversation with someone I try to imagine, there's like a bowl in front of me, because I don't want to I'm a little bit empathetic, so I have a tendency to to take on other people's like feelings and stress I used to do that more I.

B

Do that less I'm, even good at it with my daughter, which is surprising because I used to get like she'd be up. Anxious and I'd feel anxious, but so I'd sort of imagine this bowl and just like put it in there, you know it's not my my thing to take, but I want I want that person to be able to kind of like put it all out there and unload, and so within 20 minutes. We had this like absolutely cathartic conversation like I got it all out.

B

You know there were tears like we got, he had breakthroughs and I have you know and that I had gone months. Working with this individual met them once in person, but we are at this place in our relationship where there's like you know, trust in connection and they're in a much better place. You know the teams in a much better place, so introvert extrovert I just feel like there is this this ability to kind of connect with people, regardless of whether you're right there or you're through video and I.

B

You know: I, love, extras and I love, introverts and like interests for me, are so fun because it's like a current like a nut to crack. So you know it's like: what's going on, everything's cool I'm, like is everything cool.

E

You know like I'm.

B

Gonna figure you up, whereas you know extroverts tend to kind of you know we just go. You know it's like we just chat until the time is up so yeah I, just you know, for me, I think a lot about how to just create that human connection, because I love it like used to just be something I wanted to do because I like to get to know people and and understand them and care about them, and then I realized.

B

It was my superpower, you know and what actually made me successful as a leader, so now I just own it in and and that's what I like to do. That's.

D

Very cool I say we don't think about video calls and introversion. We were having one of our regular diversity and inclusion meetings the other day, and we were talking about like how technology has affected, how people communicate with each other at envision, and some of the people around the room said something really interesting, which is like when I worked at tech companies in the past and we're all in a meeting together.

D

It's the people with the loudest voices and the people who are the most extroverted who do most of the talking, because not only do they raise their voices when they have something to say, but they also do like subtle things, like kind of leaning in and just sort of like, let these cues that kind of let everybody else know like I'm gonna talk next right and when you're, using only video conferencing, there are no none of those cues.

D

Everybody is just behind a flat screen, and everybody's volume is exactly the same, and so it's because of a because of a sort of a problem I would assure coming of the technology it sort of created a bit of an equalizer amongst people who maybe don't feel as comfortable talking and in your traditional aggressive tech company kind of way. We.

B

Always try to have like a running slack channel. Well, this is something new we've been experimenting with. My last team always had like a vibrant chat. Going on any time was a presentation happening comments. Questions like you know, kudos whatever, and so we're implementing that now for exactly that reason, because even on video, some people, you can see them and I'll even find myself like.

B

Is this a good time to yep you know, and then you can just avoid that, so we always have someone monitor the slack channel and then, if someone has a question, they'll interrupt the person I.

D

Get in trouble with that, because whenever I use slack during video meetings, everybody can see me smiling or.

E

D

Whatever the bat-channel joke is and I always but.

B

If everyone can see it, then if everyone.

C

Can see it that's different, that's yeah, DMS are really bad and.

E

C

Channels and we we encourage people to not use chat but use the Google Doc, so it has the agenda and we fill out things as we go along. If you, if you have a question, you note it in there, you go on sequence, but sometimes the question is already answered by someone else. Someone adds a link to something then, after the meeting people can kind of go to that see. If the meeting is interesting because kind of all the Q&A is there and then watch the recording or not watch it.

C

So it's it's be by using a document. You can go back in time forward in time, which is way better than the linear structure.

B

A

We're going to open it up to questions from the audience. I got a whole bunch of questions here, really good questions and the first one is a great one, particularly because we have to sit here. What was the thinking pattern on going all out on remote work from the very start, yeah.

C

It was never supposed to happen like this.

C

By default, Demetri was in the Ukraine, I was in the Netherlands. I first hire was in Serbia, so we were kind of remote by default, and people in the Netherlands came into my office, but they kind of stopped showing up, because it's like two-hour commute and like. Why do it never told him they just stopped showing up but kept doing that work and doing y combinator. They said oh yeah, the remote works for engineering, but not for everything else. So we're like well one of our values. It's boring solution, so we'll just get an office.

C

We got an office 12-foot desks in it, and the first salesperson kind of came in three days and then stopped showing up as well. So we're remote, because people stopped showing up to the office.

D

Truancy by design.

A

And I mean I, guess that's how most things get started right, it's the kind of organic, organic nature of things. This is a really good question. Cheryl want to ask you this. Can you burn out even if you're, working on things that are very interesting and rewarding? Oh.

B

Absolutely absolutely I try to only work on an extreme rewarding things and I. Think burnout was possible. You know the way I think about it. It's like even when you're really into something to you'll, have a tendency to you know hold on to it. I use this metaphor live like my I, have a dog who, like rabbit way and shake it. You know that's how I describe my day.

B

It's like a dog grab grab me and just shaking me all day, and and so in order for me, for example, to kind of be okay, be healthy, be happy with the reality of what my day is like, which is pretty intense, I have to kind of carefully bookend it with you know my rituals and my practices that I do the beginning of the day. At the end of the day. That helps me make sure I have a good sleep. If I don't do those things all these ideas and things I'm excited about it.

B

I'm wrestling with in the night like I, literally, am wrestling ideas and like moving around because it's like a you know. It's such a it's an active thing and then I get really bad sleep and then I feel crappy the next day. So I try to be really careful about how I start my day and how I end my day, knowing that I have a lot less control about everything that happens during the day generally, because everything I'm doing I'm super excited about.

B

So it's a good problem, but if you don't kind of manage it, you can end up. You know with just getting you know, tired and burnt out and that's sort of with what happened to me.

A

That's a really good point.

A

So, let's ask Mike remote teams don't communicate by default. How does envision house joining envision kind of fostered a culture of communication, mm-hmm.

D

Well, there's little things that I think go a long way. Sometimes like we, the first day I joined I, did my first video call and I turn the video off cuz. Like you know, you don't need to see me right. You can just hear me. That's I didn't understand what my face needed to be like part of this call, because a conference calls that I was used to doing we're.

D

Just like you know, generally phone calls, and the first thing like somebody on the call job did would say like Mike turn, your video on and I was like all right, I turn my video on they're, like at this company, like we always have our video on and like it's. It really makes a difference.

D

I mean having having your video on unless you're like driving or something like that really makes a difference and how you, how you communicate with people, seeing people's faces being able to read what their expressions are, if you pissed them off, if you excited them, it's really. It's really. It's really important. In fact, I remember when I had my first conference called Amazon with with you guys, you had your video off like I, think everybody had their video off and I was like.

D

Oh that's, the way I used to work like, let's all turn our video on so like little things like that that you and also bow it like I. Sometimes somebody will ask me to like consult with a startup who's like thinking about you know, going all remote and I'll talk to their founders.

D

It's the same thing like we'll get on this call and they'll both have their video off I'm, like guys, yeah video on, come on so little things like that like make it make a big difference like we are not trying to avoid each other. We are trying to we're, trying to simulate being together and I. Think those those the technologies that allow us to simulate being together will will get better and better.

D

Over the next few years, like we were reaching an inflection point now, where this is possible, like I, don't know you tell me like, would it be possible to run your either of your companies? The way that you run ten years ago, like I, don't think we could do that even just video bandwidth alone. You know, like we've gotten to the point where, like yeah, like stutter, talk, is kind of like a dialect of English.

D

A little bit like you've got to understand what people are saying when you're missing a word or two every now and then, but it's usually pretty good. You know like it's, usually pretty decent, and that wasn't the case like several years ago, so we're at this inflection point where, like the technology, is now just getting to the point where we're good enough, where we can do this and over the next, like four or five years, it's just gonna get better and better. So it's important to like take advantage of things like that.

D

It's also important, however, to realize that when you are working in an all remote environment, will you call a meeting with somebody you are invading their home like you are like their cats and dogs are in the background, their spouses are in the background, coming back in from a run or whatever their their kids are running around sometimes and like doesn't mean you can't do it, but it does make you kind of think twice sometimes about like do. I need to do.

D

I do you know, do I need to have this meeting or do I not.

E

D

E

E

C

Of our company are coal, coal start with someone showing off their baby or getting their kids or their their spouse info.

A

So in the last question we got a really good question for Sid. What's the best way to stay on the same page when you and your co-founder are rarely in the same room, yeah.

C

It's it's the same thing with like, basically, all the reports so make sure you have a call once a week call with all my reports. Every week.

C

Have written down goals about what's going to be achieved and for us that's okay, ours and we every like three four weeks we go see what the stages of the okay ours is, and now for most of my reports, our executives, they will have dedicated meeting so every month, we'll have a metrics meeting for sales for marketing for finance for engineering. We review all their KPIs and all their okrs and their progress. I think that's really important to stay. Stay, aligned.

C

And some things are obvious, but they be available, like I really have people reach out to me, like hey key help with this problem. I'm really stuck like I didn't get this. That I asked for this I think that should be a low trash hold to approach. People hmm I reviewed my calendar with Dan Levin. Today, 10:11 is old, CEO of box he's now Khosla Ventures, and they very nicely made him available to help me he'll look at my agenda and he noted two things: one that I have very few standing meetings.

C

Now we don't think of meetings as invading people's home, but we we are reluctant to call a standing meeting for something which is never have an meeting about something that should have been an update in an issue tracker and for invading people home to two stories. We allow you to buy green screens and we assume you can have an amazing background. So there's.

D

A lot of condos myself.

C

There's a plug-in called snap camera where you can like make yourself tear and barf rainbows and and all the things I use that from time to time and super super fun.

C

But the other thing he noted in my calendar is that I wasn't doing skip levels. So that's something I'll be introducing.

A

And share your knowledge about out of time now next discussion, we're gonna talk about I, want to talk about technology and the way technology is going to evolve. I think that's a really interesting point, and also you guys questions we're amazing, I know. Sid does a lot of ask me anything is on YouTube, so I'm sure you can reach out to him. I don't want to, and so I just want to end by. How can people find you guys find out more about what you're doing? Are you guys active on Twitter or I'm.

B

Sam I sort of active on Twitter I'd, say more Instagram these days, but I in both places and I do get notifications and whatnot and LinkedIn too. So all those folks, it's cool, I'm.

C

Active on Twitter, DME and I do a lot of these pick your brain meetings, it's a public livestream, so you have to be comfortable with that. But I do them a couple of times a week. I am.

D

Very active on Twitter, usually after hours, my user name is Mike industries. If you'd like to follow me and my Dean's are open, thank.

A

You guys so much.

E