Issue #7: Address not applicable
Last week GitLab made history when they filed for their IPO, becoming the first all-remote company set to go public. In a nod to the remote work community, their prospectus stated appropriately: “address not applicable.”
The GitHub competitor, which provides software for developers to share code and collaborate on projects, has been remote since inception in 2014. As of today, they’re a truly global organization with over 1350 employees in 65 countries.
How does a successful company like this operate 100% remotely at-scale? Fortunately for us, GitLab is a vocal proponent of remote work and goes out of their way to share their philosophies and tools publicly.
Here's how the all-remote tech unicorn thinks about remote work:
The Manifesto
GitLab has a 9-point Remote Manifesto which sets their operating philosophy. Reminiscent of the Agile Manifesto, many of the bullets do not fully discard the old ways of doing things but rather emphasizes the preferred way to do things. Here are a few examples from the Remote Manifesto:
Writing down and recording knowledge over verbal explanations
Written down processes over on-the-job training
Asynchronous communication over synchronous communication
Formal communication channels over informal communication channels
It doesn’t mean you’ll never have informal chats or scheduled meetings, but your goal should be to develop the skills as an organization where these are not necessary. And what do these good habits get you? Two more points from the manifesto:
Hiring and working from all over the world instead of from a central location
Flexible working hours over set working hours
Ultimately this means the flexibility to hire the best talent from anywhere, and for those employees to create the lifestyles that best suit them.
Underlying all of this is what I consider the most important philosophy:
The results of work over the hours put in
Without a bias towards judging results - as opposed to the hours & inputs of employees - none of the above would be possible.
Transitioning to Remote
Obviously a ton of companies were forced into remote work with the pandemic. As those same companies decide how they want to proceed long-term, they’d do well to read the advice GitLab has for making the transition.
A lot of it comes down to one important factor: intentionality. A great remote culture with productive and happy employees doesn’t just happen. It must be designed and embraced by the company leadership. Things like:
Ensuring all employees have an ergonomic and productive home-office setup
Ensuring the executive team is equipped with the information on building a remote-work culture. If the expertise doesn’t exist in-house, considering hiring a Head of Remote
Ensuring managers are doing their part to embrace transparency, build handbooks and break down silos amongst their teams
It’s also important to identify your end-goal in terms of the type of remote-work organization you want to create. Creating the language around the different options is half the battle, and for this GitLab lays out how it sees the 10 stages of remote work - a sliding scale from complete co-location and synchronous work, to strict remote & asynchronous work. In between are some interesting nuances, such as:
#4 Remote allowed: Anyone at the company can work remotely some of the time, with very few exceptions for roles that are location-dependent
#7 Remote-first: The company is optimized for remote with documentation, policies, and workflows that assume 100% of the organization is distributed, even if some occasionally visit the office
#8 Remote only: There is no co-located work in a common office. However, the work is still biased towards one time zone. Some companies maintain "core team hours"
Where is your organization on the scale? Where are you headed?
In Summary
What’s right for your organization might be different than GitLab, but it’s hard to ignore the success they’ve seen with a fully remote organization. To check out their full manifesto, the 10 stages of remote work, and a ton more valuable info, check out their Remote Playbook here.
In the News
Ryan Breslow, founder of tech unicorn Bolt, has announced that Bolt is adopting a 4-day work week. "Work like a lion, not a cow" - check out the full explainer on his twitter thread.
Chris Herd, founder of FirstBase (a remote team management solution) and a big remote-work advocate, gave an interview to the New Yorker on the future of work: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
The BBC published a piece called Why Workers Might Eventually Reject Hybrid Work. Unfortunately, its arguments are pretty dated. One of the arguments is "For the employees themselves, it is almost impossible to set up two workspaces that are well-equipped for all the different work tasks they need to do – books or other information sources are always in the wrong place, or they don’t have a photocopier or fax at home.” How many jobs - which can be done remotely - rely on physical books, photocopiers and faxes? And if you really need a fax, wouldn't that be something you figured out over the past 18 months? The other arguments largely circle around the biases that can come from some people getting more in-person face-time than others. These are worth understanding, not because they're a valid argument against hybrid, but because organizations should understand these biases and work to avoid them.
Tips & Recommendations
For Tech & Product Agile Teams
I find the challenge of embracing agile (where we value 'Individuals and interactions' over 'processes and tools' - right?) in a remote environment really interesting. It's not that it can't be done - it absolutely can.
But there is something about the lack of proximity that seems to cut against what we intuitively think of as how a small team should interact and operate in an agile environment.I thought this piece from Venture Beat had a few good insights for managing this transition: The agile team has gone home. Now what?
...and one more thing
To celebrate the Digital Nomad lifestyle, we feature a few photos each week of someone enjoying their freedom and flexibility. Email us your photos to be featured!
This month, I'm sharing some photos of my own journey as my wife & I make our way across the country in our converted van. Below: photos from the beautiful Arches & Canyonlands national parks in Utah.
