By now you’ve probably heard about Stack Overflow’s commitment to making remote work, well… work. If not, you can read about it <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2013/02/01/why-we-still-believe-in-working-remotely/">here </a>, <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/04/14/cant-afford-private-offices/">here </a>, and a whole page of links <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/tags/remote-work/">here </a>. Seriously, we care about it a LOT. At Stack Overflow we want to hire the best person for the job, even if that person is in Salt Lake City, Utah; Berlin, Germany; or São Paulo, Brazil. Promoting remote work promotes diversity, and we are committed to improving both.

The logistics of Stack Overflow’s remote-first philosophy

This is definitely the most important piece of the remote puzzle. You need a person whose stated job is to make sure that remote employees have a specific person for questions, concerns, and problems. When we <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote-developer-jobs?utm_source=so-owned&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=dev-c4al&utm_content=c4al-link">hire a new remote employee </a>, I tell them that they can come to me with any type of question, and I will try my best to answer it, or at least point them in the right direction. I get aaaaaall kinds of questions and requests. For instance, I now know how to buy and ship Belgian beer to Poland for an employee that wasn’t able to attend a work event because of a surgery. Also FYI, Uruguay has very strict restrictions on voltage of household items, so getting a crank-lever standing desk to Montevideo was fun (read: not fun). There also needs to be someone on the executive team (it’s better if there is more than one someone) consistently asking “What about the remotes?” When you have a new “x,” the execs should be thinking about how that impacts all employees, including remotes.

Have a dedicated remote person (like me!) to be the point person for remote needs.

Companies will encounter a wide range of odd legalities in dealing with remote employees, especially with international folks.It definitely helps to have an HR department that is certified in immigration and visa issues. The same goes for finance departments. The taxation alone is a handful with multiple states/countries. You need an entity for each state, which requires considerable forethought. You also have to file payrolls properly and that varies depending on location.

Have your People and Finance Teams homed in on remote needs

We’ve already touched on this in the other blog posts, but it bears repeating: If one person in the meeting is remote, we’re all remote. If there are 5 people in a conference room and 2 people dialing in remotely, it is very easy for the folks in the meeting room to forget about the people dialed in. You can eliminate that problem by having everyone call in, if possible. Currently in the Stack Overflow NYC office it is really common to walk around and see two people on a hangout even though their offices are next to each other!

Remote first

We have regular “Bev Bashes” and holiday parties in the offices, but what about the remotes? How do you give them fun stuff even though they are scattered all over the world? For starters, we have “Remote Bev Bashes” over <a href="https://www.zoom.us/?zcid=1173&gclid=CKXQhYvundYCFYtLDQodtcICtQ">Zoom </a>every Friday. The “Bev Baron” for that week (nominated by the last Bev Baron) schedules a Zoom call and sets a theme. Employees grab a beverage of their choice and just chat. You can stay for just a few minutes to say hi, or you can be a part of the entire thing.

Try to recreate office fun stuff in a remote capacity

Once a year, we bring all of our remote employees together for a week for some much needed face-time. It’s a different city each time, and there are usually 3 days of Executive Keynotes, Tiny Talks, and many many games of Werewolf. We talk about the state of the company and new projects and teams, but we vow not to make any huge decisions or business altering plans. The focus is on camaraderie, not profits. We look forward to it all year, and it’s definitely a blast.

Bring them all together

When a new remote employee is hired, I contact them for their furniture choices. They get their choice of the exact same desks and chairs that we have in the offices, free of charge. We want them to be as comfortable as possible, and that means if they want to stand instead of sit, no problem. Our IT dept sets them up with all of their tech, and I set them up with everything else. Need a filing cabinet? Cool. You want a different type of desk that is bright pink and sings? Hey, it’s your house. We re-create the in-office set-ups as much as possible so that our remote employees never feel less valued than everyone else.

Make their home workspaces as awesome as the offices

HowTo

Making Remote Work: Behind the Scenes at Stack Overflow

A design process defines a designers journey to solve problems and to create an idea. Having a consistent process helps you accomplish great things!There are no real definition of a design process. It is different for each company and different for each individual.

What is a design process

<ol><li>Elements: What is our expected outcome: What is the end results, whar are we creating</li><li>Stages:What is our approach, are we using Design thinking, Double Diamond or some other method.</li><li>Tools: What do we use, use tools that are optimzed for specific goals.</li></ol>

3 Components involved in the Design Process

Strategy-is the intersection between solving their peple problem and achieving their business goal.Scope- Determines the set of features that are necessary for a feasible solution here you are figuring out how much work.Structure-Interaction Design and Information Architecture, Information ArchitectureSkeleton- UI and Navigation design. Start designing the Navigation Design and picking a tab bar or hamburger menu.Surface- Visual Design helps the interface be more accessible and easy to use and understand.

Strategy-Scope-Structure-Skeleton-Surface

Step 1: Discover: Step 1 is to discover as much data as possible based off of an inital insight. We audit our own business and other businessesStep 2:Define: When defining we select problems that create a large impact. from there we select the best problem to solve.

Double Diamond Design Process Part 1

Step 3- Develop: We reserve any judgement and think big, wild and crazy. You will start designing and figuring out your solutionStep 4-Deliver: You will evaluate your work by putting it through critiques, running an AB test

Double Diamond Design Process Part 2

A design process defines every designer’s journey to solve wicked problems. It’s a phrase that appears at talks, job descriptions, and during job interviews. But, what exactly is a design process…

Lecture 2 : What is the Design Process?

By considering the answers to twelve questions, an organization can measure where it is on the scale regarding their ability to attract and retain talent. These questions don’t necessarily give a recipe, but what they do is cover the key elements.

Why Q12

<ul><li>Do I know what is expected of me at work?</li><li>Do I have the right materials and equipment I need to do my work properly?</li><li>At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?</li><li>In the last 7 days have I received recognition or praise for good work?</li><li>Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?</li><li>Is there someone at work who encourages my development?</li></ul>

Question 1-6

<ul><li>At work, do my opinions seem to count?</li><li>Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?</li><li>Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?</li><li>Do I have a best friend at work?</li><li>In the last 6 months, have I talked with someone at work about my progress?</li><li>At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?</li></ul>

Questions 7-12

An ongoing employee survey that measures employee engagement, the Q12 consists of 12 actionable workplace elements that offer proven links to performance outcomes.

An ongoing survey that measures employee engagement, the Gallup Q12 employee surveys consist of 12 actionable items that offer impact performance outcomes.

Gallup Q12 Employee Survey 

Productivity is a skill that can be learned.A shared Gmail inbox on steroids.Drag lets you and your team work together directly inside Gmail.Through a combination of collaboration, productivity, and workflow tools like:<ul><li>Kanban boards</li><li>Team chats</li><li>Shared labels</li><li>Email tracking, & more.</li></ul>

Drag app

Reminders — with a sting!Track any goal you can plot on a graph.Weight, exercises, time spent on an app, etc.As you enter data it’s added to your graph.Fall below your goal & you’ll be charged an amount you determine. Stay above & it’s free.

Beeminder

A new one I stumbled across this week while surfing the ol’ interweb.At first glance, it feels like the best parts of Notion, Slack, & G-Docs all rolled into one.A collaborative space built for remote work + tons of free templates to get you started.

Slite

There’s only one thing we can never have enough of — time.With Rescuetime’s automatic tracking & time management software you can:<ul><li>See a clear picture of your day</li><li>Measure where your time is really spent</li><li>Know the truth about what distracts you</li></ul>

RescueTime

Hive turns multi-step projects into simple workflows.<ul><li>Map out project timelines</li><li>Simplify complex approval processes</li><li>Utilize templates to save time on repetitive tasks.</li></ul>

Hive

I love being productive every day as it helps me sort out all my priorities very quickly. Being Productive is a superpower we all must acquire early in our lives. So, for this same quest, I keep…

Motivation

5 Free Tools That Will Make You More Productive In 2022

Culture is the way a gathering of individuals does things together. It alludes to the mutual language, values, conventions, standards, customs, expressions, history, or foundations of a gathering of individuals. It is the standard convictions, social structures, and material attributes of a racial, strict, or social gathering.It is characterized as a unique procedure of encircling suspicions, information, and implications from another person’s experience which is not quite the same as our own and looks past “culture as ethnicity” to investigate the complexities of individual social perspective

Importance of Cultural Competence today!

Globalization has revolutionized societies around the world. Immigration has bought colossal changes and led to inclusions of diversity making culturally congruent an imperative obligation in an increasingly diverse environment with culturally diverse populations around the world. It is important to be culturally competent in an organization so that we can acquire much deeper self-knowledge and understand the basis for our own beliefs, actions, and responses toward others and we live in a world in which it helps acknowledge and respect a client’s beliefs to amplify the positive outcomes.

Why now?

A myriad of cultures are disparate and unique and by understanding the cultural genesis of our own and other's behaviours, and by remaining open to the idea that other people’s cultures guide them in the same way that ours guides us, we as humans will have a better chance of interacting positively with, and appropriately serving, people of varying cultural backgrounds. It allows us to analyze one’s own beliefs and be educated about the varying viewpoints. Such understandings are particularly important because cultural perspectives and beliefs profoundly affect us all.

Conclusion

Cultural Competence allows us to analyze one’s own beliefs and that of others and be educated about the varying viewpoints. Such understandings are particularly important because cultural perspectives and beliefs profoundly affect all aspects of people’s behaviour. It helps promotes inclusion and equality and make others feel secure and equal as their own customs and beliefs are included in mainstream practice hence making the business culturally competent.

Cultural competence is characterized as a unique procedure of encircling suspicions, information, and implications from another person’s experience which is not quite the same as our own and looks…

Making Remote Work: Behind the Scenes at Stack Overflow

Lecture 2 : What is the Design Process?

Gallup Q12 Employee Survey

5 Free Tools That Will Make You More Productive In 2022

Importance of Cultural Competence in Workplace…

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