Tidepool is a highly distributed team, and we embrace remote work. We currently have employees living in 19 states in the U.S. (California, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington) and in 8 countries worldwide (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Croatia, Nigeria and United States). While working remotely can be a challenge, we do our best to make it effective. Here are some of the things we do:
On Mondays through Thursdays project teams may hold short "standup" meetings where we report on work we are doing and any impediments. These typically take place during mutually agreed hours for the team members, and adjusts based on regional Daylight Saving changes. (See “Time-zone Sensitivity” below.)
We hold a bi-weekly virtual All Hands meeting where we talk about the highlights from the prior two weeks. This typically takes place Tuesdays at 8pm or 9pm UTC, and adjusts based on regional Daylight Saving changes. (See “Time-zone Sensitivity” below.)
We have both internal and external Slack instances for communication:
- Internal: tidepoolteam.slack.com
- External: tidepoolorg.slack.com
The external Slack instance is used for communication with our users and the open source community.
We get together at least twice per year in person for a whole week to work, reflect on the past 6-9 months, strategize and plan the next 6-9 months. We also try to work in some fun team-building events like hiking, biking or kayaking. Past locations have included Santa Cruz, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Fall River Mills, California.
This is challenging given how distributed we are. In general, there is only one hour in the day when everyone is awake. We try to schedule meetings in a way that is sensitive to participants’ locales. Employees in Australia and New Zealand may need to wake early, and employees in Europe may need to meet in the evening or at night in order to make this possible.