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Culture fit in remote teams – a founder’s perspective
Hey Hackers!
Culture fit is an obvious concern for businesses making their first remote hire. It’s different when everyone’s working in the same office: people naturally get to know each other through hundreds of small exchanges during the day. New employees soak the company culture at a visceral, almost magical level — similar to how children learn to talk without any systematic effort from their parents.
Remote work is a different matter. When all the exchanges are limited, scheduled, and happening via Zoom, little room remains for this magic to take place. Naturally, as employers, we start believing that our task to choose the RIGHT person from the very beginning becomes even more crucial.
I personally share the "Good to Great" approach, which says that your focus must be on getting the right people on the bus in the first place. If you get your recruitment right, the culture would emerge naturally - as it always does when similar-minded people are gathered in one place. Even if that 'place' is virtual.
As an early adopter of remote work, all of my businesses have adhered to a “remote-first” protocol for the last 10 years. I have shared some of the key things I learned in this blog post: https://youteam.io/blog/culture-fit-in-remote-teams-a-founders-perspective/
Would love to learn your thoughts!
- illuminated 6y agoI was managing several remote teams in the past and considering these days to do it again for a startup I'm working on. Hiring process was always hard for me to predict the future cultural fit. People are basically "selling themselves" during the hiring process, willingly or not. Their behavior is not "as usual" during that time. I came upon just a handful of people who were the same during the hiring process and later on. So, although I do pay attention to potential cultural fit (and get rid of the extremes), it is not mandatory. I try to understand how the person think regarding the position I'm hiring, how they do the work; to see if what they need in order to do their job can be provided by others and if their delivery satisfies the organisation they'll be joining. And that's it. What is understood as the cultural fit shows up along the way and can be altered, like communication with the team members or clients/customers, commenting the code, attitude towards making mistakes, etc. If a person does valuable work, these are the things worth spending time about - it will pay off during the first crisis of whatever type. What is also more important than culture to me is - trust. This is something that new hires need to work on themselves for the first couple of months, but they are aware of it since the day one. And once they do build trust by their team and the larger organization, the "culture fit" is natural. So, tldr: pay attention more if the person will bring value to your organization. Recognition of that value would help fit better those who don't fit immediately. Before culture - build trust.
- Riphyak 6y ago@illuminated thank you for sharing your perspective. I totally agree: the culture/values fit only becomes visible over time. As wise man once said: when you hire you always guess, when you fire you always know :)
- illuminated 6y agoHaven't heard that quote earlier, but it fits perfectly!
- redis_mlc 6y agoFYI: The post is blog spam for a body shop. Youteam could have been honest in disclosing that, but apparently their culture doesn't include transparency, to say it politely.
- Riphyak 6y ago@redis_mic I’m sorry but we’re not a body shop :). We are a marketplace for dev talent. Backed by Y Combinator. Also, what is your definition of spam? I have just shared some of my experience of hiring remote team members. Yes, there is a link to the full version at YouTeam blog, but how does it make this spam?