At Realm, approximately 1/3 work remotely across the world. The Android team alone consists of 6 nationalities located in 7 cities across 17 time zones. This is a candid tale of the successes and failures we have encountered while building out a remote friendly organization. You'll learn from our insights and lessons learned, what challenges you'll face and how to be successful. It is an ongoing process, but the cake is not a lie.

1. The Good, The Bad And The
Ugly - Building Distributed
Teams at Realm
Christian Melchior - @chrmelchior
@chrmelchior

2. What this talk isn’t
@chrmelchior
and what it is!

3. What is Realm?
• Mobile database company
• 2 main products: Realm Mobile Database and
Realm Mobile Platform
• ~50 employees across the globe
• 2 main offices: Copenhagen and San Francisco
• ~1/3 work remotely away from the main offices all
our the world.
@chrmelchior

4. #1 Realise that every team is
different
@chrmelchior

5. name@realm.io

6. name@realm.io

8. Embrace the difference
• Allow for experimentation
• A single team member can change the entire
dynamic
• Don’t accept advise uncritically
• Partially vs. fully distributed team
@chrmelchior

9. #2 Make communication
asynchronous
@chrmelchior

10. A new way of thinking
• Harder than it sounds
• Interrupt-based vs. Push/Pull
@chrmelchior

11. Standups
@chrmelchior

12. Weekly status
@chrmelchior

13. Code review
@chrmelchior
• When you start the work-day or after
completing a task.
• Make small pull requests
• Optimistic approvals: “+1 if X, Y, Z is fixed”

14. #3 Don’t let tools dictate
process
@chrmelchior

15. Who do you pick tools for
• Team members ?
• Team leads ?
• Product Managers ?
• VP’s / Directors ?
• CEO ?
@chrmelchior

16. What do we use?
@chrmelchior

17. Slack at Realm
• Currently 192 channels
• Everyone should be able to
create a channel.
• Fine-grained channels
• Use threads
@chrmelchior
• Only #general is required reading
• #<X>-team : Team channels
• #f-<X> : Discuss a specific
feature
• #t-<X>: Very temporary
channels
• #got: Here be dragons …

18. Slack is not perfect
• Information overload
• Bad at storing persistent information
• Search in Slack is bad
• Notifications interrupt you
@chrmelchior

19. Group notifications
• @channel
• Never use this!
• @here
• Only for real time interactions
• @g-java / @g-<group>
• Best of both worlds
@chrmelchior

20. Notification setup
@chrmelchior

21. You are not at work all the time
@chrmelchior

22. #4 Define how decisions are
made
@chrmelchior

23. Meetings
• Weekly team meeting (3pm CET)
• Europe 😊
• America 😪☕
• Asia 😫☕
• Team leads meeting (8pm CET)
• Europe 😫☕
• America 😊
• Asia 😴
@chrmelchior

24. Decision making
@chrmelchior
• Harder to get consensus
• Who makes “the call”?

25. #5 Be transparent in everything
you do
@chrmelchior

26. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
• Surface blockers quickly
• Be explicit about what you need
• You avoid getting interrupted
@chrmelchior

27. Pull Requests : Work In Progress
@chrmelchior
• Visibility
• Lower the barrier for peers / community to
participate

28. #6 Accept that turnaround is
longer
@chrmelchior

29. Learn to multitask
@chrmelchior
• Immediate feedback is impossible
• Have a backlog of “easy” items
• Unblock others

30. #7 Assume that people have
the best intentions
@chrmelchior

31. Everyone did the best job they could,
given what they knew at the time,
their skills and abilities, the resources
available, and the situation at hand
Retrospective Prime Directive
@chrmelchior

32. #8 Remember the social
interaction
@chrmelchior

33. Social interaction online
• Okay to start the meeting with a little banter
• Video chat for meetings
• Remember special events
• Social chat channels: #pugs, #got, #food
@chrmelchior

34. #9 Meet face-to-face
@chrmelchior

35. It is harder to think of
people as idiots once you
met them face to face
@chrmelchior

36. Meet face-to-face
• Realm-stravaganza ~ 1/year
• <Team>-stravaganza ~ 1/year
• Aligning on the vision
• Team building
@chrmelchior

37. Lessons learned so far 👍
• Everything becomes more transparent
• Trust + Flexibility = Happy employees
• Diversity
@chrmelchior

38. Lessons learned so far 👎
• Process problems are magnified
• Longer turn-around time for tasks
• No overlapping work hours
@chrmelchior

39. 9 tips for creating awesome
distributed teams
1. Realise that every team is different
2. Make communication asynchronous
3. Don’t let tools dictate process
4. Define how decisions are made
5. Be transparent in everything you do
6. Accept that turnaround is longer
7. Assume that people have the best intentions
8. Remember the social interaction
9. Meet face-to-face
@chrmelchior

40. Questions?
@chrmelchior
cm@realm.io
@chrmelchior