How to manage a remote engineering team

Employers hiring remote engineers have access to a much larger talent pool and can hire the best engineers from around the world. But managing remote development teams can come with unique challenges like software requirements, cybersecurity risks, and effective communication channels. 

Luckily, like our strong engineering team at Remote, a lot of engineers are accustomed to working async and communicating digitally. Here are our tips on how to manage engineering teams remotely to overcome common challenges you can face.

Challenges of a managing a remote team of engineers

Engineering teams require communication to ensure every team member is pushing toward a common goal. Here are a few notable challenges that remote engineering teams may face:

• Communication: Without appropriate communication tools, your team can't collaborate effectively. You also need to make sure your team members can speak a common language to work together.

• Time zones: Managers can think that collaboration is difficult when remote employees live in different time zones. However, when you support an async work environment, your engineers can work efficiently and happily with minimum disruptions.

• Maintaining company culture: As your team shifts to remote work, you may experience a culture shift. Plan in advance on how to maintain your unique company culture in a remote work environment. 

• Onboarding: You need a unified system to onboard globally distributed team members in a consistent manner.

7 tips for managing remote developers and engineers

To proactively address possible challenges, here are our seven tips for managing remote developers and engineers.

1. Open channels for communication

With communication, everything falls or rises.

Communicate often and transparently, even when it might feel a bit uncomfortable. Document everything. Record all hands and team meetings. Make it possible for engineers to get as much focus time as possible, and lean on async communication wherever you can. This is a practice you can read about in our public handbook.

If people don't know answers to certain topics, give them pointers on where they can go digging for more information themselves. Introduce them to people who can be helpful. Just don't hide anything — make it transparent and available.

Lastly, create an open line of communication using a Slack channel for your development team. This helps your team stay connected and supports your team members to help each other.

2. Use project management tools

Disorganization is one of the potential downfalls for your company's software development process. Project management tools can help groups stay on track and help everyone effectively complete their portion of the project. 

For example, our engineers at Remote give each other feedback and discuss code in merge requests through GitLab. We also use Linear as an issue tracker and for discussions.

3. Avoid unnecessary meetings

Around 83% of employees spend up to a third of their week attending meetings. This is a huge time drain and prevents engineers from making progress on projects and completing daily tasks. 

Minimize unnecessary meetings as much as possible by using async communication tools. When you need to work synchronously, schedule remote meetings ahead of time.

A good tip is to send calendar invites and confirm attendees the day before. This prevents team members from forgetting meetings and minimizes wasted time.

4. Identify roles within your development team

Organization is the key to managing a successful remote development team. Clear divisions of labor in which employees know what they're responsible for keep remote engineers motivated and remove the possibility of redundancy. 

Identifying roles within your development team outlines a clear chain of command and empowers employees to take ownership of different parts of the development process. 

It can also save engineering managers time by mapping out who each engineer should go to with specific questions. 

5. Automate what you can

Development teams rely on a cohesive workflow to ensure things run smoothly. Task automation like code deployment maximizes the efficiency and accuracy of your team's work.

The entire product suffers when one piece of the puzzle doesn't fit. By automating your workflow as much as possible, you minimize the risk of human error and offer employees a routine that can give them a remote workflow structure. 

For example, consider automating code deployments at the same time each week or month. This sets a target for your team and encourages team members to stay on track. 

6. Provide remote workers with what they need to be successful in a remote environment

Transitioning to remote work can be costly for employers initially, especially if they have to invest in adequate equipment for their engineering team to work from home successfully. 

However, remote work is beneficial for employers as well. Costs typically decrease when you stop paying for office space, electric bills, and other overhead costs.

Furthermore, the right equipment is a necessary expense — your engineering team will be unable to do their job effectively without proper tools. If you're not offering the right work environment for your team members to perform their job, they may be incentivized to find a different employer willing to invest in their success. 

7. Establish processes for onboarding engineering talent

When you first transition to remote work, you'll need to focus on building an onboarding process for your engineering team. The good news is that this will save you time in the long run. 

Onboarding remote engineering employees can take time until your new hires familiarize themselves with your internal processes. You can use tutorial videos and documentation to educate new team members about your engineering processes.

At Remote, we use a buddy system to help the new joiner adapt to the culture and have someone to ask for help. Our first week of onboarding is the same for everyone, regardless of their location and function. The advantage of being fully distributed allows us to give everyone the same experience.

After week one, we try to get our engineers into our codebase as early as it makes sense. There is no stress attached to it — just making sure that they are able to write some code in a timely fashion. Most of the time, week two of your journey is focused on engineering-related onboarding topics, getting you into our codebase.

How to transition your development team to remote

Transitioning engineering teams from an office to a remote setting is a process. Here are some tips to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Focus on creating a strong team culture

The key to successfully shifting your development team to remote work is ensuring that they still feel like they're a part of a team. Working from home can feel isolating, and this can be particularly challenging for new employees and engineers in the early stages of their careers. 

Focus on creating a strong team culture that encourages engineers to ask questions, communicate, and regularly check in with each other. Remote engineering managers can also plan regular team meetings to ensure all engineers feel they're completing projects together. 

Establish and manage expectations

Although many engineers may be excited about transitioning to an entirely remote environment, others may have apprehensions. Set clear expectations for your employees to manage your remote team effectively.

Communicate ahead of time to employees that you anticipate specific issues to arise and that workflow may be compromised for a temporary period. That can help avoid frustrations once you implement a remote model.

Listen to what your team needs

Transitioning to a fully remote process will be an adjustment. Remain open to employee feedback during this time and listen to what they say they need. 

Whether it's improved communication tools, a better in-home office setup, or a more streamlined workflow, compiling feedback from your employees can help shape future success. When we are focused on the nitty-gritty details of our products or the code we are writing, we forget the bigger picture. Feedback is a tool that helps you and others to do just that. Step back.

Be prepared for some bumps in the road as you support and connect your global team. The word “feedback” has some negative connotations, but receiving and giving great, constructive feedback will go a long way.

Emphasize work-life balance

Transitioning your development team to a remote environment indicates that you prioritize their work-life balance. Remote engineers can fit work into their personal lives at a convenient time when they can truly focus. 

In fact, many of our engineers choose to work at Remote because they can focus on work at an effective time. By emphasizing work-life balance, our engineers are more happy and productive.

Remote work for business success

When managing a remote engineering team, flexibility reigns. If you're considering moving your engineering and development team to a remote setting, take a look at Remote's guide to hiring remote employees. Our guide shares information on hiring international employees and what you need to know before transitioning your team to remote work. 

To find out how you can start building a remote engineering team, chat with us today.

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