By Jeff Benanto, Director of Communications at Mattermost
Tech employees of all stripes always have desired more input into how – and where – they work. Over the past year, the demand for remote work, unsurprisingly, spiked. In fact, most developers (80%) want to work remotely, and for good reason.
With companies continuously on the hunt to hire, train and retain the best technical talent, the power over workplace culture and preference is shifting in favor of developers, engineers and all technical resources. Hiring managers and C-level executives understand this and recognize the paradigm is shifting in the direction (and favor) of flexible, distributed and agile teams that are often remote. Simply put, remote work is no longer a perk to tout on job listings; it’s an expectation that signifies a flexible culture that is committed to an open and agile approach to software development.
So how can we execute on creating this culture and ensuring remote work delivers on the promise set forth above? Through a dedicated focus and commitment to effective communication and collaboration. By adopting the right tools, paired with the right processes, an organization can align its remote work policies with developers’ workplace preferences.
Here are some additional critical components to building a remote work environment that will keep developers efficient and inspired.
What does effective remote work actually look like?
The first step in creating a developer-friendly remote work culture is to set clear expectations. Establish a “remote first” mindset that empowers developers to work where they feel most comfortable and produce their best work. It’s all about providing options and boosting morale, productivity and the size of your developer candidate pool.
Part of your established remote expectations should also include boundaries for leaders and managers. Most people were abruptly forced into a remote work environment two years ago and proved that work still goes on – no matter the location. As a result, micromanaging should be a thing of the past. A healthy company culture employs leaders who trust their teams to work without continuous check-ins that disrupt workflows.
With developers working from anywhere, businesses should embrace an asynchronous work model where all employees don’t need to be online, or on a call, simultaneously. Providing this freedom breaks the traditional 9-to-5 workday and can better suit each employee’s work-life balance, which yields happier, more productive employees.
Too good to be true? Achieving this seamless remote-first culture is possible through the right collaboration tools and processes.
Developer collaboration – more than just an overused buzzword
Without the right tools, setting expectations solves nothing. Putting remote work first requires developer-centric collaboration tools that meet technical needs, workflow preferences and integration requirements. Like with any team, having a platform to communicate and share files and information is critical. But that’s the bare minimum.
Developers have specific needs for collaboration compared with other employees, especially when teams are no longer a desk away. Collaboration is more than chatting with team members; it’s about collaborating with the site reliability engineers (SREs) and security operations (SecOps) teams when an incident arises, during a release management or QA process, or other development process. Organizations that don’t understand developers’ needs might choose a variety of cheaper, siloed tools to solve different problems. But with constant shifts between tasks, jumping from tool to tool becomes exhausting and inefficient.
What’s needed is an all-encompassing platform that enables the following:
- Real-time communication between teams.
- Customization and extensibility with other tools.
- Integrated project and workflow planning capabilities.
To delight incoming developers, organizations can set themselves apart by preparing for a remote work environment and its collaboration needs. One way to do this is by avoiding basic tools and adopting comprehensive collaboration platforms that can keep developers productive and aligned, even from thousands of miles away.
Two types of transparency
The last part of building out a remote work plan is a focus on transparency. But there is more than one way to think about this when it comes to developer culture.
One way to prioritize transparency is through a commitment to supporting and working with open source technologies. The open source community produces a significant amount of innovative projects and technologies that enable developers to build complex software more quickly and at a higher level of flexibility and extensibility than other tools in your stack.
Embracing open source also introduces your team to talented developers and enables your company to play an active role in the development of critical technologies that can power your digital operations and remote business. With developer representatives within open source communities, your team can play a strategic role in the advancement of technology that’s vital to your company. With open source, everyone wins.
At a time when developers are in more control of their careers and company expectations than ever before, prioritizing transparency will attract new talent while keeping existing developers empowered.
We’ve had two years to strategize remote productivity, and we’ve seen how it can work. Productive remote environments take dedication to effective communication and collaboration to set developers up for success. So it’s time to listen to developers and enable them with the flexible, remote culture – and the accompanying tools and solutions – they desire.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Benanto is Director of Communications at Mattermost. With over 15 years of experience in technology, DevOps and SaaS go-to-market and customer experience roles, Jeff advocates for high-growth organizations, open source communities, and remote-first cultures.
