leading globally in a remote setting w/ shannon smith

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint. D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. you enjoy the episode. Shannon, let's give the people what they want. I hope so. Who are you? We'll go over there. Yeah, you know, that's starting broad. Like Shannon Smith. As you already mentioned here in North Carolina, been in technology for a really long time, kind of grew up in it in a big company, then jumped out of that in the smaller companies, both here in Raleigh and now with Ona, which is based out of Barcelona and we kind of have a spread across the US and Western Europe.

But you know, I father, husband, you know, those kind of things, you know, outdoor lover, you know, I have my back porch, my home office, which I love. I'm thankful for the cooler temps right now. The summer is going to kill it later. So I'll be back to the side. 100% of summer, summer in North, I grew up in South Carolina. So summer in North and South Carolina is just brutal. All right. So Shannon, let's dive in. We got lots of cover and a little bit of time today. First and foremost, I was fascinated and the reason why I was so excited to catch up with you is because you're a VP of engineering at a fully global company, right?

And so I'm fascinated. How are y'all, how do you improve culture in a global scenario like this? Do you all have tips and tricks? What do y'all do? Forget togethers? How do y'all communicate? kind of break it down for me. And then if you leave anything off the table, I'll just continue to pepper you with questions. Awesome. Love it. So, onus been remote for almost all of its existence and been not just remote like locally but across time zones. So the company started out in Los Angeles, but then quickly moved to Barcelona headquarters, but our technical co-founder was here on the east coast. And so there was already this need to communicate across time zones and across offices.

Up until COVID, it was pretty office centric. So it was a Barcelona office, a New York office for sales and marketing, but like a tech office down here in North Carolina. So already kind of used to sort of the remote communication stuff, but like COVID hit everyone went home like that blew up, right? Like right now it's like every conversation is remote now. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, When we use the standard stack of tools like Zoom and Slack, and honestly, we're really light on email. Slack is where it's at. Sometimes you can get killed with the Slack channels, but we do have a strategy around that, trying to keep conversations in the right place.

But not just even text stuff. How do we stay connected around the things that we enjoy? So whether it's your pets or home hobbies or sports, which actually being a global company, The word sports is actually a thing. Some Spanish guys started a sports channel, which was really about what I might call exercise. But so then the football guys show up in the sports channel and they're like, what are you guys are talking about? Running and hiking and like, it's just, you know, that's some of the nuance of being sort of a more multinational company. You get into these types of things. What do you think?

Like what's the biggest advice or what's maybe one or not biggest advice? Let's do practical things. I like to be in the weeds on the show. What is one or two things that you all have implemented? Maybe just in the slack side of things to improve culture. Because I've heard of a lot of things. So I didn't know if you all have implemented some new features or new channels or new conversations within it. I'm just curious from that perspective. Yeah, it's a mix of things. So we do try to keep the conversations kind of like to their specific areas. So each we work in a squad model similar to what Spotify made popular.

So every squad has their own conversation. We also have larger groups for the whole dev team or the whole product and dev team. And trying to keep the conversation kind of in the right space is a part of it. A lot of threads, like I'm a heavy thread user trying to keep conversation going there. But you know, some things we've also done as good times is a thing that we have. And so like every new person that gets joined gets a mention in the good times. Or as someone hits an own aversary as we call it or a birthday, throw in that and sort of the good news channel.

Kudos is another one where we try to get people shout outs to other folks. Another cultural difference there. Different cultures kind of see that stuff differently as well. It's real heavy on the US side. Kudos is, but shout outs in public aren't as heavy in our France folks and our Swiss folks. Yeah, they like the appreciation is what I get from the team. But like, that's just not a part of what we do. It's more like a hat on the back versus like a broadcast out into the world. Yeah. What talk about maybe some things, because I'm fascinated, what are you all doing now? Is the world opening back up with?

I mean, are y'all planning in person stuff? Because I know Jake, our mutual connection, Jake Shepherd, Jake, hello if you're watching probably not, because you're in meetings most likely. But Jake posted something today about, Would you rather be in the office every day of the week or something like that or travel one week a month for the entire week and be remote? So what are you all what what's own to do and about travel and team building and stuff like that now? Yeah. So it's different departments are handling it differently. Like my team, the engineering team and the product team is the most diverse, like sales and marketing is mostly here in the U S.

The people teams, another one that spread across the whole globe. We are really on a quarterly basis doing that week long thing. So actually this week, like tomorrow I fly out, I'm going to Barcelona and I'll be there. Yeah, I'll be there. We're bringing together one of the engineering teams in Spain, and most of them live in Spain, but we'll be together Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in person. And then from there, I'm flying to New York, because our executive team will get together in New York for a few days of planning for a third quarter coming up. But we do it about every quarter. We kind of try to get teams together.

And we want to have it be a mix of sort of the, let's do the work that's more effective in person. But also like the, hey, these are people. These are humans. You know each other online, and you've been trying to build these relationships via virtual chats and things. But here's a chance for you to get out and do something. The team is doing the one so one of my teams is meeting in Barcelona another team of mine is meeting in New York this week The New York team is going out and doing a charity event and so like they'll be working side by side I've been giving back.

That's a big part of onus culture as well And then they have a Yankees game They're going to so like it's like you know a little bit of mix of everything so listen Let's work hard. Let's like go out and do something good in the world and let's have a good time But we definitely we set aside budget to make that in person possible Yeah, and I believe this and ona does as well as like there's a lot of value in the remote because people can be in their space and be affected there You can hire kind of from wherever the best candidates are But there's something special to like showing up in the same place occasionally and like really connecting well with your people Yeah, well and a lot of people to think and again, we've had a ton of people join I see y'all so much Chris Alan James Justin Matt Sabrina.

It's great to see all this morning. Thanks for showing up this morning You know, I've had a few people kind of come at me a little bit like Taylor you're all remote It doesn't work that way and listen. I'm not saying oh you need to be all remote I actually I had my team flying my cuz my team's fully remote because we were creating years across the country I had my team flying two weeks ago, and it was awesome. It was awesome to have 48 hours of intentionality lunches dinners Events activities it was so nice because in my opinion. I think the I think intentionality when it comes up onsite, I think has got to be there.

Because I think what's happening right now is that people are like, people are like, oh, well, you know, Taylor, you just want fully remote, but like, we need people back in the office. Okay, okay, I'm talking two different things here. I don't think people need to be in the office to work. I think people need to be in the office for community. So I use that work community a lot. And actually, I just kind of wrote something up recently about the difference between work what it used to be and work what it is now. Like, I think it used to be this mix of vocation, like right here's my skills, I'm applying to this thing, but also community like you spend the most time in your day as an adult at work or doing work and doing that in isolation like I'm here at my house and by myself, you know, I go for walks just so I can like get out and see other people.

But no longer do you have that built-in community. And now I think people are kind of less connected to the job because they are, it's like work and work only unless you can find ways to build up like this sense of belonging, the sense of inclusion where like I'm a part of this thing, it's going to do like this team that's going out to do something cool. I want to be here for the tech, but also I like working with these people. But you got to be intentional about creating those relationships, or they just won't happen. Like I struggled, to be honest. Like I'm an outgoing guy.

Like I like being with people. I love a good meeting even. Like I know a lot of people bash meetings, but like a good meeting where we get insane. I love a good meeting too. Don't get wrong. I do love a good meeting. That's also why we're in leadership though too. Because we do. Yeah. Who like meetings? Raise your hand. Great. All right. And Taylor, you're in leadership. Yeah. But it's hard. You're missing the standing outside of the office of the meeting room, chatting it up about like the hurricanes just won their series, right? Like so people would normally be talking about. Wait, did y'all win your series?

Yeah, yeah. Oh heck yeah, y'all beat the Bruins? Yes, for sure. That's awesome. That's awesome. So, or it's like walking out of the meeting kind of like, hey, can we chat again about this thing? Or is it overhearing stuff? I think it's really hard for leaders too because right now the only thing that people get as far as leadership is the intentional thing you put out, right? It's the message that you send to the whole team. It's the one-on-one chat you have with people. But what you don't have is that sort of leadership by walking around. Like they don't see you like, hey, I'm engaged with Taylor right now.

We're chatting it up. We're cutting it up. I'm in the coffee room talking with so and so Jacob over here. Like you just don't see that. So it's easy for leadership to become this sort of the man, right? Like the authority is over there and they're holding me down for some reason. They don't care. They don't like, they're not listening to me. Cause I just don't, like we're not able to be seen as much. So you have to be super intentional about like chatting it up with people. Like I was just on a standup with some folks that I don't normally work with, but I dropped in just to kind of like, you know, say, hey, like I'm gonna be in Barcelona this week.

Would love to chat up with anybody that's available. And they're like, oh, you're coming this week? So like they didn't even know. I feel like it's like, how do you get that sort of engagement from people with leadership so you can hear from them? Because as leaders, we didn't know what they need and kind of what's really going on and not just be stuck in some like, you know, leadership bubble. Yeah, and Barrett comes down here. Don't think you need to be in person for community. In person, community typically ends up being going out after work, which is meaningless. So, Barrett, I hear you on this.

I think in person intentionality, like I was talking about a little bit earlier with my team coming in, we had a set dinner, we had a set lunch, we had a set activity or two, I think that is where I think that's the golden ticket. I think intentionality, having your team come in, building community there, but yes, you know, I actually had a great conversation about the inclusivity of events, right? Going out drinking is not an inclusive event. There's a lot of people who don't drink. There's a lot of people who don't want to drink. That is not an inclusive event. So I totally agree with you on that.

I do think if you can get the team together and spend some intentional time, I think that's where the magic happens. Yeah. Let's see here. James comes in. James, good to hear you hear from you, buddy. It helps you create an intention, it helps create intentionality, but casual conversations in my last set up an open 30 minute coffee break every day. So my team could come together and just be people. So I've so this is something I've had to re-engineer say, I don't know about you. I'm very much like no bullshit like, all right, what's going on. All right, seven minutes. All right, we're done.

What I realized now with the team remotely is that really maybe the first 15 minutes you guys just chat about your weekend. So we actually have that inside of our teams too. They have a 15 minutes of coffee and 15 minutes of stand up. Like in the 15 first 15 minutes, it's not required, but it's an open line, like the video calls on and you can jump in and chat it up about what's going on and then jump into the work. So yeah, I think the casual interactions, even the in-person stuff, creating some casual space too, where people can, like I mentioned earlier about the sports thing, folks that wanna go for a run together, like, you know, they can get out and do that together.

Yeah. I know you work out. I do work out, do not run though. I like to stay in one place at the same time. So something I'll call out real quick, because it is something that I've suffered from and probably a lot of other people have too. When you do meetups in your hometown, it's super convenient because I don't have to be away, I don't have to travel from my family. But when you throw in all of these like must do dinners things like I got three kids it's hard to like convince my wife that this is this is work I'm going to hear but like if when I do travel it makes it a little simple so just be inclusive and thinking about the family environment for those that have or even just other obligations right so planning ahead far enough that people can orient their schedules is really important too.

Well but I think I want to uncover this too and of course we have other topics but I feel like we're vibing on this pretty good. I think is what you just said. I think you have, I think leading in a remote setting is getting to know your people on a more intimate level. And I think it's, and then again, it's hard. It is so hard. I'm not saying this easy. I'm not saying this for everybody. But then it's like, how do you build your culture around the people knowing that maybe it doesn't work for everybody, right? And like, you know, because like there's some people like me like I don't I don't need a happy hour like let let me expense like some studio lighting in my microphone and let me have a really good setting you'll you'll keep me forever if you keep doing that right now there's some people like I don't really care if I have a 4k camera I don't care if I have a fancy microphone I actually just want to hang out and drink great but the thing is though I think as a leader within an organization I think it's you know in your people on that intimate of a level which is hard and it takes time but I I think that's where the magic happens.

Oh, I agree. And I think that it's valuing the whole person, not just what they contribute to the technology. So that show up and they do a great job. But really, I mean, these are people that have other interests. And that other interest actually makes them more effective at their job. Like problem solving in a tech domain is different than but similar to problem solving, like I'm a woodworker. or I like to work on cars. Like I'm just, my mind is always like working on puzzles. Like these are things that I think if you don't get to know the person, like you put them in a box and we don't, we don't fit in the same boxes.

And so getting to understand them. Now you can, you know, care for them better and engage with them differently or connect, you know, cause it's not just us as a hub connecting with all our people. I want my people to connect. And it's finding those things that they enjoy together, the interests they have that are similar. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. All right. So let's, so let's go on to optimizing interviews. I know we, we joked about this. You're like, I'm still learning, right? Like, you know, we're still trying to figure out, uh, have y'all changed up your interview process? All like, I mean, there are hiring managers that that watch this show.

I've actually had a few engineering managers messaging either like, I actually use your show to implement new steps within our organization. So I do know people watch this. What, what have y'all again? It's not just my mother. What have you all done or how have you changed? Because you've been primarily remote, right? But I know the market has obviously turned on its head a little bit. Have you all done anything differently from an interview perspective? Yeah, over time, even as I've been with Ona now, just at two years, we've tweaked and tweaked and tweaked kind of how the process works. One of the things that I've learned is different people need different sets of context.

And so one of the things that one of our folks did was like, hey upfront, I'm gonna give you everything that you're gonna get from here. Hey, we have a little like a technical exercise. It's like from the first like conversation that we set up. Like here's what's coming. I have a two-way two. Yeah. Other folks, it's like, you know, you they don't wanna get it to later because they don't even know if they wanna proceed because it isn't a two-way street here, right? Like it's a, do they wanna engage with my company versus do I wanna engage with them? It needs to be symbiotic there.

The way that we've kind of progressed is, you know, when we were in the office, someone would show up, they're there for three hours, and then maybe chop it up with like three different groups of people, and now you can make a decision. It's a little bit more drawn out now, which I think makes it difficult, because people are trying to make decisions. They're probably chatting with several different companies, trying to organize their schedules around it. It's tough to like kind of get like a series of things going. And then I throw in there the wrinkle of like, We're across multiple time zones. And so like, I got to get Spanish guys talking to us folks early in the morning and like, wow, I was kind of trying to plan to work today and talk to you tonight.

I don't want to interview like seven a.m. Exactly. And so it is these wrinkles that we keep, you know, iterating, right? Like it's, it's, there's no perfect, but we keep trying to like find where inefficiencies are where anywhere we feel like someone feels like they're just part of the process. Like I want to like squash that and be like no we care about you as a person like and not just like your contributions to us, but like how can we help you get to where you want to go and I don't know How do you how do you do that though? Like how do you do that as an organization to make somebody not feel like something part of the process?

I feel like that's so hard to do well I'll tell you it's difficult especially in my order of engineering because engineers like like they're programmatic, I'm not saying they don't have like feelings and emotions, but like they want to have feelings. They're like 100% we do. They just hide them, you know, behind Lee. But they want to kind of, okay, I'm gonna have this conversation so I can get back to writing code. It's like, okay, but like this might be the person that joins your team. So how would you want to get to know them if this is the first time you chat it with them?

Okay, let's make them feel like they can get a good sense of what the team is like. So let's not just like how them and hammer them with questions like open up and say like what do you not know about owner that you want to know about owner like and a lot of times it starts with tech questions like oh what tech staff do you use and this and that but like it gets into at least the ones that the conversations I'm having like okay like yeah how are some of the questions we're exploring right here right how are you you you know, engaging with people remotely.

Like I'm at my house, like how can I be engaged with other people? Yeah. Let's have a couple of questions coming in on the chat there too. Yeah, yeah. So Stacey comes in. My 13, Stacey is good to see you buddy. My 13 member Scrum team spans from US to Ireland to Greece to India. It's also on the ICs, which I'm an IC to reach out and check chat on our own with each other, being a 100 cent remote that doesn't happen naturally, like on a water cooler. Yeah. I mean, I've told my team where, I mean, we kind of have this mentality if it takes a village.

And like, you know, some of our newer people are doing one on ones with our even newer people once a week, right? And so it's like, we're all, we all try to make, I really try to encourage a team to reach out to other people to help them. Because I think, and I've talked to a few engineers about this on the show, I think the more that you come from a mentorship state and a learning state, the more you're gonna get better at your job the more you're going to help others. Yeah, for sure. And I think, so one thing we've done in that regard, not just from a leader down, but that community building, is we do have a buddy program that we kind of, as a new person comes on, there's already an identified, here's a partner for you.

And it's more of like a safe place to ask the dumb question than anything. Like I don't want to ask the tech lead or the manager or whoever like this question, because I don't want them to think they made a bad hire. It's like, well, we're trying to squash that too of like, no, no, we hired you because we know you're smart. We didn't expect you to know what we're doing yet. Like you've got, you know, you have some ramp time there. I love that. That buddy gives them at least a place that they can ask. And it offers opportunities for mentors to flex that muscle.

Yeah. Julia comes in, great point. The 15 minute coffee break, the beginning of virtual meetings helps create community. Management recently decided to change our projects, remote meetings to 15 minutes total. Those ultra short meetings are shutting down community rapport and some team members have stopped showing up for meetings interesting. Yeah, I agree. Like even from our CEO, like he was on some of our executive calls me like, okay, before we start the meeting, like how's everybody doing? Like what would you do this weekend? Like just trying to set that tone and model that that this is important. It is hard. Like it's hard to, because everyone wants to be efficient and get jobs done and you have going back like knowing your people.

Some people are like, I don't want to be on this call. I don't like meetings. Like, but like, how do you get folks that like can be served in the ways that they need to be served? Yeah. And 15 minutes of meetings total, like means, yes, you're super effective on like meeting reduction. But if you're all remote, like, now that means I'm only talking to someone else 15 minutes, that seems like a for maybe my son is super introverted. He might go all day and say, like four words like he might be cool with that right but right for other folks you know they want to have a little more than 15 minutes or one one thing one thing we implemented on my team is on Mondays at 8 30 we just hop on kick off the week we don't really talk about anything about work today I brought up work stuff but for the most part like we just say hey how's your weekend you do anything fun okay all right and it can last three minutes and it can last 30 minutes but just just having an opportunity where we can get everybody on the team together just hang and just shoot the shit.

I think as a huge bear comes in and goes, what are emotions? Elliot, I've been thinking to just start a call spur of the moment with a friend and then invite everyone to join us. Yeah, I mean, I think that's good. I think I did a round table conversation with some engineering leads in Nashville and Kyle Welch. She's an engineering manager at a Vamp right here in town. He talked about how they have like a Google Meet channel where basically it's water cooler and like a lot of people just have it up sometimes. And they don't even say anything until somebody else kind of says something and then they all kind of chime in.

It's a very kind of passive thing, but it allows opportunity for people just want to hang out somewhere to have like a central meeting place on a Google Meet link. So that's kind of cool. Let's see here. All right, so as we wrap up here, Shannon, well, I'll get you on. That one's like quick. I know, I know, seriously. So what's obviously, you know, you're hiring right now. What are just some key things for job seekers that you're seeing common malpractice as job seekers are doing? What are just some words of encouragement? Yeah, so I had this old friend who ended up being a boss at one point and said, don't bear the lead, right?

Every person that is out there, like looking for a job has some unique sort of mix of experience, talent, passion, of the things that you really care about, like on your resume, like, which is usually the first thing that you will see, or on your LinkedIn profile, the first thing people see, like get into the technical specifics of like this and this and this, like hides kind of what your superpower is. Right? So like, how do you broadcast like, yes, I am a developer, but this is why I'm different than other developers. Not better than, but like this is the unique value that I bring to a team.

And so somehow find a way to like promote that and then own it too. Like we talked about content and you talked about having Friday's call about, you know, content like if you have that area like, you know, whether it's, let's say it's blockchain or it's like, you know, front end frameworks or whatever your thing is like talk about it, you know, like, or just even linking articles of things like build the limit of your brand. That's a thing that helps me as a hiring manager know who is this on the other end of this thing like and I'm gonna ask those things We're on the first intro call like we have a you know Internal recruiting team that does a lot of our pre-screen But then I'm the first person a lot of folks talk to and I want to know I What do I not read on the resume?

Like tell me tell me more about you and so I think finding ways to kind of broadcast that more Makes you stand out. I love that. I love that that. All right, Shannon. This was a blast. I always let people, I do let the guests always end with a few more words of wisdom. So anything else that we haven't covered around hiring, retention, leadership, job seeker, anything else that you want to impart on the viewer's say is wrap up. Yeah, I'll say, and this isn't rocket science, like you own your career, right? Like not new Taylor, but you do. But like everyone owns their own career.

So figuring out like what step you're at right now and like what step you want next is more on you than anyone else. But once you kind of figure that out, find that community around you, whether it's people that are already doing the thing you want to be doing or hiring manager that's hiring for the thing you want to be doing, like build that community because this world that we live in is no longer like isolated. Yeah, we're off and we're working in our own spots But like the connections you can make with people, like it might lead, not lead to this job right now, but it might lead to the next job or the next job.

And I do think that first, it starts with you, but then you invite others into your story, into your world and kind of build up kind of where you're trying to go. Um, I, so I forgot this question. I need to start asking this question, um, more because, because I, you know, the whole mantra for guidance counselor 2.0 is basically, we didn't have guidance counselors in middle, we had guidance counselors in middle school and high school. We don't really have guidance counselors now, right? Like we just, I mean, they're called there now. So, you know, for, for me, I want to start getting back to the asking this question.

I keep forgetting. I need to put a note up. What is one advice you would give to your younger self? Man, um, I would say take more risks. Like, you know, I was, um, I did take a risk and I moved to Florida and it ended up, I found my wife, Like that was a huge one. But like career wise, I locked in and I kind of stayed in the same spot for a long time. And when I finally stepped out of that, like I just grew tremendously. And so I'm not saying change, change, change, change, change, change. But like kind of have a plan and like, you know, the safe thing to do, uh, might not be the right thing for you to do if you evaluate, like, what is the actual downside of me trying something new?

I kind of had a path I was on that I didn't take a lot of risks, but if I could go back and do it again Like I've lived in Raleigh and worked in Raleigh like my whole career Like I don't want to have the regret when I get to them my career Like you know what? I never lived in a city or I never lived like out west or in Colorado or at least things like where there's plenty of tech companies all over But now that world's changed and I can work for those companies without actually moving there or I can move there and still still work here so it's uh Just evaluate now.

I'm married. I got a couple more good than I got a college coming. It's harder to take a big risk now. But early on in your career, what stands in the way of you just trying something and learning and don't look at failure as an end state. Failure is the opportunity for the next thing. I love that. Well, y'all, thanks again for hanging out with Shannon and I today. We appreciate it Shane and stay on real quick as we end up Sure thing, man. Thanks everyone and came in on the chat. Yes, yes, this was great. A lot of comments. I love it so much.

Tomorrow, I'm going live with my favorite recruiter in Nashville at another agency. My favorite recruiter at another agency rather. So his name is Hunter Mitch. I'm just going to be great. It's just going to be two recruiters talking about our war stories. So y'all have a great one today. Have a wonderful Monday. I'll see you all tomorrow. Please. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store.

I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please, like right now. unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.