Full Remote, Remote Friendly, Hybrid?

Question

Hi folks,I work for a European SaaS startup, which has a fairly successful hybrid implementation. One main tech site, and a handful of remote engineers, mostly in the same timezone.I've been asked to write a proposal for building an offshore engineering team in the US. We have existing sales and services offices in Texas, so that is the preferred location. Many of the companies of similar size that I know of have gone fully remote since the pandemic and plan to stay remote first.If YOU were trying to build a new, offshore engineering team in the US, and 7 time zones away from HQ, what would you choose and why? (Knowing that the easiest path is to specify hybrid with people living in Texas near the office.)I have worked in all of the models and have my own biases, but I want a sample of N &gt; 1.Bonus points if you can articulate how you would try to convince upper management if you think it should be something other than hybrid.Thanks!

kronung · Accepted Answer

I'm a bit curious why to try to build offshore dev team in US when the organisation is in EU? If it's not DevOps / SRE team -- my personal opinion is that there are more cons then pros.
Time difference is a thing, but not only when you're talking about meetings and collaboration. I.e. someone needs an urgent help, or code review. They'll ask someone available in their timezone (for convenience) first time, but second time they'll go to the person helped previously and so on... It also creates quite clear border between teams. There will be "Us" and "They" very soon and this is a cultural issue you'd need to deal with.

vrqwn024 · Answer

Integrating teams has worked well for us as we have engineering in the US and India, which each team having a mix of each.

No one should feel forced into an always-on mindset. If employees don’t create clear work boundaries, they risk burning out, which negatively affects the entire team’s productivity, creativity, and collaboration.

Async comms could be a downside but there are ways to train people to be effective communicators and that is more about culture and leadership than anything else.

katnip · Answer

I currently work for a US/European company myself, and a lot of the engineers (me includes) work fully remote. I found that integrating US based engineers in mostly European teams (or vice versa) actually work better than having all EU or all US teams. In the former model, we try to schedule important meetings in the late afternoon (EU TZ), and that way US engineers can join too. The not-so-essential meetings take place at the early afternoon, and mornings are left mostly free. In the latter model (all-EU/all-US teams) I found that “drift” occurs very quickly, and syncing becomes an issue. I personally prefer the first model because it allows for better integration and team cohesion.

omgitsmypassword · Answer

Extrapolating from the CD PROJEKT's latest strategy update, I would probably try to find an east coast location. It seems that the timezone difference bit CDP quite a bit, and they are opening a Boston office in addition to Vancouver one.

At our company, we're working with people from South America, and it's a bittersweet dynamic because of the summer/winter timezone changes. I'd look for as much overlap as possible setting the team again.

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/media/news/cd-projekt-updates-its-strategy-2/

Full Remote, Remote Friendly, Hybrid?

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