This is really well done! I appreciate both the design, and the amount of thought and effort that went into laying all of this out and then honing it into a cohesive, well-written deck. I've been thinking and reading a good deal about distributed companies recently, and it's nice to see a perspective as solid as this.
I'm also curious for your take on one question: you describe yourself as "a remote team working all over the world", and also say that to keep the team cohesive, you try to overlap with other members of the team four days a week, and use CET as your "standard" time zone. The globe diagram makes it seem like all of your team members are relatively close to that time zone.
How would you support team members living in locations that are farther away (e.g. the west coast of the US), given that overlapping with central Europe would require those employees to work either very early in the morning, or very late at night?
Thank you very much. We actually did spend more than 6 months (not full time of course) working on this and are very proud to release it this week.
Currently the team is spread over Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Spain, Australia, UK. That said, 1/3 of the team is in Barcelona (where we started the company), but not necessarily Spanish. That said though, while we're quite diverse and from many countries and cultures, most of us do live in Europe though and once the summer is back we'll migrate back there.
So in summer it's quite easy for us, as we as a team sit closely together. However many of our customers are from the US West Coast and then the other extreme is a client in Australia. Winter time is then more difficult as some people go back home to Latin America or over to Asia. But so far we've always managed and actually sometimes it helps to have someone being in a different time zone. Makes it easier to monitor servers around the clock.
We do however require that team members do have a certain overlap with CET. Just in December I was myself in Brazil, so I simply started working at 6am and stopped around 2pm to go kitesurfing. Maybe not something everyone wants to do, but since our company is mostly about lifestyle everyone in our team appreciates that freedom, but also understands the responsibility that comes with it.
From your experience so far, do you think that the overlap requirement is essential to successfully running a distributed company? Did you have it right from the start, or is this something that you discovered you needed as you went along?
I'm also curious for your take on one question: you describe yourself as "a remote team working all over the world", and also say that to keep the team cohesive, you try to overlap with other members of the team four days a week, and use CET as your "standard" time zone. The globe diagram makes it seem like all of your team members are relatively close to that time zone.
How would you support team members living in locations that are farther away (e.g. the west coast of the US), given that overlapping with central Europe would require those employees to work either very early in the morning, or very late at night?