work from home – EngineerBabu Blog https://engineerbabu.com/blog Hire Dedicated Virtual Employee in Any domain; Start at $1000 - $2999/month ( Content, Design, Marketing, Engineering, Managers, QA ) Wed, 11 Aug 2021 05:17:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.11 How to run a Remote Company – 20 Practical Questions answered by the Basecamp founders https://engineerbabu.com/blog/how-to-run-a-remote-company/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-run-a-remote-company https://engineerbabu.com/blog/how-to-run-a-remote-company/#boombox_comments Thu, 26 Mar 2020 15:07:58 +0000 https://engineerbabu.com/blog/?p=17451 Everyone around the world is facing a tough time due to the Corona pandemic. Companies are facing a great challenge in this crisis as offices have been shut down and now they have to operate remotely. It’s tough to manage remote teams, complete the goals and remain on the same page when everyone’s working remotely....

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Everyone around the world is facing a tough time due to the Corona pandemic. Companies are facing a great challenge in this crisis as offices have been shut down and now they have to operate remotely.

It’s tough to manage remote teams, complete the goals and remain on the same page when everyone’s working remotely.

This is the time to learn from ‘Basecamp’, a top remote company that has been managing remote teams and has been running successfully for years now. 

The first time companies are scrambling to figure out what to do, how to run a remote company, how to work from home, Basecamp has been doing this for 20 years so they thought that it would be good to be there to offer up some advice and help people out with this because people are struggling with manage remote teams and to run a remote company.

We are going to share with you some excerpts from the recent talk with Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson in which they have answered all the questions about how to run a remote company and how to handle this difficult situation going on around the world.

 “Companies begin to simulate the office remotely which is not really the right way to do things. Although it’s the natural way to do things, it’s a wrong approach.

It reminds me a little bit of back in the mid-90s when the graphical web browser first hit, most websites started to look like cd-rom interfaces and DVD interfaces because it was basically like a direct port.

It’s like we don’t know what this new medium is so we are just going to port this design over from the way we interact with DVDs or CDs on to this other new medium.

And I feel like that’s kind of what’s happening now or what people are struggling with. Like they don’t know how to be working remotely so they’re trying to simulate what it was like to work in the office, which means people are having the same number of meetings.

A bunch of companies is turning on perpetual video streams on everyone’s computer where people are able to look at each other all day long while they’re working remotely or taking a picture of people every 10 seconds. The idea to simulate what it’s like being an office where you can see everybody at home is wrong.”

If you threw me a trombone and said go play something I’m like I don’t know what I’m doing I would suck at it and a lot of people are going to suck at working remotely for a while but there are huge advantages to working remotely.

One of these is that there’s a mindset shift it’s not just about working remotely and trying to simulate what it’s like to work locally it’s about actually giving people more time and attention to themselves it’s about being more asynchronous so not turning everything into a real-time situation.

Here are some of the practical questions answered about how to run a remote company, how to manage remote teams, how to work from home and all the related questions.

 

1. How to conduct real-time meetings while working remotely?

 It’s really easy to pull people into an office or conference room at the office which is why people have meetings all day long. So when you’re managing remote teams, you don’t just throw people in a video chat all day long.

Have fewer of these things and write things up instead of disseminating information so people can absorb this information on their own schedule.

These are some of the ways you can begin to shift the way you work. This is actually an opportunity to rethink the way you work. It’s actually like being thrown a little bit and having to look around and think where we should go next.

These are these moments that we don’t often have at the office because most companies are pushed by momentum. They’re gonna keep working the way they’ve always worked and they never have a chance because everyone’s always so super busy.

2. How do you know what people are doing when they work from home? How do you know if people are actually working remotely?

The answer is you don’t need to know what people are doing all the time. You don’t need to know what people are working on. This is an opportunity to rethink the way you work and do some things in a new way that we think actually gonna pan out in a big way for you over the long term.

When you switch into this new mode where you have to run a remote company, it’s not about getting everyone together at the same time. Do the status meeting not as a meeting but as ‘write-up’ and do the pitch of something you want in the form of a write-up.

If you always have let’s say a ‘Monday morning stand up’, where everyone’s around a room, cut out that Monday morning stand up business meetings and instead just allow people to talk about what they did last weekend or what they are planning on doing this week. So substitute some of that work for some life.

That meeting that you probably have Monday morning you probably don’t need to actually have that meeting. What’s probably more valuable as a social component right now is to write those things up and disseminate those things so people have the information on their own schedule.

3. How to make people working from home remain connected and not feel disconnected?

The whole reason we’re managing remote teams is social distancing. Let’s say like six months from now hopefully nine whatever it is when we can finally get back to normal, I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a hybrid shift now.

Some people are going to be working remotely even after this because people find out that it works pretty well. Some people who work from the office are gonna have more physical interactions and are gonna be together more.

They’re gonna do some things that you can’t do working remotely that’s gonna happen.

connect people in a remote company

However, there are some techniques that we use at Basecamp, a feature called ‘automatic check-ins’ and this is a feature that automatically asks people questions on a given schedule automatically so.

For example, every Monday morning,  Basecamp asks our entire company automatically like what’d you do this weekend.

Now, this is a totally optional question, you’re free to share or not. But the point is, it prompts people to share some of what they’ve been doing outside of work with everybody else.

So, we’re all not all together physically but this is a way to share those moments with one another so we get to see a little bit of each other’s humanity.

4. In a workplace with a mix of local and remote workers, what are some good strategies for making remote workers feel more connected and not left out of office events?

Don’t have five people sitting around a conference desk and then one person dialing in from the outside.

This is how a lot of people get a bad impression of what it is to work remotely because they get this experience where those five people around the desk are all connected, there’s no lag and then someone is calling in from the outside and it seems like they are just from another planet and it makes them feel disconnected and left out of office events.

So even if you have the set up where some people are at the office and some people are work from home, level the playing field.

When you do a call that requires remote workers to do it all remotely, get into your own offices, sit at your own desk or whatever and use a video chat system instead.

The absolute worst way is these conference phones where you mix people in the office with people working remotely.

The better way is becoming better writers, becoming more frequent writers and making that the default and then occasionally leveling up to having a call when you actually need to debate something.

Leveling the playing field is important. It makes everyone feel the same.

It also helps in reducing complexity because if you give them one message to one group, one way and another message to another group another way, inevitably the messages are gonna be slightly different and you might leave out some information to one or add something to the other and you’re gonna wonder why didn’t those people know about this. Well, you told two different things so by writing things up, there’s a central source of truth.

5. How do you qualify employees and gain trust if you don’t meet in person?

You don’t hire someone you don’t trust and then wonder how to trust them. We’re very careful about the hiring process, we spend months and months hiring an individual person.

We go through many rounds of interviews. Trust is something you feel about somebody and you get there by asking different kinds of questions and seeing how responsive they are and seeing how good they are giving feedback and talking to people who they’ve worked within the past.

Those are the kinds of things that you do but once you hire someone you must trust them.

You can’t figure that out later so my bigger point here is that you’ve got to suss that out during the hiring process and then once you have someone on board you must trust them.

By the time someone is hired, if you extend trust to them, they’ll give trust back to you. But if you start out not trusting them then the natural response from them is not to return the trust.

6. How do I know someone’s working remotely if I can’t see them well?

What is seeing somebody have to do with judging the work, looking at someone pound away in a keyboard tells you nothing.

All it tells you is someone’s pounding away on a keyboard, looking at someone playing with Photoshop or sketch or whatever they’re using doesn’t tell you that they’re designing anything, it just tells you that they’re using a tool.

You have to look at the work itself and the work can be looked at from 6,000 miles away.

It doesn’t really matter where you are so this idea of trust being a physical quality is also not true. You don’t trust someone more because you can see them than someone who you can’t see.

Lack of trust is a projection of someone’s own insecurities as a manager that you’re incapable of evaluating the work on the basis of the quality of the work because maybe you don’t know the work maybe you just don’t have the capacity or the insight to sort of that’s whether the work is good or not or it’s done in a reasonable time or not.

If these things are true, you’re unqualified to be a manager.

If you cannot assess the quality of the work that’s being done on your behalf or in your direction, you’re unqualified to be a manager.

The hard truth is there are a lot of unqualified managers and they help breed this idea of trust when they can’t see someone working physically.

7. How do you suggest we handle the situation where we haven’t ever been a remote company till now?

You’re dropped into a bit of a new world and you have to learn some new habits, learn some new skills. Everyone can work remotely like it’s not rocket science in that sense.

There is a new set of skills and there is a new set of habits you have to develop but everyone is totally capable of learning those things. We wrote a whole book about it called ‘Remote office’.

being new as a remote company

There’s a set of skills that you just gotta try doing. First couple write-ups, the first pitch is gonna be a little bad. but the thing here is that we’re gonna be here for a while.

So better start learning now and just get better at it and at the end of it you’re gonna be pretty good.

8. How can we help teams transition through this and what are the best training practices that can we provide?

To help teams transition through this, Leadership needs to have a certain degree of empathy here and we recognize that people are gonna suck at this for a while.

One thing I would encourage you to do is just simply write as you talk sometimes actually not even sometimes most of the time.

Businesses need to curb their ambition a little bit right now and recognize that people have to adjust, they have to adjust at home, they have to adjust at work, there’s a lot of adjustment that’s going to happen and you can’t pile that in and have the same expectations of work getting done as you did three weeks ago so maybe 20% of the time right now is spent on learning how to work remotely.

I think that this is going to be a sea-change shift in working from home. A lot of companies are going to allow people to continue to work from home and so this is a new skill to develop and a new opportunity here.

9. How to handle video meetings with more than 20 people, what are good rules and how to moderate this?

The reason people have a lot of people involved in meetings at businesses is that they have large conference rooms and large conference tables and around those large conference tables are a lot of chairs and empty chairs aren’t a good look so you fill up rooms with more people.

We don’t have to have twelve empty talking headboxes in your video chat thing if there’s only three people or four people that are required to jump in.

Let’s say you only need five and you had twenty before, 15 people just got freed up to do some other things that are really important.

“Having 20 people and having 20 people’s opinions present doesn’t lead anywhere good, it actually leads to indecision.”

We have used video chat systems in the past and the way we use it is everyone is there on it but a very small number of people actually interact and everyone else just sees.

It’s almost like a theater-based operating room. You have a spectator group of perhaps another 20 or in some of our cases we’ve had forty people who watch that surgical group does the remediation on the problem and others are taking that information and learning from it.

10. How do you prioritize your tasks that need to be done or in general what is your productivity system?

We wrote an entire ebook called ‘Shape up’. It details how we prioritize work at Basecamp as a software company. The idea is of not using estimates.

A lot of companies think accountability means asking someone to guess about the future and then if that guess is wrong then they’re bad people. That’s sort of a summary of accountability.

A lot of firms seem to run on it. It’s a really poor version of accountability.

A lot of especially creative endeavors cannot be estimated to any reasonable extent because you don’t know really what you’re building.

So inevitably what happens is that the estimate gets wrong and then someone gets sucked in to working overtime or doing other things.

Productivity system

What we do at Basecamp is we instead do budgets, so we say this general concept let’s say we’re working on a new feature it’s worth three weeks.

Make the best version of what you can of this general fuzzy concept that’s just outline sketched in three weeks and we will trust you to come up with the best version within that time, if it’s gonna take six weeks, it’s not worth it.

Say this is worth three weeks, make the best damn version you can within that and then down the ship. So that is basically the idea of keeping the scope flexible.

It’s easy to get lost in these individuals ‘To Do’s’. Rather than this, thinking what am I trying to get done this week is the right approach. Plan major projects which you need to move forward.

A lot of people end up trying to track things into doing this or otherwise and then at the end of the week they’re like wait what did I get done, what did I actually move forward.

“Instead of looking back that you checked off 122 dues, I’d much rather look at 12 peek picture of things I’m trying to move forward and that that’s enough.”

A big automatic check-ins feature in base camp asks everybody at base camp what are you planning on working on this week and people write up with a plan I’m working on and usually, it’s a few bullet points four or five or six bullet points and some big picture ideas.

11. Not everyone can do remote work, it’s not job-related but person-related. What do you think?

I believe everybody can work remotely. Of course not if you work in the retail industry and you need to be on the floor or you work in a restaurant.

But if you do information work and the examples here developer, designer,  product manager, whatever these are all informational

work. If work can be done on a computer it can be done anywhere. Everything I do lives on a 13-inch MacBook Pro, I can do that in the person sitting next to someone, I can do it 4,000 miles, the work is happening on the computer so it doesn’t matter where I am.

There are certain people who feel like they need to thrive around people and I understand that especially during this time it’s going to be harder for some of those people to not have the human connections that they’re used to having. Everyone has to make some sacrifices.

12. How would you host a brainstorming meeting? We’ve done this in person, therefore, how do we do that same thing remotely?

Brainstorming should actually be done individually and then you bring those ideas to the group and then you can discuss them versus coming into a room with a blank slate.

In brainstorming, you got a bunch of people together in real-time and they start shooting from the hip and sometimes good things come out of that.

But what I think is even better things can come out once you plant a seed, you post a pitch and you give it a day or two days for people to let it marinate in their brain maybe even sleep on it and then they’ll either present their own ideas back.

13. What do you think are the key things I can do as a manager of a small team to make remote working a great experience?

Empathy is required and also pausing expectations is required.

You need to cut back your ambitions a little bit you need to have some time for people to adjust, you need to get let people get used to things, you need to let people get their home office setup, you need to let people get the equipment if they don’t have any.

You cannot just assume the business is gonna continue as usual you have to dial back ambitions. I think it’s all it’s incumbent upon leadership to slow down, to chill out for a little bit to relax to give people some space to figure this

out amongst themselves. David said it’s not that challenging it’s just different and anything that’s different takes some time to break some habits and get used to some new ones so that’s the advice I would give.

If you pile four or five different tools in front of people and try to onboard them in four or five different tools and there’s no system in place. People are gonna go where I put the information.

I would encourage you to use Basecamp but you can use whatever tool you want.

“Pause your expectations and dial back your ambitions for a little while.”

14. How do you get aligned with coworkers without interrupting them through chat, phone calls and respecting their time?

You don’t need to be aligned all the time. First of all, you should be able to slide past one another. When you need something from someone else, ask but don’t have an expectation of an immediate response.

When you have expectations of immediate response, you end up driving other people crazy and it’s actually quite arrogant to ask something of someone and expect them to get right back to you right away.

It’s like saying that whatever you’re working on is far more important than what they’re working on. So the idea here is to relax your expectations of one rather, build a little bit more self-reliance.

On Basecamp we have all the tools right like that there are direct messages and the pings and there’s a chat and it always seems like that’s the easiest way to do right.

Direct messages and pings

It’s valuable to protect your time. The entire day is not for team collaboration, you trying to be kind and responding to everyone will end up at the end of the week and have not gotten things done you want to do and that’s not a good place.

Both the self-care and the collaborative care are that you take time away from yourself and you reserve hours where the main thing you focus on is your solo deep work and it’s only emergencies that should really burst that membrane.

Most people don’t even have control of their own day and so you can’t expect people to get work done if they don’t even have control of their own day.

So at Basecamp, we prevent people from taking each other’s time systematically if you want someone’s time you simply ask for it. It’s a negotiation, it’s valuable.

aligning the remote workers

“If you want to put something on your calendar, you should put it there even if someone asked you for your time, you should put it there, you should not let anyone else put anything on your calendar.”

15. How would you encourage leaders to prepare? What if we have a deadline to launch a product?

You must relax your expectations. We have this product called hey coming out in April well it’s not going to come out in April anymore, it’s going to come out later than April.

We have to slow down a little bit right now. We have to let people spend some more time at home especially people with kids at home who are now in charge of the health of childcare.

Launching a new product in the middle of the pandemic is probably not a very thoughtful thing to do. Do not make your team feel anxious about hitting that deadline.

It’s very important to just be very clear and to be very understanding and show that as a leader, as an owner to your team that you understand the reality on the ground and it’s not about we need to buck up.

There are certain industries where like people probably have to put in more time now like people who are researching a vaccine, people who are creating masks. Understand that it’s a national and a global emergency.

I’d say the number one thing to remember here for all product companies is that all deadlines are made up there by us. We invented them, we could reinvent them and we can change them now.

When you set the deadline, there was a reality and now there’s a new reality you have to also adjust the deadline given a new reality.

You cannot ask people to do more work in these kinds of times unless the work is critical life-and-death work.

“Deadlines are very useful important tools but if the ground shifts you’ve got to shift the deadlines as well or or eliminate the deadlines.”

16. Our company is not realizing the gravity of the situation and not allowing people to work from home. How can I best nudge our bosses in the right direction with this stuff?

Call that out and publicly leak it and get it out to journalists.

I talked to a ton of investigative journalists who are thankfully working on stories right now calling companies to account for their shitty practices if they’re forcing people who could work from home to come into an office.

You would lose your job if you work at a place where they have still not gotten the memo despite everything that you should not be working from an office if you could work from home.

You should take your precautions accordingly now. There’s a lot of information out right now, there’s a lot of great write-ups of what happens with social distancing.

So part of this calling out of companies that are not allowing people to work from home who could work from home is I set up this email address called Corona- reports at Hakam where people are essentially leaking bad places of employment and they’re sending in these announcements.

17. How do you set up a culture and understand cultural fit when building a fully remote Organization?

Culture is not something that’s created, culture is something that exists.

I’ve seen a lot of companies with long lists of missions and statements and who we are and what we are and if you secretly pulled every employee into a room and said is that who they are they would go no that’s not how it is here let me tell you how it actually is and how they tell you it actually is the culture that’s what culture actually is.

Seeing people in person doesn’t create a culture either. Culture is how you treat people, how you work with people how patient you are with one another.

These are the things that you actually do, how you ask for feedback, how you give feedback, how understanding you are when people have to be out for a few days or whatever it might be. It’s the things that you actually do and that is independent of location.

“Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior. It is what you simply do that’s what culture is.”

We typically do something once a month called the 5 by 12. 5 meaning 5 people and 12 meaning one month per year. We pull in five random people and they get an invitation about an hour or something before this even.

We do a video chat once a month with five random people across the company and it’s about a one-hour chat and it’s it can’t we cannot talk about work.

There’s no work discussion whatsoever and this is about mixing people who often don’t work together because people are pulled from different departments.

Since these people don’t often work together, they get to know each other by talking about life and whatever that’s there on their minds.

We also ask people what they have been reading and people share book reviews and topics that they’re interested in. So people can get to know each other in a way that maybe you might get to know each other around lunch if you are physically in the office.

These are the sort of conversations you might be talking about in physical proximity which you might not talk about working remotely but we kind of encourage people to do that so we do that once a month and we transcribe that call and then everybody in the company gets a copy of that transcription so the five or seven people that are in the call get to have the real-life experience.

People can read up on it later if they choose so they’re part of it as well.

A number of employees who never work remotely before who work here now who say they know their co-workers far better than they did at the other job even though they barely see anybody.

So you can really make sure people know one another even if they don’t see each other. We have also written a book called ‘Rework’ which better describes our culture and how we work.

building a remote company culture

18. How do you help first time work from home employees to ensure we are getting the most out of them?

It sounds like you’re trying to extract or squeeze and I’m not a fan of that method of management.

I think what you want to do is to get the best out of somebody and the best is not the most. So what you want to create is an environment where people can do the best work of their lives.

This is not work from home versus local this is just what is your environment, like how much autonomy do people have, how much trust today do they feel, what size is your team.

Having too many people involved in a project that makes it really hard.

For people to do the best work of their lives, you need to take care of them by paying them well. If someone needs time off or needs something to deal with, help them in the best way possible.

“Create an environment where people can give their best and want to give you their best.”

If you don’t have an hour or two, a beautiful 3 or 4 hours a day to yourself it’s gonna be very hard to do your best work.

And I think most people, if they pull their calendar up right now they’d go like, “It’s like Tetris, there are boxes everywhere and no time for myself. Oh, there’s a little small gap so maybe I can fill that with something.”

That’s not an environment where you can do your best work.

19. How do you manage boredom and anxiety while working remotely?

While working remotely, this is a real thing for a number of people. First of all, talking about it is the first thing you need to do if you feel isolated or lonely.

Tell your teammates, your manager or your team lead. People are very accommodating and understand these situations because a lot of them would have dealt with that.

Using chat for the social connection is really nice, just that don’t have it necessarily open all day long, that’s not great but you can just check in on it a few times during the day and feel like you are part of something even when working remotely.

We’re in an extreme situation right now where we shouldn’t be outside of our homes or talking to anyone in person. In normal times what I would encourage people to do is to get out of the house and take a walk, do something else for a while.

But right now, Social distancing is going on and you need not go out.

We need to support the economy right now.

“Break your day up a little bit, just make sure your team is in the loop.”

To get rid of boredom and anxiety, break up your days. That means just watch some TV or do whatever else that makes you feel comfortable.

Maybe making a hot pot of tea or making yourself lunch. If the feeling of working remotely is what’s isolating then you want to break up the feeling of working alone by not just working alone. You need to do something else for a while.

“Empathize with one another, sympathize with one another and share art.”

20. Should companies notch up on surveillance right now? I want to take a picture of everyone every 10 minutes to make sure they’re at their desk. I want to turn on presents so everyone knows like this person’s available or away or a yellow dot or red dot or green dot.

I would really encourage you not to go that route. Do not implement things where you’re watching people all day.

Do not expect people to be available all the time, you don’t want people to feel like they’re being watched, you don’t want people to feel like someone’s looking over their shoulder virtually.

You’re not gonna get the best out of people if someone’s thinking they’re looking over their shoulder all the time.

It’s especially awkward for people who are working at home who might be working out of their bedroom because they don’t have any other space to work and now the camera is shooting their family photos or the stuff on the bed or whatever.

Don’t try and simulate the physical experience of the office at home. Take advantage of the remote work which means distance, time, space, attention, autonomy and trust.

These are the things to invest in now and when you get back to working in an office perhaps these are the things which pay off.

best tool to run a remote company

We at ‘EngineerBabu’ also use ‘Basecamp’ and it’s just awesome. Thanks to Jason and DHH for giving us Basecamp. Basecamp has made ‘Work from home’ possible for us and to run a remote company.

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Why Hire Remote Developers from Indore, India? https://engineerbabu.com/blog/why-hire-remote-developers-from-indore-india/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-hire-remote-developers-from-indore-india https://engineerbabu.com/blog/why-hire-remote-developers-from-indore-india/#boombox_comments Mon, 20 Jan 2020 08:08:32 +0000 https://engineerbabu.com/blog/?p=16877 The information technology industry is undergoing rapid evolution and changing the shape of Indian Business Standards. According to the recently published research, 80% of Europeans and US outsourcing firms made Indian remote developers as their first choice. It will be intriguing to foreshadow how outsourcing trends emerging and changed geographical and economic equivalence between the...

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The information technology industry is undergoing rapid evolution and changing the shape of Indian Business Standards. According to the recently published research, 80% of Europeans and US outsourcing firms made Indian remote developers as their first choice. It will be intriguing to foreshadow how outsourcing trends emerging and changed geographical and economic equivalence between the developed and developing nations.

Rajwada Indore

“India started with an export of $100 million with around 5000 employees in 1990. But now in 2019, India’s IT export is around $80 Billion with 3.2 million employees working.”

Recommended Reading: Top 10 Tech Companies that Allow you to Work Remotely

90% of India’s IT companies are in six cities: Bengaluru, NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai, according to Nasscom. The statistics are skewed as they deal with only information technology companies, but the overall trend has been unmistakable in the past decade: startups form in a few big cities in the country.

Away from the metros and India’s Silicon Valley, a quiet revolution is brewing in the country’s tier-II cities. Places like Bhubaneswar, Indore, Ahmadabad, Chennai, and Kochi are setting high-tech technologies centers and giving tough competition to well-settled IT hubs. Among these rising IT cities, Indore is considered as the most favorable destination for any IT outsourcing. What makes Indore so special?

Cleanest City Indore

Cleanest city of India 4 times in a row!

Every day, companies are looking to expand their software development team, increase their output, or drive software innovation within their business. I’ve prepared 6 big reasons why going for remote hiring can make it happen. Let’s see some fact which makes Indore a better place to open the offshore center rather than rest of India.

Recommended Reading: Best Way to Hire Developers for Remote Jobs

Commutation: Indore is a small city with a population of around 35 lakh. So the commutation in Indore is easy. Unlike Bangalore or any other metro city where people spent hours on commutation to deliver you the work, Indore goes with an easy lifestyle. An article by The Hindu stated that a Bangalorean commute about 42.5 minutes on an average to reach their work destination and thanks to traffic jams this time is increasing from 3-4 hours!

Traffic in Indore

“The holidify listed Indore on #12 in their article “best places to live and work in India”.

Employee Retention: Employee retention is the biggest problem to run any business. It becomes more challenging for startups to maintain their employees for a longer duration. But Indore is a bit unique in its way! The employees in small cities have a tendency to work for the same company for a longer period. Employees in Indore hardly switch their jobs and stick to the same company for at least 5 years.

Happy Software Engineers

Work-life balance: Once Heather Schuck said, “You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.” And Indoris took this very seriously. Our profession has nowadays has become a vital part of our lives and while creating a good future we keep integrating work with our personal life which eventually leads to stress.

Work Life balance

But the work culture in Indore is quite different as compared to any other city. Because of the friendly environment, people share pain and contemplation

Talent Availability: Big tech companies like TCS and Infosys have recently set up their development center in Indore as Indore is the most promising city in terms of resource availability. Having the country’s first city to have both – IIT and IIM along with first-class B-schools and tech institutions, Indore attracts the students of neighboring states like Gujarat and Rajasthan. This all made Indore enrich in talent where every single person is ambitious about their career.

TCS to Set Up Campus in Indore

Talent Quality: As I said earlier, Indore is not the same as it seems to be! The talent hunt requires fresh blood and the city is brimmed of it. Indore is an education hub of central India. People with different cultures centralized in one city thus they made Indore what it is.

IIM Indore

In addition to this, MNCs like DXC, Samsung, HotWax, etc. are expanding their business in core India and hiring local talents as they have already predicted the future that what going to happen in the coming days.

 “42% of companies are struggling with quality tech talent”, says ET

Cost: An undeniable advantage of offshoring is cost-effectiveness. By offshoring the IT project to Indian developers you can reduce your IT spends by 20-50% compared to hiring at home.

Recommended Reading: How much does Website Development Cost?

The cost of living in a country like India is significantly lower than in the West and especially in the city like Indore. The ease of commutation and accommodation especially make Indore a budget-friendly city.

Let’s have a glance at what makes Indore the best place to hire the development team for your next IT project?

Not only is the cleanest for the 4th time in a row but Indore is emerging as a new IT center for central India. With all the basic facilities like commutation, accommodation now Indore has open the door for the international market as well. Indore gives direct air facilities to Dubai and other places of the world.

Connect with the Remote Developers in Indore

See the cleanest airport of India.

In terms of traffic, Indore is distinct from any other city. Don’t believe me, see this:

Indoris are really amazing at their work!!!

Indore is on its way to being a high-tech city. It is surrounded by two IT parks from the west, 1 from the south and the other from the north of the city. Have a look at these amazing places.

IT Park for remote developers in Indore Industrial Park Indore

Isn’t it enough to plan your next IT project in Indore?

if you have any amazing ideas!

How team EngineerBabu is the perfect solution for hiring remote developers?

We have initially set up our office at Bangalore but due to hectic and restless life, we shifted our office in Indore. We are famous for creating “wow”! In the small journey in the technology, we have come across several obstacles but we handled them very easily.

EngineerBabu Office

Are you looking for a dedicated team of remote developers or a single geek? EngineerBabu is the best web development agency you could ever found. We have a well-built infrastructure with available resources that are ready to help out at any moment.

Remote Developers Team EngineerBabu

EngineerBabu is a superb mix of experienced developers with new and energetic talent. We not only focus on just completing the project but client satisfaction is mandatory for us.

Timely workshops on the latest technologies helped us to sustain in a hasty changing world. All the remote developers of EngineerBabu are professional problem solvers, this what our client said about us.

Testimonial of our previous clients:

And in news too:

“We worked with many startups and helped them build awesome products until they got investments. As a result, we started getting clients from references, and we got the tag of the most startup-friendly IT services company,” shares Aditi (co-founder and CEO, EngineerBabu).

EngineerBabu has built a gigantic network of talents from all over the globe, through various online and offline processes. We are offering IT companies to hire talented engineers with us. To know more about pricing and procedure or drop a mail to mayank@engineerbabu.com

I will be more than happy to help you!

Also Read:

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10 Essential Tips for Hiring Top Remote Employees https://engineerbabu.com/blog/tips-for-hiring-best-remote-employees/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tips-for-hiring-best-remote-employees https://engineerbabu.com/blog/tips-for-hiring-best-remote-employees/#boombox_comments Thu, 09 Jan 2020 13:14:12 +0000 https://engineerbabu.com/blog/?p=16862 Hiring employees is always a tedious job and when it comes to hiring remote employees it becomes more challenging. A good employee doesn’t make him/her a good remote employee. The term “war of talent” come into existence 10 years ago when the shortage of resources was reason to not fulfill the demands of organizations and...

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Hiring employees is always a tedious job and when it comes to hiring remote employees it becomes more challenging. A good employee doesn’t make him/her a good remote employee. The term “war of talent” come into existence 10 years ago when the shortage of resources was reason to not fulfill the demands of organizations and even after decades it is still a reality for modern enterprises.

In order to complete the needs, the managers are looking to hire employees from a globally talented pool especially in the IT industry. The IT industry has one of the highest percentages of remote work. It takes the #2 spot at 57% remote, second only to the transportation industry at 61%, and remote IT work just keeps growing. According to Gallup, the IT industry continues to lead other industries in terms of full-time remote positions and top paid remote workers.

hire best remote employees
Source

So let’s now see how you can be perfect at the art of hiring great remote employees and build a winning remote team.

Few important tips to hire Remote Employees

Right Source: Many candidates are actively looking for better opportunities. The traditional approach of finding jobs over “indeed” or “LinkedIn” is no longer beneficial as the genX knows where to go! IT firms like EngineerBabu provide excellent and scalable solutions and helps to build you a successful remote company.

Recommended Reading: Best ways to hire Developers for Remote Jobs

Remote Friendly Process: The complicated hiring process may lead to misconceptions. So always try to keep the whole hiring process from beginning to end- smooth, hassle-free, and clear to all. You should also make certain that all of the tech equipment he/she’ll need is ready to go before his/her start date, so you can avoid frustration and downtime later.

Ask for Reference Work: That’s the best thing you ask them while taking the interview. Tell him/her to showcase their previous works or any similar work they have done before. Also, put some questions around the used technology, challenges, and their role in the specific project, results, and feedbacks of the clients. This will cut the hesitation between you as well the candidate and you both can communicate more openly.

Hire on Contract: Just be sure that whether the remote employee is beneficial or not! Hire him on a contractual basis. It will help to assess an employee’s technical skills, soft skills, and cultural fit within the organization before committing to a full-time arrangement. Pay him by giving monthly, hourly or daily salary. The payroll can be decided upon the skills and experience of the employee.

Give a Test Project: Well, every employee claims that he is the perfect fit for the job but to be on a safer side you must test him. Initially, begin with him some small projects or particular tasks with a deadline and keenly observe his behavior like whether he is reporting timely or not, regular communication, tech troubles, etc. If the remote employee is not communicating properly, does not ask questions about the project with the team, submitting the task lately (or not at all) it is a sign that he might not be a good match.

Be Clear about the Idea: Once you have done with the selection process the other concern may opt-out by your side. I think a leader should follow “KISS” philosophy: ‘Keep It Simple and Short.’ As a leader, you should be precise and clear about the vision and goals.

Don’t Assume they are 24/7 Available: This is a very common misinterpretation that if someone hires a remote employee they think that ‘now’ he is always available. But NO! He has his work schedule and yes, working hours might be flexible but not every time. Before indulging him in any work ask about his work hours and work schedule.

Decide One Day per Week for Group Meeting: Constantly keep engagement with your team. Give them daily or weekly tasks. Discuss it with every employee, ask to share their thoughts, troubles and appreciate each other for the best work. Fix a day in a week for team communication and gup-shup. This will help the organization to build a remote team and give a real-life feel.

Use Proper Communication Channels: Choosing one platform of all can be a difficult task. Use the best feature of all communication tools available in the market. Like for video conference using Skype, for regular group communication use basecamp (also used by GitLab), track the payroll, attendance, leave and productivity by using greytHR or Keka.

Measure your Success: The last and most essential point is- count your success ratio. Everything is useless if you didn’t succeed! Managing a remote company is an interesting task. When the project is accomplished successfully just go through your checklist. You would be more than happy to see the results.

Why hire Remote Employees from South Asian countries like India?

The talented workforce of South Asian countries is made up of a new generation. If we go through a recent report by LinkedIn showed an increase in the gap between hiring volume and budget — 13% in 2015 compared to 7% in 2014.

hiring remote employees from India
Source

Due to digital transformation, the demand for offshore software developers has increased speedily. The globalization has skipped this demand to South Asia, especially in India.

The Indian developers are not only committed to quality but also cost-effective. Outsourcing in India comes with a package of huge benefits:

  • Advantage of time zone: The remote employees of India are willing to work in different time zones, thus it gives more flexibility to the employer to connect with them easily.
  • Lower cost- More experience: That is a huge benefit! A recent article on IndiaTimes stated that Indian companies started hoarding IT talent to the US and that too at very effective cost. The IT experts in India are most skilled than compared to any other country.
  • Talented pool: India is a pool of highly skilled IT people. Not only had the best expertise in technology, but India has also highly qualified remote employees. With the largest workforce, it will not be difficult for you to choose what you are looking for.
  • Best communicators: That’s true! Previously India was one of the British colonies, so almost Indian know English which works as a cherry on the cake! Though India is divided into multiple regions everyone uses English to communicate as it is a universal language.

Are you looking for hiring a developer? the process now!

EngineerBabu is an Indore based IT company providing software solutions to the thousands of small and big enterprises for the last decade. “We believe in deeds more than words” that’s what our clients say about us.

Recommended Reading: Why Hire Software Engineers with EngineerBabu?

EngineerBabu is surrounded by top-notch educational institutes like IIT and IIM- Indore. It is also known as Silicon Valley of central India with less traffic and the cleanest city of India 3rd time in a row! If you are seeking a remote developer in India, EngineerBabu will provide the best solution. All the developers of EngineerBabu are tech-a-holic but not geeky!

If you liked my blog, share it. I am open to questions, suggestions, and feedback. Kindly drop a mail to mayank@engineerbabu.com or right now.

Thank you!

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The Complete Process for Hiring Remote Developer in India? https://engineerbabu.com/blog/hiring-remote-developer-in-india/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hiring-remote-developer-in-india https://engineerbabu.com/blog/hiring-remote-developer-in-india/#boombox_comments Tue, 31 Dec 2019 10:26:48 +0000 https://engineerbabu.com/blog/?p=16857 The Complete Process for Hiring Remote Developer in India? With the ever-growing technological innovations and advancements, human beings have come up with real-time blends to unravel each problem that they grapple with. From buying daily groceries to e-learning, the internet has made everything so much more convenient as well as accessible – just a click...

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The Complete Process for Hiring Remote Developer in India?

With the ever-growing technological innovations and advancements, human beings have come up with real-time blends to unravel each problem that they grapple with. From buying daily groceries to e-learning, the internet has made everything so much more convenient as well as accessible – just a click away. The internet even has the solution to the challenges like the lack of technical proficiency, bad-hire loss, low cost-effectiveness of resources, etc. that the new-age entrepreneurs are confronting. Yes, hiring remote employees is the key! If you are also facing all these shortcomings and looking for a developer online, hiring a remote developer in India is the solution!

Why Hire a Remote Developer in India?

In this article, we discuss the key considerations and the steps that you should zero in on before hiring a remote developer. However, before getting into the “how”, first let us talk about “why” to hire a remote developer? Let us discuss why you should consider hiring a remote developer in India?

  • Access to international talent pool beyond geographical boundaries
    Hiring a remote developer opens avenues for you to choose from a wide international talent pool of coders. India has a vast number of engineers and skilled developers who are adept with the latest technological skills and up to date qualifications. Once you open your doors for international talent, your growth is assured.

    Most of the remote talent that you hire from India are B.Tech or B.C.A graduates. Some of them are even postgraduates in their specific fields of study. Further, the culture in India is such that every other household has an engineer or coder. Consequently, you get access to a sea of talented developers to choose from at cost-effective rates. 

  • Grow your business while saving time!
    Once you hire a remote developer in India, you can save a lot of time. This is because due to the time zone difference, the developer can work while you are sleeping. Therefore, the work is never halted and hence, this results in saving your time and ultimately, saving money. So, the time zone difference can become your strength if you know how to utilize it efficiently.
     
  • Cost-effective Developers
    An average developer in the U.S.A costs around $65000 to $1,50,000. Hiring a remote developer in India is very cost-effective as the resources are available on comparably lower costs. Plus, you save on several expenditures that you might have spent on your in-house employee. To enumerate a few reasons why hiring a remote developer from India might be beneficial to you, here are some:

    • Developers are less expensive in India
    • You save on recruitment costs
    • You save on infrastructure cost
    • You boost your Return on Investment

The Hiring Process of Remote Developers in India

So, now you know why considering hiring a remote developer in India for your business can be a boon! Let us now delve into the “how”. Here, we go into the process of hiring a remote developer. 

  1. Getting into specific requirement details.
  2. Reaching out to the right candidates
  3. Robust filtering out process
  4. On-boarding the right fit 

Let’s discuss each step one by one.

Recommended Reading: How to Set Up an Offshore Development Center in India

1. Getting into specific requirement details of the job

Once you decide to hire a remote developer for your company, be ready to work on the details of an ideal developer. 

  • Prepare a thorough Job Description
    What are the technical skills required for a developer that you are looking for? You must be clear on the qualifications the developer should have along with his exposure to the latest technological tools and practices as per the industry standards. Prepare a job description of the position and mention every skill that you think would be required. If you are not that technically sound, you can take help from your in-house technical team, CTO, or anyone who has the technical know-how in your company.
     
  • Payment and Working Hour Specifications
    When you hire a remote developer, it is very crucial to decide the payment frequency (hourly/daily/weekly/monthly rate or fixed salary).  Make sure you mention the mode of payment as well as the day of the month when you’d be making the payment to keep things clear. Be transparent on the working hours – full time or part-time as well.

    After you plan out the specifics of the job, you are ready to reach out to the candidates. In addition to this, make sure you are prepared for this change in the work culture. If you already have a remote team of employees, then you know how to work and manage them. But, make sure you know the details of working with a remote developer if you don’t have any prior experience. Here are a few things to consider before you start your search for your remote developer:
    • Make sure he has fast internet connectivity
    • What mode of communication will you choose? Today, there are tools like skype, google hangouts, slack, etc. for easy communication.
    • How often and at what time will you communicate?
    • How will you determine the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) scorecard for him?
    • Which collaborative apps/tech solution will you deploy? Basecamp, Dropbox, etc. are quite prominent and in vogue nowadays.
    • How will you track the progress of the project assigned to the developer? There are project management tools like Trello and Asana, etc. that you can utilize for easy workflow.
    • What additional software/resources will he be needing?

2. Reaching out to the right candidates

After you are done with the detailed evaluation of the open position for the developer, it is time to figure out the steps to reach out to the right candidates. There are numerous online platforms where you can let the candidates know about your open position.

Here are some of the platforms online:

  • Freelance Job Portals:
    There are several freelance job portals online where you can find developers as per your requirements.  FlexJobs.com, We Work Remotely, Upwork are some of the many job portals where you can find remote developers as per your specifications. Post your job description so that the candidates understand your requirements and before applying.
     
  • Social Media Platforms:
    LinkedIn is one of the best social media portals to connect to a remote developer in India. You can post your requirements or even buy a recruiter account to post your job posting. Further, you can post about the job opening in your company’s social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. for your network to be aware of the job vacancy so that they can propagate it among their network too.
     
  • Publishing Job Vacancy on Company Website:
    Many job seekers reach out to companies on their “Careers” page. Thus, update your website’s “Careers” page with the job posting along with a detailed job description. Make sure you are updated whenever someone applies to the job on your company website.
     
  • Reaching out to Offshore Staffing/Recruitment Firms:
    There are many offshore recruitment agencies that provide you with developers on part-time or full-time basis as per your needs. Hence, you can try reaching out to some of these firms and get a cost estimation of hiring a developer. Most of these firms work on a project basis.
    However, some of them do provide you with customizable plans as well.Irrespective of the platform you choose to find the candidates, remember to hire a developer who fits into your workflow process in terms of commitment, ethics and work culture. To make sure you are hiring the right candidate, you can ask them to work upon demo projects so that it gives them the chance to comprehend the kind of work that will be expected from them.

3. Robust Selection Process

Unless you are looking for someone to join immediately, take your time to filter out the best from the talent pool available to you. Make sure you do not decide in haste and go through all the aspects before hiring a developer. Making the right choice is far more important than hiring a bad hire and losing time and money on that.

  • Selection Step 1- Selection Based on Profile/Resume
    Take a week or two to finalize the resumes or profiles of the candidates that you want to go ahead with. After you have a handful of CVs and profiles to select from, figure out a criterion to pick out the best 5-7 out of the rest. Technical experience, previous projects, exposure to remote work, work timings, etc. are some of the considerations that you can emphasize on while taking the call.
     
  • Selection Step 2 – Introductory Telephonic/Video Interview
    After you select the right candidates to move forward with, it is time to get in touch with them. In this round of selection, you talk to them and understand their portfolio. This is the right time to understand if they match your expected standards and you can analyze their communication skills, which is very critical. This is the time when you give an introduction to the candidates about the job – the expectations, the work process, the company culture, the long-term vision, your business goals, etc.

    Be ready with questions before you interview the candidates. Analyze their profiles and prepare questions that you’d want to know about their earlier jobs/projects that they’ve worked upon. Frame questions such that they provide a thorough answer of their whole career journey while proving how they can be the right fit for the position that you are hiring for. 
  • Selection Step 3 – Technical Coding Skill Test
    After step 2, you get assured about the candidate’s initial screening. Now, you can take help from the technical head or someone from your in-house tech team to frame a written coding test for evaluating the candidate’s coding skills. If you do not have anyone in your present team to screen the candidate for his technical coding skills, you can take help from online test platforms like HackerRank to find the best candidate.

    In this round, you can test the coding skills of the candidates as per the projects that you are planning to allocate to them once they are on board. In this round, make sure to evaluate their problem-solving capabilities, time management skills, algorithmic knowledge in addition to their coding skills. Select at least three candidates from this round to take it forward to the further selection process. 
  • Selection Step 4 – Optional Video Interview
    After you have selected the best three candidates from the talent pool, you can do an optional video interview with them. It is preferred that this round of interview is taken by a technical person (like Chief Technical Officer) from your organization to ensure that the candidate possesses the technical skills as mentioned in his resume. Moreover, you can get a second person review about the candidate. Here, you can finalize minimum of two candidates for the next round.

    If you are looking for someone to work on your project on an immediate basis, you might want to skip this step and directly move to step 5 of the selection process. 
  • Selection Step 5 – Final HR Interview
    In the final interview round, include your HR in addition to the decision-makers that you would like to include. Organizational specifications and work culture are some of the aspects that are discussed in this step. Be clear on what you bring on the table and make sure you convey your expectations to the candidate. In this step, you should discuss the following aspects with the candidate:
    • Salary Expectations
    • Working Hours
    • Deliverables
    • Mode of Communication
    • Required Resources
  • Selection Step 6 – Take the Call
    After the final interview, sit with your management team and evaluate which candidate fits well in the position that you are hiring for.  Additionally, ask for references from the candidates from their previous workplaces so that you can reach out to them and get feedback on their work ethics and talent. Take a mutually agreed decision and reach out to the chosen candidate with the offer letter.Here are some of the aspects that you must consider before making the final call:

    • Technical Skills
    • Communication Skills
    • Past Track Record
    • Previous Remote Work Experience
    • Readiness for on the job learning
    • Commitment Level

Moreover, make sure you let the non-selected candidates know about the closure of the position as a sign of a good work ethic. This way, in the future, you can reach out to the same set of talent pool in case of new hiring in your organization.

4. On-boarding the right fit

Once you have decided which candidate to go with, make sure you prepare an onboarding program. One of the principal objectives of an onboarding process is to help the new employee to familiarise with the social and professional expectations of the new work ambiance so that he can progress happily and easily in his role.

The onboarding plan for a remote employee would be different from your in-house employees. Remote employees who live in different places and time zones don’t have access to in-person onboarding, and consequently they take more time acclimatizing to the company’s work culture. Keeping this in mind, you should come up with a program that helps the remote employee to understand the company culture as soon as possible and feel comfortable in a short span of time. 

Below, we enumerate some of the factors that you should be including as a part of your onboarding program:

  • Offering necessary resources: 
    • Hardware Support
    • Software Support
    • Welcome Kit with company souvenirs (if possible)
    • Personalized Welcome letter
    • Password management and data encryption tools
  • HR formalities completion
  • Employee handbook (digital version)
  • Formal team introduction
  • Plan Role Specific Training
  • Schedule regular touch base & evaluation meetings

After successful onboarding, ensure that you follow up with the new hire by asking for feedback to assess and enhance your onboarding process, especially for the remote employees.

The Bottom Line

A vital strategy to sustain your business, in the long run, is to opt for quality while keeping the budget constraints into consideration. Hence, hiring a remote developer in India is certainly a great step in this regard as it is not only cost-effective but it also ensures quality output while saving your time. If you are skeptical about hiring a remote worker, give it a go and try it for yourself to reap the benefits! 

How can EngineerBabu help you?

We, at EngineerBabu, think about the future while realizing our responsibility and so, we work sans any geographical boundaries. If you are contemplating to expand your team with remote developers, EngineerBabu is your one and only comprehensive remote team solution that lets you scale up your team as soon as possible.

Recommended Reading: Hire Remote Software Engineers with EngineerBabu

Having contributed to the success of over five thousand organizations, we completely understand the concerns of employers while hiring remote employees.  Therefore, driven by the passion to provide the best remote resources to businesses of all levels – small, mid or large, we at EngineerBabu tap into the best engineering talent around the globe who want to do meaningful work and make a positive impact in the world.

Why EngineerBabu?

  • Quality assured delivery

With EngineerBabu you gain access to worldwide talent pools and the EngineerBabu platform to support the entire remote team experience. Therefore, we take care of all your shortcomings while ensuring quality-oriented outcomes on time.

  • No time lag hassles

Irrespective of where in the world you are, the developers from EngineerBabu will work and provide you with your desired results on time. We realize the importance of time and trust and so, our developers work day in and out for the projects to be delivered timely.

  • Ease of Communication

Once you shake hands with the EngineerBabu team, we make sure that our clients are regularly updated on the ongoing project and tasks. We are available on all the major project management and communication channels/platforms. So, we always ensure that you are well connected with the remote team working for you.

  • No Extra Costs

We offer you the best-in-class benefits and dedicated local HR partners at the service of our members and clients alike. So, you do not have to worry about any extra liabilities and costs when you work with us.

  • Our work speaks for itself

With a number of happy clients, our work speaks for us. More than 25% of the hire