 When I think about remote management, I really categorize it into three buckets, which is management. As a manager, you're still responsible for assigning tasks. We're still responsible for ensuring things get done. But mentorship becomes even more important in the world of remote. I have failed there more times than I care to admit, but it's a thing that I still aspire to do better every day. Is to help the people on my team, the teams that I'm responsible for looking after, be just a little bit better at what they do every day. Hello, and welcome to Universal Remote, GitLab's weekly web series on everything to do with remote work. I am Jessica Reeder. I am the all remote campaign manager here at GitLab, and I've been working remotely throughout my entire career. What we're doing with this series is we're bringing in experts from other organizations, people who've been working remotely a long time, people who are new to remote. And we're discussing best practices, challenges, learnings, everything that comes with this new remote work environment. So our guest today is Tyler Hannan. He's the VP of Product and Community at FANA. And I want to hand it over to him quickly. Tyler, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you've been working remotely? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Jessica. I think what you just said there is very important and it's necessary for us to acknowledge across the industry that this is not a normal time. But even in situations that are not normal, there are things that we can learn from times that were. My name is Tyler Hannan. I'm the VP of Product and Community for FANA. FANA is the database that's built for serverless. We feature native GraphQL. If you care deeply about massively distributed systems and databases, or you're building an awesome JavaScript application in a serverless style, come check us out. I personally have spent the majority of my career working remotely, not the entirety, but 14 plus years now. I've worked from somewhere other than what was considered headquarters and usually from home. And it really is a privilege to join you today. GitLab has done an amazing job of sharing the knowledge that it has gained over time with us as a broader industry. So thanks for having me. I greatly appreciate it. It is great to have you here. And as someone who's also worked remotely for a long time, I think that it is really nice to see companies and organizations getting together like this and trying to share knowledge and trying to put things out there. If you watching this are one of the people who has been thrown into this suddenly remote situation. What we're going to try to do is remind you that this is a transition. It's a long process. It's neither quick. It's not simple. It's not particularly intuitive. And there are no easy answers. There are best practices. And that's what we really want to talk about today, especially around remote management of teams. So Tyler, if you could tell me a little bit more about how long you've been working remotely exactly and how you got involved at Fauna. Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, I've spent about 14 years now working remotely. And that largely began because my career trajectory has followed this path of if you don't understand a job, go and do it. And that speaks to a little bit of my own hubris and a little bit of my own, you know, arrogance and that I didn't realize that there were some jobs I couldn't do. Also, quite clearly speaks to my privilege. But over time, I've had the opportunity to be a consultant who was dedicated to a customer site 100% of the time. And as I was doing that, I was effectively remote. And as I came back to the office and move from being an engineer into being what I am today, which is, you know, a manager, as well as someone who talks about the software that other people build, I realized that the difference wasn't that great between being deployed somewhere else and, you know, working full time from somewhere that was not sort of headquarters, if you will. It's interesting. I think about sales organizations a lot. Sales organizations have been highly distributed for a very long time because of a sort of a territorial model. And somehow on a technical side, which is my background, sort of a lot of my passion, we hadn't adopted the same thing for a number of years. So as I began building teams, I really asked myself the question, are we limiting who we hire based only on physical proximity? You know, I had the opportunity that, the blessing, quite frankly, to spend a number of years prior to Fauna at Elastic. And at Elastic, as I was building out the community organization there and helping it grow, I realized I cannot tell you how to do developer relations in South Korea. But I know someone who can and they live in South Korea. Similarly, I can't tell you how developer relations works in France, but I know someone who does and they happen to live in France. I can tell you a lot about how it works in the Netherlands, where I'm based, and I live here. And so letting people be experts at what they do and who they are and having their location be just an attribute is the thing that's deeply important to me as an individual. It's also a thing that's deeply important to us at Fauna. We're a team that is truly in the GitLab definition all remote. There is no headquarters. There is no office. Everyone works from home. And that is a feature of our organization rather than a bug. It also, however, requires that we invest heavily in how we communicate and how we manage. We don't just fall into the habits that, you know, are easy to be built over time. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, something you said sort of stuck with me, which is that you were consulting first. And that's actually something that's reflected in my background as well. I was freelancing and consulting for quite a while. And part of that was because I wanted to work independently and I wanted to work remotely. And when you're talking about hiring the people who are the best fit. Some of those people are people who prefer to work individually and they may be people who are creative thinkers and they just don't necessarily fit into an office dynamic. And it gives you an ability to reach a different group of people. You may find some people who are thinking outside of the box, not to say that I am necessarily great at thinking outside of the box, but I do think that a lot of people are trying to design their own workspace because they want to have a creative bent to their work. Absolutely. There is a, there is a traditional career path that tends to go with each job description. Those are fine. Some people follow those paths and that's fantastic. Others of us don't and that's also fantastic. And to me, the beauty of remote work is that it does broaden the scope, provided you have hiring practice in place that supports it, provided you as an organization, acknowledge it. It does broaden the scope of who you can hire. It's one of the things we think a lot about here at Fauna. I mean, if you look at me, I'm not what you think of when you think of a sort of typical corporate exec. But that's okay. I don't have to be. I am capable of being fully Tyler. I am not my job. My job is an attribute of who I am. I can be a number of other things. And those are actually beneficial for the organization. I think about it often when I'm interviewing for a remote person. I care less about what you do. I care more about what you're interested in. Because I can't teach passion. I can teach software. I can teach the mechanics of a product management. I can teach the mechanics of developer relations of documentation of support. I can't teach passion. So I'm always interested in what is the passion that a human has. And to your point, Jessica has so many consultants fall into that role out of passion for their work and for sort of ownership of their time. Yeah, absolutely. And I think too a lot about the concept of integrity. This is something I've been thinking a lot about recently, which is essentially when your thoughts, your words, your actions, your identity are all aligned with each other. And I think, you know, when I look at people such as yourself who are, you know, not wearing the typical button down shirt, but still able to absolutely build a wonderfully successful organization. I think that there is a certain level of integrity there that's that's admirable. And I think that's very important for the future. So let me go back to the theme of our conversation. And there's actually something that we did recently we've been running polls on Twitter. And we did a poll just last week where we asked people what they think is going to become of the office environment after the pandemic. So only 32% of people said that the office environment is going to go back to normal of 43% said that they think offices are only going to be used part time, and an additional 24% says that offices will not be the default workspace. So that's pretty telling. I think that there is not just a movement out of the office but also a real wish for people to continue moving beyond the office. I want to ask you Tyler, how has fauna evolved to support a remote team and what's your approach to managing remotely to make this possible. That's that's a really interesting set of statistics. And as someone who's passionate about this style of work. I don't find it surprising. But those numbers are actually higher than I thought that they would be. Yeah, yeah, you know we have a our audience at GitLab maybe a little skewed. These are people who follow us. But nonetheless, pretty pretty strong as statistics there. Totally. So, you know, fauna is fully distributed. Or if in the words of sort of the GitLab handbook and if you haven't read it and you're watching this you should fauna is all remote. And it's important for anyone who's listening to know we did not begin that way. We began as a co located company, sort of a primary office in San Francisco some folk working outside of it. And then we realized the feature of being an all remote company. And it really is a mind shift of saying this is an opportunity. This is not something that we have to work around or to deal with. We are in the midst of a pandemic. This is something we have to deal with. As when if society reopens, I would encourage you to think of this as an opportunity. I think that the fundamental question you asked that's very, very important is as it relates to management. My first manager, I was 17 years old, was a gentleman by the name of Santiago Talamantes, and Mr. Tal would walk up and down the rows of desks, and he practiced what he called management by walking around. And I hated it because I was convinced he wanted to know what I was doing. Is he going to keep an eye on what I'm up to on how well I'm doing? I realized over time, he didn't really care about what I was doing. He cared about how I was doing. So when I, when I think about remote management, I really categorize it into three buckets, which is management as a manager, you're still responsible for assigning tasks, we're still responsible for ensuring things get done. But mentorship becomes even more important in the world of remote. I have failed there more times than I care to admit, but it's a thing that I still aspire to do better every day is to help the people on my team, the teams that I'm responsible for looking after be just a little bit better at what they do every day. And so I orient my time towards mentorship. And as I think about that balance between management and mentorship, the biggest bucket and where I spend most of my time concerns and thinking and sometimes overthinking is communication. When you're remote, particularly if you were co located initially, it is very easy to come across as micromanaging when the first asynchronous message of the morning is I need an update on these 13 things. It is very different to ask the question and authentically mean how are you. I would always rather ask how my team is doing and trust them to complete the work trust becomes fundamental the underpinning for how we as people who manage remotely must engage with our teams. A lot of that is hiring, but even in a situation where a co located team has become remote. It is necessary to build that trust and that that management by walking around the Mr towel that lives in the back of my brain and encourages me to be better at what I do every day. Wants me to make sure that I am coaching and that my job is to make sure my team members have what they need to do their job effectively, and then to trust them to do it, not to ask them daily about the status. Does that make sense. Yeah, I mean it makes total sense to someone who's been working remotely for a long time, but I think you know as we've been meeting with a lot of companies lately who are transitioning to remote or suddenly remote having been co located in the past. This is one of the biggest challenges is this concept of trust and how to manage and how to measure productivity, how to monitor. And that's really the word that starts to come up is how do we monitor what employees are doing. And you know to what you're saying the answer is you don't. You really don't you hire people that you believe you can trust you give them your trust and you make sure that their morale is strong and then you measure the results and that's how you know if it's working. Yep, you clearly define objectives, you define results or desired results, whatever that KPI looks like and that depends. This is not a shift in tactic. It is, but fundamentally this is a shift in culture. And I think that as managers. That's scary, because why do they need me. If I trust them enough that they can do their job. I would say, and again I speak from a position of privilege but I would say I have done my job most effectively when they don't need me anymore. My goal as a remote manager mentor leader is to find someone who is better at what I do than I do. Let them do it and then go do something else. I view that as as ultimately truly success in what I do. I love that attitude. It's refreshing to hear and it's a challenging as well. I think it's challenging for all of us. You know it's it's one of those things that is easy to hear easy to say, even maybe easy to conceptualize but incredibly difficult to execute. So, you know, I want to ask if there is one thing that you could recommend what's one tangible thing that manager could do to start on that path. Yeah, absolutely. And to be clear. It's a daily reminder to myself. It's a struggle. I've been doing this for a long time. And I still have imposter syndrome around it. I am not good enough to do what I do. I'm okay with that. And just want to make that very clear. The place for me to start is is very simple. You can't fundamentally change the way that you're managing. If you've been a very detailed manager, that's what the corporate culture is like. If you change that fundamentally overnight, it's jarring to the team. And it's actually detrimental to the team because it's it's such a mind shift that it's fundamentally different. The thing that I do still every day when I wake up is I ask myself, how are the people on my team doing. I look at a list of my team in the morning and I say, how is summer. And if I don't have an answer, I go get that answer. And I say, how is Lewis and how is Jay and how is Luigi, and where is Jenny at and what's what's you went up to and all of those humans live strewn across seven I suppose time zones. That's a feature. But that's where I start is I don't ask myself, what are they doing. I asked myself, how are they because that reframes the way that I have a conversation with them when I do engage. Yep, that is a tough one but it is wonderful. I think it's a great mindset and I see a lot of people practicing that in the remote world. I do think that it's integral to making this work. I want to ask you with people across seven time zones. How do you do meetings. What's your approach. Yeah, it's, it is the most difficult part of of remote work, particularly of all remote work. However, all remote work has a feature that other models don't. And I refer to that as shared pain. But we alternate meeting times or right now we're moving towards it like that is an aspirational statement from me. It's the thing that I have done in the past is the thing that I will continue to do in the future with with Fauna is we alternate meeting times so that it always kind of sucks for someone. I want to think of meeting times as sacred, like there is value in sitting in front of a zoom and and sharing the interaction. I also recognize that life happens. And because of that, we, we record all the things, and we take copious notes, and when it can be synchronous make it synchronous because it's so valuable for a meeting to be synchronous but also allow people who could not be there because not everyone can. I've managed across 14 times zones. Like once you start including all of the hemispheres and and regions of the world that gets even worse, someone cannot make it. So don't make their, their inability to attend exclusionary, record it, take notes. If you make a decision, give space in that synchronous decision to allow asynchronous feedback. It feels like you were slowing down, but you were actually speeding up because of the cultural decision to invite the participation of others a sitting in a synchronous meeting is absolutely necessary sometimes don't view that as a failure. Sometimes people have to speak when the conversations become difficult when people are talking crossed each other, when there needs to be a brainstorming session, sometimes voice is valuable. That is not a failure. However, it should not be the default. And that's sort of the way that I try and try to frame it is we meet synchronously, we meet synchronously on a known schedule. We share the pain of scheduling those synchronous meetings, but we also give people space that if when as life happens, they're allowed to step away it's expected, and it's accepted by others on the team. It's really similar to what we do at GitLab as well. I think it's interesting that we have so much in common there we also try to do as much asynchronous as possible we take copious notes we record the meetings just like you. I think one additional thing that we do at GitLab which I really like a lot is that there needs to be an agenda for any meeting. If you aren't just calling a meeting because you know they need to talk something out, they need to be able to share the agenda ahead of time, so that those who are expected to attend the meeting know what it's for, and know what is expected to be accomplished in that meeting. So if there isn't an agenda, you can say no. Actually, you can say no whether or not there's an agenda but if there isn't one, you are more likely to be able to say no. Absolutely, and so that avoids people you know the common phrase of a meeting that could have been an email and we definitely definitely try to avoid that. Totally. Even for team meetings we have we have open and shared agendas. The team meeting time is our shared responsibility not my or someone else's dictate. And so it's very important that I don't necessarily know what someone on my team wants to discuss synchronously. And so building a culture around collaboratively sharing those agendas is also super important. It's an easy oversight, but it's deeply meaningful for those synchronous meetings. It's actually something that's really interesting that happens during a meeting when you're sharing a document and people are collaborating on it in real time and people start just answering questions in the document instead of it by voice but everyone's there and everyone's watching it happen. We even have something in shared documents when it's a large meeting, someone will create a cursor park you know when you're in a in a document and everyone's cursors are all over the screen. So they'll create a little park and put in little emojis trees, plants, and so forth, and you can put your cursor there while you're looking at the document. Little things like that, you know, it makes it fun. It makes it organic and it makes everyone feel like you're, you know, having a little bit of an experience while you're just working through a normal meeting agenda. I have never seen a cursor park before. And now I want to do it in every in every document that I have because it does become both visually and sort of distracting right I couldn't come up with what the right word for was for sense because sensitively didn't make sense. It does become visually distracting to see the cursors bouncing around and like why is that person looking at that thing but if I can scroll using a mouse wheel or my track pad, having a cursor park is a fantastic idea. I do admit that sometimes I'll pick an animated gift from somewhere and just randomly drop it in agenda just to see who's paying attention but that's just me being a troll at heart. Yeah, we're all trolls at heart. And I think it's good to have fun with it. It keeps us human, right? That's right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're all humans even if we're in a document together. So speaking of humanity, can you show us your office? You've got a lot of cool stuff going on. Totally. So, as I said, I live in Amsterdam, but I'm also lucky in that I not only live in Amsterdam, I live right in the center of Amsterdam so this house was built in the 1600s. This is the fifth floor right now. And this is an old nursery that was all white with lovely little pink and blue polka dots. And when we got it, my wife thought, hey, we should paint a old style print on the wall. So that's actually not wallpaper. It's green paint and copper wax on top of the on top of the paint itself. I'm a huge fan of art. I talk about the software other people build. I wish I could create art. So that's actually a giant collection of playing cards, and that's only about a third of them. Playing cards are portable art. There's a thriving community on Kickstarter. Of course, a bunch of music gear, and then camera gear, which has sadly gone underused at present. The light, which makes life fantastic. And, and yeah, with with schools being closed I have had the opportunity to share my office with my, my two little ones during their school day at 13 year old and a nine year old and certainly from the US, but, but they speak Dutch primarily now over the last few years it's become their prominent language and so this interesting sort of mental challenge of listening to my daughter is sitting in here speaking Dutch to each other. While I try to have a meeting in English most of the time it's fun. That's good for the brain. So they they come in and do their work in your office with you. I think it's very important. As a leader in a remote company to, to set the example that when I am working from my house, I don't have my work space, although there's a benefit in having a space that you set aside that you said I'm done with work and stepping away from it. Not everyone has that sometimes it's the corner of the kitchen table, or sometimes it's the corner of the couch. What's important to me is that work is work is an attribute in my life. And I want my team, my coworkers, the folk I have the opportunity to lead to feel comfortable with the fact that life intrudes into work, just like sometimes work intrudes into life. And so my daughters come in and you know when there's a late night meeting, I'll often give them a hug and a kiss goodnight on camera, because it matters to me that they're deeply important part of my life. And so I want the folk that I care deeply about at work to know about the other deeply important part of my life, my children as well. Absolutely 100% agree. I know that you may not be able to see too much, but you've got a big window. What's one good thing that you've seen recently. So this is very, very specific to Amsterdam. The canals have been largely closed, particularly during holidays because they didn't want too many people on boats floating past to recently see the canals open up and watch families and friends on boats going past. You know, I have, I've very, very rarely left the house over the last 75 days, and to see humans eating and drinking and smiling and laughing and and loving and being human again on a canal is without question the most beautiful thing I've seen from my window reason. Hello, Quinn. I feel that I really feel that I can't wait until I can see that again myself. Soon, we hope indeed. Excellent. Well, thank you so much Tyler it has been wonderful to have you here I've really enjoyed this conversation. I want to also thank everyone who's been viewing. If you have questions for future conversations please tweet them to us at lab or you can follow up with Tyler at Tyler Hanan and be sure to watch the rest of our episodes on the YouTube playlist. We are going to be releasing them weekly and we hope to see you in here from you soon. Thank you.