In this talk, you'll hear from Bitnami co-founder and COO Erica Brescia on the lessons learned and best practices they have developed to effectively run a highly distributed team of 70+ stretched across over 10 countries and 19 time zones. We'll start at the beginning - the hiring process - and walk through the employee's journey with your company, including travel, performance management, "all-hands" and more. Expect to come away with a set of ideas immediately applicable to your company or team.

1. THE REMOTE
CULTURE
RECIPE
Erica Brescia, COO

4. IT STARTS WITH HIRING
REMOTES EVERYONE
● We hire largely through our network or
participation in open source projects
● We hire primarily senior people for
remote roles
● We almost always hire people with
previous remote experience
● We look for folks who have worked with
distributed teams before
● We set expectations appropriately,
including the need (based on the role)
for late or early calls
● Strong communication skills are key
● VALUES unite everyone - we look for
these during the hiring process

5. THE BITNAMI VALUES
Empower Users Team UpMake It So Value Simplicity Stay Curious
?

6. ONBOARDING

7. Release Manager
Seville, Spain
Director of European Ops
Seville, Spain
VP of Engineering
Washington DC, US
Solution Architecture
Bend, Oregon, US
K8s Engineer
London, England
Sr. k8s Engineer
Sydney, Australia
Partner + Event Marketing
Portland, Oregon, US
NEW HIRE

10. THE
DAY-TO-DAY

12. TRAVEL
While we save on office space, we spend more on travel.
● All-hands
● Engineering sprints
● Fly people to conferences - get Airbnbs instead of hotels!
● Bring folks to different offices just to spend time working F2F

13. ALL-HANDS
● We just moved from 2x per year to 1x per year
● Fly whole company to one place
● 4 intense days of presentations and meetings
● Encourage team and cross-team dinners
● Provide opportunities to spend time together out of the office
● Take the team for an “offsite” on Friday early afternoon
It is as much about building relationships as it is about reflecting on our
accomplishments, sharing information and planning.

17. ALL-HANDS
Lessons learned.
● Provide as much free/flexible time as possible
● Interactive sessions are by far the most highly rated - AMAs,
whiteboarding sessions, discussions
● People appreciate the icebreakers and group activities - be
thoughtful about getting different teams to mix
● Set the expectation with leaders that they should be driving
cross-team activities
● You can’t please everyone all of the time :)

18. ONGOING BEST PRACTICES
PERFORMANCE
REVIEWS
1:1 QUARTERLY OPS
CHECK-INS
ANNUAL
SURVEYS
3:2:1 model
What are your
career goals for this
year?
Tend to become
tactical with
remotes. Managers
need to be
reminded to also
focus on career
planning, etc. so
performance
reviews are not a
surprise.
Ask the same
questions of
everyone.
Make sure
feedback is
appropriately
shared.
Ask remotes to
identify as working
remotely so you
can spot trends
and gaps between
the remote and
in-office
experience.

19. THE TOOLS THAT MAKE IT WORK

20. ● Record and upload everything
● Develop an exceptional note-taking culture
● “Default to open” in Slack, Google Apps, and in general
● Make it easy for people to recognize others and celebrate
success
THE TOOLS THAT MAKE IT WORK

21. WHAT HASN’T WORKED
We’ve had repeated attempts to recreate “water cooler”
and cross-company relationship building:
● Buddy program
● “Beer chats”
● Latest: appear.in - “Bitnami coffee machine”
● Suggested: cross-team, randomly assigned 1:1s

22. KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Be thoughtful and deliberate about the remote experience
2. Default to open
3. Constantly seek feedback, and act on it
4. It takes a lot more work to make sure information spreads
5. Regularly revisit goals and objectives to ensure people are
working on the right things
6. Invest in getting people together in person
7. Building a team around a core set of values is key

23. THANKS!
Questions? Reach out!
@ericabrescia erica@bitnami.com