Build

In the last episode of Build, we debunked a number of myths related to bitcoin, blockchain, and other cryptocurrencies.

 

Despite all the myths and hype these technologies have staying power in the market. But we get that you might be skeptical. So we’re dedicating today’s episode to showcasing how they are being incorporated into valuable applications that are making an impact in the market.

 

And if you’re still concerned about the volatility behind cryptocurrencies or how to get involved without losing your shirt, we’ll dive deeper into each of those topics.

 

Our guest, Audrey Chaing is back. You’ll recall Audrey is a crypto trader as well as a Blockchain analyst and consultant, and blogs on Blockchaing.  

 

Here’s what you’ll learn from today’s episode:

 

• How Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency Are Being Applied To Financial Services, Identity, and Supply Chain
• What Is An ICO (Initial Coin Offering)
• What Causes Volatility In Bitcoin And Other Cryptocurrencies
• What Are Cryptocurrency And Bitcoin Exchanges And Marketplaces
• What Are The Up And Coming Business Applications For Blockchain Transactions
• How Blockchain Is Being Used To Monitor Identity
• How To Get Involved In Learning, Building, and Investing In Blockchain

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

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# How Bitcoin, Blockchain And Cryptocurrencies Are Being Incorporated Into Valuable Applications That Are Making An Impact In The Market Transcript                  

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     In the previous episode, we debunked a number of myths related to Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies. If you missed that episode, I've included a link to it below. In today's episode, we're going to dive a little bit deeper and talk about some of the cool applications that have come out of Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies and let you know which ones are here to stay and how you can get involved. Stay tuned. Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. In today's episode, Audrey Chaing is back. You'll recall that Audrey is a crypto trader, as well as an analyst and consultant. Thanks for coming back, Audrey.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Thank you.

 

Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency Applications: Financial Services, Identity, and Supply Chain

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. Today, we're going to talk about some pretty cool applications of Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies, and why they're here to stay, and how our audience can get involved. Let's kind of dive right in. Let's talk about, what are some of the applications of each of these?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Sure. To be honest, everyone's still trying to figure out the killer use case, but there's a lot of really exciting work happening. They tend to fall into kind of three buckets. One is financial services, which we are kind of more familiar with, with the cryptocurrencies and things like that, cross-order payments, remittances. Another area is identity, and another area is supply chain, and so—

 

What Is An ICO (Initial Coin Offering)?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Let's start with the financial services. I know there's a lot of ICOs, initial coin offerings. What are those?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yes, initial coin offering, that's basically how a new cryptocurrency comes into existence. I mean, it's almost a new way to fund a startup that is related to blockchain. They could be doing any number of things. An example could be, "We're doing distributed storage, so then in order to buy and pay for services, you have to use our token coin." Yeah.

 

What Causes Volatility In Bitcoin And Other Cryptocurrencies?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it. What's causing a lot of the volatility now in the market then, as it relates back to these ICOs?

 

Audrey Chaing:                A lot of it is, frankly, just speculation, because people have heard of how much money that some others have made in cryptocurrencies, and people are interested because they want to make a quick buck. Right?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Also, for the people who are less familiar, there tend to be different stages of a sale in an ICO. You would get kind of in-the-know institutional investors that would come in on the early rounds and get a very large discount. Then they might have several rounds of sales, and then by the time you reach the crowd sale, they might also have a tiered, "If you get in now, you get a larger discount. Wait till next week, you still get a discount, but it's smaller," and so—

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     So it is very much like fundraising—

 

Audrey Chaing:                It is, yeah.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     ...from like venture capitalists or angel investors.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Now, the difference is that you get liquidity a lot faster. If your token ends up getting listed on exchanges, that means you can start trading right away. Sometimes there are kind of lockups for the large institutional investors, but that is one big difference.

 

What Are Cryptocurrency And Bitcoin Exchanges And Marketplaces?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. Actually, let's dive into that. There are a lot of other applications in the financial services, like what you just mentioned, exchanges and marketplaces. What exactly are these? Walk us through.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yeah, sure. Actually, just to clarify, too, ICOs, the tokens could be in any number of industries. It doesn't have to actually relate to financial services. Some of the more straight financial services use cases might be...There's something called Coins.ph. It's in the Philippines. A lot of Philippine workers work internationally, remit money back to their homeland. This actually is interesting, because it brings on a lot of the unbanked population, so there's...In order to participate in our current banking system, you need to have a minimum amount of deposits in order for it to even be worthwhile for the bank to have you, and a lot of people don't have that. Now, with crypto, integrated with our current banking system, you can use the Coins.ph app to send money to friends, and they could go to an ATM and pick up cash, or just the corner store, pick up cash. You can pay for your tuition that way, your cell phone bill, all sorts of things.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Very cool.

 

Audrey Chaing:                There's also, there are traditional ways of sending money around, which is Western Union, wire transfer, which tend to be slow and relatively costly, but now with crypto, it can happen a lot faster and a lot cheaper.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Those are kind of the financial use cases, but you asked about exchanges. There are many. A lot of the reason that there are so many is because there are so many coins, and not every exchange will have all of the coins you want to trade. Most people in the U.S. would be familiar with Coinbase. I think they have a pretty good brand name, and pretty on top of their regulation, their...It's easy to use. However, they only trade four different coins, so if you want a coin that is not one of the four that Coinbase has, what you have to do is put your fiat, or your U.S. dollars, into Coinbase by some either Bitcoin or Ethereum. Identify what other coin you want. Let's say you want Monero. Right? Then you have to find which of the exchanges has Monero, send your Bitcoin over to that one, and then buy your Monero that way.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     In the previous episode, you started to hint at some business applications for blockchain. Not the cryptocurrencies, but just the underlying technology. Why are people using this for business?

 

Business Applications For Blockchain Transactions

 

Audrey Chaing:                I guess going back to the kind of large categories, we already talked about financial services a bit, but let's talk about supply chain for a second. Right? There are some very interesting proof of concepts going on. I can talk about a couple. One is with prescription medication. You can basically track that it is legitimate, right, it's not like a fake or copy, and then you can make sure that, say, it needs to be refrigerated, that it was taken care of the whole way through.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     How do you, how can you tell that?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Kind of like, well, you could kind of use sensors to say that, "OK, the temperature never reached above X amount that would make the medication bad." You could, kind of like how you already scan along the way, say, a FedEx package, you could track all these different stages and have them write to the blockchain.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     OK, got it.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Then since it's on the blockchain, you can't go back and edit the database. Right?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Right, so basically, it's stuck there, and then people can see the audit trail because it's on-

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yeah.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     ...blockchain.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Exactly. Another interesting use in supply chain is provenance for food. For example, if you are eating bacon and you are interested in, "Where did this pig come from?" All the way from which farm, what it was fed, how it was...The whole process of how it reaches you, you can now track that.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Very cool. How does somebody then get onto the blockchain to have the entire supply chain and each of these transactions listed?

Audrey Chaing:                Yeah, so blockchain, in the traditional sense, is a public blockchain, so you, or I, or anyone could go onto Blockchain.info, for instance, and look up any Bitcoin wallet or Bitcoin transaction. There is this idea of permission ledgers, which, especially, some enterprise are looking into because they don't want everyone to have access to everything, but in the traditional sense anyone can look it up.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah, but then it's only as good as the reporting, right?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yes. There is this kind of...When you try to mesh the real world with the digital world, how do I know, "So-and-so is attesting that this is true. Well, is that legitimate?" Then, so that is something we definitely need to think about when we try to kind of mix the digital and the real world.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it, yeah, so going back to your bacon example, if somebody forgets, maybe in the packaging stage or one stage before that, to list a transaction, what happened, then the public isn't going to know what that is, so there is going to be still a hole in it.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yeah, so these are the things that are being kind of worked out right now, with all of the kind of proof-of-concept work and research.

 

How Blockchain Is Being Used To Monitor Identity

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Very cool. What's another application that you think is here to stay for blockchain?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Identity is another area where there's a lot of work, a lot of interest, kind of how it could look like in the end. Right? You could have full control over your data. For instance, if you had your medical data here, your social media data here, your shopping data here, you could say, "I want to grant you this particular piece of information," and you can even decide to be compensated for it or not. That's kind of the self-sovereign identity piece. There's already some work happening in this area in governments, even. The government of Finland, they have this blockchain-enabled card for refugees. This card will be an identity card, but also, they load it with money, so that's one interesting use case. Estonia now has e-citizenship, so there's a lot of interesting stuff going on.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     I know one concern that our audience may have is, which of these things are fads? Which of these things are here to stay? It sounds like some of the things that are more groundbreaking, like identity and supply chain, are here to stay, but can we really know?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yeah. Actually, we can't. That's a good warning for anyone trading crypto or getting to blockchain is that there's a lot of potential. It's very exciting. However, there are some real technological hurdles, including scalability. That's the largest one. There are a lot of smart people working on it, including like off-chain solutions, but we won't know for sure. Yeah, I would say if you're going to invest, I think it's smart to have something, but don't put in more than you would be OK losing, because that is a possibility. You could completely lose it all.

 

How To Get Involved In Learning, Building, and Investing In Blockchain

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah, and in terms of investing and learning about applications of blockchain, or getting involved in building something on the blockchain, what would you recommend?

 

Audrey Chaing:                Well, I guess there are a lot of choices, but not a whole lot of great resources, to be honest, so you have to decide kind of like what kind of do you want to build on an existing chain? Do you want to build your own? I mean, building your own is quite a undertaking, but people have done it. I think the best way would be just start. There's no, it's very, not a whole lot of documentation, not a whole lot of tutorials. There are meetups all over, so I'm actually a part of Oakland Blockchain Developers and SF Ethereum Developers. They have people come in and do technical talks and sometimes code labs. That really helps, but it's very, it's not fun to work with yet.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Right?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     OK.

 

Audrey Chaing:                It's very early, and-

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     So not for the faint of heart, but maybe for those—

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yeah.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     ...who want to get in, eager—

 

Audrey Chaing:                And it changes very quickly. I mean, even if you're looking at Solidity, which is what a lot of people use for Ethereum, the syntax changes frequently.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. Well, that also might also be a good thing, so for people who are eager to always be at the cutting edge—

 

Audrey Chaing:                Yes. It's definitely-

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     ...and want to be involved.

 

Audrey Chaing:                ...cutting edge. You know what's shocking is, sometimes I talk to people, and I'm like, "Yeah, I've written a smart contract in Ethereum," and people are like, "Oh, my God," so just like this is crazy that this is like a thing, but it's so early that not very many people have done that.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Audrey, for sharing all your expertise when it comes to Bitcoin, blockchain, as well as cryptocurrencies.

 

Audrey Chaing:                Thank you for having me.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode. Ciao for now. This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our main sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.  

Got a laundry list of questions that have gone unanswered when it comes to blockchain, bitcoin, and the myriad of cryptocurrencies out there?

 

Questions like the following: What’s going on with the boom and bust cycles? Are cryptocurrencies really here to stay? Are there really a myriad of applications for blockchain? And how can one get started playing around with the technology when bitcoin has such an expensive price tag, and blockchain is so challenging to develop on?

 

Well, we’re going to answer all these questions for you and more by kicking off this month with today’s Build episode that debunks a number of myths related to blockchain, bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies. In next week’s episode, we’ll share some of the cool applications that are making an impact in the market and prove the staying power of these technologies.

 

To help us out I’ve invited Audrey Chaing who is a crypto trader as well as a Blockchain analyst and consultant, and blogs on Blockchaing.  

 

Here’s what you’ll learn from today’s episode:

 

• How to go about explaining the differences between Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency in simple terms to friends and family
• How bitcoin works with public key and private key encryption — and what is public key and private key encryption
• Why People Think Bitcoin Transactions Are Anonymous Or For Criminals
• What The Real Value Is Behind Bitcoin
• Whether Bitcoin Will Replace Credit Cards And Cash
• Other Cryptocurrencies Besides Bitcoin
• How To Get Started Playing With Cryptocurrencies And The Blockchain

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

--

The Real Deal Behind Blockchain, Bitcoin, and Cryptocurrencies Transcript

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So congrats. How far along are you?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Thank you. Yeah, seven and a half months.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Great.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     So just 10 more weeks to go.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Awesome, awesome. Are you ready?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     To be honest, no. Kinda spent junior's college savings on Bitcoin.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Well, you never know. By the end of this interview, it might be totally back up.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     That is true.

                                                 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. You're probably wondering what's going on with Bitcoin and Blockchain, the boom and bust cycles, and whether cryptocurrencies are here to stay.

                                                 

Well, in today's episode we're going to unearth some of the common myths, and in a future episode we'll dive into some of the applications to let you know what's really here to stay.

                                                 

And to help us out, I have invited Audrey Chaing, who is a crypto trader as well as a Blockchain analyst and consultant. Thanks for joining us today, Audrey.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Thank you for having me.

 

Difference Between Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. So, let's first talk about what's the major differences between these three: Bitcoin, Blockchain, and cryptocurrencies?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Sure. So there is a common misconception that Blockchain is the same thing as Bitcoin, and that's actually not true. The reason why people get confused is because they were kind of invented at the same time. So in 2009, someone named Satoshi Nakamoto...now, this is a person or a group. We don't know. They're kind of anonymous. They came out with a white paper that describe the Bitcoin protocol. And so that was how Blockchain technology was born. But Blockchain is much bigger than just Bitcoin.

                                                 

So Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency but Blockchain refers to this technology.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it. And what got you interested in this?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So basically, it has everything to do with everything I've done in my career. I studied computer science at MIT but graduated in the dotcom bust, so I ended up on Wall Street for about a decade. And then after that I founded two startups. So the technology, the finance, the startup entrepreneurial part, Blockchain kind of encompasses all those things.

                                                 

But specifically how I got started was back in 2013, I decided, "Hey, I might want to start my own companies." In order to do that, it would be good to refresh my programming skills because it had been a little while. So I took a Stanford online [MOOC 00:02:44] startup engineering, taught by [Balaji Srinivasan 00:02:47], who's pretty well known in the Blockchain space. And so our final project was to build a Kickstarter clone. And there was a leaderboard and you moved up on that by tweets and Bitcoin funding.

                                                 

And so friends and family, they're like, "Great. We want to support you. What the heck is Bitcoin?" And I'm like, "Don't worry. Just tell me in dollars and I'll trade it for you." And so that's how I got into doing that. And then I realized, "Hey, it's really volatile. I can trade this like anything else and try to make some money off of it."

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. Awesome. And so now, you are independent and you blog on Blockchaing.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's Blockchaing, and it's basically Blockchain and add a G, dot org. I just...my name actually is perfect for this.

 

Myth #1: Bitcoin Users Are Anonymous

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. Wonderful. So, on this show we love to debunk a number of myths and misconceptions. I am sure Bitcoin and Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are just ripe for this. So, let's start with the first myth, which is Bitcoin users are anonymous.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Yeah, it's actually pseudonymous. People have that idea because there are these wallets that are this big string of numbers and letters, but since everything is on the Blockchain you can trace at any point. You know X wallet paid Y wallet at this time, this and that. So even though you don't know who necessarily who owns X wallet or Y wallet, you know that that happened and you can trace that. And actually, law enforcement has already started doing that.

 

How Bitcoin Works With Public Key and Private Key Encryption

                                                 

Sometimes it's really easy to out yourself as well, so there's public keys and private keys. If you post your public key somewhere, then that now is associated with you. Even if you don't think anyone can track you, then maybe they can actually. But that's why there are now privacy coins where that's much more of an anonymous thing.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Let's backtrack a little bit. What's public key?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So, in cryptography there's a private key, public key. They're mathematically related, and they can be used to...For instance, I'm sending you an email and I don't want the whole world to see it in transmission, so what I can do is if you send me your public key and the public key's OK to share, I can take my message, encrypt it with the public key, send it over and it'll just be garbled, and then you can take your private key and decrypt it that way.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Nice. So it's a way to encrypt signals, messages, any sort of data?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Mm-hmm.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     OK. So let's get back then to talking about some of these myths. Now, what's perpetuated this myth that Bitcoin users are anonymous?

 

Why People Think Bitcoin Transactions Are Anonymous Or For Criminals

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So, I think people think it's anonymous because there are transactions that are wallets, but there are no names or identities necessarily associated with them. So it's a long string of numbers. However, that's not fully true at least in the case of Bitcoin because, yes, you have these numbers that are not associated with people, but you can trace the movement of funds and kind of what happened with what.

                                                 

So, if wallet X decides to send 5 Bitcoin to wallet Y, you don't know who owns wallet X, you don't know who owns wallet Y, but you do see that it was sent. And there are many ways that you can kind of out yourself by accident, therefore someone knows that I own wallet Y for instance.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. So, another myth: Bitcoin is beyond the law and it's for criminals.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Yeah. So there's a lot of people that talk about Bitcoin along with drug deals and things like that. There's good reason for this because there are things like Silk Road, which was a black marketplace that got shut down. But you know, having said that, the black market will always...it's been around a long time, will persist, and no matter what sort of medium you use, it'll still be there. I don't think that the levels have increased due specifically to cryptocurrency. And actually, the largest source of money laundering is the U.S. dollar.

                                                 

So there's that, but also on top of that there are a lot of legitimate companies getting very interested in Blockchain technology, not just Bitcoin, that's one thing which a lot of companies are actually invested in, but Blockchain technology as a whole, a lot of Fortune 500s, names that you would hear are investigating into Blockchain.

 

Myth #2: Bitcoin Has No Market Value

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. And we'll get into that in the next episode for sure. So, let's talk about another: Bitcoin has no value. It's not backed by anything.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            This is true. It is not backed by anything. Some people like to point to, "Well, you know, there was electricity put in, and that's proof of work, calculations." But you know what? A lot of things don't have intrinsic value like the U.S. dollar. It's just that the government says it's worth something, and we have all collectively agreed it's worth something.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     OK. So that's actually not a myth. That is true. It is-

 

Audrey Chaing:                            It is not backed by gold or anything like that, yeah.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it. All right. The next one: Bitcoin is not secure.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So, secure could mean a lot of different things. In one sense, Bitcoin is more secure because the whole...it's a distributed database, so a lot of people have copies, therefore you have no one point of attack. So in the Equifax half for instance, they were holding a lot of people's data. I know I was definitely affected. You were probably affected. But there's [nodes 00:08:15] everywhere. You can't just take down one and get everybody. You actually have to get over 51% to trick the system.

                                                 

In one case it's kind of more secure, but one thing that I do want people to understand is that we've become used to things being reversible, so if someone got your credit card number, they made a bunch of transactions, you can call your company and say, "You know what? That was not me. Can you reverse it? Can you credit me," right?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Right.

 

Cryptocurrency Works Like Cash

 

Audrey Chaing:                            And we're all very used to that. That's not how it works in cryptocurrency. It's like cash. If someone steals it from you, it's gone. You can't be like, "Oh, can you just reverse that back."

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Right. OK. So it's basically...it's sunk cost. You're not gonna ever get it back.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Basically, yeah, like cash.

 

Myth #3: Bitcoin Will Replace Credit Cards And Cash

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     OK. Next myth: Bitcoin will replace credit cards and cash.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So, I don't think most people think that is the point of Bitcoin. So, the point of Bitcoin is that it's a store of value, and it's done a good job doing that. Having said that, there is potential for other cryptocurrencies to potentially be more of an everyday transactional...you go buy your coffee with it. Some include maybe Bitcoin cash or Litecoin. They're a little faster, a little cheaper.

                                                 

But one thing to keep in mind right now is that scalability is a huge problem. So if you're talking about these Blockchain systems, right? We're doing eight to 30 transactions per second, credit cards handle about 5,000 transactions per second, so it's like a really big difference.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption Explained

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah. So actually, that brings up a good point. A lot of people have said that given how intensive each transaction is, Bitcoin can be a huge energy consumer. Is that true?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Yeah, I think that's...there's people that have been running mining rigs in really cold places and it heats their home.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Oh, OK.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Yeah, which is kind of clever. So yes, there is an energy cost. People are aware of it. There are a lot of other consensus mechanisms. So proof of work is just the first one, right? If we think about email when it first came out. You can complain, "Oh, this is not efficient," or whatever, but it was the very Version 1, so that's Bitcoin and proof of work and these whole calculation things and using up electricity.

                                                 

But there are a lot of other ways to reach consensus. Examples include proof of stake, and there's a lot of other ones in the works now where you're not actually calculating. And there's actually an interesting idea of what if you did proof of work but it actually did something? Because right now you're doing calculations but it's not really adding to anybody. If you did almost like a Mechanical Turk in that we're doing calculations but it's actually helping us solve something, then you could be doing two things at the same time.

 

Myth #4 Bitcoin And Blockchain Are The Same

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it. All right. And last one, which we talked about in the beginning: people think Bitcoin is the same as Blockchain.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I understand why because in the media people usually talk about Bitcoin because of the price moves. People are interested in that, right? A lot of people haven't even heard of the term Blockchain, and when they do they think it's the same thing. But yeah, Bitcoin is one cryptocurrency. There are now over 1,500 cryptocurrencies. They are all using the Blockchain technology, but it's very possible to work with Blockchain and not even have a currency.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     OK. So what is the Blockchain technology, then?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So that's basically...if you've heard of distributed ledger—

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Mm-hmm.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            That might be driving you. But at the very very base, it is a large database that everyone has a copy of.

 

Other Cryptocurrencies Besides Bitcoin

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Got it. All right. So, what other cryptocurrencies are out there?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            There are a lot, and I would recommend if you wanted to look into them, CoinMarketCap has a list of all of them basically. But some of the ones you may have heard of, like Ethereum is a really big one. Some quarked off of Bitcoin so there's Bitcoin cash, Bitcoin gold. There's any number of coins that exist and sell through ICOs, which I think we'll talk about later.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Yeah, great, thank you. So, for our audience out there who...they're gonna want to arm themselves and be able to tell fact from fiction, how can they explore Bitcoin, Blockchain and cryptocurrencies and know that they're getting the right information?

 

Audrey Chaing:                            Yeah, it's really hard because there is information out there but it is hard to say what's real and what's not, and the people really deep in the community, you look at things like Reddit and Twitter, but if you're just starting out...This is actually why I started writing because I didn't think there were very many good resources out there. But one that's quite good is Blockgeeks.com. They do introductory stuff all the way down to explaining zk-SNARKs.

 

How To Get Started With Cryptocurrencies

                                                 

So there's stuff out there. I think the best way to get learning is actually to just go buy some cryptocurrency, because once you have something on a line, you'll want to learn how it works.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Nice. And hopefully there's something that's cheaper than Bitcoin that we can all purchase.

 

Audrey Chaing:                            So here's another thing...another common misconception is that you need to buy one coin at a time. You really don't. You could do like .001 on any of these things.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker.:                     Oh. Very cool. Well thank you so much, Audrey, for helping us bust all of these myths and sharing your expertise on Bitcoin, Blockchain and cryptocurrencies. I know our audience out there is gonna get a lot of value out of this. If there's a question or a myth that we didn't answer today, be sure to let us know what it is in the comments below this video. We'll be sure to answer it. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode, where Audrey and I will talk about a number of applications that are hopefully going to stick around that you can get involved in when it comes to Blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

                                                 

Ciao for now.

This episode of *Build* is brought to you our main sponsor, Pivotal Tracker. We'd also like to thank our Platinum Patreon Patrons: Corgibytes, the Develop[Her] Show, Dee Gill, and Jamie Hand.         

In the last episode of Build, we exposed a number of myths about current augmented reality and virtual reality trends, and how new products are evolving by learning from predecessors like Google Glass.

 

If the episode piqued your curiosity and left you wondering how you can get started or where you can find more resources, today’s episode is for you!

 

Rose Haft the CEO and Founder of Lumenora is back. Together we’re going to share some the applications of augmented reality and virtual reality that are here to stay, and how you can get started tinkering with the technology.

 

You’ll learn:

 

• How 200+ companies are using augmented reality and virtual reality
• Why augmented reality and virtual reality isn’t just limited to industries like gaming but others like healthcare are adopting it
• The software tools and resources that are available today — making it easier for early adopters like you to start tinkering and developing applications!

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

--

Episode Transcript

Poornima Vijayashanker:           In the previous episode of *Build*, we shared some of the most common myths and misconceptions related to augmented and virtual reality. If you missed the episode, I've included a link to it below. In today's episode, we're going to do a deeper dive into some of the applications of augmented and virtual reality, and talk about how you can get involved and your hands dirty using the technology. So, stay tuned.

                   

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker, the founder of Femgineer, In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. In today's episode, we're back with Rose Halt, who is the CEO and founder of Lumenora, and we're gonna be doing a deeper dive into augmented and virtual reality, talking about some of the applications, as well as how you can get started using the technology. Thanks again for joining us Rose.

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah, thanks for having me.

 

How 200+ Companies Are Using Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah, so, let's go ahead and dive in. Last time, we talked about some of the myths. This time, I want to talk about some of the applications, so maybe you can walk us through what you're seeing in terms of use cases for AR and VR.

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah, so even though people think that AR and VR is done. We talk about on the last episode, there are over 200 companies who are using it today.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Wow.

 

Rose Haft:               Which is pretty significant. They're using it to help reduce errors in production lines, helping to provide instructions where people might not have a lot of experience in a job, and helping to make sure that everyone is doing what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to. So, a lot of optimization.

 

How Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality Is Helping The Healthcare Industry

 

There are companies starting to work on Healthcare, trying to help to improve the patient-doctor experience, and that's another prominent one that's starting to take off. And then also in gaming. I'm sure you guys have all seen a lot of gaming videos of your friends on the internet, and so that's another one that people really like, and enjoy.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah, I think the gaming one has been going on since the 90's, right? So, that's definitely one that's sort of here to stay. So, are there any other applications? I know I've seen some stuff around simulating things like surgeries, anything else that comes to mind?

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah, absolutely. So, on that surgery front, being able to train people and have the opportunity to practice something, before doing it in real life has been known to increase the likelihood of success. And so, people who are going into surgery it's really helpful to know the doctor has practiced a couple more times on a specific patient with similar body types, and expectations, and unique scenarios before they go in for a dangerous surgery. So we're really starting to see them being used to help humans make fewer errors in general, which is really interesting. As we're increasing the robotic technology to create machines, that can do things perfectly, we're also helping humans to do things perfectly.

 

Additional Applications And Use Cases For Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Well, I don't know if perfection is necessarily the goal, but that's good to hear that that's what they're aiming for. So, are these just trends, or are there more applications that you see coming down the pipeline?

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah, these definitely aren't trends. There are people who are starting to get to know and understand, and the right tools are being built now, from software and the hardware perspective, that will allow people to start adopting them. Today, I just had an interview with somebody who has tried using it in a business setting, and there's still some issues that they're running into even with billions of dollars being put into developing headsets. And so, as an engineer, I'm trying to...they say laziness is one of the virtues of being an engineer, and trying to do things right the first time, so as a startup, after people have put a lot of money in, we're able to take a hard look at some of the reasons why people aren't able to use them, and be able to put them design to prevent those flaws, and make them more adoptable.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah, so it's gotta be a really high cost of production right? And for people in the audience who want to play with the technology, it costs like several thousands of dollars just to get a headset, and then of course there's a software being developed, so how are you seeing the cost come down, or how companies trying to bring down those production costs?

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah. So, companies like mine know the importance of these technologies. I've spent time in India and Peru, and I've seen how much a lack of similar tools has really made an impact on the world. And so, we're designing specifically to have a headset that can be used as functional, works great, and has a price point we can't fully disclose that yet, but ours won't take thousands of dollars to actually use and integrate with. We don't need to buy an expensive laptop in order to work with it. Our will be able to work out of the box, for about the cost of a cell phone, what you'd find now.

 

Software Languages And Platforms Compatible With Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           And what about the software that goes in it? Since, nothing yet is standardized, are company's thinking about this? How can our audience develop applications?

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah. So, Android is probably one of the easiest ways to get started. Android, if you know how to build apps, and there are a lot of tutorials, you can start to integrate with some of the same systems that will work on a phone, as well as a headset like ours. Most headset companies do integrate in that ecosystem. So, that really helps. Otherwise if you're more familiar with HTML or CSS, you can go to aframe.io, and there's also a Slack channel where you can get help learning how to use HTML and CSS to build applications using just regular web browser technology. It's a little more technical than that, but it's a good place to get started. And then, also Unity is another big skill that people can...another software platform that people can use in order to get started.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Oh, great. So, it's good to see that this same software platform is being leveraged, and it's not new languages or new frameworks that people have to adopt, except for maybe a couple things, like you mentioned, Unity.

 

Rose Haft:               Yup. So, I know there's a lot of different software languages to learn, and that can be very overwhelming. For the most part, all of them will talk to each other in some sort of way. And so, if you are wanting a specific language to write in, usually C or C++ is pretty universal, it'll allow allow you to plug in with one platform or another. Java, as well.

 

How To Deploy Software Application On Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Headsets

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah, and what about the actual way to sort of put the application into these headsets, is there...is it all internet enabled? How does that work?

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah. So, every headset will have its own SDK that you can access and download, typically through the internet, and something you have to work directly with the company, and so it really depends on what you want to use. Android tends the easiest, because you can buy phones for less than $100, and you can start building and testing with that. And a lot of them are really functional and capable.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah. Maybe you can help us break down what SDK is.

 

Rose Haft:               Oh yeah. So, SDK is our software development kits, and so it'll have standardized code that will help you to talk to the hardware, or talk to other pieces of software, to make sure everything is compatible. For instance, with the different display systems, there are specific ways in which the display will be changed, so it has a coherent image, and that will be part of an SDK.

 

There’s A Market Need For More Software Infrastructure To Support Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality Products

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So, to draw an analogy to when mobile devices were first coming out. A lot of these platforms had emulators that you could put on your computer so that you didn't have to have every single device. You didn't have to have an Android phone, and a iPhone. Are there similar emulators being developed?

 

Rose Haft:               There should be. I haven't developed specifically for other headset companies. I'm trying to keep the IP stuff differently, but Android does a really good job with emulators, and it should work standardly, and each headset company will have an easy way to integrate, make it look the same on their headset, as well.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           OK, so maybe a market opportunity for some enterprising audience member out there.

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah, absolutely.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           But certainly, that opens the door for testing. I'm sure there's a lot of testing frameworks out there as well.

 

Rose Haft:               Yup.

 

Resources To Help Early Adopters Like You Get Started Tinkering and Building Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality Applications

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Wonderful. So, for those that want to get started, you already mentioned a few resources. Do you have any other resources out there that you can share with our audience?

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah I think if you're wanting to get started, it is really great to you find a mentor, or somebody else in the space who has worked, joined Slack channels and communities, and also talked to people who have been in the industry for a while, and find out what's worked, and what hasn't worked, what they need help with, and a lot of people are very willing to take the time to share knowledge, and information to help you move forward and get started. So, never feel ashamed to clarify, to ask for help, and to make sure that you're getting started and doing things in the best way.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah, wonderful. And we'll be sure to share those links with our audience out there. Thank you so much, Rose, for coming on the show today.

 

Rose Haft:               Yeah, thank you for having me.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive our next episode, and share this episode with your friends, your teammates, and your boss. And a special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now. This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor Pivotal Tracker.

Remember Google Glass? Yeah it didn’t quite take off did it… It was just one example of a failed attempt to productize virtual reality. Its short lifespan along with a number of other products since the 90s has probably got you thinking that there is just a lot of buzz around augmented reality and virtual reality.

 

While the technologies seem exciting, you might be on the fence when it comes to investing your time and energy exploring the technology.

 

It doesn’t help that the cost associated with production and acquisition of the devices, and the limited toolset have made them both a challenge to tinker with.

 

But I have some good news for you: much of the market is changing! There some great applications that are disrupting businesses and industries like healthcare, and a number of resources making it easier to build.

 

In today’s Build episode we’re going to dive into the major differences and similarities between augmented reality (AR) versus virtual reality (VR). Then we’ll debunk the many myths around AR/VR. And in next week’s episode, we’ll share some of the cool applications that are coming on the market and a number of resources to help you get started!

 

To help us out, I’ve invited Rose Haft who is the CEO and Founder of Lumenora.

 

As you listen to today’s episode you’ll learn the following:

 

• What are the major differences between augmented reality (AR) versus virtual reality (VR)
• Why products like Google Glass failed to take off and what new products are learning from its demise
• Why you haven’t heard from companies that are actually making a mark
• Why big companies like Facebook are investing in a more long-term strategy
• How Rose Haft got introduced to AR/VR and how her company Lumenora is approaching the market

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

--

Episode Transcript

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Wondering what all the buzz is about when it comes to augmented reality and virtual reality? Well, stay tuned to find out more. Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode of *Build*, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. You've probably heard that augmented reality and virtual reality are the way of the future and maybe you're reluctant to join all the buzz. Well, I don't blame you. In today's episode we're going to debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to augmented reality and virtual reality and then in the future episode we're going to talk about some of its applications. To help us out, I've invited Rose Haft, who is the CEO and founder of Lumenora. Thanks for joining us today, Rose.

 

Rose Haft:          Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

 

Are augmented reality and virtual reality the same?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Why don't we just get started by introducing to our audience, in case they're not familiar, what exactly is the difference between augmented reality, AR, and virtual reality, VR?

 

Rose Haft:          Absolutely. Yeah, so augmented reality and virtual reality are a way to have a computer interface that's very close to the eye that allows for there to be a different way to interact with the computer than what you're used to today. Augmented reality makes it possible to see what's happening in the real world that everyone else can see, with a little bit of image overlay that will help to display text, or data. If you've heard of Magic Leap, it'll also help to display holograms and things that look very lifelike. The difference between augmented and virtual reality is that in virtual reality you have your own environment and you're not able to access any of the exterior world, so you're completely immersed inside of that environment. It makes it a little bit more difficult to see what's happening elsewhere, but there are a lot of really useful applications for being fully immersed and reasons why people really enjoy using it.

 

Why Rose Haft (CEO and Founder of Lumenora) Got Interested In Augmented And Virtual Reality

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Maybe you can tell us what got you interested in augmented and virtual reality and then we can talk about why you decided to start your company.

 

Rose Haft:          I got interested in augmented and virtual reality in high school. I knew I wanted to be an engineer and I had an opportunity to work as an intern at one of the local prototyping facilities. At that facility we were working on building advanced headsets for the military. I really had a chance to see how having a hands-free tool that could be worn can really do anything from help to save lives, as well as help to communicate silently between people. I thought it was really interesting, a different way of interacting in technology, than had ever been there before.

 

Why Building Headsets for Augmented And Virtual Reality Was Challenging And Led To Limited Product Adoption

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        What inspired you to start your company Lumenora?

 

Rose Haft:          Yeah. After working at several companies, including working at Meta helping to design the Meta II, I realized that there were a lot of logistical and engineering reasons why people weren't able to build the headsets that I felt like were ideal and also why those reasons are also part of the reasons why people don't want to adopt them. I was studying at Stanford a little bit of biomedical engineering and how to use sensors, like you would in surgery, and I thought it'd be great to incorporate them into a headset. Again, there were logistical reasons to doing that. After I found a partner company that could help solve one of the major problems in the area, and with my unique background in design, knowing how to design things differently, was really a great match to build something that is more advanced, more capable, and people actually want to wear it and use it.

 

How Businesses Are Applying Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality To Their Business Processes

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Do you mind sharing the application of what you're working on?

 

Rose Haft:          Yeah. Right now, we're kind of fitting into the maintenance repair and operations space. There are over 200 companies internationally that are using it to do things like supply chain management, companies like BMW who build cars find it useful to make sure they're choosing the right parts and putting them together in the right way, and making sure that their quality process, you don't have to go back and double check work, they're doing it right and the first time.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Got it, so it's really a training platform—

 

Rose Haft:          Yep.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        For people, yeah.

 

Rose Haft:          We're adding in extra features and we're doing some fun and cutting edge things that will help to even more improve those industries, especially training. In order for people to learn skills, and trade crafts, and the majority of Americans who hold the same job title need to go to school to learn these things, and how to work on specific machines, and machine types. We'll be integrating a real-time training system where you can learn a new skill or a craft in real-time and you don't need to have the several years of school, so we'll be able to adopt robots faster, and self-driving cars, and those sort of things.

 

Why People Have Been Reluctant To Adopt Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality Products

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Very nice. You mentioned early on that there's been a lot of reluctance to adopting this new technology, AR and VR. Why is that?

 

Rose Haft:          There's a lot of reluctance for a variety of reasons. People haven't found that they're stylish enough, or cool enough, and also really haven't found the benefits. They've really only seen the detriments and pullbacks as far as feeling like their security is being threatened or their privacy would be threatened because of the ability to record and take in information. I think the use cases are just now starting to be developed. One of my favorites is there's a 3D graphing app, and so you can use it for calculus. I know we're doing some fun and cutting edge things that really will help the average everyday person meet typical goals and those sort of things and it'll make it better and easier to adopt once those use cases are there.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, and we'll hold that thought. We're going to dive into those use cases in the next episode. There's also a lot of myths being propagated right now and I think one of them, because of the lack of adoption, people just are saying that AR/VR is dead and there's not much going on. Is that true? Are people not building these headsets anymore? Are they no longer investing in the technology infrastructure?

 

Rose Haft:          Yeah, that's absolutely not true—

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Rose Haft:          Whatsoever.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

 

Why You Haven’t Heard From Companies That Are Actually Making A Mark In The Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality Market

 

Rose Haft:          There's still a lot of investing to try to find the right solutions and the right designs, so people can actually wear them and adopt them. I know companies like mine have tried to stay as much out of the media as possible, because people have spent billions of dollars trying to find the right solution, and as soon as you put something out there, people feel like they can help themselves. Working on companies like mine who are working on very proprietary things, or making sure that they're developing and building strength, and so we're doing a lot of things in the background that can't be seen quite yet, and eventually will come to mainstream once we really feel like we'll be able to offer something that people really want.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Are there any other myths that are being propagated, aside from the one around it being dead?

 

Rose Haft:          Yeah. People think they're ugly.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Right.

 

What Led To The Demise Of The Google Glass And How New Products Are Learning From Its Failures

 

Rose Haft:          The glass hole is the scared term that's used and we're building something that will be a lot more sleek and stylish and have a lot more options in order to wear it and have it look different. I think the use cases that we're developing will be cool enough and necessary enough that people will want to adopt it anyways.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. You're seeing a lot of friction just in terms of the adoption because of change of behavior because people don't see this as prevalent, so that makes sense. There's already a number of big players in the market today. Facebook has Oculus. Google, like you mentioned, used to have Google Glass. What exactly is the difference between some of these big players, and maybe what you're building, and what you see other people building?

 

Rose Haft:          The main differences between each of the companies are the form factor and the tech-

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Rose Haft:          The technology that's being used to develop them. There are several different optical technologies that are used and those really make a big difference in what a headset looks like. Most of the virtual reality headsets have a screen like your cell phone that's in front of the eyes and there are lenses that help you to see an image clearly. That's one type of technology. Companies like Google have something called a beam splitter inside the Google Glass and while it's a smaller form factor, it has limited capabilities. Companies like Vuzix have something called a wave guide that has limitations around it as far as the brightness of the image, and the amount of the screen that's able to be filmed. That might be a very technical explanation, but-

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        That's OK, we have a very technical audience.

 

Rose Haft:          Well, this is...I'm hoping to share-

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

 

Rose Haft:          Relevant information. The biggest difference between each of the systems is the way the computer image is generated so somebody can see it. Those are really the big three ones that you see right now. Meta has a direct reflection. I helped to come up with that design. I built a...Meta hired me because I had built a prototype and they thought my prototype was cool and they hired me on to help with that.

 

How You Can Separate The Fact From Fiction Around Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, that's awesome. When our audience out there is trying to evaluate between fact and fiction when it comes down to augmented reality and virtual reality, what would you say to kind of arm them?

 

Rose Haft:          Yeah. In order to help understand the difference between fact and fiction in an augmented and virtual reality environment, a lot of companies are going out and giving a lot of information and showing pictures and those sort of things, without actually having a product. It's really important to look at how close is whatever is seen actually able to go out and be used in the world.

 

Also, companies that have a lot of hype, where they are getting the most press and it seems most exciting, aren't necessarily the ones who are building the most useful tools. I think it's kind of...Companies can be like people. If they're kind of showing off a whole lot, but not really putting anything behind the game, then there's probably a problem with it.

                   

Otherwise, I encourage your audience, everyone out there, to really learn the science behind what's happening. Part of the reason why we've been able to do things differently at Lumenora is because I knew the science, and I was able to go through and do things differently, because I knew the limitations of the methods trying to be implemented. Science, and also fact check, and double check if something's actually ready, or usable, or wearable.

 

Why Big Companies Like Facebook Are Investing In A More Long Term Strategy Around Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality

 

Companies like Facebook who have a five-year plan in order to build something and they've talked about that at F8 and those sort of things, they haven't necessarily released anything publicly to show what they're working on, and those are the companies that are more genuinely putting an effort into creating something useful before they go out and get credit for something they've not yet done.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Well thank you so much, Rose. This has been really eye opening for us. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing.

 

Rose Haft:          Absolutely.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Rose and I want to know, do you have any questions related to augmented reality and virtual reality? Let us know what they are in the comments below. That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode where we'll do a deeper dive into talking about some of the applications on augmented and virtual reality. Chow for now.

                   

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

 

All this month we’ve been talking about remote working as it relates to recruiting, training, and retaining remote works. We started out by tackling how to recruit remote workers for people who may be new to it. Then we discussed how to train, hold accountable, and retain remote workers.

 

In the final episode for this month, we’re going to address a BIG concern that often holds people back from recruiting and managing a remote team: the nature of the work that needs to be done.

 

Most hiring managers we talk to are OK with hiring a virtual assistant to handle day-to-day tasks. But when it comes to a mission critical project like launching a startup or handling very important client or customers, going remote seems too risky, and people opt for hiring a team on-site.

 

In today’s episode, we’ll talk about why it boils down changing your process depending on the nature of work your remote workers are doing.

 

Holly Cardew the Founder of Pixc is back to help us out. Holly has grown and scaled her team across Australia and Asia. And has done so in a number of job functions spanning both the business side with roles such as virtual assistants and marketers, to the technical side hiring software developers and designers to build the product.

 

As you listen to today’s episode you’ll learn:

 

• How to manage a remote team that is working on a mission critical project
• How customers and clients benefit from a team of remote workers
• Why facetime is still important for remote teams—especially when kicking off a project
• How to facilitate facetime amongst remote workers
• A simple first step for people who are on the fence about hiring remote workers

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

--

## What A Remote Team Needs To Be Successful When Working On A Mission Critical Project Transcript

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        In the last two episodes of *Build*, we shared a lot of the benefits of remote working. We also shared some best practices when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees and the processes you want to put in place to keep everybody productive.

                   

In today's episode we're going to share how these processes will change depending on the nature of work so stay tuned.

 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode of *Build*, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech.

                 

We're continuing our conversation with Holly Cardew who is the CEO and founder of Pixc on remote working. Thanks for joining us Holly.

 

Holly Cardew:       Good to see you again.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Every episode of *Build* is inspired by amazing audience members like you, sharing your experiences and asking insightful questions. Today's episode is also inspired by an audience member, Kai. I want to start by reading an email that Kai sent me because I think it could help many of you who are out there.

 

How to manage a remote team that is working on a mission critical project

                   

Kai wrote, "Hi Poornima, I've been following your show since the pilot episode with Ben Congleton on building a remote team and recently caught the one you did with your team mate Megan as well. Thanks for revisiting this topic of remote working over the years. One thing I've been curious about is how processes change when you're managing a critical project versus a normal day to day? I know for things like startups, or mission critical projects, coordination appears easier when everybody's in the same location. I say "appears" because it can also be a huge distraction. What do you see are the trade offs and how does a remote team dynamic change between a critical project versus normal day to day tasks? Sincerely Kai."

                   

This is a great question Kai, and Holly and I are going to tackle it. So, if you're watching this episode, thank you for writing in. OK Holly, let's start with Kai's first question, which is, what are the trade offs when it comes to these mission critical tasks versus sort of the day to day?

 

Have remote workers be within a few time zones for mission critical projects

 

Holly Cardew:       I think mission critical tasks, you really need to understand what needs to be done and stick to that goal and that time zone. Also, understand that other people, aren't maybe in different time zones and you may need to stay up a bit late or go to bed, you know, I mean may not go to bed till 5 am. Whereas day to day tasks, it doesn't really matter when they happen in the week.

                   

For us, what we've really done is we've kept all our tech and product in Europe. So they're not in the same location, but they are in a similar time zone, so the time difference is really 4-5 hours, five hours max. Which allows everybody to communicate, but I think it can be beneficial, again to have somebody in another location in case there is a customer issue with the technology side.

 

Categorize tasks as asynchronous versus synchronous tasks to help remote workers collaborate

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. So what we did early on was actually break this up into asynchronism, what we like to call sort of those day to day tasks that people can do whenever they have availability, and then synchronism, where it's like you said, something that's customer facing, something that's critical, or something that requires a lot of coordination and figuring out that 3-5 hour time difference where everyone's kind of, be in the same day versus you have a problem, someone's asleep, you don't necessarily want to wake them up, right?

                   

If it's a customer facing issue than it can be a challenge, but I also like what you said about having people in different time zones in case it's a customer issue and then you've got more hands to kind of help out over the various time zones.

 

Holly Cardew:       Definitely.

 

How customers and clients benefit from a team of remote workers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Do you have any, do you have a specific example you'd like to share with us?

 

Holly Cardew:       So as I mentioned, we definitely have taken product in Europe. We do have a project manager in the Philippines but that's OK because she understands that the rest of them are in that time zone, so she will work with that time zone. For our content and marketing, it's kind of, Europe but Western Europe and then flows over into America. That works absolutely fine.

                   

There's about, maximum there's eight hours difference, with social media included but they don't mind that because they've just set a time, each week to get the tasks done, but as you said, it's tasks that sort of come and flow. You don't need to do it at a certain time, it's not critical that you know, our social media post went up one hour difference, doesn't make that much difference to us as a B to B software company, but I think for customers, so customer service is really important because customers can not wait 12 hours. They can't wait eight, they need a response within 20 minutes.

 

Facetime is still important for remote teams—especially when kicking off a project

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Now I will say that even aside from the time zones, another thing that I've found helpful is when you're kicking off a project, or you do feel like it's something really mission critical, it can be helpful to have people at the start of the project, all working together. Early on I will do either a retreat or maybe coordinate with some subset of the team, do you do anything like that at Pixc?

 

Holly Cardew:       We haven't yet. We've actually, we're talking at the moment about having our first meet up. Somewhere in Asia, so sent out a Google form with potential dates of what would work, but I think it would be really valuable for people. If you are located closely together, what we will do is try to meet up at conferences.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh perfect.

 

Holly Cardew:       Or, you know other events, or you know if I'm traveling to Indonesia I'll try and meet up with a team member, but for us we haven't yet done the in person thing yet.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. I think it's also good that you said you meet up with your employees, right. So, even if it's just a one on one or kind of a smaller group getting together that can be really valuable.

 

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, I've also said to them, like give them a budget to travel too. So if there's a lot of them in Asia, it's quite cheap to travel within Asia, so they could meet up for a dinner or lunch.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh, great.

 

Holly Cardew:       So it doesn't necessarily mean it's just for the project, it's again, links back to the culture, because if you create a good culture and they have a social gathering together, then when they do go away they sort of understand each other a bit more.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Right and it stills helps to kind of elongate that process and they feel like they're part of team and not just somebody working somewhere in some part of the world.

 

Holly Cardew:       Yeah. Definitely.

 

A simple first step for people who are on the fence about hiring remote workers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Wonderful. Any final words of wisdom for our audience out there when it comes to recruiting remote talent and retaining them?

 

Holly Cardew:       I think when I speak to people and they're like I've never hired someone remote, what should I do? I think the first step is having a virtual assistant for yourself. So those tasks that you do every single day, that you could pass to someone else, just try it. Have someone 10 hours a week, or even five hours a week so it's one day a week, doing some of those tasks and you'll soon build a culture that works for them.

                   

The other thing is I would really think about them as not outsourcing or part of someone else's company. I stick with hiring individuals and not agency's or outsourcing companies. Then I send them birthday cakes and cards just because it makes them feel included in the bigger vision and bigger company and picture rather than just doing a task at hand.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh yeah, they're definitely contributing to the overall company so that's good. That's good that you recognize them. Well these are all great tips Holly. Thank you so much for joining us.

 

Holly Cardew:       Thank you.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        That's it for this week's episode of *Build*. Be sure to share this with your friends, your teammates and your boss, if you are thinking about putting in place a remote working culture. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode. Ciao for now!

                   

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor PivotalTracker.

 

In last week’s episode of Build, we dove into the benefits and best practices around recruiting remote workers. But as you’ve learned from last month’s Build episodes, it’s not enough to hire talent, you also need to onboard new hires by training them!

 

Training someone to be on a remote team might seem like a challenge since they aren’t sitting next to you. Those who are new to setting up a remote team think that training face-to-face is just easier because you can answer questions as they come up. And it may seem easier when it training multiple hires. But rest assured you can train remote workers, and in a way that scales as you hire multiple people at once.

 

In today’s episode, we’re going to share a number of proven strategies that have worked across job roles.

 

Once you’ve trained your remote workers, you might be wondering how to hold them accountable and retain them long term. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered ;)

 

We’ll be share fool-proof techniques for holding remote workers accountable and how to retain them long-term.

 

One last thing to keep in mind—there is a difference between a remote-first versus a remote-friendly company. If you’re not familiar with the difference, we’re going to dive into it and talk about how it can impact long-term retention of your remote workers.

 

Holly Cardew the Founder of Pixc is back to help us out. Holly has grown and scaled her team across Australia and Asia. And has done so in a number of job functions spanning both the business side with roles such as virtual assistants and marketers, to the technical side hiring software developers and designers to build the product.

 

As you listen to today’s episode you’ll learn:

• Why remote working doesn’t work for some companies and cultures—impacting long-term productivity and retention of remote workers
• Best practices for training and onboarding remote workers
• How to hold remote workers accountable
• Why you need a communication escalation framework to keep your remote workers productive
• How to coach remote workers to be more resourceful

Check out these additional resources on remote working:

• How To Build A Happy And Productive Remote Team
• How to Succeed In Your First Remote Working Position

If you have a remote team, how do you train, retain, and hold your employees accountable? Let us know in the comments below.

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

 

## Proven Strategies For Training And Retaining Remote Workers Transcript

Poornima Vijayashanker:        In the previous *Build* episode, we shared a number of strategies for recruiting remote workers. If you missed the episode, I've included the link to it below. Now, it's not enough to just recruit employees. You've also got to train them, hold them accountable, and retain them. In today's episode, we'll dive into how to do this, so stay tuned.

                   

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. As an employer, once you've recruited remote workers, you need to train them, you need to hold them accountable, and of course figure out ways to retain them. If you're wondering how, Holly Cardew, who's the CEO and Founder of Pixc, is back. Today we're going to be sharing a number of strategies on how to do this. Thanks for coming back, Holly.

 

Holly Cardew:       Thanks for having me again.

 

Remote-first versus remote-friendly

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. OK, Holly, one of the biggest misconceptions around retaining remote workers is this idea of remote-first versus remote-friendly. Maybe you can explain what each of these are and how they impact retention.

 

Holly Cardew:       Sure, so the difference...Well, what remote-first is means that everybody is remote. There is no head office. There is no main office. Everybody can work from home. They could work in a coworking space or a café.

 

Remote-friendly is that there is essentially an office, and then the office allows you to be at home or at the office when you would like. We've never had remote-friendly. We've always been remote-first.

 

Why remote working doesn’t work: communication and collaboration breaks down with remote-friendly

 

But the issue I see with remote-friendly is that there is a lot of miscommunication, because everybody is...You can either choose to be involved in the culture and be at the office, or you can be at home. It's kind of a little bit warped, whereas remote-first, because we were remote-first, we had to build a really strong culture from the beginning. There's no thing that I was at the office, or I was at wherever, a space, with three employees and not the other 20. That's where I think in terms of retaining, it's just really important to build a strong culture either way, but there is a little bit of miscommunication in the remote-friendly one.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Do you think people feel left out maybe?

 

Holly Cardew:       Yes, definitely. Well, they may or they may just not want to get involved, which therefore impacts the team because the team feel like...The team who are in the office feel like they're doing more, and the person at home may not be.

 

What you need in place before you train remote workers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Got it. OK. We also know that in any company, in order to retain employees, you have to train them, but it can be a challenge to train people when they're not right in front of you. What are some best practices when it comes to training remote workers?

 

Holly Cardew:       It's so important to document. At the beginning, I didn't document. I would get on Skype or Google Hangouts, and I would tell the same person the same thing. I realized that I was repeating myself.

 

Our best practice is really to document, but also make everybody responsible for documenting.

It's not my job to write everybody's roles. I always tell the next person I hire that they're going to be responsible for the next team member that joins. They need to keep their own documentation.

 

We've also started Google Sites, so we have Google Sites which also connects to Google Drive and Google Documents, but that place is like...Google Sites is really the place for us where we can talk about the culture, the values, and the missions of the company, but then have all the documentation in there. It's a one, sort of essential portal.

 

Best practices for training remote workers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Nice. Then what about when it comes to actually training people?

 

Holly Cardew:       It depends on what team they're in. We usually have an onboarding process with their team lead, whether it's marketing or customer service or engineering. Then we have a weekly team meeting. They'll have an onboarding session, but we have check-ins, more check-ins I would say at the beginning than further on down the track.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Mm-hmm. A couple things that we do at Femgineer are I record all the videos, because like yourself, I got tired of saying the same thing over and over again. The other is I have screencasts, and I also have an employee handbook, and much like yourself, have people update that once a quarter. As we scale my training efforts, do you have any that you recommend?

 

Record training sessions

 

Holly Cardew:       We actually do a lot of what you do. I think that you made a really good point. We do a lot of screencasts as well. I think we try and implement the philosophy that even if you're just doing a quick call...They may have been in the job for six months, but if you're doing a call with somebody via Google Hangouts, record it. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just put it in the folder with that question or showing that person how it's done, so the next person who comes along doesn't have to ask the same question.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. I also do it for our meetings, because sometimes people get sick.

 

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, definitely.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Instead of having one person type up all the notes or play phone tag, it's easier to just say, "Hey, watch the recording. If you want, watch it, double the speed." It's a great way to stay efficient and keep everybody in sync.

 

Holly Cardew:       Do you record every week or every meeting?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yes, we do record all of our all-hands. Then if it's a particularly training meeting, if I'm walking somebody through it, then I'll also do the recording. Zoom has been great for us to do the recordings. It just automatically records it. Then I'll upload it to Google Drive and label it whatever the training was about.

 

Holly Cardew:       Cool. Where do you put all your documentation?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        In Google Drive.

 

Holly Cardew:       OK.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

 

Holly Cardew:       Sorry.

 

How to hold remote workers accountable

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Similar. Yeah. On the flip side, there's also accountability. I know a lot of times managers feel like if somebody's just sitting right next to them or in the cubicle farm somewhere, they're a lot more present and they're getting work done. But I've been in environments where people spent that eight hours in their cube surfing the internet. How do you hold people accountable in a remote team when they're not even near you, you can't see them?

 

Holly Cardew:       For us, it's really about the goal and the work that they achieve. We could be counting hours and minutes and what they're doing. Some days, I do get a little slightly frustrated, because I want the person to be...I expect them to be there and they're not, but at the same time, we're flexible with time. It's about getting the work done. If people have never hired online before, I actually suggest for them to use a time tracker. I know that platforms like Upwork have...What they do is they take a screenshot of the screen every 10 minutes, and you can check a work diary of what the person's doing.

                   

How to divvy up tasks and set goals with remote workers

 

For us, it's really about trusting the person at the end of the day. I don't want to sit there and look over their shoulder every single minute on what they're doing online. I just want them to deliver high-quality output of their work and their goals for the month or for the quarter. What we've done is we've set up team goals. Instead of me setting goals for the team, we agree on them. They can say, "Holly, that's not achievable," or, "Yes, that is achievable," or, "That's a push goal," but we both agree before moving forward. Then they can't come back and say, "That was too much work," because they also agreed to it.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, but what about some of those nitty-gritty tasks like, "Oh, I thought so-and-so was going to write this blog post, but then they didn't, so it didn't get it done"?

 

Holly Cardew:       No, we have everything documented in spreadsheets.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Good.

 

Holly Cardew:       Like the task at hand and the person responsible and the due date.

 

Remote working and collaboration

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yup. Yeah, we actually do that as well at the beginning of the week when we do our all-hands. People are supposed to come in with their Trello already filled out—

 

Holly Cardew:       Oh, that's interesting.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:      —on what the tasks are going to be. It's also a great way to then, if somebody can't do a task, to hand it off. The checklists and all the documentation is in there, and that way, if for whatever reason it doesn't get done, someone else can pick it up and run with it. We're still flexible within that. If it's really like, "Oh, this person had five tasks, and it was unreasonable that week," then it's OK, but if you look and see that none of the five tasks were done, then clearly something is up. I feel like the tools have evolved to a point now where it becomes very transparent on who's getting stuff done and who isn't.

 

Holly Cardew:       Definitely. We have all the tasks listed out. We have used Trello depending on what the role is, again, so we're doing some new feature builds. It involves having the UX and the front-end engineer and the back-end, so we want to keep it all on track. We do use JIRA, too. We probably use one too many tools, but I think everything's well-documented, so we know who's doing what and if it's being achieved.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, and then just going back and kind of grooming that periodically to see if things are no longer a priority or aligned to your goals.

 

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, definitely.

 

Why you need a communication escalation framework to keep your remote workers productive

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yes. As your team scales, communication obviously becomes a bottleneck. What would you recommend to keeping people in sync?

 

Holly Cardew:       What we do is we've actually broken up in the teams into mini-teams, so tech and product, and then marketing and customer service, and then internal operations. The reason for that is we don't...The tech don't really need to know some of the details, and I don't want to confuse everybody. We have weekly meetings but in those sort of mini-meetings. Then it means that there's no miscommunication. It's quite easy for a small team of four to get together rather than a team of 23.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Sure, that makes sense. Another best practice that I have kind of discovered over time is communication escalation, because it's very easy for people to think that texting has to happen no matter what. I actually over time came up with a framework where, for example, email was for reference. Using a tool like Slack is great for daily communication, archiving messages, kind of going back and taking a look. You could even have a water cooler. Do you have anything like this in terms of communication escalation?

 

Holly Cardew:       We do. I haven't put in a proper framework, but I think over time it's evolved that people do understand that, yeah, Slack is for daily chat. Email, we still quite like email, because it is a bit like to-do. For me personally, it's like a to-do list. Then if it's an ultimate emergency, WhatsApp. WhatsApp's the place.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

 

Holly Cardew:       No matter where you are, it's handy. We actually have our groups on WhatsApp, so we have our tech and product, our marketing and customer service broken down, so when there is an issue, they can go to a different group. It's a little bit like Slack in that way.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, but it's good to have that breakdown. Otherwise, people feel like, "Why are you texting me all the time?"

 

Holly Cardew:       Exactly.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Or, "why are you emailing me all the time?" Having that, I think, is important and figuring out what works for your team versus another team.

 

How to coach remote workers to be more resourceful

 

Holly Cardew:       I think also as the leader, it's important that if somebody does email you something, and there is information out there, rather than giving them the answer, in a nice and polite way point them in the direction to say, "You didn't need to email me this for this question. You could have figured it out."

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Right. Exactly. This is great advice, Holly. I know our audience out there is going to benefit from all this.

 

Holly Cardew:       Thanks for having me again here.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Holly and I want to know. If you have a remote team, how do you train, retain, and hold your employees accountable? Let us know in the comments below this video. That's it for this week's episode. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode where we're going to talk about how a number of these processes will change depending on the nature of work, whether you've got a high-stakes project or just daily tasks. Ciao for now. This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

 

Remember our fun live pilot episode back in January 2015? In case you forgot about it or missed it, it was on How To Build A Happy And Productive Remote Team with Ben Congleton the CEO and Co-Founder of Olark. In it, we debunked a number of remote working myths such as:

 

• Remote employees won’t be as productive and progress will stagnate
• Communication between remote employees and remote teams will break down
• A remote team will be devoid of culture

 

It was great for teams, but then we got questions from individuals who wanted to know how they could get started. So last December, we revisited remote working and focused the conversation around How to Succeed In Your First Remote Working Position with Femgineer’s very own Community Manager: Meghan Burgain.

 

And it seems like we have only scratched the surface because we still get a lot of questions and concerns on the topic from startup founders and hiring managers.

 

Most recently, we’ve received questions and concerns are around the hiring process like:

 

• How do you know someone is a culture fit without a face-to-face meeting?
• Can you hire a remote worker for any role or only specific ones?
• How do you test a remote worker’s capabilities and competence?
• What is the best way to onboard and train a remote worker?

 

So this month we decided to revisit the theme and created three more episodes on the topic, focused on recruiting, training, retaining, and managing remote workers.

 

To help us out, I’ve invited a pro on the topic: Holly Cardew the CEO and Founder of Pixc. Holly has grown and scaled her team across Australia and Asia. And has done so in a number of job functions spanning both the business side with roles such as virtual assistants and marketers, to the technical side hiring software developers and designers to build the product.

 

As you listen to today’s episode you’ll learn:

 

• The benefits of remote working for employers and employees
• The criteria you need to set to source candidates
• Roles that are well-suited to remote work
• How to suss out culture fit without a face-to-face meeting
• What to watch out for—red flags to spot early on when hiring remote workers
• Why it’s good to give people a test or trial project and how to structure it

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

 

## How To Recruit Remote Workers Transcript

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        We've covered a number of benefits when it comes to remote working in previous episodes. If you've missed any of them, I've included links below. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to actually go about recruiting for your remote team, so stay tuned.
                   

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech.
                   

Remote working is becoming the way of the future, and employers who have started embracing it are starting to see the competitive advantages. It's very attractive for employees. In today's episode, we're going to dive into the numerous benefits that employers and employees face when it comes to remote working, and we're going to talk about some of the best practices when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees. And to help us out, I've invited Holly Cardew, who is the CEO and founder of Pixc. Thanks for joining us.

Holly Cardew:       Thanks for having me.

 

Remote working benefits for employers

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, thanks for joining us. You and I have experienced a number of benefits when it comes to running a remote team. For our audience out there, maybe you can share some of the benefits as an employer.

Holly Cardew:       Running a company, a remote company, has been beneficial for us, or beneficial for any employer, because what you can do is, you can scale up and scale down depending on what task you need done. You can also hire from a remote pool...Sorry, global pool of talent, rather than a local one. We can also provide customer support 24/7, and in other languages, which is amazing. It's also great because as a company, we're flexible. If something goes down or something happens on the weekend, the employees or the team members can also jump online. They're not so constricted to a specific time.

 

Remote working benefits for employees

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, and I'm sure there's a number of benefits for the employees, so let's jump into those.

Holly Cardew:       I think, for the employees, they love it because it is flexible. At the end of the day, they can live and travel and be wherever they want to. They can work the hours that they want to work. I don't expect someone to be there 9-5. I didn't want to build a company and be in an office 9-5. The employees don't have to necessarily spend an hour and a half in traffic each way every day. So, they can spend that time really focusing on their task at hand.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Another thing I learned recently was that people who are disabled, or an elderly population, can stay in the workforce longer because of having the ability to work remotely. So, I think that's another great thing, if we can keep maintaining the size of the workforce.

Holly Cardew:       Definitely, fantastic. I've also seen that with mothers. We've hired content writers, proofreaders. They're mothers in middle America, or the Philippines. It doesn't matter where they are, they're now able to be with their children before and after school, be really flexible at home.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, we've got one, Meghan, who's been on an episode before. So, yeah, I think it's great for motherhood as well. These are great benefits. Let's talk about the types of roles that are conducive to remote work.

 

Types of roles for remote workers

Holly Cardew:       I actually think anything can be remote. I mean, there are definitely times when you need to be on the ground with the customer, or you need to build a physical product, if you're in hardware or other industries. But really, we have, I don't like to use the word "outsourced," but we have people doing legal, accounting, bookkeeping, engineering tasks, design tasks, customer service, marketing. You name it, it's been done with us. So, I think you can actually use a remote or distributed team for any job.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        But I'm sure there's some employees who are better suited for remote work versus others, so tell us what somebody should be looking for in an employee.

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, definitely. I find that the people who are most proactive and take initiative are the ones who are better off when they're remote, because they don't need the guidance or the team around them to keep them motivated. I also find that someone who is slightly entrepreneurial, like they may...I had someone who was in the Philippines, and I said, "What do you do in your free time?" And she said, "I import things from America and I sell them at the market on the weekend." And doing that, it makes them think outside the box, as well. You don't have to train them as much.

 

What to watch out for when recruiting remote workers

Poornima Vijayashanker:        That makes sense. And are there signs that you want to watch out for?

Holly Cardew:       The signs I would watch out for are people who do need to be around others, and they do need that guidance and training, and they're waiting for you to tell them the next thing to do.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So, people who maybe aren't as self-directed, or possess some of the self-leadership qualities.

Holly Cardew:       Definitely.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Which I think is necessary for any employee, but...

Holly Cardew:       Definitely, but there are people who are starting out, and they're not used to taking the initiative to go find something. They're used to turning to the person next to them at the office, or university, or wherever they're starting out, and finding the answer.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, that's a good point. So, being proactive about being resourceful, and getting the answers that you need on your own.

Holly Cardew:       Especially if they're remote, and I'm sleeping, and another team member's not awake, so they can't get help that way.

 

Criteria for sourcing and filtering remote working candidates

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, that's a good point. So, do you have a set of criteria for sourcing candidates that fit?

Holly Cardew:       We have quite a, I wouldn't say strict, but a process that we follow every single time. Essentially, we always hire contractors straight away. The reason for that is that we don't have to onboard them for every single task.

 

So, what we do is, we put out simple things when we put out the job. People, nowadays, they're applying for absolutely everything. They just click the apply button. So, we'll put some sneaky question inside the job, even it's "start your cover letter with a smiley emoji."

 

And then you can clearly filter out the people who have read the job description. Because when you're remote, there's a lot of reading, rather than face-to-face conversation. So, that filters down some people.

 

Interview process for remote workers

                  

And then we make a short list, and we interview, and just have a Skype call, about 10-15 minutes. In 10-15 minutes, you can figure out if you're going to...if they culturally fit with the company. I think that's really important. They may be the most amazing person on paper, but if they don't fit with your remote culture, it won't work. And then we give them a trial task, and then after that, if they're successful, we hire them for approximately two weeks to a month to figure out how it works with the company, and then we scale up from there.

 

How to setup a trial project to test candidates

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. The trial task is one that I do, too. I call it a "task project," and I time box it to about 5-10 hours. I limit it to maybe the two people that I feel have gone through the interview and done a good job, and I actually end up paying them for that trial time.

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Exactly the same. We also do a trial task, about 5-10, depending on the role. If it's a social media thing, it might be, give me 20 posts that you would post up, or some advice on what you would change on our current social media. But if it's an engineering project, yeah, it would be 5-10 hours, maybe a page, and pay for that task, and then decide from there.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. And how do you communicate that to them? Because I know some people are immediately like, "I'm not doing this," and then some people actually take the effort, and I can tell just based on that, who's going to be a good employee versus, OK, clearly you're not interested. So, do you start to see signals like that?

Holly Cardew:       We've definitely had the same thing.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah? OK.

Why a trial project helps filter candidates

 

Holly Cardew:       It's sort of like a self-filtering mechanism for us. I think most people who have already...If they're local and they haven't had a remote job yet, they're probably a bit standoffish. But most people who are freelance, or have worked remote, they are used to that.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        And then there are some people that think remote working is for them, even though they've never done it before. Like you said, someone who is new to remote working, and they might not know the criteria. Do you have any filters, or ways in which you recruit them?

 

How you can spot signs that a remote worker can be self-directed and resourceful

Holly Cardew:       I think, what we have looked at is that if people are entrepreneurial, they usually have done some small task by themselves. The other one is, I've asked if they've done any side projects, and I ask them to show me their side projects. Like, what do they do in their free time on the weekend? If they don't do something that is slightly work-related...engineers may build something. Marketing people might start their own website to self-promote. So, I look for those things before hiring someone who hasn't had a remote job.
                   

If they have started, it's really about trial and error, and talking to them, talking through. I have friends who are definitely, they say straight up, "I need to be around people." The other option is, you can actually provide them with co-working space.

 

How to provide remote workers opportunities to be around other people
                   

In some situations, I've either provided them with co-working space, or there was another situation where I had someone in Manila, and I knew the people at the Uber office in Manila, so I made a connection for her to go meet with the community manager at Manila, so she could learn from them. And then, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have the people in your company around them, they just need inspiration from other people.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Nice. Yeah. And that's a good point, because it does get lonesome, and coffee shops don't always have the best internet. The co-working could be great. Hiring sight unseen can be challenging. I know, when I initially did it, I wasn't as good, but over the years, I've gotten better. How have you managed to get the best candidates out of the pool?

 

What to watch out for—red flags to spot early on when hiring remote workers

Holly Cardew:       I think, going back to my previous answer, is that really it's about the cultural fit of the person. If your values and the culture doesn't fit, it won't work. I had someone who I was interviewing, and they were so good. I really wanted them. They were an early employee at a huge company that's IPOed. They would have been...It would have been really beneficial to the company, but we didn't see eye-to-eye on hiring, growing the team. We discussed how we would grow the team, and how we would go about it, and it did not fit. Even though it wasn't an issue then and there, I could foresee, going forward, that it would be a huge issue when we wanted to expand the team. So, it was really about the values.
                   

The other thing is that you really need to trust your gut. At the beginning, you're early on, you're starry-eyed. You think everything is amazing, and you just want to get these people on board, but deep down, if you know that it's not going to work, don't do it.

 

Crucial conversations to have with candidates

Poornima Vijayashanker:        One nugget in there was having these crucial conversations, right? You said that you had the conversation about how they were going to approach hiring, and you didn't start to see eye-to-eye. So, maybe when it comes to the tasks, or whatever the next milestone is, have those conversations, and that way, you start to uncover what their philosophy is, to see if there's alignment and a good fit.

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, definitely. I think, it's like any relationship. You need to be able to have a hard conversation. And sometimes, you don't...As a CEO, what's really challenging is, you don't actually get along with everyone perfectly. But as long as you can have a hard conversation, and come to a conclusion, then it's OK. But if something really doesn't fit in your values...

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Better to expose that early on.

Holly Cardew:       Yeah, exactly. Move on, rather than try and make it fit at the beginning.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Well, these are great practices, Holly. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Holly Cardew:       Thanks for having me.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So, now, Holly and I want to know, if you have put a remote team in place, what was your process for recruiting? Let us know in the comments below. And that's it for this week's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode, where we'll talk about how to hold employees accountable and retain them. Ciao for now.
                 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

All this month on Build, we've been talking about on-boarding techniques for your new software engineering hires. We started out by talking about why on-boarding is important, and then moved on to showcase how pair and mob programming can help ramp up a lot of hires at once.

The next step is to give them a project!

Giving a new hire a meaty project can seem like a big risk. Seems easier to have them fix bugs while they ramp up on the code base.

But endlessly fixing bugs can be demotivating.

If you’re not sure when the right time is to give your new hires a meatier project, then you’ll definitely want to watch today’s Build Tip.

Chris Jobst who is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs is back to share some tips on how to balance bug fixes with meatier projects.

As you watch the episode you’ll learn:

• Why bug fixing is often a priority, and how to motivate new hires through it

• Why new hires are in the best position to spot technical debt and tackle it

• When does it make sense to transition from bug fixes to a project

• How to structure the project, when new hires are unfamiliar with the code base

• Why pairing more experienced software engineers on a project with new hires can help new hires level up faster

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

Episode Transcript: When Does It Make Sense To Give A Newly Hired Software Engineer A Meaty Project 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Hey Ronan, how are you doing, how's your team?

 

Ronan Dunlop:                They're doing great, they're doing really good. In fact, I'm concerned, they're almost through the entire backlog of bugs and I'm not too sure what to give them next?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Maybe a project?

 

Ronan Dunlop:                I don't know, I was really hoping to keep them on bugs for another six months.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Six months? You've got to give them something else, maybe like features, infrastructure work. You've got to mix it up or they're going to burn out.

 

Ronan Dunlop:                I'm not sure they're ready. I'm nervous.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Well, I think that we're going to need to talk about the importance of balancing bug fixes with projects in today's *Build* tip.

 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker.

 

In the previous two *Build* episodes, we talked about the importance of onboarding new hires and shared how you compare or mod a program. In today's episode, we're gonna dive a little bit deeper and share why you want to not just give new hires bug fixes, but also transition to have them work on some meaty projects.

 

And to help us out, we're back with Chris Jobst, who is a Senior Software Engineer at Pivotal Labs. Thanks for joining today, Chris.

 

Chris Jobst:              Great to be back. Thanks for having me, Poornima.

 

When To Move Past Fixes And Give Newly Hired Software Engineers A Project

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So, Chris, you and I have been in the trenches, and you know a lot of times in generating leads and some companies, we won't name any, will start new hires out with a lot of bug fixes, some menial projects. It's no fun, but they do this, why?

 

Chris Jobst:              I think they don't trust them, ultimately, but it's such a great way to get people to not care about the product.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So, at some places they do this for six months, bug fixes and stuff, when does it make sense to actually move past this and give someone a meaty project?

 

Chris Jobst:              I think it's great to get them innovated as soon as possible. Fixing bugs can be a great way to learn about the code, but you want to give them a mix. Get them on features. That's how they're really gonna enjoy their job.

 

How To Structure A Project For A Newly Hired Software Engineer

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So, I assume there's some way you want structure a project, because a lot of them won't know their complaint code base. There's gonna be reset a technical debt or other issues that come up, so what's a good way to set them up for success?

 

Chris Jobst:              I think that using pair programming is an excellent way to both onboard them, and get them into the code.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah.

 

Chris Jobst:              You can have somebody more senior help them along as they're developing their first features. At the same time, doing some bug fixes, can get them to learn more about how the code really works at a deep level.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Yeah, and so what do you think the benefit is of doing that peer programming with a senior person?

 

Chris Jobst:              Well, they're gonna ramp up a lot faster, and they'll probably learn a ton from a senior person. It's a great way to have your Junior Developers become Senior, very quickly.

 

How To Train Newly Hired Software Engineers To Handle Technical Debt

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So they're probably gonna come across some technical debt and make it stock, not knowing what decision to take or how one thing will impact another module. What are your recommendations?

 

Chris Jobst:              I think new team members are the best positioned to see technical debt, where others may have just put it off to the side for later. So, what they can do, is they can bring fresh eyes, and talk about it with their leads. Then, their leads can help them understand what are the priorities right now, and how to prioritize those things.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           OK.

 

Chris Jobst:              It just makes them feel heard, and it lets them understand what are priorities of the project.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So, how do we gauge the success of a project, because there's gonna a lot of learning and ramping up to do, so it's not like somebody can do a release every week?

 

Chris Jobst:              Right, well I think it's really subjective, but a successful project, to me, is one that satisfies the users. If the users are happy, then that's success.

 

How To Motivate Newly Hired Software Engineers To Fix Bugs

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Now, I know there comes a time for every software engineer where you've got to hunker down, do some bug fixes, do some menial work, clean out that technical debt, but how can you, as an engineering lead message that, especially to your new hires?

 

Chris Jobst:              We have a weekly meeting to talk about the features coming up. You can make that a meeting, actually, about the chores, and the bugs that need to get done. This involves a PM, and gives the team a sense of unity. It can also give them a direction to go, so they don't feel like its' just gonna go on and on forever, and finally, make sure they understand why they are doing this. It's all for the user's benefit, and for their own. The code is gonna look cleaner by doing the tours and refactoring, and the bugs are gonna solve user problems.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Should there be a carrot at the end of the stick?

 

Chris Jobst:              Absolutely. I'm a huge proponent of celebrating success, so have the team go out to lunch, or have a hackathon that gets them to take their minds off of it, do something else for a bit. In addition, if you have that weekly meeting, then you can setup your next feature, and get them excited about it.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           So, Chris, you've shared a lot of great tips when it comes to onboarding new hire. Any final words of wisdom for us?

 

Chris Jobst:              Well, this is a process that can always improve, and I think companies really do themselves a service by iterating and continuing to improve that. A healthy team always has new members joining, because you're rotating you're teams. You're getting new hires. So, make that an enjoyable process for them.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Chris. This has been great.

 

Chris Jobst:              Thank you for having me again. It's been really fun talking with you.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:           That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive more great episodes like this one, and be sure you share it with your teammates, and your boss, and special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now.

 

Speaker 3:          This episode of *Build* has been brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

In last week’s Build Tip, we dove into the importance of onboarding new hires, and the benefits your team and company will experience if you invest the time into doing it.

 

Next, you might be wondering, what do you do if you have more than one hire? Or you have a hire that isn’t familiar with the language or framework your team uses and you want to ramp them up quickly?

 

Have you heard of techniques like pair programming or mob programming, but aren’t sure if they efficient and effective?

 

Well in today’s Build Tip, we’ll be sharing why pair programming and mob programming can be beneficial to getting new hires up to speed quickly on a new language or framework, and help you scale your efforts efficiently and effectively.

 

Chris Jobst, who is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs is back to help us out!

 

As you listen to the episode you’ll learn the following:

 

• Why pair programming may seem daunting but it’s very efficient
• How pair programming improves the quality of your code base and product
• What mob programming is
• Why it may seem inefficient to have everyone working on a single line of code at once with mob programming, but it’s actually very efficient when onboarding many new hires

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

Check out these additional resources on programming methodologies:

• Extreme Programming Explained
• How can I practice pair programming?
• Mob Programming

How Pair Programming And Mob Programming Help Quickly Onboard New Software Engineers Transcript

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Hey Ronan, how's it going with your new hires?

 

Ronan Dunlop:              Great. I did everything that you and Chris suggested and...but I've run into a small snag.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh, what's your snag?

 

Ronan Dunlop:              Most of my new developers don't know RAILS.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh, well just peer program with them.

 

Ronan Dunlop:              There's just one of me.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh, that's right. And five of them. Well, have you considered Mob programming?

 

Ronan Dunlop:              That sounds dangerous. What's that?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Don't worry, it's not. In fact, why don't we cover the benefits of pair and mob programming in today's *Build* tip?

 

Ronan Dunlop:              That sounds cool.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In the last *Build* episode, I shared some tips for onboarding new hires.

                   

In today's episode, we're gonna dive in and give you some more tips around how you can onboard engineers, get them up to speed on a code base or a programming language they may not be familiar with really quickly. And to help us out, Chris Jobst is back. You'll recall Chris is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs. Thanks for joining us again, Chris.

 

Chris Jobst:        It's great to be back, Poornima. Thanks again for having me.

 

What Is Pair Programming In Software Engineering

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, wonderful. So let's dive right in. What's Pair programming?

 

Chris Jobst:        Pairing is when you have two people sitting at one computer. We often have two monitors and two keyboards and two mics, and they're literally working on the same code at the same time.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        That's gotta be really time consuming to have two people doing the exact same task at the same time. What's the benefit?

 

When To Use Pair Programming

 

Chris Jobst:        It sounds really daunting, but it's actually very efficient. You're basically doing code review a hundred percent of the time.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Chris Jobst:        And you get to refactor together, so you avoid a lot of these common things that you'll see in other code bases.

 

Pair Programming and Refactoring

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK, so maybe for some folks that don't know code reviews or refactoring, maybe we could share what those are as well?

 

Chris Jobst:        Sure. Oftentimes before something gets committed or accepted into the code base, you'll have somebody review it and make suggestions and then the original committer has to go back and change it, and then it goes back to the code review and gets accepted.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Chris Jobst:        That's a feedback loop that we completely avoid with Pair programming.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        And with refactoring?

 

Chris Jobst:        Refactoring is simply where you take code and change the implementation without changing the functionality.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Chris Jobst:        To improve the readability and maintainability of the code.

 

How Pair Programming Really Works

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So in pairing, since you've got two sets of eyes checking each other's work, it probably moves a lot faster as a result?

 

Chris Jobst:        I think so. There's code review going on, you're refactoring together, you're always talking about the best way to solve a problem and if you don't know what to do, instead of having to go ask someone or stop and email, you've got your pair right there.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Which is probably the benefit for new hires?

 

Chris Jobst:        Absolutely.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        For our audience out there who may be new to pair programming, how can they get started?

 

Chris Jobst:        Well, you know one computer and another monitor, and you need two keyboards and mics. Most people already have that on hand.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, and are there any rules, I'm guessing?

 

Chris Jobst:        Absolutely. The biggest one is have empathy, and just be kind to your pair. You're both working together, it's pretty intimate, but it's a lot of fun too.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Now are both people writing code at the exact same time?

 

Chris Jobst:        No. You decide who's going to drive at a certain time and type on the keyboard and the other person will navigate and maybe suggest, "Hey, what if we went over here and did this thing?"

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So it's like a pilot/co-pilot and maybe you trade off?

 

Chris Jobst:        Yeah, that's a great way of describing it.

 

Mob Programming Versus Pair Programming

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Awesome. There are some situations where you can't Pair program, like in Ronan's case where he's got five engineering hires and they don't know RAILS so how can you work with a bigger group?

 

Chris Jobst:        Well, you can do what's called Mobbing.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

What Is Mob Programming

 

Chris Jobst:        You get one computer and often a TV screen or projector and you have a bunch of people, five or more, look at the code. One person is typing and you're generally more teaching or gathering suggestions about how to best achieve a goal.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Got it. I'm sure somebody who's looking on from the outside is gonna be like, "Why are five people sitting around one machine and writing a single line of code?" What are some of the benefits? Why we would wanna do this?

 

Benefits of Mob Programming

 

Chris Jobst:        As you pointed out, it's great for onboarding new people.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Chris Jobst:        And what you'll have is people asking questions, oftentimes they'll ask a question somebody else didn't think of but it's a question that they need answered.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Got it. And I'm sure it also helps with the bus factor, right? Everyone's gonna know something, or know the same thing.

 

Chris Jobst:        Definitely, you want everybody on the same page. You want them all knowing how the code works and if you've got a bunch of new people, it's actually more time-consuming to go and teach every person individually than to get them in a room and help them learn from each other and from the person who's the expert.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Got it.

 

Resources On Pair Programming And Mob Programming

                   

This was a great primer on pairing and mobbing. For our audiences out there who maybe want to dive a little deeper, do you have recommendations on resources?

 

Chris Jobst:        Definitely. There are two great books that I love. *Extreme Programming* and *Extreme Programming Explained*, both by Kent Beck. I recommend the former for engineers. It really talks about these practices and the process in more detail. *Extreme Programming Explained* is a great resource for PMs. It talks about it on a higher level and how a whole project can benefit.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Thanks for sharing these great resources and tips for us. I know our audience is gonna get a lot out of this.

 

Chris Jobst:        Thank you for having me. I'm a huge proponent of pair programming.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So, for all of you out there, Chris and I wanna know, have you done pair or mob programming with your teams as you onboard new hires? If so, what are the benefits you've experienced? Let us know in the comments below.

                   

That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive more episode like today's and special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now.

 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Have you recently hired a software engineer or maybe a few? Congratulations!

 

Are you starting to worry that they haven’t shipped any code yet?

 

Maybe they’re a bad hire...

 

Seems kinda harsh to think someone is a bad hire if they haven’t shipped code in their first day or week, especially if they haven’t been ramped up on the code base.

 

But who has time to train a new hire?!

 

Unfortunately the lack of onboarding new hires, and seeing it as unnecessary is becoming a pervasive misconception. Instead, teams and companies fault the new hire by thinking the new hire just isn’t self-sufficient if they need to be onboarded.

 

But how could someone (even a very seasoned software engineer) possibly review hundreds, thousands, or possibly millions of lines of code on their own? And be expected to know the nuances and decisions that went into writing all of it? Not to mention those notorious monkey patches that lead to bugs that only veterans on the team are aware of!

 

In today’s Build Tip, we’re going to explore why onboarding new software engineers on your team is important, and provide you with some techniques for doing it.

 

To help us out, I’ve invited Chris Jobst, who is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs.

 

As you listen to the episode you’ll learn the following:

 

• How to design a first-day experience for your new hire
• Why making setup a cinch is a good thing and doesn’t mean you are spoon-feeding your new hire
• What to expect in terms of results from your new hire at the end of the first day and the first week
• The benefits your team and company will experience when you invest in onboarding new hires

Wondering what to do if you have more than one hire? Well, stay tuned, because in next week’s Build Tip we’re going to be sharing some best practices for ramping up more than one new hire at a time!

Why You Need To Invest In Onboarding A New Software Engineer And Not Expect Them To Ship Code On Their First Day Transcript

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Hey Ronan, congratulations.

 

Ronan Dunlop:              Oh yeah, we just hired five engineers.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, that's awesome. Are you going to start onboarding them soon?

 

Ronan Dunlop:              Onboard them?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        You know, walk them through the architecture, maybe do some peer programming.

 

Ronan Dunlop:              I don't have time for that. That's why I hired five engineers.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So you're just going to let them sink or swim?

 

Ronan Dunlop:              How else does one know if they're good or not?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh boy. I think we're going to need to cover the importance of onboarding in today's *Build* Tip.

 

Why Onboard Your New Software Engineers

                   

Welcome to *Build* brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host Poornima Vijayashanker and I've got a new *Build* Tip for you.

                   

While hiring engineers is half the battle, the other half is ramping them up quickly. Today, I'm joined by Chris Jobst, who is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs. Thanks for joining us today Chris.

 

Chris Jobst:        Thank you so much for having me Poornima.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. So Chris, a lot of people would say if you hire an engineer and they're not productive on the first day shipping code, they were probably a bad hire. What do you think?

 

Chris Jobst:        Unfortunately, that's a really common misconception.

 

Software Engineer Onboarding Checklist For Managers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, what should a typical first day look like?

 

Chris Jobst:        Well my first tip would be to have them meet the team and really make them feel part of that team.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Then what's the next thing you should do?

 

Chris Jobst:        Well start off by talking about the product.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

 

Chris Jobst:        What are they building? Who are they building it for?

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Got it. After that what would you do?

 

Chris Jobst:        Well then maybe dive into the code a bit. Talk about the architecture.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Nice and what should you do as your talking about the architecture, because some people could have really big code bases?

 

Chris Jobst:        Absolutely. I like to start at a really high level and then dive down bit by bit.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

 

Chris Jobst:        You don't want to overwhelm them on the first day.

 

How To Train Software Engineers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        It's great that you mention architecture review. Again, some contrarians might think, "Well they should just set themselves up and dive into the code base. Don't make it too easy, we want them to sink or swim." What do you think?

 

Chris Jobst:        I think the easier that it could be to set them up, the better they're going to be set up for success at the company.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, why do you think we should make set up a cinch?

 

Chris Jobst:        Well if you really do want to get them involved in the product and the code, then make it easy for them to do that.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, so getting them ramped up and being able to download the code. Not have to install a whole bunch of jazz and this and that.

 

Chris Jobst:        Have a setup script.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

 

Chris Jobst:        We have a few different ways of doing that for the computers that we use and it makes it so much easier.

 

Examples Of Onboarding Newly HIred Software Engineers

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        What's an example that you guys use?

 

Chris Jobst:        We'll start with a base image and then we just have a workstation script that literally just installs a bunch of software.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        What are the expectations for the new hire at the end of the first day? I know you mentioned they should meet the team, we should do an architecture review and make set-up a cinch, but what can somebody expect at the end?

 

Chris Jobst:        I think that it's really important that they feel part of the team, but also that they feel connected to the user base and have empathy for the user.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, so getting a sense of who the user is and walking them through some use cases. Sharing some new testimonials.

 

Chris Jobst:        Absolutely.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Usually it's an engineering lead driving the process like Ronan Dunlop, so I'm assuming they should maybe do some check-ins, either during that first day or during that first week? What's the benefit of doing a check-in?

 

Benefit To Onboarding Newly Hired Software Engineer

 

Chris Jobst:        Absolutely. You want to make them feel part of the team and when they feel part of the team, they're going to stay at the company longer.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, that's a clear benefit to having a good onboarding process.

 

Chris Jobst:        Definitely.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Well thank you so much Chris, these tips have been very helpful and I know they're going to help our audience as they onboard their new hires.

 

Chris Jobst:        Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

 

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Sure. That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive more *Build* tips like today's and thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now.

                  

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.