DistantJob Podcast

In this episode of the StaffITRight podcast, we talk to Laurel Farrer. Laurel is a remote work strategist and advocate who works with companies to strengthen communication and develop long-distance management strategies. She has written about remote work for several publications and education platforms and has advised US governments, business conferences, and industry leaders on the topic of remote work.

We cover a wide range of topics during our conversation, including good stand-ups and bad stand-ups, how to be a leader instead of a boss, how to figure out if the remote approach is working for your business and specific conversation scripts that you can use to make clear to your remote employees what are your expectations of their work.

In this episode of the DistantJob podcast, we talk to Joel Martinez. Joel Martinez is a Senior Developer at Microsoft, a prolific writer, and a huge advocate for remote work.

During our conversation, we talk about how to stimulate focus on a team, how to know if a team is ready or not to work remotely, what can remote employees do to be proactive in showcasing their work, and much more – Joel is a true practical expert in the field.

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Among many other things, we talk about how Buffer's focus on transparency allows their teams to generate unprecedented value; why empowering people only works when it's in service to generating said value; and how you need to be creative when adapting leadership lessons to remote teams.

This episode touches on how the importance of treating remote employees just as if they were regular, co-located employees; how negative emotional states can be more prevalent during online communication and how to manage them; and on the best formula to get honest, actionable feedback from your team members. But that's not all, of course – this is one of the wider-ranging DistantJob podcasts ever!

Victoria talks to us (among many, many other things!) about what top performers come looking for when they consider joining your company; the importance of virtualising small workplace rituals; and how to build and benefit from a company with a network structure, as opposed to flat or hierarchical. (DJ Podcast drinking game: have a drink whenever Luis mispronounces "hierarchical"! Such is life.)

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Todays' guest, Marcello Bonatto, leads Re:Coded, a non-profit that helps people from war-torn countries learn the craft of IT and work remotely with Western enterprises, bringing value into their lives and communities.

But don't be fooled into thinking that we're going all touchy-feely about how remote work is helping to turn the world into a better place. There's plenty of that, but there's also some very practical advice about how to invest in your employees education, and how to account for cultural differences when hiring and managing remote workers. As usual, the podcast goes into a lot of different subjects, so start listening and find out what can YOU apply to your business, today.

Todays' guest is Gonçalo Silva, CTO of Doist. Obviously, we dig into the importance of checklists and process in managing remote teams, but we also talk about a lot of other things, including, but not limited to: how to test potential employees for remote skills; what are some good ways to document decisions in a way to have a single source of truth; and what an 80-year-old book can still teach us about management, even when it comes to the Future of Work.

Todays' guest is Christian McCarrick, VP of Engineering at Auth0 and host of the SimpleLeadership Podcast. Christian has been a technology leader for almost two decades, and through his Simple Leadership Podcast, has learned from dozens of the best in the industry.

We dive into topics as varied as how to make sure to hear the opinions of introverts in your team, how to write like a leader and beat the Slack "rumour mill," what's the difference between brainstorming for discussion and brainstorming for decision, and much more!

Today's guest is Lisette Sutherland, remote work advocate extraordinaire and the driving force behind Collaboration Superpowers. Lisette's superpower is the ability to give multiple options to tackle the most grievous of remote work challenges, and she has compiled them all on her excellent book – "Work Together Anywhere."

Our conversation with Lisette goes from hiring to onboarding to how to get experience in the remote work arena, even veering at times into the weird and wonderful world of video-gaming and virtual reality. All of this with her book as the background.