As we grow,
Voalte faces a common challenge: how to expand an already impressive
engineering team quickly, without sacrificing quality. We’ve attracted some of the most talented software engineers in the industry by opening our search to people from all over the world … and letting them stay right where they are. As a result, we have engineers in Florida, New York and Seattle, as well as Uruguay, Vietnam, Romania and Spain.
When I joined Voalte as V.P. of Engineering, I realized that our choices of less common programming languages and new, in-demand technology like iOS meant the number of people who can do that work is relatively small. I also knew that while we might be able to attract a full staff with the correct skill set in New York City or Silicon Valley, that wasn’t going to be possible here in Sarasota, Florida. By finding the most talented, highly educated people who are passionate about this technology and letting them work from home, the entire world suddenly opened up to us.
Telecommuting is a hot topic recently, thanks to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announcing an end to the company’s work-at-home policy. Here’s how we make it work at Voalte.
First, I work remotely most of the time, because my family and I live in Orlando, and the Voalte office is a 2-hour drive away in Sarasota. In my experience, attaching a few remote workers to a mostly on-site team is a recipe for failure. Instead, all members of our team communicate the same way, whether one desk away at our home office or 3,000 miles away in Barcelona. With me working as a remote executive, we all have to walk the walk, at every level of the group.
Also, collaboration tools have improved greatly in the past few years. With our engineers spread across the globe, remote tools such as Google Hangouts and HipChat have become our default methods of communication. We can get 15 people into a real-time video chat, with great picture quality and the ability for people to come in and out of the discussion at their leisure. Our engineers meet in daily morning Hangouts, and every Friday afternoon we host an engineering forum, where someone presents a topic or proposes an item for discussion. All day, every day, we use HipChat as a critical command center for most conversations.
Finally, we bring everyone together face-to-face on occasion to extend the relationships that make it easier to work together remotely. Twice a year, all of our engineers from around the world gather at an engineering summit in Sarasota.
It takes a certain attitude and personality type to work from home. Fortunately, computer programmers tend to be well-suited to telecommuting since they are comfortable communicating online. For Voalte, the payoff is in attracting world-class engineering talent that translates into world-class products.