Last fall, we published a post about how Courier would continue to keep its office in San Francisco despite the continuing impact of Covid-19 and focus our hiring efforts on the local talent within the Bay Area. We have decided to adopt a remote-first approach as the company evolves. Although there were good reasons not to move to remote earlier in the process, we eventually changed our mindset. We implemented several new initiatives to keep the company culture intact in a remote-first setting. These initiatives will be highlighted in this blog post and explained why they were chosen.
Why aren’t we more remote?
We didn’t decide to move to remote-first sooner for several reasons. First, it was easier and faster to hire new employees in person than remote. Every hire can impact the company’s overall dynamic, especially if it is a small group. It’s important to ensure they are well-versed in its culture and strategy. People are more likely to ask questions in person than they are over Slack, especially if it’s their first time meeting them. Poor communication can cause delays in delivering critical information. We thought that focusing on hiring people in person would speed up the onboarding process. We believed that collaboration was not possible in a remote setting, especially when it comes to situations that require creativity and quick decisions like product design, marketing campaign building, and deal strategy. We believed that having a physical presence in the early stages of a start-up was a competitive advantage. This is because we witnessed many similar start-ups move to remote-only. A few people joined our team, citing the office and the personal experience as motivating factors. After over a year of working remotely, we believed that many similar candidates were looking for an in-person experience and that we would be well-positioned.
Since then, we have learned that these assumptions were not entirely unfounded. However, we underestimated the negative effects of moving to remote-first. Although we had always planned to eventually hire outside the Bay Area, after an additional year of learning more about remote work and its advantages, we decided to accelerate our timeline to adopt a remote-first strategy.
Two factors were key to our decision. First, even though we were an in-person business, we didn’t mandate office attendance after March 2020. This was even though many of our in-person restrictions had been lifted legally. We had many employees based in the Bay Area but who rarely visited the office. They also had remote workers onboarded and had operated 100% remotely since their inception. They were as productive as regular employees, and they did not compromise our company culture or operational speed. We also discovered that while some candidates appreciated our commitment to keeping them physically present, many others wanted remote work. We could offer both those types of candidates a more attractive work environment by switching to a remote-first model. After trying this approach in a few open positions, we noticed a significant increase in our inbound talent pool.
Levelling and compensation
It’s not as easy as just making an announcement and posting a blog post. We had to think about the long-term implications of this change and how we could best support the remote employees. First, we needed to determine how remote employees would be compensated. We will be writing separate posts detailing our compensation and levelling strategy. However, in the end, it was most sensible to pay everyone the same amount, regardless of their location (within the U.S.), and to make all compensation and level information transparent both internally and externally. This would be fair for all team members, reduce administrative overhead, and clarify expectations to prospective candidates.
Communication and cultural expectations
In addition, we decided to make the communication, and cultural expectations for new hires clear during the onboarding and recruitment process. We now have specific guidelines for employees regarding communication. These include D.M.s being preferred over public Slack channels, encouraging asynchronous communication instead of synchronous, and sharing notes in in-person meetings with the context in Slack. To help remote employees meet each other, we introduced several new company activities such as monthly virtual hangouts, escape rooms, and games.
Review of new hires
We have also instituted a 30-day review process for new hires to identify better how we can support them when they join. This is done when they reach 30 days from their start date. We will not be focusing on performance indicators like most review processes, but we will emphasize behavioural indicators of success at Courier through peer reviews. We believe that “proactively asking questions”, offering feedback, taking ownership, and suggesting improvements are indicators that will correlate with success. This process has two goals: to reinforce Courier’s work philosophy for new hires (and reviewers, who will need to be on the watch for these behaviours) and to help us consider what we should look for in the hiring process so that there is mutual greatness with all candidates.
This decision has a significant impact
We’ve received a positive response to this change since we made it public a few months back. This change gave existing team members more flexibility as they can now travel anywhere in the U.S. and receive the same compensation. They can also continue to come into the office as before. Our inbound talent pipeline has seen a significant rise in all roles, from candidates seeking a remote experience to positions. It is worth noting that all of the non-Bay Area hires have visited the area at least once. Monica, our Head for Developer Relations, was actually in Portland and cited the opportunity to have lunch with the team during the interview process as the main reason she chose Courier. This has been well received by both current team members and potential candidates. We will continue to look for ways to improve Courier’s workplace.
