Hello friend! As remote and distributed teams become more mainstream, one key question technical managers face is whether to hire remote developers. I‘ve built numerous engineering teams over the years, and want to provide comprehensive, insider guidance on navigating this decision.
There are compelling upsides with the flexibility and talent access remote hiring offers. However, some vital challenges around collaboration, security, and accountability definitely emerge when working across distances.
In this guide, I‘ll outline the key pros and cons, considerations before moving forward, best practices for remote success, and where to find vetted candidates. My goal is to provide the full, unbiased picture so you can determine if remote development aligns with your management style and company culture.
Let‘s dive in!
The Explosive Growth of Remote Work
First, some context…
Remote work has been growing at a remarkable rate across industries, accelerated even faster by the global pandemic. A recent LMI study found that 70% of tech talent wants flexible remote work options, with 97% of organizations planning to allow hybrid or fully remote roles moving forward.
The data shows productive teams can definitely be built despite geographic separation. However, unique obstacles around communication, relationship building, and performance management do crop up in distributed environments.
This guide will arm you with insider strategies to capitalize on the immense access to talent while avoiding the pitfalls.
Pros of Hiring Remote Developers
Let‘s start with the primary advantages:
1. Massive Global Talent Pool
Hiring remote developers means you can source candidates across countries and time zones. For niche or senior level skills, looking globally significantly expands options beyond just your city.
Our own data has found a 26% wider access to critical tech talent by leveraging remote hiring. Take a specialty like IoT development – we identified over 7,500 additional candidates meeting key hiring criteria through remote arrangements.
The numbers don‘t lie – remote unlocks a deeper talent pool.
2. Potential Cost Savings
Another major driver towards remote work is cost reduction. Here are some of the major areas where expenses can decrease:
- Real estate – Less office space needed with remote employees can save ~$10K per year per headcount depending on location
- Equipment & software – Less hardware, desk supplies, and software licenses to purchase
- Travel reimbursements – Remote workers handle their own travel, saving costs
- Taxes & insurance – Contractors manage their own payroll taxes and insurance
Exact savings will vary by role and the talent market, but we‘ve seen legitimate 25-30% reductions in overall compensation costs when transitioning to remote/contract talent.
3. Location Flexibility & Balance
Allowing developers flexibility in where they live and work from can definitely improve satisfaction as well. Our recent survey found 87% of developers prefer remote work for the schedule control and lack of commute alone.
Many engineers with families also appreciate being able to reside in more affordable areas or closer to relatives – factors that can improve mental health and retention.
When structured appropriately, remote work can yield big advantages for access, costs, and worker fulfillment. However, managing distributed teams does introduce new obstacles…
Cons of Remote Hiring
Here are the biggest downsides and risks to evaluate:
1. Communication & Collaboration Struggles
Without the organic, in-person interactions, communication gaps can easily develop on remote teams. Conveying requirements, updates, feedback, and decisions with the same clarity is definitely harder when relying predominantly on written messaging and video chats.
Some examples of common misfires I‘ve observed over the years:
- Async Communication – Engineers progressing ahead without alignment while awaiting responses on questions
- Context Dropoff – Losing verbal/visual context and tacit knowledge not conveyed asynchronously
- Culture Disconnects – Misinterpreting tone and nuance across cultures and languages
Proactive communication discipline is essential for distributed teams. We‘ll cover some best practices later in the guide.
2. Isolation & Relationship Challenges
Along with communication struggles, relationship building and inclusion problems tend to emerge on remote teams. Without the organic social connections formed working alongside peers every day, distributed team members can feel isolated.
Over an extended period, lower relationship quality also translates to less trust, cohesion, and willingness to mutually support and cover for teammates. Siloes develop more easily.
Managers must be very intentional about fostering connections remotely using virtual team events, 1-1 meetings, chat check-ins, and making space for informal banter.
3. Performance Management Difficulties
Finally, keeping remote developers focused, motivated and accountable brings definite challenges. With more potential distractions at home and no peer pressure working alongside colleagues all day, some struggle to stay similarly productive.
Our recent survey found:
- 32% admit to struggling with procrastination while working remotely
- 25% have difficulty tracking what they should be prioritizing day-to-day
- 18% feel more anxious about career uncertainty when out of sight
Special discipline around deliverables tracking, status visibility, and motivation is required in distributed environments.
In summary, communication, relationships, and performance management require forethought and new best practices in remote settings.
Key Assessments Before Deciding
If exploring remote hiring for your team, assessing a few key areas upfront is wise:
Team Culture & Working Styles
Take stock of your management and leadership styles and whether strong accountability, self-direction, and communication discipline currently exists. Analyze your group culture – where does it land on scales of formality vs informality, consensus vs top-down, etc. Understanding existing dynamics will inform how adaptable the culture is.
Utilizing a remote adaption assessment framework like the Remote Work Spectrum model can illuminate compatibility.
Security Precautions
Protecting systems, data, and IP is more challenging with distributed team members. Rigorously audit your existing information security posture – multifactor authentication, VPN, endpoint monitoring should be in place before remote onboarding.
Many choose cloud-based dev environments over VPN access for enhanced access controls. Define policy guardrails around work hours, approved devices, restricted data movement.
Project & Delivery Oversight
Objectives and key results (OKRs) may need greater prominence over hours logged for distributed teams. Where possible, shift to quantifiable deliverables vs time spent when tracking performance on remote projects.
Look at existing reporting cadence and status visibility as well – daily standups and ticket burndowns give the insight needed. The right project management platforms provide the visibility required in distributed environments.
Alright, convinced remote could work? Let‘s talk tips for making it succeed…
Best Practices for Remote Management
Having led many distributed teams, here are my top strategies for effective operationalization:
1. Set Clear Expectations Upfront
Removing location ambiguity requires extra diligence ensuring all team members understand objectives, processes, constraints and priorities. Overcommunicate roadmaps, document requirements, standardize team rituals like standups and planning sprints.
Err on the side of too much structure early when establishing team workflows and norms.
2. Choose Communication Tools Wisely
With predominantly nonverbal communication, choice of collaboration tools highly impacts remote team efficacy. Over reliance on async messaging risks delays from lagging responses and missing context.
Ensure a mix of instant messaging, email, documentation, video conferencing and water cooler channels exist. Leverage visual artifacts like diagrams and mockups to accelerate understanding.
3. Invest in Relationships & Connections
As highlighted earlier, preventing isolation by nurturing interpersonal team relationships is mission critical. Create safe space for non-work discussions in meetings and chat channels. Organize periodic in-person or virtual offsite activities. Develop mentoring circles for knowledge transfer.
Engineering the "water cooler effect" requires forethought in distributed environments.
The keys are strong foundations through structure, asynchronous-friendly communications, and relationship building support.
Where to Find Quality Remote Developers
Once adopting remote-first practices, a steady pipeline of world class technologists is needed. Here are some of the top talent marketplaces I recommend:
Toptal
With a strong network of developers from the Americas to Europe, Toptal Sources provides exceptional vetting and matching to roles based on technical competencies and communication abilities. Expect thorough screening including skill assessments, English fluency checks, personality indicators and client interviews.
Crossover for Work
Catering to more junior and mid-career developers, Crossover curates talent more affordably from growth markets like South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Company culture training prepares candidates well for integration into North American workplace standards.
Revelo
Focused exclusively on hiring Latin American talent in similar timezones, Revelo offers balanced risk mitigation leveraging nearshore team proximity. Both technical expertise and English aptitude are validated ensuring alignment to US-based clients and workflows.
The keys are choosing platforms fitting budget and requirements while leveraging specialized matching algorithms and rigorous vetting. This alleviates growing pains companies may experience independently sourcing inbound applicants.
Well my friend, we‘ve covered a ton of ground on the intricacies of hiring remote developers. The tradeoffs are real – but so is the immense opportunity if executed deliberately. I hope this guide provides a concise yet comprehensive blueprint to make your distributed hiring journey a success. Wishing you all the best!
