Managing an engineering team is hard, managing a remote engineering team is even harder―but dedicating effort to setting up a proper remote-first environment will allow for your team to thrive. This book breaks down the most important processes in engineering teams, and demonstrates how to make them work effectively in a remote organization.

How do you organize code deployments, onboard new hires, give feedback, and stay up to date with your team when you can’t see each other in person every day? This book looks at how building connections and working together to solve problems comes naturally when a team is co-located, but can feel almost impossible when everyone is working remotely and communicating over video calls and messages.

Whether you’re an experienced engineering manager or just getting started, you’ll learn why copying in-office practices to the remote office doesn’t work, the communication issues behind the scenes you may not even realize are happening, and how to make every aspect of remote work better for your team. From learning about how to remove new remote-specific biases from your interview process, to understanding what the team really thinks about those daily status update meetings, this book will be your guide in creating the best and most inclusive version of your engineering team.

What You’ll Learn

• Recognize where current remote processes are falling short
• Build up best practices to lead a team with a people-first and empathetic approach
• Communicate effectively in a remote organization

Who This Book is For

Engineering managers, team leads, directors, and those hoping to move into a lead role, will get the most value out of the book. Many of the learnings around communication will be applicable to any position in an organization, but there’s a focus on processes and job duties most relevant to engineers.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Hiring

Chapter 2: Onboarding

Chapter 3: Meetings

Chapter 4: One-on-Ones

Chapter 5: Deploys

Chapter 6: Communication Strategies

Chapter 7: Feedback and Promotions

Chapter 8: Burnout

Chapter 9: Saying Goodbye

About the Author

Alexandra Sunderland is an engineering leader with over a decade of experience working in both hybrid and remote roles, at companies ranging from 10-person startups to public corporations. She is currently a Senior Engineering Manager at Fellow.app, where she is helping to build the future of work. She prides herself on building emotionally-intelligent processes for teams, and sharing her knowledge of management through conference talks and written works.

This book is a collection of best practices and lessons that Alexandra has developed throughout her career, meant to help engineering managers new to remote work adapt and become the best leader that they can be―without having to go through the same failures and learnings that she did.