What trait makes remote tech professionals most successful?
At Riskified and StrongArm Technologies, resourcefulness and disciplined communication are the traits that make their teams successful. While both qualities were beneficial to cross-functional collaboration before the pandemic, leadership now finds them essential.
“Resourcefulness is important for remote success because it’s about adapting to new circumstances and challenges with ease,” Riskified’s Director of U.S. Recruiting Matt Yardeni said. “This was true before the pandemic, but it’s become even more important with everything that has happened over the last year.”
Below, Yardeni and StrongArm Technologies’ Executive Director of Engineering Jesse Goodall explain how living out company values while remote brings their respective teams that much closer to their mission and to each other.
If there were ever a time to perfect the art of adapting to new circumstances and challenges with ease, this past year was it. Employees at the e-commerce solutions provider know this well. Over the last few months, Yardeni said leadership has supported new and current team members alike with easily accessible resources and online learning and development options.
What’s one key trait you look for in a new remote employee?
One key trait we’re looking for at Riskified is resourcefulness, which is also one of our operating principles. We look for people who approach challenges with thoughtfulness and creativity, can find the best solutions and make things happen. This was true before the pandemic, but it’s become even more important with everything that has happened over the last year.
We are really fortunate that Riskified’s business has continued to grow significantly, despite the pandemic. We are hiring across all departments on three continents. That growth brings new challenges and we need people on our team who are excited to take those on and discover new solutions.
Why is this trait so important for remote work success?
Resourcefulness is important for remote success because it’s about adapting to new circumstances and challenges with ease. While remote work has many benefits, it has removed that in-person human interaction that many appreciate when starting a new job, especially in the first days. We as a company have had to embody resourcefulness to adjust to this reality and we look to our new hires to do so as well.
We look for people who approach challenges with thoughtfulness and creativity, can find the best solutions and make things happen.”
We’ve worked hard to support our new team members and provide easily accessible resources to ensure that everyone has the ability to succeed in their role, wherever they are. When the pandemic hit, our learning and development team moved our onboarding online and created a robust and collaborative experience for our global employees to train together. It’s a great opportunity to make friends with colleagues around the world.
Our wellness team has also done a wonderful job to ensure that our new hires feel welcome and connected to the entire Riskified team. They send new team members onboarding packages full of RiskiSwag and invite them to take part in digital happy hours where they can introduce themselves and meet people from the rest of the team.
At StrongArm Technologies, Jesse Goodall, executive director of engineering, said that disciplined communication allows his team to do more than build complex systems that span wearable IoT devices, cloud infrastructure, machine learning, mobile and web apps. It also allows the team to maintain a remote culture they are proud of.
What’s one key trait you look for in a new remote employee?
Having spent many years as a software engineer, I have become very passionate about fostering a top-notch team with a great culture. Our engineers come to work excited to build systems that process terabytes of data from many thousands of IoT devices around the world in service of a mission that we feel passionately about: protecting frontline workers in the midst of a global pandemic.
The software we write helps keep tens of thousands of industrial athletes safer on the job. While the mission is fulfilling, it isn’t easy to accomplish, especially when working remotely ourselves. We have grown by looking for and nurturing key traits among our team members.
At StrongArm, we embrace a set of “SACRED” values: self-improving, adaptable, collaborative, relational, enlarging and disciplined. All of these traits have been important to fostering a great culture. But when it comes to working together remotely, we have found how we collaborate and relate to each other and our discipline to be most impactful.
While the mission is fulfilling, it isn’t easy to accomplish, especially when working remotely ourselves.’’
Why is this trait so important for remote work success?
When working remotely, teams need to be more disciplined in their collaboration as communication is more difficult. It is harder to convey project requirements and share knowledge in an ad hoc manner, so the importance of thorough documentation, structured meetings and schedules and proactive communication increases.
New hires who are effective technical communicators and show discipline in their communications via clearly documented engineering plans and code will be highly sought-after and ultimately most effective.
