Remoter Podcast

Defining remote work culture

Episode Summary

Alexander Torrenegra, Erik Hare and Andrés Cajiao embark on an analytical conversation about "how does one define work culture?" And thought-provokingly enough, wouldn't you want the same factors to make up a positive work culture, no matter if it is remote or office-based?

Episode Notes

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A big thank you to our post-production wizard, Vanesa Monroy.

Episode Transcription

[A moderately paced, trip hop song that is best described as chill and cruising. Synth and techno drums are the primary instruments in this track. This is our podcast background music, it starts playing at the very beginning]

Andres: 00:00 Hi, I'm Andrés.

Josephine: 00:04 And I'm Josephine. Welcome to the Remoter Podcast.

Andres: 00:07 Follow us in season one of this journey as we cover anything and everything you need to know in order to successfully build and scale a remote first team.As someone who's been working remotely for over a decade, our CEO, Alexander Torrenegra shares his personal experiences, lessons learned and advice for those of you who are curious and interested in exploring the future of work.

Josephine: 00:33 This podcast is brought to you by Torre, the end to end recruitment solution for Remoters. Get our free AI powered sourcing and processing tools, or let Torre recruit on your behalf at Torre dot co, that's T O R R E. Dot. C O.

[Music stops playing]

Erik: 00:53 So how do you build a truly remote culture?

Alex: 00:56 It depends. I love that answer. It depends what you define as 'culture.' Actually, I'd like to know first, your definition. How do you define the culture of a company? What is it for you?

Erik: 01:06 A shared set of values and mission, beliefs.

Alex: 01:10 Now, would that change if the company's office-based versus remote based?

Erik: 01:15 Doesn't feel like it should at first but it does in practice, doesn't it?

Alex: 01:18 Why would it, I mean the mission of the company could be the same regardless the values. What are traditional values in a company?

Erik: 01:25 Getting the job done, serving the customer, adding value.

Alex: 01:29 I believe that a company should do that regardless of whether it is remote or not. And I think that most people would potentially agree with me. But unless what's, what's culture for you? I know you have, you know my definition of culture but before that like two years ago, when we were not working together.

Andres: 01:46 No, so, so before that I would say it had to do with the vibe they will feel. Like you're walking to the office and then you kind of feel it, right? You, you see people, there are different kind- types of cultures. So I, when I, when I will go into, I don't know, a corporation, right, you would see everyone in their cubicles and looking at their screens and like, focused on their work and not looking at it in anyone. And when they would go to an advertising agency, I would see, you know, an open space, people listening to music, playing with balls and walking around and all these creative kind of vibes and feelings. So I would say that, before the definition that I now have, I would think, yeah, like kind of the vibe of the office and the feeling of being there. And so you feel more stressed or, or more relaxed or you feel more friendly or you feel more serious or more professional. One thing that I, that I feel like impacted culture a lot was literally how offices were built. So I would go to these big pharma company and the walls will be blue and white, but like I didn't work for Pfizer, but like Pfizer, blue and white, which is like a very corporate kind of blue and and all these kinds of things. And the receptionist would be this lady that would be very serious and very tough and I think will be my traditional definition for culture.

Alex: 03:01 And I mean I asked the two of you and and you two had a different definition of what culture was and and I think that that happens. I'll ask twenty HR people what the definition of culture is and probably you're going to get twenty different definitions.

Erik: 03:18 Depending on where they came from, what their industry was.

Alex: 03:21 Yeah. In general though, I was listing two major trends. One is there are some people that define culture as the vibe of the team, how it feels to work there. And then that is the other definition, which is the one that I like the most and that is, culture is the HOW of your company. Is how you do things, is how you talk to each other. How you develop product, is how you do customer service, is how you prioritize, is how you hire. All of those hows are the culture.

Erik: 03:57 It's also based on a routine as much as everything and, and practice.

Alex: 04:02 Indeed. So as a consequence I believe that that it may be better to split the question in two. And that is, how do you build the vibe of a remote company and then how do you build the hows of a remote company?

Erik: 04:17 Okay.

Alex: 04:18 The hows in general are pretty much the same as the house of an office base company because it's how you prioritize, for example, how you develop product. Again, how you do customer service. All of those things are pretty similar regardless of whether you have an office or not. There are some specific hows, especially in the, on the HR side, such as how you hire or how would you provide equipment to the different members of your team or how you have meetings that change, but there are so many hows in a company. I mean if you make the list, potentially within a few months of the company having a staff, that you already have hundreds of hows, whether they're documented or not, it's a different thing, but there are really hundreds of traditions and within a year you probably have several thousand already, in terms of how people expect to others to behave and to do things as a regard.

Erik: 05:09 And they just pick up on it and develop it as they go. Yeah.

Alex: 05:11 And only a small fraction in that changing, then there is the vibe, right? Going back to the other question, that is, how do you build the vibe of a remote company? And that's very, very different indeed.

Andres: 05:24 So before we go to the vibe thing, you're saying that the hows don't necessarily change a lot?

Alex: 05:31 Most of them, no. They are not. Well, yeah, they are not different.

Andres: 05:34 But for example, so how will you brainstorm, if you're building a remote first team?

Alex: 05:38 That, that changes.

Andres: 05:39 That has to change.

Alex: 05:40 That has to change.

Andres: 05:40 How do you have thoughtful conversations with your leader? That has to change as well because you're not going to be physical. You're not gonna be like, let's take a coffee...

Alex: 05:46 If you're going to get physical then it's actually better to be remote.

Andres: 05:51 But you're not going to be able to like, "Hey, let's grab a coffee and like, let's put ourselves in a, in a kind of mood. Let's get out of the office," you know and go to a, to a coffee shop or something like that. That's not gonna happen.

Alex: 06:03 Although usually that's not a well-defined how in a company, like when you have a problem with a person that reports to you, you're supposed to get out of the office and go to a coffee shop and have a coffee. That's not a how, and that is part of the culture. That's more of an ad hoc how the you as the leader, you come up with, depending on the challenge.

Andres: 06:20 But it ends up being part of the culture. Cause, like...

Alex: 06:22 If everybody does it, or most people do it like that, yes.

Andres: 06:26 So in my previous business, whenever I, as a CEO, whenever I had a tough conversation to have, I went out of the office and that was a rule, right? So the team already knew that if they wanted to have a tough conversation with me, there was a, "Hey Andres, can we go for coffee" and we'll go for a coffee and we'll have the conversation, you know.

Alex: 06:44 So in your case in particular, yeah, I don't think that most companies will be, we'll have that rule for tough conversations.

Andres: 06:49 But they will have their own like specific kinds of things for, for tough conversations or stuff like that.

Erik: 06:56 So "have a coffee" became the euphemism for hard conversations.

Alex: 07:00 So I stand corrected. It is very interesting that you had, that you had that. And I agreed there are many hows that are going to be different, but in general, in a company there are so, so, so many hows that the ones that have to change because you're remote are not that many. If I were to guess, it's probably of all of those hows and indeed, I mean most of these podcasts and the book and our online library is about those hows. How many of those things have to be different?

Andres: 07:27 Yeah. But like signing a contract is not going to be much different, or you know, presenting a report. It's not going to be much different if you go remote or if you stay in an office because you still, you're still gonna have to like type down the report and you're still going to have to update your spreadsheets or whatever it is that you do in your company. All those hows are going to remain the same regardless of if you are remote or not. That's kind of the point. Okay. Let's go into the fun part of it, the vibe. How do you define the vibe of a remote company?

Alex: 07:54 How you feel in general as you interact with, with other people and this, I believe, is where most people, most companies transitioning from having being office-based to being remote-based end up having challenges because the vibe changes a lot and you described a moment ago how you can go to one office environment or another office environment and the vibe is quite different, right?

Andres: 08:20 Yeah.

Alex: 08:20 Even more different is the vibe of being a remote company versus an office-based company. Because feelings in general come from your senses and when you work remote, there are less senses that get stimulated and there are some that get even more stimulated. You end up reading more for example, but you don't get to smell the office, or you don't get to smell your desk or you don't get to share food with your colleagues. So indeed it feels different.

Andres: 08:46 Corporate offices often smell like, I can smell the carpet of corporate office right now, you might notice at this time, and when you go to this startups, or more creative offices with no carpeting at all, it just smells different.

Alex: 09:00 I think that a good analogy and it's going to change a lot because even within remote companies, you have a lot of different vibes. A company that is a small have a very different vibe than a company that is significantly larger, a company that uses one type of video conferencing tool might have a different vibe, than another one that uses a different one, or even the same media conferencing tool.

Alex: 09:19 I know of companies that have this rule of always on video, so you have to be on video all the time.

Erik: 09:26 Right.

Alex: 09:26 For some teams it works. I've experimented with that. For some other teams it doesn't work. That changes the vibe a lot when you are always being able to see other people and they can also see you, which to some extent... Is resembles a little bit more of the office environment but all of that but makes a significant, a significant difference. How you organize your communication channels in your team, what kind of routines you do, whether you make a war cry in the morning or not. All of that affects the vibe and it's not that you have to replicate the vibes of the office, it's just that the vibes are different and you have to learn how to use them. I've seen a few companies try to go that route, that nostalgia kicks in and they miss the vibe out of the office environment so much that they kind of adapt to the new office environment. It's like moving from a city to another city. Sometimes you love it, sometimes you won't.

Erik: 10:18 Well, having gone back and forth in my career between you know, huge cubicle farm that feels like a livestock pen and working from home, to me working from home was always about creating my own vibe, creating my space. It's actually mine, more than the companies. It can be a problem or...

Alex: 10:36 It depends on the person. I think that if you are primarily an extrovert and you like you reenergize, you recharge yourself out of interactions with other people. If you have been in an active office environment, kind of a, an open office plan like that, you might find difficult to work out of... Work remotely. Even if you work out of a co-working space. On the other hand, if you are an introverted person that's recharges batteries by being by himself or by herself, your chances are you're going to love remote.

Alex: 11:10 Now the reality is that most people are in the middle of that range. They are extroverted in some areas and introverted in other areas. So it really depends on the person and what job the person is actually doing. And again, how you end up interacting with other members of the team and to some extent, the culture that you, that you create. For example, in in, in the Torre team, we recently started something that I find really cool, and that is, one person of the team each day has the responsibility of asking a personal question to everyone else. So personal doesn't mean private. Personal means it's non-work related. So do you remember the questions they have asked? Like what activity do you enjoy a lot that you will like to experience with other members of the team? Right. My answer playing Age of Empires, for example.

Andres: 11:56 Mine was, I don't think the question was framed that way because my answer was doing a rally in like, I don't know, Emirates or something like that where there's everyone with their own cars and racing around something crazy. I don't know.

Erik: 12:06 That'd be good.

Alex: 12:08 And such and, that creates a vibe. One of the questions was, can you share a, a picture of your loved ones and we all shared them. That was really nice and got a bit emotional, or sharing a picture of you when you were a kid or the oldest picture you have of yourself, stuff like that.

Andres: 12:23 A picture of you when you were a kid and, and I just took a selfie at that time and sent it to the team. That's a picture of me being a kid. Anyways...!

Alex: 12:29 But like that kind of vibe never happens in an office environment and it's very difficult for that to happen in an office environment.

Andres: 12:36 To ask personal questions?

Alex: 12:37 And to get visual answers from everyone. Like, like if you were in an office environment and were to ask people, "hey, can you share the oldest picture of you?"

Andres: 12:47 It will be pretty weird if you bring your photos, like physically.

Alex: 12:49 And most people won't have those pictures in, in, in the office while they might have them in their house. So it's just different, you know.

Erik: 12:59 And it's funny you should mention that because almost every, you know, cubicle farm kind of thing, people have pictures of their loved ones up but nobody ever talks about it. They're just there.

Andres: 13:09 They exist.

Alex: 13:10 That's a really good point.

Andres: 13:11 And another aspect of the vibes thing is we recently on-boarded a new intern in our sales team and I remember the first meeting we had, she had this, she was dressed with with this, you know, fancy shirt and she was in a white background and everything. And by the third day in the company she already had a hoodie and she was in her room and it was like, and she felt like, okay, being in a hoodie in her room. And I'm like, great, cause she came from like doing a couple of internships in, in big corporations here in the U.S. So my thinking is that her expectation on the first day in the company, cause I literally met her the first day, was different and then when she saw that she could be like herself. Yeah, I think that she feels, I actually made a comment, "I really like your hoodie today" and she laughed. I saw that she laughed, we were on a daily stand up. But the thing about creating the vibe is that I feel like we all the humans as nature, we kind of want to have our own thing and that's why even cubicles end up being personalized, you know, with the photos that you want and your own little toys and stuff. When you're working remotely, whether it is a coworking space or it's your home or a home office space, you end up being able to be more creative and even, you know, personalize that even more. That's actually pretty, pretty cool. Actually, one of the things that we have at Torre, I don't know if everyone knows about that. One of the things that we have is that we have budgets for equipment, but part of the equipment is also the actual home office space that you build. And I've really taken advantage of that because like I, I, I wanted a huge whiteboard so I literally went and bought a huge whiteboard and I had it in my living room. I don't have that anymore, but in my living room I used to have a huge whiteboard that I would write down things and they have a mix. I have a co-working space that I go in my city, in Bogotá. I used to have the co-working office where I would go to and I would meet with the team from time to time, and I will also have my home and I will also be able to have my own personal space with my own, you know, standing desk and my things and my set up. So that's like allowing each member of your team to feel like a VP or an executive with like his own kind of office and his own kind of design and things, because they're in their homes and they can do whatever they want. But at the same time, scaling that feeling because it doesn't cost as much for you to personalize your own space.

Alex: 15:20 In Torre, like we pay for all of that. If you want to have two screens, you want to have a computer for your coworking space, a computer for your home, we'll buy all of that for you.

Andres: 15:28 It gets to a point where it kind of gets weird because I'm like, Manuel, how many computers do you really need? Jesus Christ, he has like three computers already. But yeah, if he feels like, he feels like he needs it. I mean...

Erik: 15:38 What you're describing though, is that personality, that intimacy and I've, I've experienced this too when I'm working remotely. You can dish that out on your own time at the level you're comfortable with. But when you're in an office together, it's kind of forced on you. You're there, you're part of the team immediately and you have to respond in some way. Whereas if you're at home, you can be a little shy at first or dish out, whatever weirdness you have, slowly.

Alex: 16:01 It depends on the company, right? And there are some companies that I build a set for, whether they're office based or remote based, their set for being more welcoming than others, being more weird than others. And being remote is just one way of doing it. And again, within, within remote, you can do it in many, many different ways.

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Josephine: 16:28 So I know you covered a lot in that episode with Alex and Erik, but I just wanted to add one more thing. Like, if I feel like I work at a company, at a cool company that I support and I am happy and excited to tell people where I work, I'm not afraid to show it off. Like whether it may be some kind of merch, pen, notebook, backpack like here, like I got a nice jacket from you guys when I started during my on-boarding and it really made me feel welcomed into the team culture. And I was really excited to kind of like officially join the team with all that. So I just wanted to add that little tidbit about, to add that tidbit into what I look for in a work culture, which translates into the remote work culture as well.

Andres: 17:21 You know how I call that jacket?

Josephine: 17:23 What do you mean?

Andres: 17:24 Yeah. So that jacket, it's the, we got funded jacket. We did not get funded, by the way. When we, we haven't thus far. But we had been as scrappy with our budget and the first two jackets that I, that I bought, I'm the one in charge of doing that. I made sure to make them, I mean decent, but it's scrappy, right? So they were reflective of over situation. But this jacket we were talking with Alex and we were like, okay, we need to buy the, the merch for this this quarter cause we do that every quarter. And I was like, and he was like, you know what, I'm tired of these jackets that you have been buying for us. Oh, please get us something nice. And I was like, okay, I'll get us something like you mean like one of these rich series B startup, nice got funded jackets. He was like, yeah, that's exactly what I want.

Josephine: 18:24 What were the old ones then?

Andres: 18:26 I have one here if you want it. I mean, it's not going to be your size, but it's we did some, the first version, it was like a potato sack.

Josephine: 18:34 A potato!!!

Andres: 18:36 It really did. I don't, I don't, I don't, I think I lost it. On purpose. No, I'm just kidding. But um...

Josephine: 18:41 I mean it's a good Halloween costume if you want to go as...

Andres: 18:44 It is.

Josephine: 18:44 A potato sack...

Andres: 18:45 It is. It's, it's, and, and the ink was really, really cheap, so it wore off in a couple of washes. The second one, I tried to make it nicer, so I bought a nicer little hoodie. But the sizes were all wrong and the ink again wasn't the best ever. This third one is like a fancy, what is it? North Face, North Face with the stitching on it. So we're not that, that will not wear off.

Josephine: 19:16 That is progress right there.

Andres: 19:17 You know, I got that one and I think we're going a little bit long with this podcast, but just for the context of it, I got that jacket for all of us, 999 days after Torre was founded and which was the same date that we internally announced that we had reached product market fit.

Josephine: 19:35 Oh, okay. Okay.

Andres: 19:37 So I said like, today's a day to buy these jackets.

Josephine: 19:39 The celebratory jackets, got it. Well, anyways, I hope you guys know that I really appreciate the remote culture, the remote work culture that I have felt over the last four weeks. And I think you guys practice a lot of what you preach, at least in the episode. So it's really cool to hear it back and to be able to relate it to things that I've been experiencing in my first four weeks here.

Andres: 20:07 Awesome. Well you're welcome. And also thank you for being a part of building it.

Josephine: 20:14 And for our listeners, thank you so much for being with us for our eighth episode now I believe, wow. Time is flying. And we'll see you back here next week for episode nine.

Andres: 20:32 Thank you so much for tuning in. A few last words, if you enjoyed that episode, please...

Josephine: 20:37 Follow us on social media at Remoter Project and let us know what you think about the latest episode.

Andres: 20:42 We'd love for you to join us as we continue building the remoter library on our website, remoter dot com. That's R E M O T E R dot com.

Josephine: 20:52 If you want even more resources, sign up for our free founding and growing remotely online course. You can find that on our website or check the description for links. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, SoundCloud, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Andres: 21:07 And remember, we're here to make work fulfilling so I'd like to ask you, what part will you play in shaping the future of work?

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