External teams - Remote or from the vendor's office?
8 months ago - 2 minute(s) read
Should your extended team work remote or from the vendor's office? Some might say that as long as they deliver, it doesn't really matter. But there are situations where you need the outsourcing partner to hold a tight grip on the team, so they can perform at a certain pace. Nonetheless, if the seniority allows it, most teams will probably choose to work remote/hybrid, according to the latest trends. While you can't argue with seasoned Seniors, managing Seniors or Mids is a different story altogether.
When the remote trend hit, we already had a couple of vetted Seniors working from home. Sure, they were locals and we had a business relationship doubled by a friendship for the past seventeen years. However, some Seniors chose to keep working from the HQ. Furtunately, their presence was very supportive for the Mids and Juniors that were also working from the office. Some of them were re-skilling through our coding courses, while others were already working on real world projects.
From the above situation, we found that it is optimal to have Junior and Mid Developer teams on premises for a couple of reasons:
Support from Seniors in real time
Although our teams use internal communication apps such as Jira, Trello, Microsoft Teams, Zoom etc., having a Senior in the same office that is able to provide real-time advice or code scrutiny is priceless.
A higher degree of accountability
Reaching the desired degree of accountability works best for someone young when they are present in the office and interact/report to those with a higher seniority more often.
Employment with CIM
This brings quite a few perks for those not willing to do finance management as an entrepreneur, such as medical cover, bonuses, fitness card etc.
Infusing a healthy organizational culture
This is indeed a reality that is often overlooked in the context of the new remote trend. Interactions with colleagues, games, team building activities, in a word exposure to the real brand experience is the only way to plant the seends of a healthy organizational culture.
The best setup for courses/mentoring sessions/knowledge sharing
Over the past two years we organized our own coding academy, since candidates from the current market were no longer fit for our roles. Courses taken at the office were by far the best when it came to students ability to understand the curricula, do their homework and ultimately graduate.
On the other end of the spectrum, a distributed vendor may:
- employ a variety of subcontractors on different timezones
- find it hard to motivate subcontractors (low involvement)
- lack the team cohesion and culture necessary for long time projects
Depending on your project's needs, you may want to enquire and take these aspects into consideration.
Sure, a bunch of well versed Seniors can do it from a tropical paradise too, but larger teams and limited budgets may require a different approach. This being said, let us know about your current strategic needs. In turn, we'll tell you how our Mid and Senior teams can accelerate those stalling projects!
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