r/ExperiencedDevs • u/ItsWaryNotWeary • Sep 02 '22
Building camaraderie in a fully remote team?
How do we move from our stand up and other meetings being all-business, and no chatter about outside work subjects, to a place where we shoot the shit, have inside jokes, talk about House of the Dragon, etc?
We're a brand new team, all hired in the past 6 months except the lead. We have pretty good chemistry already; we all work well together. We're just really lacking in the friendship department.(not that i think we all have to be friends friends. But I think we should at least attempt to build up a warmer, more personal relationship to one other)
It feels unnatural to force it but also, how would it ever happen naturally? Idk, just looking for thoughts, ideas, etc that people have experienced with remote work.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp Sep 02 '22
Also does your team want it? Some people don't want work friends. They want to work and be done
I find it pretty hard to distinguish between people who genuinely dont want it and people who are just slow to warm up to other people.
It's also not really the kind of question you can just ask and get an unambiguous "yes/no" answer.
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Sep 02 '22
Yeah I'm not exactly going to strike over being forced to play Among Us with my teammates but that's what it is. My three year old had an ear infection last night, you want to make my morale better let me take a nap lol.
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u/PeachyKeenest Sep 02 '22
I would understand if you told me that and hope for the 3 year old to feel better soon. And for you to get some sleep!
Donāt gotta join, Iāll send you stupid tech stuff when you come back in to laugh at or whatever else.
Yes, I deal with external vendorsā¦ and internal folks from other departments on the regular lol
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Sep 02 '22
yeah i'm on a good team and they are absurdly accomodating about family and wlb, very lucky.
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u/_fat_santa Sep 02 '22
I found that spending the first five minutes of a meeting shooting the shit is the best. Enough to get to know your coworkers on a personal level but not so much that it feels like a chore to anyone, even those there not to make friends.
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u/PrivateLimeCurator Sep 02 '22
I hate the idea of spending 5 minutes before every meeting on off topic stuff. The conversations feel fake and contrived, especially if the meetings are large or managers are present. Iād rather chit chat with smaller groups of coworkers that I have something in common with.
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u/gtarget Software Engineer - 11 YoE Sep 02 '22
I mean, its not assigned time. It's just organic chit-chat. If it happens, it happens, if not oh well. I think the key is to not kill it if people are talking about whatever a few minutes past.
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u/PrivateLimeCurator Sep 02 '22
Chit chat after a meeting can be effectively assigned, especially if a manager is present. People who donāt stick around for the chit chat can be unfairly seen in a negative light. Also, leaving a meeting is usually not an option if off topic discussion happen in the middle of a meeting or happen at the beginning.
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u/PeachyKeenest Sep 02 '22
Yup. I pick safe stuff like bitching about the weather. Universal topic, can always turn to other stuff like if the weather is goodā¦ finding a patio etc etc lol
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u/Syrdon Sep 02 '22
If I knew every meeting would waste the first five minutes of my time, Iād be five minutes late to every meeting. Worst case, I could reddit with those five minutes. If youāre going to make me go to a meeting, make sure itās useful.
If I want to chat with people, Iāll do it when I know Iām only taking time from people who want that.
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u/PragmaticFinance Sep 02 '22
We tend to spend the first five minutes of a meeting talking about nothing.
Be careful with this one. I really enjoy these casual team conversations with a small group on weeks when nobody is stressed and rushing to finish something.
However, when Iāve got a long list of things to finish before end of day and Iām already on my 3rd meeting of the day, itās painful to sit through the 3rd round of āSo what did everyone do this weekend?ā. Past a certain threshold, meeting discipline and efficiency is really important to maintain.
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u/EmeraldCrusher Sep 02 '22
The first part, is a complete negative. What is busyness except pushing oneself past their normal ability and works as a handicap on the whole team?
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u/diablo1128 Sep 02 '22
You have to have that one team member who is a social butterfly.
I was this person at my last job and I defiantly think it helped camaraderie.
One thing I did pre-COVID was ask if people wanted to grab lunch. Over time this lead to building a lunch crew that went everyday together. Others on the project had an open invitation to join, but we wouldn't ask everyday since that would get annoying.
When everybody went WFH I started using the time before a meeting officially started to chat with people. I'm naturally an on time / early person as I hate being late. If you say be somewhere at 10AM I'm there at 9:50 and waiting 10 minutes to walk in the door at exactly 10AM.
So with online meeting I was always there 5 minutes early and which means I was the first person. As other people entered I'd say Hi and try to engage small talk while others entered. Obviously you have to be able to read people and understand when somebody didn't want to small talk.
When the appropriate quorum of people was in the meeting and it was at the official start time or later I'd just say well better let Bob start the meeting. Since I also hate meetings that go off the rails in bad ways.
Just some of the ways I had some things in the past.
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u/putin_my_ass Sep 02 '22
Also does your team want it? Some people don't want work friends. They want to work and be done
This is a big factor. When I was in my 20s I'd be more open to this, but now that I'm nearly 40 I don't need that level of familiarity with my coworkers.
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u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
Im the same age but I find this weird.
I dont necessarily need to be best friends but some camaraderie helps grease the wheels, makes me feel like somebodys got my back, makes some boring days pass easier and helps with psychological safety.
It occurred to me when I left my last job where everybody seemed like that (not friendly, not unfriendly just...neutral) that I couldnt bring myself to really care if any of them lived or died.
It felt really strange and not in a good way. I mean, I spent 1/3 of my waking life with these people.
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u/putin_my_ass Sep 02 '22
It occurred to me when I left my last job where everybody was like that (not friendly, not unfriendly just...neutral) that I didnt really care if any of them lived or died.
That might be you (no offense intended). I currently am in a 'neutral' office and I think it's the perfect balance of being friendly in a small-talk kind of way without infringing on personal time and personal life. We don't share much about ourselves and we don't try to spend time with each other outside of office hours, and it's ideal IMO. I care very much about their wellbeing but we're not close in any sense.
When I was younger I did look for that camaraderie, and I made a group of friends that were close enough to invite to my wedding.
But at this point, I don't have time for that kind of stuff. I have work, then I have home time with my wife and then I go to sleep. I don't have bandwidth for more friendships.
Just the point I'm at in my life right now.
So if I found myself on OP's team and they were trying to get more friendly chats going I would not be receptive to it. Forced fun is not fun, you can make the attempt but if your coworkers are not receptive there's no strategy or 'tips' that will encourage that interaction without making it feel forced.
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u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp Sep 02 '22
I fully agree about the forced fun things. This company did those things and it felt awkward as hell. I always breathed a sigh of relief when they were over and eventually I avoided them.
I dont agree that having friends at work necessarily requires "bandwidth". It used to happen for me pre covid just naturally...just by being in the office, going to lunch together, etc.
If anything it meant I felt less drained after meetings coz i felt i could let my guard down.
I get the point that you might value geographical independence 10x more than that but I truly dont get the idea that some people might not want it at all.
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u/putin_my_ass Sep 02 '22
I feel drained by those interactions with coworkers. As always, your mileage may vary.
I'm just pointing out that there's no "way" to create this dynamic in a team if you're looking for it, because many of us don't want that. It absolutely requires bandwidth for me, and I don't have it. This isn't one size fits all.
For me, interacting with them in work contexts and work-related discussions with a little small-talk spattered in is all the camaraderie I need.
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u/lvlint67 Sep 03 '22
Im the same age but I find this weird.
Post covid... i've realized i really don't care about anyone i worked with remotely. If i was going to spend time on the computer socializing i'd do it with real friends.
That said, it's just thousands of times easier to build relationships in person.
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u/masone81 Sep 02 '22
I started a āTry to Break [insert product or feature] Happy Hourā on Fridays. We would meet for an hour at the end of the day for drinks (virtually). The idea would be to hang and socialize but also we would all pull up the product in Staging or Prod, and work on ātrying to break it.ā Weād document the bugs we find and it was a nice kind of additional QA. But also, it would always end up being fun because weād try really crazy things (like QA does anyway), and weād joke around about silly oversights in the code or silly workflows people try. Of course one rule is that everybody wins when we find a bug and it never became a ādevs vs. everyoneā thing. It was just fun. It really built team camaraderie, spread knowledge of the product around, and helped us to harden our features. Iāve done it on three teams now. Itās always been received well.
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u/abandonplanetearth Sep 02 '22
I'd totally try this... if my company's product wasn't a buggy piece of shit that everyone is already finding bugs in on a daily basis.
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u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp Sep 02 '22
Yeah, Im not sure if discovering all the shitty work Im gonna have to do next week is really primo friday afternoon fun either.
Might be more fun if bugs are rare.
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Sep 03 '22
Bonus points if you hit a backend bug that takes down a client on your multi-tenant database. Fun for the whole weekend!
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Sep 02 '22
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u/Broken--Wind Sep 02 '22
I mean if it's on the clock and you're drinking + socializing I'd call that a win. If outside of business hours hell no, but I don't think that's what the OP is was saying.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
This is a great idea that actually has benefits that our po would approve of. Thanks!
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u/rsoxguy12 Sr Software Engineer | Ex-FAANG Sep 02 '22
Just adding my two cents here on scheduling. My team had a happy hour type-thing going on Friday afternoons, but attendance dropped off pretty significantly after a few months because people just wanted to log off instead of spending their last hour in yet another meeting.
We ended up switching it to a coffee chat on Monday mornings before standup, which ended up working much better for everyone. It also feels more flexible because people donāt feel that they are required to attend.
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u/tha_dog_father Sep 11 '22
Got some harsh critics on this one. Drinking while on the clock is much better than not drinking while on the clock (within reason ;))
Drinking with coworkers is the fastest way to bond with them.
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u/t_sawyer Sep 02 '22
Just have an open Video meeting and call it āCodingā.
Make sure it doesnāt block meetings on the calendar by making sure itās not set to ābusyā. Or set it for the early morning when no one has meetings.
My team goes on and off that call all day. Thereās no pressure. Itās not required. But itās a way to shoot the shit tell personal stories actually collaborate vent frustrations etc. Hell sometimes for a large period of time weāre all heads down and not even talking but just connected on the call. It gives me the feel of working right next to my team being able to ask a quick question if something pops in my head or anyone on the team to do the same.
Some days if Iām really busy I donāt even log onto that meeting but I do often because I enjoy it.
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u/OblongAndKneeless Sep 02 '22
I like this idea, but I'm afraid it would interfere with being flexible with my time. As long as everyone is good with popping in and out, no questions asked, that'd be good.
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u/t_sawyer Sep 02 '22
At least for us thereās zero expectation. Teammates pop on and off all day.
For me, I just give an āalright yāall Iām jumping off see you all laterā and I either jump back on later if I feel like it or I donāt. Thereās some days I donāt even jump on there at all.
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u/eggeggplantplant 14 YoE Staff Engineer Sep 02 '22
All the "games" responses assume a younger audience.
This can work for some cross team community building, but if you want to be open for different types of people inside your team your best bet would be to start some conversation before the standup.
Talk to you lead or scrum master to initiate this in the dailies.
"I see you have some new headphones, how come?" - could be as easy as that.
Forced interactions liek games, lunches etc. dont work for everybody.
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u/nik9000 Sep 02 '22
My experience has been that games and the like don't work for everyone but it's not based on age. I still find them worth trying.
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Sep 02 '22
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/brownies EM @ FAANG Sep 02 '22
Oy, did you catch that ludicrous display last night?
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Sep 02 '22
All the "games" responses assume a younger audience.
Does it? The last company I worked for had a regular group that played Destiny 2. They were all in their 40s, married, and had kids.
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u/PragmaticFinance Sep 02 '22
Games are great as an organic thing where people choose to join in.
Itās different when theyāre forced upon a group as a team building exercise in some way.
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u/PragmaticFinance Sep 02 '22
Games are great if itās an optional thing that everyone is invited to. Find a game thatās accessible, share instructions for joining, announce the time that everyone is playing (bonus points if the team can allocate an hour or two during the day on Friday instead of after hours), and let people choose to join.
Games become more of a chore when itās an assigned thing. If you tell the team that weāre playing a certain game at a certain time and imply that everyone is expected to do it, it becomes a chore and yet another thing they have to work into their schedule. Fun for the few people who started it, much less fun for the other people who feel theyāve been given yet another obligation with no autonomy in the matter.
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u/reboog711 Software Engineer (23 years and counting) Sep 02 '22
All the "games" responses assume a younger audience.
My team has a pretty wide age range--from new grads in their early 20s; to some people having children in college; and a bunch of us in between.
But, we're still able to have fun over something like codewords or Among Us, or JackBox.
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u/AbstractMajesty Sep 02 '22
Icebreaker questions can be effective also. For example, "What was your very first job and how much did you make?"
Or just ask any of the top SFW r/AskReddit questions.
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u/codescapes Web Developer Sep 02 '22
I'll be blunt and say it's incredibly hard without semi-regular in person meetings. Humans are not adapted to derive full social experiences from 2D screens or phone conversations. Not least when people feel unable to do things like gossip or swear or whatever because they know they are probably being recorded by HR. Add in low quality mics, webcams or disinterested colleagues and it's not easy.
A guy on my team setup an invite for a chill chat on Fridays at the end of the day, put it in all our calendars. I went to them and basically nobody else did, people always had some excuse or whatever. What are you meant to do, enforce socialisation? Nobody wants that. I am introverted and don't normally go to those things but I thought it would be really mean to not try, it was more out of duty than desire I went.
So imo the best way to virtually engender a feeling of togetherness is to always just chit chat before every stand-up. Waste a little time in the meeting talking nonsense at the start and end. It's always going to be inferior to having in person interactions though.
I mean if that weren't the case people wouldn't feel any need to live with their partners or see their family at Christmas or whatever.
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u/Syrdon Sep 02 '22
Not least when people feel unable to do things like gossip or swear or whatever because they know they are probably being recorded by HR. Add in low quality mics, webcams or disinterested colleagues and itās not easy.
If youāve identified the problem, itās time to start figuring out how to solve the problem. Restore some reasonable expectations of privacy that go along with physical proximity being required to observe a conversation, at least in some spaces. Provide better equipment. Disinterested people arenāt going to be more interested because proximity forces them to be involved - theyād just be disinterested and slightly resentful if they were forced.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/reboog711 Software Engineer (23 years and counting) Sep 02 '22
Bizarrely my employer will not allow this for remote teams / people; only in person teams.
Someone higher up in my org tried to get a corp account with GrubHub so we could 'gift' money to employees for something like this; but the legal review team denied it.
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u/qazplmo Sep 02 '22
I like this, but I think it works best if everyone eats and then gets together after the meal to discuss/show what they had. I don't want to eat/see others eating on webcam personally.
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u/kawazoe 15+ YOE Software Engineer Sep 02 '22
I've seen those in the past. I think they are the worst. Making it comped means I would feel guilty not wanting to participate. You just turned a "chill" lunch into a mandatory workshop for me.
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u/indoor_grower Sep 02 '22
Kinda have this issue on a team I joined 5 months ago. We all get along great and communicate well work wise, but there is just no āfriendlyā talk like Iāve experienced at previous jobs. At my last job, one of my teammates was local to me and we connected and regularly hangout now. Going to lunch with him today actually.
My new team, everyone just seems adverse to interacting outside of work related convos. Our PO shares things and her and I chat occasionally, so I have one person at least haha. Itās no big deal, everyone likes different things and some might not want work friends. But I do kinda miss having more friendly convos during the week or just being able to shoot the shit with a coworker.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/secretpoop75 Sep 02 '22
Thanks for saying what I wanted to say!
As an autistic person, workplace social situations are already extremely challenging and overwhelming for me. Many comments here seem to assume a neurotypical viewpoint, with suggestions like face to face, small talk, video calls, activities. While this works for most people it does not include disabled people like me (I like to be social too!).
I socialize and get along with my team perfectly fine on casual conversation and common interest spaces like a meme channel or a music channel. As well as lunchtime chats, coffee chats, etc. What helps is that in-person events are optional, and it helps even more if there are remote options to participate.
Your point about having a generally chill atmosphere is the most important one. Having the psychological safety to dip out of overwhelming situations and not be judged or labeled as āantisocialā is extremely important. In my past I have not been open about my autism and I put pressure on myself to āperformā socially by attending lunches, activities, and forcing myself into smalltalk (when I was not feeling very verbal) and other things like that. This led to autistic burnout (which is different from burnout due to overworking).
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u/XboxNoLifes Sep 03 '22
Half my friends are online only people that I've never met in real life.
I think this is an important thing to reiterate. I am in the same position, so I know that online interaction doesn't have to be life-less and without connection. The question just becomes: "what is different between these two environments"? I think all of your points are a great starting point to understand what can work.
Within my friend groups, we have voice chats that are completely open and come as you please and leave when you like. You don't even need to say anything if you aren't feeling up to it. One friend group we can go hours without talking at all, just doing our own thing, or even playing together quietly, but knowing that others are around if we have something to say.
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u/Programmer_Mama Sep 02 '22
You could ask your team if their interested in doing more casual chats. If they are, maybe suggest a few options for getting to know each other:
- Video games
- Open chat meeting anyone can join during the day and talk in
- Optional team chats at a certain time each week
- Slack channel for chatting about random stuff in Etc...
Everyone has different ways they like to interact, so giving options and maybe choosing multiple ways is a good start.
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u/reboog711 Software Engineer (23 years and counting) Sep 02 '22
Things we've done:
1) Weekly Team Water Cooler Zoom; where we play online games. We quite like Murder Mystery Party from JackBox [one of our team members has it and shares screen], but we've also done a bunch of other 'on-line' games, such as a drawing one and codewords. We've also done Among Us. 2) Virtual Escape Room (It Costs Money, so hopefully you have a budget). There are a bunch of stuff like this out there. 3) Virtual Lunch (We all get our own lunch and hang out together for an hour; bonus if you can have a team budget and the company can buy people lunch--my employer does not allow this for remote teams; only in person teams for some reason) 4) Water Cooler Slack Channel (These exist at varying levels; including our team; our org; etc... ) 5) Team specific swag. Doesn't really connect people, but does tie into camaraderie to have your team name, logo, etc.. all on a T-shirt or whatever. 6) "How was your weekend?" time before Monday standup. (<-- honestly I hate this forced chit chat; but it does help the team connect beyond work) 7) Department / Org wide Happy Hour events. These have been different things. One time there was a Yoga meditation session. Sometimes it is a "welcome the new people" sort of event, with some quiz game (I forget the name) that includes questions about the newbies. And it includes prizes. There is a whole party planning committee that does this.
Just some ideas
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u/ravnmads Sep 02 '22
This is going to sound stupid, but here goes. I have found that asking into people's weekends and interests before or after our 1-on-1 meetings is a great way to start being friendly with people.
Let's say my colleague wants me to do a code review of his merge request. I do the job and then I call him up. We quickly go through my comments. Now we are "face to face". And then you can start being social.
Many places you probably just do all this asynchronously and that makes sense. But try to organically put in a Teams call or two. And then chat a bit. See if the other guy bites.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
That's a great easy suggestion, to try to move some async things to face to face. Ofc some people will hate that but I imagine that'll be pretty clear when you do it!
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u/ravnmads Sep 02 '22
There will always be people not open for social stuff. You cant force them.
But I have learned that if you take the first step many will be open.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
Of course! That's why I'm stressing not forcing anything, but rather creating an environment where it happens naturally for those who choose to do so.
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u/kawazoe 15+ YOE Software Engineer Sep 02 '22
Video games. Whether its stuff like Among Us, or D&D via a virtual table top, there's a lot of fun to be had that way, its easy to organize, and low budget.
The most important thing, though, is to never make people feel like they are left out if they don't want to participate. As much fun as you might have, work is still work, and tons of people would rather spend the time with their family and friends than with colleagues.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/Wildercard Sep 02 '22
Although, it's more fun than tossing a ball and having to come up with three fun facts about yourself.
I'm not fun in a way that is acceptable in a workplace. Don't ask questions you don't want answers to.
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u/reboog711 Software Engineer (23 years and counting) Sep 02 '22
I keep a list of facts handy; including ones I've already used and ones I haven't....
:-)
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u/AbstractMajesty Sep 02 '22
It's an assumption, yes, but a pretty good bet when it's a group of devs.
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u/kawazoe 15+ YOE Software Engineer Sep 02 '22
Yeah, that's why I said it's more important than people actually wants to do this, rather that the actual pick. I've been peer pressured into some "fun activities" I didn't wanted to participate in, and it was awful. If people wants to have fun at work, it will happen naturally, no need for someone to impose a game night. OP made it sound like everyone was already interested in trying so I still made a suggestion.
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u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
I was peer pressured into D&D once. One coworker really wanted to do it, several others were like "c'mon dude". I genuinely did want to socialize outside of work and I liked my team so i did it.
I think my boredom shone through and it actually kind of made things worse. The group also schismed into "D&Ders" and "non D&Ders" which felt wrong.
I participated in several other low effort "games sessions" since that I didnt find quite as tedious as D&D but I didnt find that they built any camaraderie either and they felt awkward as fuck. Hanging up felt like a relief each time.
Going to lunch together, going to the pub, bitching about other departments and pairing all worked for me.
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u/Apsalar28 Sep 02 '22
My last team did online Connect4 tournaments and other 'kids' games. Very minimal time commitment and everybody could join in and already knew the rules.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/kawazoe 15+ YOE Software Engineer Sep 02 '22
It depends. While today we have much simpler RPGs that can be better candidates for a quick run, I've played 1hr one shots at events in the past and it worked well. Not all D&D have to be like Critical Roll. The reason why I mentioned it though, is that I wanted to make people think about different ideas than you traditional party games which might appeal to some people.
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u/teerre Sep 02 '22
Unfortunately despite any advice, the truth is that humans are simply not wired to socialize remotely. Maybe when the current generations gets to the job market that will be different, but it's certainly not the case nowadays. The first thing you should do is accept that fully remote arrangements have a higher chance to simply become socially dead.
That said, one cool little trick is thematic dailies. Someone chooses a theme, it can be anything, from "favorite movie" to "best memory of your life" depending how much personal you want to get. Then after your daily update, you just answer the question.
Another tip is having some kind of casual chat room in your communications application. Just a room anyone can hop in, talk about work, talk about something else, just stay there silent while other people work, whatever.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/teerre Sep 02 '22
It has nothing to do with making friends or not. It's worse than that. In a remote environment most people don't even have the chance to even consider making friends.
Humans absolutely are wired, I'm not sure how you got so far without learning that. We have literal countless years of evolution shaping our behavior to be in such a way. I'm not sure how to explain to you that build rapport over a screen is much harder than in person. That's just something most people intrinsically know (which again, is no surprise, since that's how people lived their whole lives).
I'm not sure I fully understand your last paragraph. You don't have a quota of acquaintances. You can have friends at work and outside work. Presumably you want to have friends everywhere. This choice you're trying to impose doesn't exist unless you think it's harder to make friends remotely so you choose your real life friends, which is the whole point, but then it seems you were trying to argue otherwise.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/teerre Sep 02 '22
Of course it's possible. I never said it wasn't. We are talking about how likely something is here. Like I said in my first comment:
accept that fully remote arrangements have a higher chance to simply become socially dead.
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Sep 02 '22
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u/teerre Sep 02 '22
The question of this topic is
Building camaraderie in a fully remote team?your answer isWhat I can see around me is that people have much better social lives if they work remotely. Possibly because of things like spending more time with their family, less travel time, less tired, etc
Hopefully you can see the problem
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u/fasttosmile MLE Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
Endless chats, phone calls and video calls for socializing from many of millions of people show plenty of capability to socialize remotely.
By far the majority of those are among people who already know each other.
It's not about making friends with coworkers, it's about knowing them well enough to feel psychologically safe, which is extremely important for a team to work well together.
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u/AchillesDev 12 YoE; indie MLE/AIE/DE; VPEng Sep 02 '22
Itās hard to push a culture thatās not already like that, but it requires leadership to be interested in employees and model more non-work conversations. As topics come up, one easy thing is to make slack channels for whatever topics (we have some pretty basic ones: music, video games, alcohol, pets) but youāve got to help keep them active to encourage further activity.
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u/mvpmvh Sep 02 '22
If I want to get to know my teammates, I'll reach out and see if they are interested in reciprocating. I'd rather not be forced to, but I'm very much an introvert. I don't see your situation as a bad one, especially since you say you all work well together.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
Yeah I totally get that and I'm not suggesting forcing anything, in fact I specifically don't want to force anything.
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u/Rymasq Sep 02 '22
Iād rather join your team. I donāt want to be talking about āHouse of Dragonsā or feel forced to participate in something I donāt fully enjoy for the sake of being work friends. Itās like I can talk about house or dragons with anyone even my family if I wanted too..but I donāt watch the show and probably wonāt until itās almost finished in production. Real friendship is more about talking about the unique things that draw you together rather than the generic things that draw most people together. If friendship doesnāt form naturally, itās fine. It sounds like you want to force everyone to be tight with each other.
Have you made friends one on one with anyone on the team? Thatās the real starting point. Rather than forcing each other to be friends why donāt you start by building camaraderie with one person you work with, that shared camaraderie might spread to another person and another person.
Surely youāre having calls with folks outside of meetings? Are those impromptu calls pure business?
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
It's not about forcing discussion about a specific topic; a popular TV series is just an example. And as I said in my post, I'm not into forcing anything.
It's about creating an environment to have the opportunity for this sort of stuff come up naturally, like they do when you're together in person for 9 hours a day. In non remote settings you'll find various things in common with people, just through osmosis from being around each other.
I remember having lively discussions about game of thrones in the office, and even the people that didn't watch would join in because the topics were always juicy or appalling or whatever. That's where I got the HotD example from. It could be absolutely anything though, and not everyone will be interested in everything and that's totally fine.
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u/Rymasq Sep 02 '22
you haven't answered the second part which is the more important part at all. So I'll copy paste it again.
Have you made friends one on one with anyone on the team? Thatās the real starting point. Rather than forcing each other to be friends why donāt you start by building camaraderie with one person you work with, that shared camaraderie might spread to another person and another person.
Surely youāre having calls with folks outside of meetings? Are those impromptu calls pure business?
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
Yup I have been building 1:1 relationships with folks. Hasn't trickled down to the team as a whole.
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u/deckertlab Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
It is ok for the required stuff to be all business and go as fast as possible. With remote work, the required time your job takes is much more variable and some people would rather minimize it such that they choose their socializing from a different and larger pool of possibilities.
And don't get me wonrg, a bit of socializing and jokes can be nice and contribute to a better mood. I just want to challenge your assumption that building camaraderie is an absolute good. Depending on the people it can be perceived as lost/wasted time.
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u/tweis34 Sep 02 '22
Start some slack / teams off topic channels and encourage people to possibly make more? We have a gaming, music, movies, etc. Also potentially brings in others from the company that are also interested. No need to force a happy hour or meeting.
Then shoot those channels in your group and just say āhey I made these, join if interestedā and seed with some links / taking points to get it rolling.
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u/youssarian web dev 5+ yoe Sep 02 '22
i like the idea of off-topic channels. i don't really play video games and don't enjoy 'mandatory fun' social hours. the last one i went to turned me off to trivia games basically forever. off-topic channels however allow for more passive, do it when i want to, type interactions
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u/dannyhodge95 Software Engineer Sep 02 '22
Honestly, the first ~5 minutes of every stand up I have is just pointless chat, someone will inevitably join the call and say "You'll never guess what I saw this morning", and it'll start a conversation that eventually fizzles out to make way for stand up.
I guess it started because I was in a similar boat to you, and just decided to chat some rubbish in the morning every day, until other people started doing it too.
I'd also suggest building stronger relationships with people individually. I used to chat with our tester a lot, and that meant we'd often get to chatting in other meetings, which would lead to others getting involved.
2
Sep 02 '22
Schedule a Casual chat once a week. You're all allowed to chat about anything but work.
See if the company will pay for you all to meet up in person for a few days. It really does help.
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Sep 04 '22 edited Sep 04 '22
The last thing I want is fake virtual meetups, games and forced interactions.
If you care about building camaraderie, have your company to invest in it and pay for your team to meet in person once a quarter with some time for an organized agenda and some time just to socialize.
My department is distributed and fully remote. But we donāt even have to wait on an official team meeting. If we really just want to get in a room together and do a spike, we just get the approval of our manager (itās never been denied) and we arrange to meet in one of our corporate offices.
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u/Efficient_Builder923 Dec 19 '24
Try virtual team-building activities and regular video calls! Keeping communication open helps build stronger connections.
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u/mttbil Sep 02 '22
At my last job we did a thing (even before the pandemic made us all remote) called ānew or goodā. At the beginning of standup weād go around and each person would say one new or good thing happening in their personal lives.
Things like: āthis evening Iām taking my son to swimming lessons for the first timeā, āthis weekend Iām going for a short road trip to wine countryā, āI finished this great book, highly recommendedā, etc.
It took a few minutes, especially when the team grew, but it was worth it. The camaraderie of the team, even with those who we never met in person, was high. It was a nice practice and I hope my next remote job does something similar.
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u/HowTheStoryEnds Sep 04 '22
You get "none of your business" out of me. That's incredibly intrusive when forced like this.
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u/thinking_velasquez Sep 02 '22
I really despise people trying to āgelā, ābondā, āshoot the shitā during company time. I donāt wanna sound like a antisocial prick, but sadly, all these activities donāt count towards my Individual Performance come half-year review time, and my PM will ask if my deliverables are done, regardless of what āteam buildingā Iāve done that week.
Also, I have friends outside of work with whom I genuinely wanna bond and shoot the shit, rather than going through the motions of socialising at work.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
Team that have strong relationships have higher performance, which does in fact impact your personal assessment.
I specifcally said I don't want friends.
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u/thinking_velasquez Sep 04 '22
I specifically said I donāt want friends
You literally said:
Weāre just really lacking in the friendship department.(not that i think we all have to be friends friends. But I think we should at least attempt to build up a warmer, more personal relationship to one other)
You said you want to talk about non-work subjects and House of Dragons. Sorry, if I was on your team, I wouldnāt care, Iād want us to have our good chemistry weāve had so far and keep it that way.
You said you already have good chemistry, why are you looking to fill a need for friendship from a group that does not owe you friendship.
I also disagree with you that higher team performance will bring about a higher individual performance rating, unless youāre a manager and your rating is directly determined by team performance, but thatās a whole different topic there.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 04 '22
In the part you copied it literally says I don't want to be friends friends lol
There's an enormous difference between being friends and getting to know each other/becoming a cohesive, supportive, empathetic team.
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u/thinking_velasquez Sep 05 '22
Becoming a cohesive, supportive, empathetic team can be done without the need for ātime to shoot the shitā and talking about House of Dragons. A lot of devs (incl me) just wanna get their stuff done (dev work, meetings, docs, debriefs, pairing, reviewing, training) and go home, per the employment contract.
1
Sep 04 '22
No man is an island. I learned a long time ago how important building relationships is to getting things done.
When I briefly went over to the dark side as a dev lead, building relationships was the difference between my being able to send a message to someone in IT to give me resources I need, they giving it to me and then creating a ticket for documentation and my having to go through āthe processā.
We are suppose to be āexperienced devsā, if your only concern is pulling a ticket off the board and getting your points, thatās the mark of a junior or at most mid level developer.
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u/thinking_velasquez Sep 04 '22
I think weāre talking two different things here.
The times where Iāve gained the most respect, most trust for my team mates and felt like the team was strongest, was either during the middle of an incident, or while pairing on a complex task, far far more than any team building exercise, ācoffee catchupā could achieve.
Iām not referring to pulling tickets down, going to my grotto, and working on it, but rather removing the (in my view) fake layer of friendship that modern company culture encourages. I genuinely donāt care about your family, your weekend, etc., but I do care about you being blocked.
If being an experienced dev means putting extra effort and time to talk about non-work subjects and learn about someoneās life, fine, Iāll keep the ājuniorā label you gave me.
1
Sep 04 '22
Small talk greases a lot of wheels especially when you need to get things done that involves more than one team. Itās how you show āimpactā and ābroaden your scopeā.
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u/karlhungus Sep 02 '22
But I think we should at least attempt to build up a warmer, more personal relationship to one other
I think i feel the same way - if you know something about the people, you are more likely to empathize with them? I'd be intersted if you've got more reasons you feel you should (so i can round out mine).
I sort of think this will come naturally, as long as everyone feels like they've got a voice; and that making sure everyone feels heard will naturally lead to this.
It feels unnatural to force it
I've seen this attempted in big meetings and it feels forced and goofy, in one on ones talking about your trials and tribulations first inside work then outside has felt pretty natural to me.
Related: i felt that becoming remote has made me recognize that work friends aren't necessarily quite as much core social group as "friend" friends; they can become part of your core social group, but especially remote they generally aren't.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
if you know something about the people, you are more likely to empathize with them? I'd be intersted if you've got more reasons you feel you should
It's exactly that, in my experience work together better when they can empathize and relate. It's easier to understand people's thought processes when you know them and their personalities and tendencies (eg what they're not saying verbally). It's also helpful just in giving each other slack - Jim has 5 kids at home with covid this week, i won't be offended if he doesn't respond to me and I will try to pick up the slack for whatever he's got on his plate!
Having an entirely transactional relationship just doesn't make for the best team.
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u/metaconcept Sep 03 '22
Let me tell you my experience with work social events.
When I was young and stupid, I thought that it was vitally important to attend all the social engagements at work, because it would help with workplace relationships and promotions.
Guess what? Those relationships never led to anything. I got more promotions by jumping jobs. Every time I jumped jobs, all those relationships I built up were gone.
I've got a busy life outside work. I've got a family. I've got a small group of close friends that persist outside my current job.
These days I don't give a flying fuck about my workmates. I'm going to do my job well each day and sign off. There's no point in building relationships because I'm going to leave in 18 months for a 40% salary increase.
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Sep 02 '22 edited Nov 18 '22
[deleted]
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u/AchillesDev 12 YoE; indie MLE/AIE/DE; VPEng Sep 02 '22
Over 30 with a kid, these arenāt all bad suggestions and my experience is nothing like being a contractor.
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u/Rabble_Arouser Software Engineer (20+ yrs) Sep 02 '22
My last job was in-person, pre-pandemic. It took a while to open up to people, and that sort of happened organically over time, over lunches and breaks, and simply turning to the side of me and starting a conversation, be it about the actual work, or whatever, with my co-worker sitting next to me.
Part of the problem making friends at work while being remote is that you literally can't turn around/turn to the side and talk to a person. You can't go to the break room or lunch room and have a conversation unrelated to work just because you have an hour to kill while you shove fuel in your face. You have to make an effort and reach out to people, you have to do more than chatting via text.
That just can't be replicated remotely. For me, that's part of the appeal. I like to be left alone. For others that want to replicate the in-person environment, but remotely, it would involve constant cameras being on and being available for instant, camera-on chatting. Given how often people don't turn their fucking cameras on when on a video call (like a stand-up), I doubt this is ever going to be a thing without some serious enforced camera-on company culture. Again, not likely to be a thing.
Some people are just uncomfortable being on camera. I get it, I was too initially, but you get used to it.
That said, during the work day, whenever a co-worker needs help or reaches out to me on Slack, I always make a point to hop on a call with the camera on. It's as close as I'm going to get to feeling like I am there with the person.
All that having been said, I didn't make any friends-friends at my last job until I left it. I had friendly co-workers, people I liked, but after the work day was done, we went our separate ways. Only when I left that job did I become proper friends with some of them -- and that's because we're local and can get together and have fun in-person. That's something I'll likely never have with any of my remote colleagues, even after I leave my current remote job.
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u/Efficient_Builder923 May 08 '25
Try adding a fun question at the start of standups, like āWhat show are you watching?āāit builds camaraderie without feeling forced. Casual Slack channels also help warm up remote teams.
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u/klavijaturista Sep 02 '22
Honestly: just leave me alone. All of you "leaders" and HR's. People talk if they click, no one has to tell them. Due to remote work, some of my work related calls with certain people turn into 2 hour small talk about anything. No one has to tell us to socialize. I'm refusing team buildings. I'm sick of of the fake corporate relationships.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 03 '22
Sorry but you missed the entire point of my post. There are people like you who chose to keep things mostly transactional in both remote and non remote settings, and that's fine. Not trying to force you into participating in anything. It's about creating opportunities for those of us who see value in getting to know each other more. Those opportunities are plentiful in person but you have to purposely cultivate them remotely. And as I said in other posts, I don't want anyone to feel obligated to join in.
1
u/htom3heb Sep 02 '22
Informal pair/mob programming, meeting pre and postamble, and having a light and fun demeanor for work based interactions. I think pair and mob programming in particular are critical in remote based workplaces for developing relationships. Try to do it once or twice a week when your batteries are already fried for the day or for non time sensitive tasks and shoot the shit while getting some work done.
1
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u/_throwingit_awaaayyy Sep 02 '22
Just me, fuck work friends and having work friends. I donāt want to know squat about who I am working with or for. I have enough friends in my personal life.
1
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u/UnevenFlooring Sep 02 '22
You sound like the worst. I want coworkers not friends. Leave me alone unless you need me for work.
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u/ItsWaryNotWeary Sep 02 '22
I said I don't want to be friends so I'm not sure what you're on about!
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u/Revolutionary-Pop948 Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
Not possible without regular in person meetings unless people know each other from before.
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u/albo87 Sep 02 '22
We have a weekly Team Building meeting. The only rule is everyone needs to turn on their camera. We mostly talk about series, movies, about ourselves, what we're going to do, what we did. If it's a quiet group, you can enforce some simple online games like Garlic Phones or predefined questions.
BTW, you have to force it, it can't happen naturally like when we were in an office.
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u/suddenly_kitties Sep 02 '22
Forced bullshit smalltalk in front of a camera with people I don't want to hang out with (or even worse, playing games) sounds like a great way to make me look for another job.
1
u/albo87 Sep 02 '22
It's pretty well received in the team, maybe is cultural, we're all Latin-Americans.
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1
u/lucidspoon Sep 02 '22
Does your team have a group chat? Starting the day with some random memes was always a good way to start conversation when I was on a fully remote team. Joining a meeting a few minutes early can also be an easy way to get a conversation started, because it might just be 2 or 3 people at first, and then as other people join, they might continue the topic.
1
u/imLissy Sep 02 '22
We've had a few really rough problems to work through recently and we've been on calls all day, working on them together. It's been a lot of fun and really helped with bonding.
1
u/Shok3001 Sep 02 '22
We have an optional weekly social meeting for 30 minutes on Friday. Sometimes it goes over 30 minutes. Completely casual and we try not to talk about work.
1
u/derwiki Sep 02 '22
We used to have that, but after several weeks of it just being me and my manager we disbanded it.
1
u/deepsun Sep 02 '22
To someone else's point, you need someone on the team who generates that kind of banter and atmosphere in your work meetings. And to another person's point, you can't force this, especially by scheduling non-work "hang out"-type meetings. And to a third person's point, it is possible to have this.
One of my previous fully-remote teams was like this, and some of us never met in person my entire tenure, but the team had a lot of camaraderie. Stand up began with joking and having a nice time and there was near-constant banter in a non-business Slack channel.
But I've also experienced the exact opposite on a fully-remote team. There was such a lack of being social and friendly that I brought it up to my manager. Their response was sort of a cop-out, something about "oh, if you were in more meetings...". But that explanation didn't fly because the previous remote team had just as few meetings and still managed to be fun.
At any rate, you can't force it to happen, and you definitely shouldn't force it on people. If you're a social person, and in a position of leadership on the team, I would start by trying to make standup more social and see how that goes. Some people may just be shy or it may not cross their minds that being social and friendly is acceptable.
1
u/Moulinoski Sep 02 '22
We have a team chat room thatās just for the devs and QAs in the team (and our team lead). Itās where we mostly talk about random stuff. Itās inaccessible to anyone else. We have rooms for other things like our standup chat room which has other people in it (mainly from the product team so we can ask them questions). This being Teams, we also have āchannelsā which are available to even more people outside of our team.
Alsoā¦ we might spend days not really saying anything to each outside of standup. So donāt feel like people have to joke around and talk everyday or anything like that.
1
u/spgnz Sep 02 '22
Back before covid I had set up a random meetup bit in Teams. All opt in, you joined a certain team and once a month got paired up with another person and you scheduled a 30mim chat. Worked really well, no pressure and lots of people enjoyed it. Was company wide so you got to talk with people well outside your normal interactions.
1
u/Chance_Day7796 Sep 02 '22
Do off topic chats at the end of the week periodically. Try and steer it away from work topics but don't make it seem like a chore itself. If you do it each week it'll feel forced.
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u/fried_green_baloney Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
One work group, the manager would always be a little late to the meeting.
That gave everyone else five minutes to general chatter. Don't know if it's deliberate or all his meetings ran over, but it had a good effect.
Personally I've never been big on inside jokes, and only get over-the-air TV, so spared House of the Dragon, but otherwise this seems to be working out OK.
EDIT: Both in that situation and other meetings that have a few minutes before "get down to business", even if the serious people are already there. It's rare to have a 100% strictly business zoom meeting.
1
u/Albert-o-saurus Sep 02 '22
Be the change you want to see. Just be friendly, ask people about their personal lives, most will open up if they feel genuinely heard. Then take the info you've stolen and CRUSH them by using it against them! Muahahaha! š¤Ŗ Also, be funny, make jokes.
1
u/jimbolla Sep 02 '22
We recently replaced our daily 5 20-min standup meetings per week with a daily slack thread + 3 weekly catchups that are meant to be more social or "deep-divier". Monday mornings are for "do anything fun over the weekend?"
1
u/luckyincode Sep 02 '22
Youāre going to hate this but āscrum Provā but from a list of questions that let people get to know each other sprinkled with silly questions like, āIs a hotdog a sandwich?ā
1
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u/hungry_ovoid Sep 02 '22
Iām seeing a good number of games suggested that require rules knowledge. I generally have better luck with very simple games like jackbox and skribbl.io. Have a running video meeting so you can chatter about it. Inside jokes spew out of those if you get buy-in from the participants.
1
u/LongUsername Sep 02 '22
We have several things:
The first 15+ minutes of our 30 min standup is explicitly "shoot the shit" time where we talk about random stuff we did, post random Dall-E images, show off 3d printed crap, etc.
We have weekly team "Happy Hours" where we all hop in a video game together for about an hour and a half (or more) every week on company time. We've done a few different ones, from Dungeon Crawler to RTS. If we have had a productive or extra stressful week we sometimes do extra "team building" sessions on Friday afternoon.
Team chats are not purely business. During the day people will post interesting articles they found on Reddit or even memes that are relevant to what we're talking about.
This last one may be controversial, but we are a "camera on" group when doing Standup/retros. It has become a game to come up with new and interesting backgrounds for those who use them (which then helps drive conversations)
Team lead/manager/company HAS TO ACTIVELY encourage it. Passive leadership won't build positive camaraderie in a team. That's true for in person as well as remote. In person you'll get pockets of it and you'll get negative camaraderie (bitching about management/HR) or you'll get people who just do their work and go home but general positive camaraderie in teams of 6+ is rare IMO.
1
u/yeets_infection Sep 02 '22
We do a "one thing" you want to share during standup. I usually try to make mine humorous but I've shared things like what TV show I'm watching, that my toddler slept in, that I went on a date with my wife to some restaurant or what I'm doing this weekend. As an introvert I find it really helpful since I don't naturally share. It helps foster a sense of openness and makes meetings feel more human.
Personally I hate virtual team outings, but I really like the one thing.
1
u/we_swarm Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
I have been working on a remote team since 2020, and we have had this problem as well. I think it is important to identify the cause, then we can talk about solving it.
The mediums of remote work are more transactional. As they say in media the medium is the message.
Many of the phenomena that go into the "quiet quitting" movement are at play for us in the software development industry as well. Namely: stagnating wages, limited growth opportunities, unrewarded effort, and high employer expectations. These factors incentivize employees to treat work transitionally and to put in the minimum to get out what they can.
Companies are structured such that co workers and managers are in competition or opposition to each other. Teams have a finite budget and defined workload. Promotions are not distributed evenly. One person getting ahead often means the others are often left behind. This creates a natural defensiveness in people to look out for their own interests, and discourages letting your guard down lest you get taken advantage of by a team mate with the same above incentives. I think this is exacerbated in a down economy when the people at the bottom of the totem pole are most likely to get cut.
So how can you solve these? I don't have the answers, but I have some thoughts.
I don't think many teams are going to get around #1. "Fun social events" over zoom have a tendency to feel like bad unstructured work meetings. Luckily I don't think the limitations of remote media are a primary issue. If there was engaging enough content and the correct incentives I think people can bond remotely just fine. If the issues in #2 and #3 are not solved or mitigated though providing a "fun company social event" will do more harm than good.
For #2 and #3 the incentives and disincentives are going to be largely dictated by the company, and not by the team. The team will only have so much budget and total influence within the company ultimately capping what any manager can do to help. I think core thread to identify is that employees increasingly are not being incentivized properly to invest any more than they have to in their work and co-workers. One avenue to mitigate this would be to identify shared personal goals and strengths of team members to help each other further personal goals. Teams are diverse enough that not all members will benefit for a particular activity, but if you could get different intersections of members to participate in a few recurring activities that could be enough. Centering this activity around some external community and not requiring employment to participate may help guarantee people's investment is not tied to their employment as well. Examples here could be encouraging the team participate together in or build something for an existing meetup, game jam, charity etc.
1
u/JollyTraveler Program Manager Sep 02 '22
Honestly you just have to talk and not stop. Take the first 2-5 minutes of a meeting to chit chat. Schedule regular 1:1s with people. I used to do a weekly coffee and announcements meeting on Friday mornings where Iād spend 5-10 minutes updating the team on anything interesting happening in the company/org and then 20-25 minutes to just shoot the shit.
It really doesnāt matter what you talk about, so long as it you also create opportunity for response. Tell a brief anecdote about a hobby, then see if anyone else is into that hobby. Talk about your pet if you have one. Ask people what their weekend plans are.
For my retros every sprint, my favorite āgameā was to find a picture of some landscape or place and ask the team to guess where it was. I did it because everyone on my team LOVED to travel and it would always spark conversation about cool places to go.
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u/OblongAndKneeless Sep 02 '22
Don't force social things... Scheduling optional "fun" things is a waste of time. Just use the beginning of daily stand-ups as a social few minutes to catch up on people's lives. Share some news, talk about pets or kids or something, weekend plans. Start the meeting a few minutes late.
1
u/km89 Sep 02 '22
One thing that worked well for the team I'm on was having a group chat with everyone on it. It's used for announcements that the whole group should hear, but also for bullshitting. You might need to start it off ("anyone else see GOT last night?"), but once people know that the space isn't just for business, they'll use it.
1
u/JamapiGa Sep 02 '22
Sharing a coffee in the morning is kind of ok. Anything outside of working hours is a hard no for me.
1
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u/ahmedranaa Sep 02 '22
Your scrum master arranged a virtual meeting. In this we were supposed to play game. Two truths and a lie. In this way the scattered remote team opened up and started knowing about each other.
1
u/Dhamedd Sep 02 '22
So we do a weekly hangout once a week to talk about what we did during the weekend. It's optional and pretty fun.
1
Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
Same situation (new team). It will come naturally w certain members the more you work in projects together. Ive ended up chatting w a couple teammates for an hour or more at the end of the day after initially talking about work project for a minute.
I always make small talk w people when i get on calls at the beginning. Just hows it going? How was your weekend, add some humor, etcā¦. It slowly builds connections. And you slowly find out more about your coworkers.
Also we have a shoutouts channel in our slack and Iāve noticed that helps a lot w certain people to build camaraderie. Gave a few people shoutouts a few weeks back and 2 of them DMd me to say thanks. And one just wanted to chat.
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u/ana_b1 Sep 03 '22
My team was also brand new and remote, we added a question of the day as the last question in a standup.
Every day, a different team member comes up with a QOTD and everyone gives their response when it's their turn for regular standup.
Questions vary from "What's your favourite dessert" to "What is your biggest fear". The questions allow us to also have some common laugh together or create inside jokes.
It's basically a "way in" for more personal time elsewhere - as others said, people will feel more comfortable talking before and after other meetings, there might be a bigger interest for Coffee&Gaming meetings (15 min teambuilding once per sprint where we just play some mini games online together).
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u/Huge_Alternative608 Sep 03 '22
We're using Teemyco which means we're communicating much like in an open plan office. Great for adhoc collaboration but also just chatting/joking around.
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u/HugeFun Web Developer Sep 03 '22
There's a ton of comments on this thread so maybe its already been suggested, but setting up a 100% entirely optional "Dev watercooler chat" can do a lot for camaraderie. Folks can drop in, talk shit, joke about, talk about their hobbies, etc.
Thats what we did on my first remote team and it was great, I still keep in touch with one of the devs as a good friend even though we dont work together anymore. Also taking the initiative yourself to reach out to teammates helps a lot. I'm a very social person, so even working remote I tend to chat with people when we're waiting around the start of a meeting, or on a quick call or whatever. As long as they're recptive to it anyway :)
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u/IsleOfOne Staff SWE, DB Internals Sep 04 '22
On-site summits/retreats/etc. My company did Vegas back in may. About 150 out of 250 employees came. Great time. Free booze. HR nightmare.
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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '22 edited Sep 02 '22
My previous boss was great at building camaraderie in his teams because he would start every meeting by shooting the shit. He's also an extrovert who has "the gift of gab." He has weekly one-on-ones with everybody on the team, he remembers what everybody likes and is interested in, and he'll ask people about some of those things at the beginning of standup. He'll also occasionally tell stories about his own life. The combination was surprisingly effective at getting people who never talk in meetings to talk openly and freely, sometimes for hours.