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Remote Work
29 posts about Remote Work. Every summary links to the original.
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Bridget Harris on bootstrapping your startup - The Intercom Blog
Bridget Harris bootstrapped YouCanBook.me, a SaaS scheduling tool, to their $1 million in annual recurring revenue and profitability without taking any venture capital funding. The company, now serving more than 10,000 customers including Atlassian and Shopify, emerged from a freemium scheduling tool called When is Good after businesses showed willingness to pay. Harris argues that VC interests often prioritize rapid growth and timely exits, which can conflict with a founder’s long-term vision, but bootstrapping still requires exposure to external ideas. She draws on her past as a busker to explain the need for adaptability and risk tolerance in bootstrapping, and she has banned internal email at her remote company to encourage productivity and collaboration. The key to bootstrapping, according to Harris, is finding problems that can be solved incrementally through agile and lean principles, enabling sustainable growth without external funding.
Getting ready for 2026 results: A look back on Developer Survey findings
Drawing on 15 years of data, the post compares 2024 and 2025 Developer Survey findings across AI evolution, work settings, and community demographics ahead of the 2026 results. AI tool usage grew from 62% in 2024 to 79% in 2025, while agent adoption jumped from 31% in 2025 to 59% in an April 2026 pulse survey, with ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot as primary gateways. Among learners, AI tool use rose from 63% to 73.3%, but favorable sentiment dropped from 72.2% to 52.8% and confidence in output accuracy declined, signaling growing skepticism. Work settings evolved, with fully remote falling from 38% to 32.4% and hybrid models gaining ground, yet 82% of respondents retained some remote flexibility in 2025. The post raises open questions for the 2026 survey, including whether the gap between AI use and enthusiasm persists and how agent delegation affects developer workflows.
The 2026 Developer Survey is now open (for human developers only)!
The 2026 Developer Survey is open to gather data on software builders' tools, working lives, and emerging practices. Marking fifteen years since its initial 2011 release, the annual survey focuses heavily on the role of artificial intelligence and autonomous agents across the software development lifecycle. Past survey results indicated that while developer adoption of AI and agents doubled, user trust declined alongside escalating concerns regarding generated code quality. In addition to modern AI trends and financial return considerations, the questionnaire maintains traditional inquiries regarding day-to-day technologies and developer workflows. The survey is hosted on the Qualtrics platform, which requires users to pause third-party ad blockers and adheres to regional access restrictions across multiple countries.
Strengthen customer loyalty and employee engagement with Vouchers for Uber Eats
Uber for Business is introducing Vouchers for Uber Eats, a meal-benefit feature intended to help organisations engage customers, guests, and employees during changing work and event routines. Businesses can create single or bulk voucher campaigns, choose coverage amounts, and apply controls for spending per order, order counts, dates, times, and other parameters. Recipients claim vouchers through an Uber account and redeem them at checkout, while administrators can track claims, meals ordered, total spending, and costs within a set time frame. The post presents uses including feeding teams returning to work, supporting remote events, treating clients, welcoming guests, and recognising employees, with no-contact delivery and access to 400,000 restaurant partners in over 6,000 cities cited as supporting options. It also says average delivery time is under 30 minutes, based on internal Uber data from 2018.
Working at the intersection of data and AI with Kenza Boulisfane
Thumbtack software engineer Kenza Boulisfane develops an artificial intelligence tool called the Marketing Analytics Agent to democratize access to complex cross-channel marketing data. Non-technical staff across Data Science, Growth, Brand, and Product can ask natural language performance queries without requiring SQL expertise or manual reporting. A primary technical challenge involves unifying fragmented data across multiple advertising platforms that define metrics differently while maintaining data reliability. The system interprets natural language queries, analyzes underlying performance metrics, and translates results into actionable, data-backed recommendations for next steps. Boulisfane also notes that virtual work environments enhance collaboration by encouraging clearer documentation, intentional communication, and focused individual productivity.
How Chronicle hit #1 on Product Hunt using Notion
Chronicle’s Product Hunt launch aimed for a few hundred upvotes but reached number one and generated a waitlist of more than 100,000 signups. The remote team used Notion as a launch “mission control,” expanding an initial planning page into a database with status and due-date properties, assigned owners, collaborator tags, asset links, social copy, and calendar views. The shared hub coordinated feature timelines, asset publication, emails, LinkedIn posts, announcements, pre-launch instructions, and real-time launch-day updates without losing a single source of truth. Templates turned tasks into reusable pages containing creative files, drafts, and strategy notes, while the broader workspace also stored customer interview transcripts and marketing work. The team attributes the result to early preparation, careful copy and assets, coordinated support from its ecosystem, and treating the launch as a company-wide event; it says the process enabled speed, alignment across time zones, and documented repeatability.
Engineering the right opportunities for Thumbtack Pros.
Ashmann Syngle, a backend software engineer on Thumbtack's Pricing team, focuses on systems that connect local service professionals with homeowners. To improve matching and revenue operations, the team recently deployed new pricing features, launched experiments, and partnered closely with Data Science and Monetization Experience groups. Current engineering efforts center on infrastructure enhancements, specifically upgrading alerting and monitoring across owned services to raise system reliability and operational efficiency. Because the team maintains complex monetization systems within a codebase that has evolved over many years, engineers conduct deep system analyses to evaluate edge cases before implementing foundational platform modifications. Thumbtack supports these initiatives through a virtual-first operational model complemented by regular in-person offsites.
MongoDB is a Glassdoor Best-Led Company of 2025
MongoDB has been named one of Glassdoor's Best-Led Companies of 2025, an honor ranking the top 50 organizations with over 1,000 employees based entirely on employee reviews. This recognition coincides with recent company milestones, including the release of MongoDB 8.2, integration with Voyage AI embedding models and rerankers, and the introduction of the MongoDB Application Modernization Platform. MongoDB now serves nearly 60,000 organizations, encompassing more than 70 percent of the Fortune 500 alongside artificial intelligence startups. Company employees attribute the workplace recognition to leadership transparency, regular quarterly goal alignment, and a supportive hybrid work model that grants staff autonomy over their work locations outside the New York City headquarters.
SupaClub
SupaClub is announced as the “world’s first Software Engineering Nightclub,” a Bali venue intended to combine Hardcore Techno with software engineering for South East Asia’s digital nomads. The stated motivation is that Supabase team members working remotely in Bali could not bring laptops into established nightclubs, preventing them from fixing bugs while listening to music. The venue is described as being in Canggu, opening the following Friday, with capacity for 4,000 developers across four floors, dedicated DJs, breakout rooms, 1Gbps WiFi, and bookable standing desks. Its private conference rooms reportedly offer SupaBrew bottle service, whiteboards, and UltraWide monitors, while the opening-night announcement names Ja Rule and Niki Minaj as performers. The post invites readers to request guest-list spots by email with a GitHub link and the subject “Re: april fools.”
How Good Documentation Can Improve Productivity
Internal documentation is presented as a productivity and scaling tool for engineering organizations, especially as people move between teams, projects, or companies and remote work makes writing a default channel for knowledge sharing. Shopify’s approach combines standardized writing practices with three primary locations: Markdown microsites built with Docusaurus, internal GitHub for issues, READMEs, setup guidance, and searchable code, and the Vault, a GitHub- and Markdown-powered source of contextual information. The article argues that documentation should be treated as a product: it should be searchable, user-friendly, kept fresh, integrated into CI/CD, and hosted where engineers already work. It also recommends making writing routine through small contributions, paired writing, peer review, and audience-aware context, concluding that accessible documentation speeds onboarding, reduces duplicated problem-solving, supports asynchronous and cross-team collaboration, and improves developer literacy.
Who We Hire at Supabase
Supabase describes the hiring traits and operating model it believes support its growth, arguing that people matter more than methodology. It looks for extreme asynchronous effectiveness, egoless execution, continuous incremental improvement, a bias toward immediate action, ambitious problem-solving, and a founder mindset; seniority does not exempt anyone from independent-contributor work, self-management, or maintenance. The 60-person team spans 25 countries, uses meetings as a last resort, and gives autonomous product teams access to shared metrics, user feedback, and equity through an ESOP. Teams are organised around products such as Postgres, Auth, Storage, Realtime, and Functions, while cross-cutting groups consult rather than merely receive delegated tasks. Three-month product cycles set ambitious goals, and Kaizen Weeks focused on QA, documentation, and performance help address technical debt and incorporate improvements into ongoing workflows.
Three Essential Remote Work Practices for Engineering Teams
After Shopify became a fully remote-first company, its engineering organization refined how teams communicate, collaborate, and work across time zones. The recommended team structure concentrates engineers in related time-zone regions to maximize synchronous availability for discussion, pair programming, mentorship, and questions, while relying on asynchronous writing and documentation between teams. Teams are also asked to define communication norms that specify which medium to use, expected response times, and whether contact is appropriate after hours; documenting these rules reduces ambiguity and protects focus. Individuals should intentionally shape routines and work-life boundaries around their own energy, productivity, health, and responsibilities, then integrate those preferences with team norms. Together, these practices support flexible remote work by combining synchronous collaboration within teams, asynchronous coordination across teams, and greater control over the working day.
A Software Engineer's Guide to Working Across Time Zones
Working across time zones can make live collaboration difficult when teammates are nine to 12 hours apart, as described by a developer based in Singapore. The proposed alternative is to treat much of the work as asynchronous and deliberately document progress, blockers, decisions, and context. Examples include taking turns across working hours, annotating non-obvious pull request changes, posting end-of-day summaries with links or investigation notes, and recording meetings with agendas, key decisions, and action items. During Shopify's Hack Days prototype work on Linkpop, a Singapore-based frontend developer handed off updates before sleeping while North American teammates extended backend functionality and responded to blockers. The post concludes that these practices become habits that support handoffs, reduce back-and-forth, preserve information for absent teammates and future reference, and can provide longer uninterrupted focus periods.
A Flexible Framework for Effective Pair Programming
Pair programming is presented as a mentoring and onboarding tool for early-career developers in Shopify’s Dev Degree program, where interns use it to build technical and communication skills. The author created a flexible framework to address progress tracking, session goals, a safe space, and communication, then refined it through an interactive RenderATL workshop with more than 30 attendees. The framework lets pairs choose roles, structure, agenda, environment, and communication practices; one described style assigns a driver to type and explain thought processes while a navigator reviews, observes, and suggests edge cases or refactorings, with frequent role switches. It also warns against hostile, passive-aggressive, and overly absolute language, and the pilot received positive intern feedback for supporting learning goals in a flexible format while continuing to evolve.
How to Build Trust as a New Manager in a Fully Remote Team
The post explains why building trust as a new manager in a fully remote organization differs from joining a team with established relationships: passive cues and casual interactions are harder to observe, so remote work requires intentionality. The proposed 90-day plan focuses on the environment during the first 30 days, the team during the next 60, and the manager thereafter. Early actions include pairing sessions, one-on-ones, peer-group sessions, understanding the wider organization, setting up remote tools, and building cross-company relationships. Team leadership emphasizes spending time with members, using asynchronous communication for productivity and synchronous meetings for connection, and creating psychological safety through open communication and transparent discussion of failures. The final phase addresses FOMO, workday design, and experimentation through feedback and reflection.
Perspectives on Onboarding: Joining Shopify as an Engineering Leader
Shopify’s onboarding program is presented as an alternative to the common first-day experience of receiving a laptop, documents, and a team without enough context. It gives new engineers, including engineering leaders, a structured period of roughly six weeks to learn the product, merchants, engineering practices, and company values, including by creating test shops and using the admin. Avanti Ketkar and Maria Robledo describe how this preparation helped them connect onboarding content to later work, ship a pull request after using a test shop, and build relationships and trust in a remote environment. Their accounts also cover the adjustment to learning before delivering impact, moving from a .NET background to Ruby and Rails, managing time zones, and keeping technical craft relevant while leading teams.
How We Built Shopify Party
Shopify Party is a browser-based internal tool designed to make virtual hangouts more social and reduce video fatigue after Shopify moved to remote work. Its 3D spaces favor non-prescriptive play, letting participants explore and manipulate objects, join or leave at any point, and use a small control set rather than follow prescribed rules or win conditions. The initial version was built in three months with Unity 2020 and the Universal Render Pipeline, exported to WebGL, while Normcore synchronizes game state, provides VoIP and networked physics, and uses room time to keep autonomous objects aligned across clients. Performance work included third-party assets, GPU instancing for repeated models, simpler materials, and adjustable render resolution. The launch exceeded expectations, with hundreds of games played each week, and the tool is positioned as an option alongside video conferencing rather than a replacement.
Asynchronous Communication is the Great Leveler in Engineering
After Shopify became a remote-first company in March 2020, globally distributed engineering teams had to replace office habits and spontaneous context-sharing with remote-focused ways of working. The article presents a spectrum of synchronousness, ranging from video calls and pair programming through chats, recorded video, email, written documents, wikis, and READMEs, with increasing permanence toward the asynchronous end. It argues for writing as a primary communication mode, replacing meetings where possible, recording and rebroadcasting events, documenting decisions, maintaining a single source of truth in the Vault, and defining team norms for overlap, deep work, code review, and shipping across time zones. It also cautions that not everything should become asynchronous: synchronous meetings, pair programming, social activities, and intentional in-person gatherings preserve human connectivity, while asynchronous practices provide flexibility, equal access to information, and durable archives.
We Raised $100 Million for Open & Collaborative Machine Learning 🚀
Hugging Face announced a 100 million dollar Series C funding round led by Lux Capital, alongside participants including Sequoia, Coatue, and several angel investors. The platform hosts over 100,000 pre-trained models and 10,000 datasets spanning natural language processing, computer vision, speech, and other scientific domains for more than 10,000 customer organizations. The company plans to use the capital to expand research, open-source initiatives, tooling, and efforts focused on mitigating machine learning limitations like biases, privacy risks, and energy consumption. In addition, the organization is directing the BigScience research workshop with over 1,000 participants to train a massive open-source multilingual language model. Following organizational growth from 30 to more than 120 employees in twelve months, the remote-friendly company is actively hiring across all positions and seniority levels.
Supabrew - Never Code Thirsty
Supabase presented SupaBrew, a mock non-alcoholic beverage engineered specifically to address developer thirst during extended coding sessions and large pull request reviews. Developed following a survey of 80,000 registered developers, the recipe relies entirely on three ingredients consisting of barley, hops, and water in strict adherence to German beer purity laws. The mock packaging design features bottles manufactured from recycled cathode-ray tube monitors and labels repurposed from leftover Ubuntu conference stickers. The fictitious rollout introduces tiered pricing models, including free access for indie developers, Pay-as-you-Drink consumption billing, and dedicated enterprise tiers. Supabase concluded the announcement by confirming that the product release is an April Fools joke.
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