A conversation with ShiftLeft CTO and co-founder Chetan Conikee about ShiftLeft and remote working. As Chetan describes, remote working was a default way of work for ShiftLeft since its inception and it is not relying on its learnt experience to cope up mandatory home work culture.
Alok, VP of products at ShiftLeft talks about how he is engaging with enterprise customers while being remote.
A conversation with ShiftLeft CTO and co-founder Chetan Conikee about ShiftLeft and remote working. As Chetan describes, remote working was a default way of work for ShiftLeft since its inception and it is not relying on its learnt experience to cope up mandatory home work culture.
Alok, VP of products at ShiftLeft talks about how he is engaging with enterprise customers while being remote.
Alok: 0:14
Welcome to sources and sink podcast. I'm Alok and run product management at Shift Left, and my today's guest is Chetan who is the CTO of ShiftLeft
Chetan: 0:29
Hello. Good evening. How are you doing?
Alok: 0:31
Hey, I'm doing fine. So, Chetan, How many folks used to work remote in our company a week back? And how many additionaly have started working remote once we announced that everybody needs to go to more because off the corona virus situation.
Chetan: 0:47
So prior to this challenging and trying times of Covid 19 that we're facing shift left as a company had two satellite offices. One was in Santa Clara, where we had approximately about 7 to 8 members on Berlin, where we had approximately 10 to 12 members. The rest of the team members, approximately again 9 to 10 have always been operating in a telecommute fashion, meaning the very most. But given the trying and challenging times that we're facing at the moment, everyone of us have con remote, so there's a lot of exchange of information happening with the past four days, where some of us who are not used to working remote are asking and learning from those who have worked remote.
Alok: 1:33
Can you for the benefit off our audience, give us a sense of where all in the world we have those remote employees? I think you talked about Santa Clara and Berlin. Which all other Geo's that you're talking about?
Chetan: 1:49
Definitely. We have employees that are working from Argentina, Spain, New Zealand, Luxembourg, New York City. New York is also considered a site for us, given that we are our satellite excuse based in Santa Clara in California and a few other places and just a touch on a critical topic of how we got how we came about identifying these individuals. I personally worked with some of them in the past, or I used to work or follow their work or use their work even that some of them were contributing to various open source projects on a different phases of my life. I used to consume some of their work, follow them on Twitter. And I sorts built a relationship which essentially gave me the leverage to reach out to them and ask them to join Shift left in the early days.
Alok: 2:41
So you have been very comfortable to hire remote and that working culture actually became comfortable to rest off all of us, right?
Chetan: 2:52
Absolutely. I wouldn't say I'm totally comfortable. I'm actually learning as we speak, because, you know, the notion of remote has different perspectives to it. Because, you know, typically, open source contributors have a certain intrinsic discipline in the way they operate. So in that sense, I understood and built somewhat of an understanding of how to operate with discipline remotely. But, I still work in an office set up. You and I are office colleagues. So what I'm missing the most is all the hallway chatter and coffee breaks, our walks that we typically take; Because that is when we typically share some of our ideas that germinated to become products. And that is something that I'm beginning to miss and learn how to adapt to in this new world,
Alok: 3:58
I can say likewise, although I have some other thoughts and we can talk about it offline. (laughs ) You are running engineering. If I ask you, to kind of talk about your big learning and in terms off remote working and specifically from last two years and also what you have seen the change in last one week. I think you just touched upon some of the things, But maybe you can talk more about the remote culture. What is the general learning that you have in last two and half years?
Chetan: 4:35
So progressively we've learned how to do remote actively. And In the beginnings, we consulted with the various companies that have been practicing more than a very efficient fashion. Companies like Sonatype, GitLab have been operating in a remote mode very efficiently. So in the beginnings, we spoke to some of the executive leaders, with the engineers, read some of the material and learned. But that learning came with a cost because often we want to tap into the collective intelligence across the planet rather than focus on a concentrated area in our hiring sphere. Because, you know, they're plenty of great engineers, scattered order all around the planet.
Chetan: 5:21
But when it comes to hiring, you don't want to formulate a bias and hire people only from a particular location. So with that we expanded our scope! Essentially found great engineers through their work because we watch some of these engineers create great projects on Github, then directly reached out to them and we were fortunate enough that they communicated, reciprocated back with us and came on board to join our family at shift left.
Chetan: 5:49
After they came on board the one thing that we learned gradually is how can we be sensitive to different time zones. Because often you know when we scheduled meetings we forget that we have our fellow engineers who are operating in a different time zone. So over time, we've become more sensitive to it. Because, you know, we committed mistake where, you know, often we had to keep them awake at late hours in the night or early hours in the morning in order to attend our meetings at the schedule. So that was our first mistake that we managed to correct by essentially polling the entire team and asking what is an amicable schedule for all of us to talk?
Chetan: 6:28
The second mistake is hallway conversation. You know, like I mentioned earlier when some of us are acquainted with office setups, have this tendency off yelling over our shoulders, starting debates and you know, essentially coming up with ideas and what gets left behind are our colleagues who are in other parts of continent and who are not listening to our dialogue. That was mistake number two and then where we made that fundamental shift of chatting and initiating dialogue on channels like slack so that everyone is listening, everyone gets an opportunity to express their opinion and participate in our system.
Alok: 7:09
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think this has been an important aspect. I'm glad that we touched upon that. Actually, I can also share my perspective from a product management perspective. I think I have chatted with you on this.
Chetan: 7:26
Absolutely would love to hear your experience too, because you come from a different world, which is product management and the product management works very closely with engineering. So would love to hear your perspective because you know, it's almost been over a year now that you've been a part of shift left. So tell me more about how you know you have embraced this and what are the challenges that you face
Alok: 7:50
Actually, good that you think that I have just been in a year, although I'm going to close to two years now. laughes.. But I think from a product manager perspective, I have a slightly different feeling. I used to and I will take it around 10 years back when I was working at McAfee and I was working out of Bangalore and my engineering team was based in three different geographies. One was in Bangalore. One was in UK, Aylesbury and 3rd one was in Santa Clara. So that gave me a very founding perspective on how to work with remote teams. And then there were customers who were again part of different geos, I had somebody in Tokyo in Japan and one was in Saudi Arabia, than few were in Spain, then we had in US. So for me the work life was global and everybody was remote and it was a lonely experience to begin with. So for me, it was are different set of issues. For me, I was very comfortable with remote, but I had a need to go out and meet people because sometimes for me as a product manager, which was very important to sense that emotional experience, on how our customer experiences my product. Or how an engineer is looking at my requirement. So while I'm comfortable with remote, I had an opposite need to meet people. And so I'm trying to kind of begin to miss that, and I can talk more about that. But that was a kind of a quick flavor to that
Chetan: 9:34
You touched on a very critical aspect which is emotion and let me, let me pontificate a bit on this aspect. You particularly stalked about your relationship with customers because you know you are instrumental in building a product and customers experience what you build. And often as a diligent product manager, you have to sense that emotion. It's almost like virtually looking over their shoulder and sensing How they are experiencing your product And likewise, you know, given that you mentioned that - another thought triggered because engineers to engineers communication also follows the same modus operandi because you know often with these, you know, with telecommuting, we resort to communication channels like slack and sometimes, you know, in we say certain things. What does those words don't carry is emotion.
Alok: 10:25
Hmm
Chetan: 10:26
And on the other side, someone else could interpret it as arrogance. So that's another degree of sensitivity we have to maintain with telecommuters.
Alok: 10:35
Absolutely on. Actually, uh, I will make a point here. For me when I am, especially in a start up where you are not only making a product, but you are looking to make errors quickly, and some off the errors are about how your customer is perceiving your product. You need to look at the timber off their voice or sense the timber of their voice. You have to sense the facial expression, how they are experiencing you and when as a start-up, they're not only experiencing a product, they're experiencing the way you come across as a company, the way for small small things, small small features or good things that we have implemented, did they get an Aha moment? Captured that emotion? So sometimes it's important for us to be there and watch them, and that is a challenge. I would say that.
Alok: 11:33
But if I have, what I have learnt here and I'm drawing upon that. That if I when things were good I spent time with them, built relationships with many of the customers. I start to get sense from their voices, when I chat to them in a remote setting that what it is that gives me the clue whether they are liking what we have done or not liking what we have done so the real relationship that were formed when I met them is something I carry when I am, when I have to work remote. Does it make sense?
Chetan: 12:08
Absolutely. You know, if I had to summarize and process what you said, building an emotional bond with someone that you're communicating remotely is essential!! Because once you built that, that particular bond which is important from an EQ perspective, then you begin to process and understand how they're either comprehending your product, your communication, your messaging, etcetera. A very good point.
Alok: 12:33
Absolutely. I think you actually talked about a great point about EQ. If you (inaudible) , if you have empathy built in to, whether you deal with your fellow employees, engineers or your customers. If you invest in this then you can also work remote but you still would be connected with them because you have relationship with them. Absolutely great point. So let's actually talk about some of the tools and this is kind of important topic. If I were to ask you and it just purely from your experience and you can also talk about your team's experience, which tool they prefer, which tool has made their life good and which you would like to recommend from a remote perspective? Yeah,
Chetan: 13:23
Absolutely. Thank you for asking that because it's a very critical question and I'm going to add another dimension to your question because often we speak of the tools that worked. But let's also speak of the tools that didn't work. Firstly, let's start with the tools that work. As we communicate with telecommuters, it is critical to over communicate, and our only medium of communication is either a telephone or a Webex channel or, or a videoconferencing channel like zoom, Webex. You know Google. Google has its live meet ups as well, so these are channels where you can put a face to a voice. It's almost akin to speaking to someone on the other side off the window, which is your monitor, and also sense their emotions because that's very important. So the subtle point that I'm saying is when time to time when you are actually scheduling videoconferences, switch your camera on and look at each other and understand and empathize with the person on the other side. Uh um, the other is slack. Slack is critically important because this is where you know we literally are signing on as we come alive in the day at 9 a.m. Or shutting off when we switch off at about 6 p.m. or so in the evening. This is also where it's two people communicating and several people listening, uh, listening aids someone to express their opinion as well which is the inclusive notion of communication, which is very, very important.
Alok: 15:00
You said about how hallway conversation. These are the hallway conversations
Chetan: 15:04
Exactly. It's almost akin to, a, hallway conversation where we're just not talking about work at times, you know, we also have a channel called as random, where we are just, you know talking about several other things in life, sketching up about our families, what we're doing on a weekend, et cetera. So that's a very critical aspect where, you know, we speak off things associated with work and also not so much associated with.
Alok: 15:28
I would mention that we talk a lot about food,
Chetan: 15:47
Absolutely. Given that you are a food critic and a food expert, you know, we learnt so much from you. So that's the fun part. You know, we get to see other dimensions off individuals that are particularly happy.
Alok: 15:47
So let's go do something else you are. But look,
Chetan: 15:47
let me speak of things that didn't work. That's one critical aspect that is. Often we begin to learn by reading material and books and more so often, the first thing we do is read about the culture preset by some other company like Google and Facebook. And what I'd like to use as an example is OKRs and KPIs set by such companies as Google Facebook. Now, these metrics are phenomenal. They are great instruments, to essentially measure how an individual is performing. But remember that what we have to do from learning is first falter and understand that we faltered and then learn rather than subscribe to some other instrument without going through that faltering exercise. So what I'd recommend to start ups is when you start the company, don't just measure humans like robots. with KPIs and OKRs. These are great instruments when you have very large teams and you need a process, a formal process to measure performance and peer reviews of individuals. But if you're a small team, such things don't work very well to me.
Alok: 16:55
Understood! Actually, while you were speaking about that one thing, actually, I just wanted to add that works for a remote setting. And it's kind of very unusual for me to say that it's actually WhatsApp. I can tell you that in last one year how much I have experienced successful moments when I saw customers starting to chat with me on what's up so that it's my Maslow's hierarchy of satisfaction. That first a customer, if he is completely formal with you, he will chat with you on emails. Then he will get you on a phone, and then he may meet you. That's a third level, but in my experience, if the customer or anybody, your friend or employee comes on WhatsApp.. It's somehow has been for me, the most comfort level that any of these persons have assumed with me. I can't tell you why, but there's a high degree of probability of them being on WhatsApp with me, whether employees or customers and their involvement with us as a company. I just wanted to kind of say that!
Chetan: 18:06
Absolutely, that's a trait that we all should learn from you. You know, it's very special, especially when a customer ads you to a very personal channel, like WhatsApp it goes to show that you built a bond that can exceed and transcend the the life span off a company. And you know, we all have to learn from you. Maybe you should do another podcast. You know, following this speaking about how to establish that relationship,
Alok: 18:30
that's a great idea. So let's, uh, pivot to something else. You have bean an investor in your past life, and you continue to be that as a founder of shift left, you were associated with Mayfield. So donning that hat of an investor, how do you think investing in startups? I mean, I'm just looking into your mind that how do you look up a startup, which is being very remote friendly who believes that they want to work with that. I'm surely different investors have different thoughts on that topic. Just can you enlighten us on that?
Chetan: 19:06
Definitely! Often when you don that investor had you guide your decisions using data, not emotional empathy as much. So investors often in the past have always expressed concerns with an all remote setup. And the reason is, data say's that past successes have happened with companies that have created clusters within an in-office set up. And based on that data, often you make decisions. So when it comes to executive teams, investors often wonder whether key exited executives can effectively communicate or very very at high velocity and band with in a remote setup and there are cases in the past that didn't work very well, which is why data guides not to invest in a company in certain cases, which is fairly remote. But I would say that this theses have been debunked and, you know, and the reason is we have seen wide variety of companies that have originated or germinated from open source projects.
Alok: 20:13
Yes, yes!
Chetan: 20:14
And founders of open source product projects are naturally, you know, acclimated to operate in remote self. They're very, very efficient. They have a work discipline and they also good at creating a very large peering structure where their fellow colleagues on the open source project are contributing with that equanimous amount of discipline and gates.
Alok: 20:39
So both of you, both of us, can actually accredit, github a lot for helping us with that kind of a culture. Won't you?
Chetan: 20:50
Exactly! I mean Github is just an enabler to this culture,and some of my friends who founded Cloudera, Confluent and various other companies that are doing phenomenally well have a fairly distributed set up. And this thesis is completely debunked. So I'm very excited about the future.
Alok: 21:07
So, uh, actually, we have covered a lot of ground! So I will ask you, Maybe this is my last question, and actually, this is two parts, and I will also try to answer in my own sense. But let's start with you. What do you think at this point of time, the impact on families of employees? So we know that our few off our employees who have been working remote from so many Geo's but there are some who have just right now stepped up into that and their families, including yours and mines are kind off making those adjustments, so what have you seen? What are the quick things that you are beginning to see?
Chetan: 21:46
I can actually share my personal experience and I'd love to hear yours as well after I do. Um, you know, over the past one week, I have derived a greater degree of respect for telecommuting employees for the mere reason that when you work in a remote set up, you don't have to wake up in the morning and take a bath, change your clothes, drive to your workplace. You almost have to shift from one room to the other and don your working hat and immediately get productive. Remember, when you working from home, you sometimes have to run interference with the you know, your younger children who are running around. You know, I have a four year old myself, and over the past four or five days, I have to figure out ways to keep him occupied and at the same time maintain the necessary discipline.
Alok: 22:37
Absolutely.
Chetan: 22:38
And thirdly, you know what we as telecommuters do is invade the sacred space of our spouses, our partners who are actually living with us. Sometimes they need their space and often we're actually asking from them to take away some part of that space so that we can work with that necessary degree off silence and discipline. So it's an ode to our partners in our, in our lives, because, you know, it's a very important sacrifice that they make for us. And at the same time, you know, I have a very high degree of respect because, you know, for those that do it constantly, it takes a lot to plan, prepare, schedule. So we have to learn this from them
Chetan: 23:25
And I would love to hear your opinion too Alok.
Alok: 23:27
Oh, yes! Oh, actually, I have a couple off things to talk about on this one. I'll talk about one off our junior employees. I'm not going to name him or her in this podcast. But that individual told me that working from home is a unique challenge because he or she never actually established that set up at home. The person also had very young kids, and he/she never give a thought ever to that they would have to work from home. Both husband and wife are actually working, are basically working and both have to work now from home. And there are home space is not designed for two people to work concurrently. So it's kind of a thing that I developed an empathy for that. Not everybody just can start to go remote commuting, as you just said.
Alok: 24:26
From, but from a personal experience, me and my wife have worked remote, and I actually learnt for my wife because she is someone who actually loves to work remote and she has, she's a very efficient worker and one of the things she tells me that when you are working remote, you need to take care of your health. You need to find time to take a walk, to go out and do something from a health perspective and ensure that your food still has a time table. When you're in office, you sometimes have lunches, break fast dinners. They're all kind of scheduled because you have to work with others. When you are solo, sometimes you maybe just in the meetings and eating, and nobody's watching you, and you just can become very unhealthy very quickly. So I actually have, this is something which is I'm learning from a personal perspective.
Alok: 25:24
From a gender perspective. I do believe that female employees generally do better for a remote work culture. It just there, in there, some sort, they have been trained from a mindset perspective to multi task and from a home perspective, they just quickly set up their work life and family life together pretty quickly. So that, I mean that what I've just learned in few days, and I'm sure I would have more learnings,
Chetan: 25:56
I can't agree more. Very good points. I mean, two of those critical points that you laid out one is taking care of our health. Knowing when to take a pause. Define, you know, your heads-down Interval, where you take a walk, come back, clear your head space. That is very, very important in a remote culture. That's something that I've been steadily learning over the past few days. And the other point that you spoke off is, you know, I have personally learned a lot from my mother and my wife and I feel they are naturally tuned to multi task and they're the best leaders that we can actually observe and learn from. So very good point that you raise.
Alok: 26:34
Okay, So I think we covered a lot of ground. So thank you, Chetan for joining this. And this is the start of a podcast journey. And I'm sure this actually became a really interesting topic to kick start the journey. And I'm sure we're going to get more technical as we go along. So thank you to our audience who have been listening to this from both me and Chetan. Thank you.
Chetan: 27:01
Thank you. Alok! Great podcast! Look forward to more.
Alok: 27:04
Thank you, Bye!