Misc Misc

What do you want this founder to teach you about managing people remotely?

Posted on Jul 21, 2012 - 10:00 AM PST

Ryan Carson, founder and CEO of Treehouse, is dropping by Mixergy soon. But before he does, we want to hear from you!

Ryan manages 40-full-time employees, mostly based in the United States, from his home in the United Kingdom. Despite the eight-hour time difference, Treehouse cleared $3,000,000 in revenue and has more than 11,000 paying customers.

Here’s where you come in: If you’ve got a burning question about how to manage people remotely, leave a comment and tell us what you want to know!

Include a link to your site if you want Andrew to show it to Ryan during the interview and get specific feedback.

  • Carlos

    How do you keep employees motivated?
    How do you maintain the company vision?
    How do you run your meetings?  

  • Renee Harris

    If you are hiring contractors from other countries, what should you be aware of in how the Indian/Latin American/British etc. do things as compared to an American? (ways they do business, business ethic, what they expect from you if it’s a B2B…)

  • http://profiles.google.com/dennisgorelik Dennis Gorelik

    1) Why hire more expensive Americans if you can hire Filipino or Indian workers?
    2) What’s is the most important disadvantage of working with remote team and how you overcome it?
    3) What are the most important benefits of working remotely?
    4) When you are hiring, how do you know who would be able to work remotely and who wouldn’t be able to?

  • Testguestaccount

    Anecdotally, since remote employees have less visibility, they miss out on key decisions and are passed for promotion (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428195). What do you do to prevent that, and ensure remote employees are on the same level as in-office employees?

  • http://mohamedaslam.com Aslam

    1. How you attract potential candidates?
    2. Interview process
    3. Hiring process
    4. Do you request any spec work before the hire?
    5. How you negotiate the salaries?
    6. How you deal with the time zone conflicts?
    7. How you keep your remote employee motivated?
    8. Do you do daily team meeting like Scrum standups?

    Andrew, thanks in advance for the interview. 

    My website are http://aslamnajeebdeen.com and http://frontcube.com

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=520380765 Rupert Littlejohns

    What mistakes must one avoid when managing remotely, and if you were to start over again what would you do differently?

  • http://profiles.google.com/vishal.khialani Vishal Khialani

    hi, I would like to know how to find right talented people and work with them remotely

  • Sachit Gupta

    Ryan talks about the hiring process here: http://ryancarson.com/post/23990414000/how-to-hire-a-lot-of-talented-people-very-quickly

  • http://mohamedaslam.com Aslam

    Thanks @sachitgupta:disqus 

  • http://www.facebook.com/mfarhan1 Mohammad Farhan Riaz

    1. What kind of SOPs has he made?
    2. How he implements the management practices remotely via skype, email, odesk etc.
    3. How he monitors them?
    4. How does he keep them motivated in his absence?
    5. Other tips for management by absence.

  • Chris Risenhoover

    How do you build culture and vision with remote employees?

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    Thanks for being so thorough.

    What does “SOPs” mean?

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    I noticed that 37signals was having trouble including their remote people in their live meetings. Good point.

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    Maybe we should do a whole other course with someone else about finding talent. I don’t think it’ll fit in this course, but it’s a very important topic.

    If anyone has a suggestion for who should teach it, let me know.

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    Great list. I esp like #2.

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    Renee, this might be outside the scope of this program, but it’s a good question.

  • Bob Hiler

     I think he’s referring to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). But I could be wrong.

  • http://www.ssylee.com/blog Stanley Lee

    Andrew: I’ve emailed your team a suggestion. Just an FYI.

  • Martin S.

    Those would be my questions as well. Maybe add “How do you evaluate employee performance?” to the mix.

  • Anonymous

    1) Do you find any value in meeting face to face with your remote team, either individually or as a group?
    2) Are they truly FTE’s or contractors? If FTE’s how do you handle PTO, medical, retirement and more?
    3) Any special considerations for non-compete, non solicitation using remote staff vs. in-house staff?
    4) You are in the UK your team is in the US. What are the legal issues?

  • Janusz

    Have you ever considered using screen monitoring for your remote employees? 

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    Who’d you send it to (or where did you send it)? I want to follow up with them since you and I talked here.

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    Great questions.

  • http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

    I’ve heard of people doing that for smaller tasks. (I think Liam Martin talked about it in his course.) But from what I understand, Ryan has a different kind of team, but it’s a good question.

  • http://www.ssylee.com/blog Stanley Lee

    I submitted an email and it got forwarded to Aire, who I believe forwarded to you.

  • Zeus

    1. Do you think its important to have video meeting or video interview before hire ?
    2. Can you give some of the example of where things have gone wrong because the team was remote and how could you have averted that ?
    3. Salary vs Per hour payment structure ?

New Here? Start With These

You're logged out.

You are not currently logged in.






» Register
» Lost your Password?