Book Your Dayis in the Events Tech Industry

Book Your Day

Exclusive Excerpt from by Make Your Bed Admiral William H. McRaven On May 17, 2014, I was honored to give the commencement speech for the graduating class from the University of Texas at Austin. Even though the university was my alma mater, I was concerned that a military officer, whose career had been defined by war, might not find a welcoming audience among college students. But to my great surprise, the graduating class embraced the speech. The ten lessons I learned from Navy SEAL training, which were the basis for my remarks, seemed to have a universal appeal. They were simple lessons that deal with overcoming the trials of SEAL training, but the ten lessons were equally important in dealing with the challenges of life — no matter who you are. Over the past three years, I have been stopped on the street by great folks telling me their own stories: How they didn’t back down from the sharks, how they didn’t ring the bell, or how making their bed every morning helped them through tough times. They all wanted to know more about how the ten lessons shaped my life and about the people who inspired me during my career. This small book is an attempt to do so. Each chapter gives a little more context to the individual lessons and also adds a short story about some of the people who inspired me with their discipline, their perseverance, their honor, and their courage. I hope you enjoy the book! Start Your Day with a Task Completed The barracks at basic SEAL training is a nondescript three-story building located on the beach at Coronado, California, just one hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean. There is no air-conditioning in the building, and at night, with the windows open, you can hear the tide roll in and the surf pounding against the sand. Rooms in the barracks are spartan. In the officers’ room, where I berthed with three other classmates, there were four beds, a closet to hang your uniforms, and nothing else. Those mornings that I stayed in the barracks I would roll out of my Navy “rack” and immediately begin the process of making my bed. It was the first task of the day. A day that I knew would be filled with uniform inspections, long swims, longer runs, obstacle courses, and constant harassment from the SEAL instructors. “Attention!” shouted the class leader, Lieutenant Junior Grade Dan’l Steward, as the instructor entered the room. Standing at the foot of the bed, I snapped my heels together and stood up straight as a chief petty officer approached my position. The instructor, stern and expressionless, began the inspection by checking the starch in my green uniform hat to ensure the eight-sided “cover” was crisp and correctly blocked. Moving from top to bottom, his eyes looked over every inch of my uniform. Were the creases in the blouse and trousers aligned? Was the brass on the belt shined to a mirrorlike radiance? Were my boots polished bright enough so he could see his fingers in their reflection? Satisfied that I met the high standards expected of a SEAL trainee, he moved to inspect the bed. The bed was as simple as the room, nothing but a steel frame and a single mattress. A bottom sheet covered the mattress, and over that was a top sheet. A gray wool blanket tucked tightly under the mattress provided warmth from the cool San Diego evenings. A second blanket was expertly folded into a rectangle at the foot of the bed. A single pillow, made by the Lighthouse for the Blind, was centered at the top of the bed and intersected at a ninety-degree angle with the blanket at the bottom. This was the standard. Any deviation from this exacting requirement would be cause for me to “hit the surf” and then roll around on the beach until I was covered head to toe with wet sand — referred to as a “sugar cookie.” Standing motionless, I could see the instructor out of the corner of my eye. He wearily looked at my bed. Bending over, he checked the hospital corners and then surveyed the blanket and the pillow to ensure they were correctly aligned. Then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a quarter and flipped it into the air several times to ensure I knew the final test of the bed was coming. With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day. In December 2003, U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein. He was held in confinement during which time we kept him in a small room. He also slept on an Army cot, but with the luxury of sheets and a blanket. Once a day I would visit Saddam to ensure my soldiers were properly caring for him. I noticed, with some sense of amusement, that Saddam did not make his bed. The covers were always crumpled at the foot of his cot and he rarely seemed inclined to straighten them. During the ensuing ten years, I had the honor of working with some of the finest men and women this nation has ever produced — from generals to privates, from admirals to seamen recruits, from ambassadors to clerk typists. The Americans who deployed overseas in support of the war effort came willingly, sacrificing much to protect this great nation. They all understood that life is hard and that sometimes there is little you can do to affect the outcome of your day. In battle soldiers die, families grieve, your days are long and filled with anxious moments. You search for something that can give you solace, that can motivate you to begin your day, that can be a sense of pride in an oftentimes ugly world. But it is not just combat. It is daily life that needs this same sense of structure. Nothing can replace the strength and comfort of one’s faith, but sometimes the simple act of making your bed can give you the lift you need to start your day and provide you the satisfaction to end it right. If you want to change your life and maybe the world — start off by making your bed! For more, check out Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven. Published by Grand Central Publishing . Copyright © 2017 Admiral William H. McRaven. Now available! Amazon , Barnes & Noble , iBooks For more information: http://www.mcravenbook.com

If You Want to Change the World… Start Off By Making Your Bed

Hi I’m Chris, founder of Slite ! Slite is the new way to write in teams. It replaces Googl e Docs, making collaboration and sharing a breeze. About five months ago, Slite was one year old, we were still in private beta and just preparing to launch. Around that time, we applied to Y Combinator’s W18 batch, got in, and are now one month to Demo Day. Applications for the next batch are open — if you’re thinking of applying, here are a few tips that I hope can help. And in bonus, , check it out if you’re curious! here is the application that got us in The written application YC’s application form is a long process, but 100% worth it no matter the output — we got rejected twice with my first company, but every time the application process was helpful. First, because it allows you to clarify your value proposition and makes you ask yourself the touchy questions: what are your key insights, what drives your team and so on. Second, because most of the other applications you will send out will be based on a similar model — this is material you’ll be recycling in some way, shape, or form. create a Slite channel, write an application template and duplicate it everytime you start a new application 😉 💪. Pro tip time: Some advice on writing your application: Block at least half a day with your cofounders to work on it. Be super straight to the point, especially for the video. Cut the crap. The best people in the valley have a tendency to avoid the BS, YC partners are part of those. Get it reviewed by mentors and alumni, they’ll help you avoid some obvious pitfalls. Send it a bit in advance: everybody sends it right at the cliff date, which causes useless stress. Plus, I’m pretty sure partners start reading through them before the limit date so you can give yourself a chance to be among their first reading. The interview Briefly after the end of applications, you’ll receive an email saying either that YC would like to meet with you or that you didn’t make it to the interviews. (To be noted: a week before hearing the news, I actually received a message asking to have a video call. It was to talk about a few unclear bits, so I really don’t think these “edge cases” are worth any interpretation. In fact, our friends at didn’t get any call before the interview and also got in.) Station Some advice on preparing the interview You only have ten minutes with the YC partners: that’s very little room to express yourself. The only solution is to come incredibly prepared. Rehearse the touchy questions over and over again ( can help) iPG Get mentors and alumni to challenge you for practice Rinse & repeat, until you feel sharp and comfortable with every answer The day of the interview: The date you receive the response of the application is known in advance so be ready to pick the right slot for you (I’d recommend the earliest possible to avoid useless stress). The interviews are conducted in small rooms of YC’s offices in Mountain View. You’re invited to wait in the big iconic orange rooms where dinners take place during the program. If you can, avoid waiting too long there: there are too many other nervous teams and it can feel contagious. You’ll be interviewed by 3 to 5 partners. My best advice is: It’s pointless because ten minutes is way too little time, every partner has a different style and you have no way of knowing the output. don’t interprete their behaviours. I actually had this advice from an alumni having been interviewed 3 times, he never guessed right the output. Be incredibly synthetic. You have only 10 minutes, and need to show you have clear vision on each relevant topics. Stay in control of the conversation: you don’t want to spend 5 minutes talking about irrelevant points. For Slite a frequent challenge is bringing up Evernote as a competitor as we brand ourselves frequently as “ ”. The thing Slite is not a replacement for Evernote as they focus mainly on personal usage, and the note app for teams Slite’s core focus is teams . The question did come up during the interview, and it was key to recenter the talk, by explaining that Slite is doing to content what Slack did to communication, and as a result replaces tools like Google docs and Confluence. This doesn’t mean you should avoid your weaknesses: those are actually the ones you must have the clearest answers on. Once the interview’s done, the awesome thing is you’ll get an answer the evening. You’ll receive an email if it’s a no, a call from a partner if it’s a yes. If it’s a no: don’t overthink it, only 1% or so of companies get in. It was no twice for me and it only pushed me to do better and get a yes the third time. If it’s a yes: celebrate and start defining your Demo Day goals, book your first office hours, YC just started! Good luck and whatever the result is, keep it up! 😉 → Small perk: to give you a first taste of YC, we actually made a Slite template on how we experience YC as a team for our batchmates https://slite.com/templates/how-slite-does-yc-w18

Nail your YC application

Okay people, grab your goggles because I’m here to bust some myths wide open. You see, when you’re a “normal person” (read: not super smart) happen to be a successful software engineer — a lot of people ask you what your deal is. and also With a degree in Economics, a life in software engineering wasn’t what I was expecting. I simply took the least bad option in my career, right up until the point where people were paying money to code. quite With that kind of background, it’s no wonder I’m such a massive evangelist that literally anyone can learn to code. But most . don’t The reality is, most people have built coding up into this demigod of fear. And all those fears stem from the idea that “I’m not good enough”. So I’m here today to be a bit of a prick and tell you why you’re all wrong. But like, in a nice way. I have to be good at mathematics This is so ridiculously untrue that it hurts. When I was in school, I was very bad at math. So bad in fact, that my parents got me a tutor. And even with weekly tear-filled sessions I barely scraped through my GCSEs. I just didn’t get it. Fast forward ten years and one glow up later, and I’m a full-stack software engineer. How? Because I’m telling you, it wasn’t by getting better at math. The reality is, math isn’t that important anymore. Sure, back in the day when we were writing in binary or building frameworks — mathematics was kinda a big deal. But now, outside of Machine Learning and academia, you’re not going to see much math that you don’t know. Can you count to ten and know your timetables? Congratulations, you now know enough mathematics to be a software developer. Please collect your certificate at the door. I’m not saying coding is “easy”. It’s not, it’s of work to learn. But it’s also not a load of random green sprawling text from the matrix. It’s a language, and if you take the time to learn the concepts one by one, you get it. a lot will I mean, take a look at . It’s pretty beautiful isn’t it? I’m telling you, the math we used we used in that website — any kid with an abacus could do. But you know what that kid couldn’t do? Choose the right colours. Think about the user flow. Decide on the right fonts and sizes. Understand how to draw the user in. this website There are whole careers in software engineering like that. Careers where you won’t touch math. But where you’ll draw upon that calligraphy book your mum got you every day. Where that time you spent reading trashy magazines will help you plan better layouts. Where all those years playing Xbox will help you think more logically. The web is art, and coding is simply a paintbrush. I’m not smart enough From Zuckerberg to that creepy guy on Silicon Valley, our collective idea of what a software engineer — starts and ends with that nerdy genius stereotype. is I’m not here to tell you they don’t exist. They do. They’re also like the 1% of all software engineers. For every genius teenager living , there are hundreds of regular people building neat stuff. in a bunk bed in the valley Think about Airbnb — one of the biggest software startups in the last decade. Okay, maybe now they’re a unicorn and have the time to do complex stuff. But back when they were a , their MVP was something anyone with Rails could do. cereal company I’m not trying to take away from what they’ve built. But what I am saying is this. You don’t need to re-write JavaScript in smoke signals or design algorithms at Google to be a coder. You can just be the girl building cool things in your bedroom. I don’t have the right mindset A lot of programming revolves around logic, and being able to reason about problems. My beef is this is often unfairly attributed to being a skill — rather than a general skill. math life And sure, logic is pretty important. But it can also be . There are books that teach reason and the scientific method, and logic puzzles online you can do. Even reading blogs by other coder will give you an insight into how they do it. learned But here’s the secret: . There are other skills more important than logic You know what else is important? Communication. Time Keeping. People Management. Let’s say you take my advice. You do a bootcamp, and survive by the skin of your teeth. Congrats! You’re now a very junior programmer. But if you can be that being able to communicate with other developers and management. being able to plan out a project and keep to deadlines. getting people to like you, and persuading them to work hard to help you build cool things. whilst Whilst Whilst Then my friend, you have . a bright future Huckletree is now hiring a Junior Software Engineer! If you’re a JS engineer with an eye for design based in London, then make sure you let us know .

The 3 Lies Stopping You From Learning To Code

: TL:DR Wake up with a startup idea, Imagine yourself to be Steve Jobs, Talk to people who appreciate your idea, Kill yourself building a product without a validation plan, learn nothing & perish. In advance to all of who think I am a demotivating pr*ck, I am not. I don’t sit in an ivory tower and dole out advice. I have made & averted many of these mistakes over the years. The ones where I didn’t avert have always proven to be expensive. Today, if I threw a stone across the street, it would hit somebody working in a start-up. I would imagine that the ecosystem is mature. Truth is, people are none the wiser despite Eric Ries and Steve Blank screaming and writing posts for years. People still fantasize in bars, wake up quit jobs and destroy their lives over ideas that should have never made it past the hangover the next morning. I marvel at the number of people who think building a business is about building an app. Building the app is the last problem. Some how people are disappointed when I say this. They want an expensive lesson that involves engineering cost — without validating the business model. This post is structured to identify problems based on signs. I would encourage every one of you to think hard and not tell yourself stories about why you don’t fall into one of these. If you read any sign and feel even a vague doubt, you probably fall into the category. Sign 1: I have a startup idea, I need to build an app/site/product to launch This mostly comes from non-tech founders. They are lucky because they don’t have the technical expertise to dive right in. I say luckily because startups are not about building apps or products in the beginning. They are about discovering a sustainable business model. This is the hardest part and because of that, we do what is easier — build the product instead. It’s comforting because technical problems can be solved. Business problems are a beast of another nature. They depend on behaviour, market dynamics, understanding willingness to pay, etc. These are all hard to measure when you are sitting in your chair. They are also hard because every entrepreneur thinks his/her target customer behaves exactly like them. The way to shatter all these illusions is to get your product in the hands of a customer. Sign 2: I don’t have a customer using my product yet but if I build more features….. Most startups suffer from this disease. We spend days, months & even years building features without meeting a single customer. Your product will never be fully done, take it to the market and see what happens. In the early days, you are better off working with customers & letting them be your lighthouse. Yes, I know it is not easy to find your early customers. If you can’t find someone to work with your product how will you sell it? Not every prospect will be ready to work with your product, not every customer is an early adopter. If your product solves a problem that is worthy of building a business around, you will find that customer. After making your product fit their needs, your next problem becomes replicating the success and finding others. Sign 3: But I need to build features in my product so that it scales Bullshit. If you don’t have multiple customers on your product, don’t even bother building for scale. You can boil the ocean use the best platforms, go serverless and the list goes on. If you are busy going serverless when you are customer-less, you are doomed. I read somewhere that at Y-combinator they insist on spending time building things that don’t scale in the early days. The wisdom in this is so profound. Scale never comes without engineering cost. Throwing that away hurts. Scale is not a day 1 or day 100 issue for most startups. You should not lead yourself to believe that you will reach scale overnight unless your business shows you otherwise. Thinking about scale, in the beginning, is like worrying about which stadium to book for your concert on your first day at music class. Sign 4: I spoke to 4 people and they told me my product is great Another disease. If none of those 4 people are target customers or worse — they are target customers but won’t adopt your product, ignore this feedback. If your customer says your product is great, that is a good sign. If they say it’s great and use it regularly, that’s a very good sign. If they pay for it, amazing. If they keep renewing, you have won. Don’t listen to the 4 people who tell you your product is great but say nothing else. It’s smoke up your a**. I am not saying ignore feedback, make a note of everything. If you see a pattern take notice as well. A lot of us get caught up in trying to hear what we believe. An echo-chamber where everybody is offering up optimism is dangerous not just useless. I am writing an entire piece about how it is valuable to say no to an entrepreneur. More about that later. Sign 5: I can’t do sales, I need to hire a sales guy and everything will be alright Yes, not all of us are not the best salespeople. In the early days, you should do the sales so that you are talking to the customer. There is no conflict of interest and the right feedback goes back to your product. If you employ a salesperson whose sole interest is to hit targets, you will find him/her giving you excuses on why they didn’t meet the targets. I have said this before, Salespeople are trained to find fits, not gaps. They will miss the critical data points you need for your product. Of course, when you have validated that there exists a market, it would be foolish to continue owning this stream. That is a good time to delegate it to real salespeople. The key is to transition the responsibilities out when you have things figured out. A good salesperson at the right time will shoot your company into the orbit. At the wrong time, you will be shooting yourself in the foot. Sign 6: I have met 3 potential customers & I need to pivot to get things right The most critical thing that we need to understand is, what is a pivot and when to make it. That starts with understanding what metrics we want to measure to see if our product is succeeding. I want to share this tweet at this point: The number of people who abuse the term MVP, I am tempted to start a #meMVPtoo movement. Most of us work with feelings, perceptions & interpretations. All 3 of them are misleading. It can be a hard task to understand why somebody didn’t buy your product. In India, we are non-confrontational so nobody says No, the customer will always say he/she will get back to you. That could mean they will do something or they are not interested. This makes it very hard to get the right feedback. Sometimes your product’s buyer persona is such that decision making is fraught with delays. In such cases, making an intelligent guess on why your product is failing to sell becomes hard. This makes it all the more dangerous to pivot. In the absence of measurable metrics, most of us tend to make a dizzying set of useless pivots. When it’s all over, you won’t even know why you failed. Sign 7: My competition has been around for 10 years, I will wipe them out because my product is awesome Bullshit. If your competitor has been around for 10 years, they have built invaluable market experience and resilience. You have jack shit. Your product needs to find users who aren’t already using another product. Else you need to convince prospects to switch vendors. Resistance to such change will always be high. You need to work doubly hard, your product won’t sell itself or market itself. Features will start making a difference only when customers start using them. Till then your competition is somebody and you are a nobody. Sign 8: I succeeded in company X with 15,000 people, I can do this Running a startup is not like running a large team at a large organization. The leadership skills required are completely different. The vast majority of startups that fail with a veteran from a large company is because of this. Startups can’t be run like mini-versions of large companies. The focus has to be about taking products to the market & validating the business model. People from large companies seem to lack this skill completely. When you move from a large company to a startup you quickly realise how much of stuff was sorted out before it landed on your lap. Sadly, some people never learn. With higher experience, people tend to become opinionated and less malleable. Their worldview gets fixed. When they land up in a startup, they keep trying to replicate their success using large company techniques and the result is always a catastrophe. Sign 9: It is not me, its the <whatever you fancy> The assessment of the market, the approach, the pivots — everything is simply a function of the team and the board. Startups supposedly fail due to the following reasons: Lack of Product-market fitTough market situationsBad chemistry in the team All of the above is simply a function of the people’s inability to understand and adapt to the above. These are the expected challenges. Doing the wrong thing when we encounter them is a sign that we have consistently failed to lead or interpret the signs. Sign 10: I will build everything my customer asks for This is the last one because you have solved the biggest challenge of getting your first customer. Now you have a new problem, you are saying yes to everything your customer is asking for. This means you don’t have a roadmap — your customer is simply asking for stuff because they feel entitled to it. It’s dangerous because customers don’t always know how to ask for stuff, they come with solution requests, not problems. That’s a red flag. Don’t convince yourself that it is a strategic move and that you can course-correct later. Saying yes without reason is a habit you will never be able to break out of. Soon you will find yourself doing the same thing for every customer and then you no longer have a product. It is important to please & retain your customers. However, you should be driving the roadmap else you risk making a mess of your product. I want to wrap up by saying, not all problems present themselves with a sign-board. Sometimes they manifest themselves as organisations where it is impossible to move fast and adapt to changes. Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

How to Waste Money and Time in the Most Painful Way

#1 The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change This is my favourite . The first thing I did after I woke up was to check my phone. After reading this book I was able to break that habit into reading a chapter from a book. The book contains three parts . 1.) The habits of Individuals 2.) The habits of successful organizations. 3.) The habits of societies. It explains the habit loop of cue, routine and reward. Using the techniques explained in the book you will be able to use the habit loop to change your bad habits to good. It contains stories of people and organizations , who benefited from their habits. Book on Amazon #2 Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World We all know that social media usage affects our productivity. This book explained me it’s cost . After understanding the cost , you are likely to restrict your habit next time. I usually get stressed after a day’s of work. This book taught me if i do my work right. It can be both enjoying and satisfying. This author explains why deep work is effective, satisfying and meaningful. This can help you get the best of your day. Worth a read. Book on Amazon #3 A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) Even though the book is about learning techniques. A lot of chapters in the book has got techniques to stop procrastination. The pomodoro technique explain in the book is my favourite. This book also contains strategies used by people from different field of expertise. If you want to be an active learner, this book is worth reading. Book on Amazon If you are interested in developing cloud apps. Do check out my book Cloud Is a Piece of Cake

3 books to help you stop procrastinating

This is my learnings from applying techniques of these beautiful books. 1.) Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World 2.) A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) I have written more about these book . here Before reading these books, I used to overestimate my mind’s ability. I would never keep a to-do list or think through my day’s work. This resulted in me having a hard time getting things done. It’s because the mind has no clarity about the next step. This causes confusion. A confused mind drains your energy. You often end up being stressed . In the book deep work the author asks to schedule time blocks for your day. Here’s my blocks for the day. One thing to keep in mind while scheduling your day is to be specific about it. Avoid writing generic terms . For Example : Instead of scheduling a block called “reading” make it “read Xth chapter from book X”. Try this simple technique and your days are never the same. Do checkout my previous post on productivity. . How I tweaked pomodoro technique for better results in productivity

Boost your productivity by having order in things you do

Establishing a bond between remote employees in the virtual office culture is quite challenging. To ease it, we have Virtual Team building activities. Virtual Team Building Activities refer to those group team building activities usually carried out using any collaboration platform like . These activities' ultimate goal is to bring their teams together virtually despite being apart geographically. Google Meet, Zoom How Does Virtual Team Building Bring A Value into Teams? Meeting deadlines and finishing the tasks in the pipeline is essential. However, Virtual Team Building activities allow you to ensure your team stays in line. Here are few points that emphasize how remote team activities add value. Establishes a good relationship among the peers and allows them to collaborate better on work. Will give a break to remote employees from their work routine, and this small break will help them focus better on work, increase productivity. Trigger employees' ; thus, the chances are high that remote employees will apply similar strategies to solve work-related problems. lateral thinking ability When you hire a remote team, Virtual team-building activities help you get your team to engage, interact, and bond with one another. Several remote development companies with the remote developer and employees practice these virtual remote team building activities. Best Virtual Team Building Ideas and Activities Here we have come up with some virtual remote team building activities and games. 1. Happy First Minute - Unusual Icebreakers Icebreakers provide an excellent kick start to a virtual meeting. It spontaneously creates a quick connect, to be precise, a personal connection with teammates. Before starting the virtual meeting, ask any easy ice-breaking questions like share the emoji you used today while texting? What is your go-to Web series to watch at night?. How To? Give everyone one minute to answer the question. This activity helps remote employees to understand one another better by standing in their shoes. 2. Catch-up Over a work Talk with Idea Board Try to get the remote teams to think about some new ideas and concepts. It may be for an upcoming project, or it may be for the current work. A small talk over work ideas can break the myths revolving around remote work culture. Get a whiteboard or excel or document sheet from your regular collaboration tool, start the Idea talk and see how the team responds. How To? This idea board talk builds a rapport with your team. 3. A Virtual Coffee Station A Virtual Coffee Time is the best time to meet friends and colleagues virtually and A simple way to manage remote teams is by encouraging coffee chat moments. chat. Allow your team to grab their favorite coffee or any beverage and block the calendar for the break. How To? This Coffee Chit Chat will allow remote co-workers to dig the happy moments and boost their minds. 4. Quick Book Review in a Non-review Way Hosting, Read a Book activity is a fun and exciting activity. You can suggest this for only readers and book lovers of your team. Once in eight days, host a virtual book club and request the participants to express their view on the particular book they liked the most. How To? This activity triggers instant conversation, and in the end, a healthy understanding happens between the team members. 5. Virtual Pooling of Knowledge Share and encourage team members to share information on the latest trends and technologies. Give updates on work and review the work, provide ideas and suggestions to improvise. Utilize screen sharing and code sharing tools to impart and suggest ideas and help to solve complex codes. How To? An informal mentoring or pooling enhances your team's quality and additionally builds trust. 6. Virtual Office Olympics An easy way to increase team activeness, weekly online gaming activities, also referred to as can be held. These activities can be either online paid games or interactive virtual games. "office Olympics," Form teams and invite them to play online team games such as Pictionary, trivia, virtual board games, virtual puzzles, to name a few. Office Olympics like the kitchen treasure hunt, pick me up can be included. How To? These games directly contribute to team involvement, interaction, and bonding. 8. Pic Talk Visual Icebreakers are sometimes needed. An image or graphical picture quickly shows what it signifies. Show and Tell is becoming quite a popular trend in virtual team meetings. Show an image, a picture, or a graphical image and question what it describes. You may also draw half the picture on the sheet and share, requesting to fill the remaining. How To? This activity stimulates the brain, refreshes the mind, and acts as a brainstormer. 8. Discuss Over Plans for Vacation Given the current situation of pandemics, traveling is not advisable. Virtual Team Vacation is an ideal activity, as it gives individuals to discuss their plans and trips. For this activity, pair up two members and ask them to discuss their vacation plans in a one-on-one call with each other. Later, one member must brief the travel plan of another person to the group. How To? This activity enhances listening abilities and communication. 9. Interactive Virtual Meetings In the Digital age, one needs flawless virtual team management. So, use collaborative tools to manage and proceed with the virtual team meetings. Use tools like Uber Conference and Google Hangouts to interact with the team effectively. How To? The main idea is to streamline productivity. 10. Online Movie Date Increase the flavor in remote team management with entertainment quotient "Movie Night" Using and other techniques, stream a movie to your remote teams and ask to leave a review in the chat. How To? Video Conferencing The activity enhances interaction and channelizes communication. Bottom Line: When you hire a remote development team, the only major issue in remote employees is  chances of feeling lonely. Following the above engaging and interactive Virtual team building activities is the best way to make your remote team active and productive.

Virtual Team Building Activities For Remote Teams In 2022

Let’s say you have a job interview in a few days. How should you prepare for it so that you can make an informed decision about joining the company, as well as make sure that your interests are taken care of? Prepare your questions An interview is a two-way street: it’s not only the company investigating you as a potential employee; in addition, you are investigating the company as a potential employer. Hopefully, you have some other options available—such as staying at your current place or trying out other companies interested in you. In the best case, you’ll have the flexibility to decide whether you want to follow through with the company or not. To learn about the potential employer, you need to ask questions. The question will depend on what’s important for you at the current stage of your career. Some things I would like to know before deciding to join a new company are as follows: What is their development process? If they use some standardized methodology such as Scrum, I would like to hear how they implement it. Especially whether they have Scrum Master and Product Owner roles covered—and whether those people are easily reachable. I would also ask if they do retrospective meetings. How do they do quality automatization: things such as unit tests, e2e, CI & code-style enforcing? For things that they don't have, I would ask if they would like to see it in the project. I would ask about their product and how they do product design/discovery. Life–work balance questions inspired by : How do they deal with emergencies? How often is there a need to receive a call or respond to messages outside working hours? Healthy Software Developer’s video how long do employees usually work? Salary negotiation The point of going to the interview is to get to the salary negotiation. The result of the negotiation will have a great impact on your life for the whole time you spend at the company—it’s a smart move to prepare well. The earlier you start, the better—as you will have more time to investigate, ask questions, and plan your strategy. The best resource for preparing for an interview in IT is . You can buy the complete e-book, read the chapters online, or get the key advice from the bite-size articles on the website. Fearless Salary Negotiation Research compensation Before you start negotiation, figure out the current situation in the market. A little bit of time spent on systematic investigation can give you a much more precise picture than anecdotes heard here or there. Check out this . chapter on market value estimation Decide your minimum Great advice is to decide on the minimum pay that you’ll accept you start speaking with the company. It could happen that during the various rounds of interviews, they will manage to the company very well or that the effort you have already invested into the company will make you more flexible than you should be. In those cases, having the minimum salary decided ahead of time can be very helpful. . before sell Relevant chapter from the book here Think openly about your options. As you negotiate with the company, it’s good to be flexible about the options you consider. If you are asking for more money than they have budgeted for, you can propose reduced hours with the same hourly rate that you are happy with. Similarly, commuting to the office can easily take 1–2 hours of your day, so a lower salary could be worth it if it comes with guaranteed remote work. Practice interview Try role-playing an interview with someone. If you can handle it, you can ask them to be tough on you—stricter than what you would expect from a real interview. Ideally, you’ll have a tough, low-stakes interview that would make you relaxed during the real thing. Investigate the company Learn about the company—all you can do before the meeting, that is. Check their website, their LinkedIn page, and their key employees. Play around with their product if you can. In short, spend an hour or two trying to learn as much as you can about the company. It will help you ask important questions and make a good impression. Summary A bit of preparation can go a long way. As developers, we often think about the technical part of the interview, but learning about the company and preparing for salary negotiation can help us even more. We can filter out companies we shouldn’t join, and we can make sure that we get as good a deal as possible. Also published . here

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