Remote Work Tools

In this episode we are talking about our remote work tools that enable our distributed team across the world to collaborate, design, and build software. Throughout the episode, Todd, Ken, and Jamon touch on their favorite tools—from Slack, Zoom, and Google Sheets—why they chose them, and the ways they have added custom features to really make the remote experience special.

Show Links & Resources

• Slack
• Zoom
• G Suite
• BlueJeans
• Screenhero
• RealtimeBoard
• InVision
• Trello
• Airtable
• Shush
• Dropbox
• Bigscreen VR
• Taking the Pain Out of Video Conferences by Ken Miller

Episode Transcript

CHRIS MARTIN: The topic at hand today is remote tools, and all of the different ways that you have built a remote company. Where do you even start when you're thinking about what tools to pick when you're going remote?

KEN MILLER: This is Ken Miller, by the way.

It happened very organically for us. To be honest, I don't know that we could've done this company this way before Slack. Because the tools that came before, Hipchat and IRC and Yammer, even though I worked there. Sorry, Yam-fam. They just didn't quite do it. Right? They didn't quite create the online atmosphere that we need to work the way that we do.

Does that sound accurate to you, Todd? I feel like once we found Slack, we were like, "Holy crap, this is epic!"

TODD WERTH: I think there's a few alternatives. Hipchat, at the time, wasn't good enough. There were a few alternatives we investigated. I would like to mention at the beginning of this ...

This is Todd Werth, by the way.

I would like to mention at the beginning, I imagine that a lot of companies in this podcast will need to be paying us an advertising fee. Like Slack.

JAMON HOLMGREN: We actually adopted Slack before we were remote. We had ... I think we were using Google Hangouts or something. Or whatever of the myriad Google chats there are out there. They have like 12 apps. We were using something else in person, and then we started using Slack organically right when it first came out.

TODD: Sorry about that noise you all heard. That was me throwing up a little bit in my mouth when you said "Google Hangouts". (laughter)

KEN: We'll talk about video-chat in a minute.

JAMON: By the way, this is Jamon Holmgren.

It was ... Initially, we jumped onboard. They did a really good job marketing themselves. We had used Hipchat a little bit, but it just wasn't what we expected. We started using Slack. That was in early 2014, I think it was? I don't think it's a coincidence that within a year and a half we ended up going remote. I think that was one of the enabling tools.

We got used to it in the office, but it enabled remote work.

TODD: To talk about chat apps or chat services is important, but on a more general standpoint, I would say how you approach it is actually try 'em and do it. A lot of companies seem to just use whatever is available and not look for optimum solutions. If trying three or four different chat systems is too onerous for you, that's probably the wrong attitude, in my opinion.

KEN: You think, "don't settle". Don't assume that the first thing that you try is the only thing, and then conclude that remote isn't gonna work because the tool that you tried sucks.

JAMON: We tried a lot of tools at ClearSight, before the merger. We tried ... I can't even name them all, to be honest. Part of it is because I like ... I'm a gadget guy, I like to try new things and see how it goes. There was actually a lot of skepticism around Slack because they're just yet another tool that they had to log into and pay attention to. "We already had the email, so do we really need this." It was kinda funny, when I went back and looked at our inner-company email, just tracked ... I think I used the "[email protected]" or something email address to track how often we were using it for company communications. It just dropped off a cliff after Slack.

The amount of email, the volume of email that was flying around went way, way, way down. In fact, I remem...