Hey this is the Daily Overpass. My name is Eric
and I make apps.
Now today ,
Let's talk about, Working with developers in other time zones.
All right so today, I want to answer a question
that came in from our good friend Rifat
on last livestream.
He missed the livestream
but he posted this in the comments he said. Missing in the UK.
Lol same time zone.
How do you work with Devs in different time zones.
How do you delegate the work. Please give detail.
I am doing a sample of this work on unity.
So basically what he's doing is he's
communicating
with this developer via YouTube videos.
What do you think of the giving work in receiving work by via the videos.
Working with people and other timezones can be very very challenging.
But in another way it can be very rewarding.
It actually is more efficient in some ways.
If you've ever work in an office as a developer you know how distracting
it can be because you always have somebody coming by
and asking you questions just on the fly.
They don't wait for certain parts of the meeting so they can discuss things.
No they could just interrupt the flow of concentration by saying,
hey what if we did this.
What if we did that.
What if we did this
and you're thinking are we doing that
Because i have to change what I'm doing now
and you just can't really just stop start stop start stop start.
So you are dealing with somebody remotely especially developer.
As long as you have some sort of overlap where you can have those daily conversations
and those daily meetings. That gives them the time to do what they need.
You don't need eight hours a day of their time
and the same is true for designers.
The same is true for a lot of the team if they should know what their jobs are
and what they're doing and I've not been the best at this in the past
and I'm trying to get better at this all the time.
So we try to do is have at least a little bit of overlap in terms of our our time zones.
So our developers
At first hiring them as saying you have to work the late night shift
So that we have to see work 9:00 to 5:00 U.K. time
and then it got a bit more lax so they can work pretty much flexibly
like or like Marvin or our video editor.
He works until 6 p.m. Philippine's time.
So that's like 10a.m. here. So that gives us some time to maybe 11:00a.m.
but at the end of the summer daylight savings.
But that gives an hour or two to go through
and say you know to have a quick chat how's everything going.
What are your next task
I like that video. Let's do this
The same with the developers.
We need to have some sort of overlap.
Now one of the challenging parts about having that arrangement is sometimes
you'll have something in production that might go wrong at four o'clock in the afternoon
and then the only person around to deal with it is this guy
and that could be a bit difficult but I have to know what's going on there too.
Using videos is something we do a lot
and this is something that
because I do the daily video, I've kind of used to just
turning on the camera and talking.
So it's easier for me to give task,
especially if I have to share my screen just start up Camtasia and say
Okay this is what I need you to do
for the developers not so much
the developers the developers I could give them a flowchart
or specification and they should be working on things more readily
More frequently for something like
for Rowena our VA
We just go through in Start Camtasia
This is the what i want you to do
If it's complicated
I'll just give a quick demo on how to do it.
I can upload it to YouTube
and she could watch it as an unlisted video
that's why you guys don't see it.
Because it's unlisted or it's private just shared with them.
Then the developers do that too so the developers in Vietnam.
they're doing something and I'm trying to figure something out
and they'll want to demonstrate something to me.
But they don't want to release it as a full version,
So they'll just do a video.
I do this same thing with clients.
I will send them videos when we are not ready for a Beta Builds.
If I don't want them clicking around on all kinds of things that are going to break,
but I want to show them one little bit of functionality
an unlisted video is the ideal way to do that.
I mean YouTube is not just for
I'm gonna make this a vlog.
It's for
How do we share information in a quick way.
The ideal situation is you just record something on your phone send it by e-mail
but like easily 30 megabytes
or more then you get all these problems.
I didn't get it my e-mail provider scripted or whatever.
So using something like YouTube which is free it is really easy to do.
So we do that a lot and a lot of our SOP's.
Especially the early ones were done in video because it was much easier to do much easier for them to watch TV than that.
So that I think that's a great idea.
People say a lot of times it must be difficult working
with developers remotely and sometimes it can be.
But there's also you have to think about
You need to give your developers some space sometimes
You need to let them get on with what they're doing.
The downside is they could be working on the wrong thing for seven hours out of the day
until they ask you the question
or they might be waiting for an answer from you on something
but a lot of times sometimes even I'm about to go to bed at night and I realize,
I have to answer this question on this
So I got to remember to do that really quick before I go to sleep.
Otherwise we'd lose a whole seven hours of the eight hour day the next day.
It can be difficult. I think it's a better way of working.
Even if you're in the same time, Even if you're in a same office
you need to give your developer a space
You need to schedule time that say
We're gonna discuss this at this time in this five minute period.
Now just pop by the desk and say Hey I just got this new idea.
You think how long will it take you to implement it,
Because it takes them out of the flow it takes them out of what they're doing
So difficult sometime.
So anyway I hope that helps. That's it for today.
I'll talk to you guys again tomorrow.