Episode #49: Wade Minter and Andrew Berkowitz of TeamSnap

Sep 12, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

Wade Minter and Andrew Berkowitz, of Teamsnap, chat about their company’s need for not so many formalized meetings, why all distributed workers and teams should dabble in improvisation, and being the right candidate to gain remote work.

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Show Notes:

Teamsnap.com
andrewberkowitz.com
@andrewberkowitz
@minter

00:45 – Wade Minter and Andrew Berkowitz Introduction

Andrew Berkowitz: Vice President of Product Management at TeamSnap and one of the original four founders of the company
Wade Minter: Director of Engineering, manages technical operations, contractor with TeamSnap since the beginning

01:51 – What is TeamSnap?

Mobile application on Android and iOS
Manages recreational youth or competitive sports teams
Roster, schedule, messaging

02:17 – Location

Based in Boulder, CO
Andrew is in Portland, OR
Wade is in Raleigh, NC
Rest of team in Austin, TX, Baltimore, MD, Washington, D.C., etc.

02:52 – History of TeamSnap

Doorway to leave the web design world
Half the team is design and development
Half is non-technical, i.e. customer support

05:13 – A day in the life

Campfire is the primary communication tool
Github is used on the technical side

06:46 – Meetings

1 scheduled company meeting per week
1 scheduled developers-only meeting per week
Development style is very “montessorial”
If people need help, they ask
Don’t need a ton of formalized stand up meetings
Ad hoc conversations

10:00 – Challenges

Building a sense of community
Preventing people from overworking

11:54 – Identifying people who work well remotely

Improvisational backgrounds

13:30 – Improv

Skills help with interpersonal communication
Intellectual component
Listening skills
Be opinionated and have a voice
Big ideas & tiny ego
Building on prospective

23:46 – Flexibility in work/life balance

Knowing when to unplug
Preferred schedules
Multiple time zones
Dev at their desk for 18-20 hours/day
Product coverage

26:02 – How to find remote work and be the right candidate

Personal connections
Job boards
Local tech meetups
Coworking facilities
Don’t look for job postings, reach out to the company you want to work for
Listen to Wide Teams podcasts

distributed teams Interviews podcast remote work

About the Author: Avdi Grimm

Husband, father, software cultivator, and amateur community builder, Avdi has been leading and participating in dispersed software development teams since 2007. He works from home in Southern Pennsylvania, and loves the fact that working remotely enables him to spend more time with his wife and four children.