Building & Enabling Remote Engineering Teams

Let’s face it: creating a highly engaged team is tough, especially if you’re starting from scratch. There are so many odds stacked against you, from a disengaged workforce, to massive competition for top talent. Even if you win at those two, you still have to keep your employees engaged and motivated. 

Meanwhile, the competition to get — and keep — top talent is fierce. The war for talent and the challenges of remote work have made it more difficult to build amazing remote engineering teams. It’s never been more critical for growing companies to distinguish themselves against the Googles, Amazons, and Metas of the world. 

The numbers say 18% of U.S. employees are “actively disengaged” at work — the highest count since 2013—and over 50% are simply “not engaged,” aka the “quiet quitters” (Gallup).  In this article, you will learn how Nextiva builds and enables remote engineering teams, and what you can do to create a positive experience for your own team.  

Great Technology is Built by Engaged Technologists 

Creating a highly functional remote engineering team is an enormous undertaking. There are many things to consider, including: 

• Cultivating a great culture within your team
• Establishing processes for and communicating how teams use tools and collaborate
• Balancing teams to successfully push to production
• Building scalable products and solving hard technical problems

Managing 300+ technologists across the globe, the leadership team at Nextiva strives to ensure every engineer has a consistently positive experience at work. To help drive these efforts, the organization established a Technology Experience program that focuses on three goals: enablement, connection, and career growth & development. 

Technology Experience: The Human Side of Work

When most people think of culture- or experience-driven programs like this, they imagine team builders and virtual happy hours, and while those can help cultivate a great office culture, there is so much more.

Technology experience is about building a meaningful work experience. 

People want to grow in their careers, feel a sense of belonging, know how they’re doing, and how their company is performing. 

They want more than just a paycheck. 

They seek purpose and meaning from their work. They want to be known for what makes them unique. And they want relationships, particularly with a manager who can coach them to the next level.

This is the human side of work. 

In the end, that’s what it boils down to. We are all humans, after all. 

Every element of the Nextiva Technology Experience program facilitates the human experience through goals of enablement, connection, and career growth & development.

To learn more about how Nextiva has created an amazing technology experience or see the connection goal in action, sign up for an upcoming Tech Talk and watch replays of past events. 

About Ruth Vela

Ruth Vela is the director of technology experience at Nextiva, and the general manager of Nextiva Mexico. 

Ruth is responsible for the Technology Experience program for the company’s global team of technologists. Additionally, Ruth leads end-to-end operations for Nextiva Mexico, where much of the company’s R&D is conducted. 

Ruth combines her unique engineering, leadership, and entrepreneurship skills with her passion for using technology to simplify the way we experience work. She is an advocate for expanding education and careers in STEM to women across the world.

Want to chat more about the Nextiva Technology Experience? Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn. 

About Nextiva

Nextiva is a business communications company with more than 300 technologists distributed across multiple countries. 

Nextiva started out by offering VoIP phone service — fast forward 14 years, and they just launched NextivaONE, a new cloud-based workhub that brings together business communications applications, intelligence, and automation to help companies build deeper connections with customers and manage all conversations and relationships in one place. Today, more than 100,000 businesses depend on Nextiva with 4B conversations flowing through our networks each year.