Doing Your Job

Table of Contents

• Work Hours and Shift Schedule
• Using Eightmeters
• Workflow Checklist
  • Meetings
  • Commitments
  • Every Day You Work
  • Every Week
  • Do Not
• Time Off
• Remote Work Basics
• Solving Problems
  • References

Purpose

Describes the processes and norms of getting our jobs done at Countable. Make sure to check out our Onboarding Guide first!

Scope

Covers our team management platform Eightmeters, work hours & shift schedule, workflow checklists, remote work basics, professional conduct, setting up your desk, expenses, and a subcontractor’s guide.

Work Hours and Shift Schedule

• All full-time employees and contractors are required to work 8 hours per day. Part-time employees may have shorter work periods.
• For individuals in the CA timezone, the standard working hours are typically from 8 AM to 5 PM PST or 9 AM to 6 PM PST.
• Individuals in the PH Timezone have more flexibility in choosing their work shifts, as long as they complete 8 hours of work daily. However, they are expected to work during either the 3-5 PM PST slot or the 9-11 AM PST slot on any given day, but not both. In cases where there are morning meetings scheduled from 9-11 AM PST, it is acceptable to skip team meetings (e.g., standup and sprint) on the same day. Please remember to inform your team and provide your updates on Slack in such instances.
• We strongly encourage consistent attendance at the all-hands meeting whenever possible.

Using Eightmeters

At Countable, we built Eightmeters to overcome some of the challenges of remote work.

Make sure to log your time daily according to appropriate project tags, including links to related Trello cards or document deliverables when possible.

Workflow Checklist

This workflow checklist covers mostly things we should already be doing. If it’s something we’re still working towards, it’s in italics.

Meetings

• Be on time, or notify as early as possible about absence or lateness and offer something instead (here’s my summary so you can read it). See Commitments, below.
• Everyone should share something. Prepare what you want to say (that fits the meeting agenda), and even send it to team members before the meeting.
• If you have a proposal or idea, write it up in detail, and share it ahead of time. Indicate how it impacts something we care about (OKR).

Commitments

• Be clear and specific about commitments.
  • Say “I’ll send you a prototype link at 2pm” rather than “I’ll be done after lunch”.
  • This should be in writing, such as in a Trello ticket (in this case, set a deadline on the ticket too.)
• If you’re not going to meet a commitment, tell the team as early as possible, and explain what the gap will be, and how close you are. Explain what else you can do to help.

Every Day You Work

• Share something with the team every day. The simplest way to do this is to report what you did on Slack in your team’s channel, and anything you’re stuck on.
  • Shooting a quick screen cap video to share is a great idea to try out.
  • Consistent submission of a daily work summary is mandatory and will be closely monitored. Failure to submit or delays exceeding one day will have adverse effects on both your team’s productivity and your individual performance evaluation and compensation.
• Check Slack at least twice a day, and react/respond to some other team members’ posts.
• Commit your code and push it to bitbucket every day.
• Enter your hours on Eightmeters (end of the day)
• Check your company email

Every Week

• Communicate with each client you are working with: Send them an update on what’s done and what’s pending out of their current expectations. Include a link to staged work, and a screenshot or video. It’s best to do this Friday or Monday.

Do Not

• Use private messages for things that don’t need to be private. Share your experiences on your projects in your client channel, and if it’s more widely applicable, (#client-) in #general. See also: Transparency

Time Off

Countable’s intention is allow a great deal of flexibility to everyone, while ensuring we work at predictable times and can depend on one another.

The important things are to make sure your team can rely on you being around when you say you will, and that you don’t burn out. So, you can generally work when you want, but you should communicate when that will be.

• Employees (not subcontractors) based in Canada are subject to labour laws and as such have vacation pay, stat holidays, overtime, etc.
• Team members based in the Philippines are given 10 paid sick leaves and 10 paid vacation leaves.
• Other Sub-contractors may take unpaid leave any time, and should take at least 2 weeks throughout the year.
• By default, assume your teammates won’t work on stat holidays noted on the Countable Meetings calendar or over weekends, so don’t be surprised if you do not get a response to messages.
• Everyone must plan and document their regular hours in Google Calendar’s Working Hours. These should comprise around half of the hours you work.
• If you are away during scheduled time, please let your team know in advance and help them plan. Ask for approval from your Lead. Once approved, notify the Operations Coordinator to update your leave credits.

• Note your absence on the Countable Absences shared calendar and add an Out-of-Office notification to your calendar.

  Days of Scheduled Time Off	Advance Notice Period
  Less than a day	same-day or 1-day notice and approval is fine
  1 day	at least 1 day
  2-3 days	at least 1 week
  4-5 days	at least 2 weeks
  6 days or more	at least 1 month advance notice

• If you need to take unexpected sick leave, it is understandable that you may need to notify the on the same day, and there is no requirement for prior approval in such cases. Just make sure to notify your Operations Coordinator to update your leave credits. However, for health-related situations that can be anticipated, such as surgeries or therapy sessions, we encourage you to utilize sick leave or planned time off/vacation leave especially when you have to be off for more than a day. It is highly recommended that you adhere to the lead time mentioned above.
• For PH members who are eligible for parental leave (120 days paid leave if you are working with Countable for at least a year), you may inform your supervisor as early as 3 months in advance. This advance notice will enable us to make the necessary arrangements and ensure a smooth transition during your absence.
• Check this to know how to file your leaves on Eightmeters.
• We expect remote team members outside of the America/Vancouver timezone to have a 25% overlap with the Vancouver timezone (work at least 2 hours per day overlapping PST schedule).
• Remove yourself from calendar events you won’t attend.

Remote Work Basics

Countable is a fully remote team, which has certain pros and cons. The top “cons” reported on other remote teams are:

• Loneliness / Isolation
• Collaborating / Communicating

Things to try:

• Weekly team Lunch. Can we schedule a video call for a weekly lunch? Figure out what day works for everyone.
• Shorter coffee-break video call, daily.
• Video collaboration time on projects. Casual mob coding, async coding allowed too.
• review: Gitlab Remote work tips

Solving Problems

We aim to onboard people we can trust to make good decisions to the team.

If you’ve been with us for 3 months or more, and you think you can solve a problem for our team for less than $100, feel free to do so and submit as an expense for compensation with context.

References

Quu Blog