How do you manage remote or hybrid teams effectively?

Situation: I led a team of 18 engineers across four time zones—San Francisco, Austin, London, and Bangalore. We'd grown through acquisitions, so we had a mix of colocated pods and fully remote individuals. Before I took over, remote folks reported feeling out of the loop and missing key decisions. We were also struggling with "always on" expectations that burned people out.

Task: I was responsible for establishing practices that would make the distributed setup work—clear communication norms, outcome-based management, and ensuring remote members had equal access to information and influence.

Action: I started by defining explicit norms. We agreed on: Slack response within 4 business hours (not minutes), async standups in a shared doc by 10am local time, and "no meeting Fridays" for deep work. I moved status updates to written form—weekly team updates in Notion, design docs for decisions—so everyone could contribute regardless of time zone. For sync time, I reserved it for high-value interactions: weekly team sync for alignment and blockers, 1:1s for development and feedback, and ad hoc pairing when someone was stuck. I made it a rule that if one person was remote, everyone joined from their own machine—no conference room with a laptop in the corner. I also created a "remote-first" checklist for hybrid meetings: agenda 24 hours ahead, explicit "who hasn't spoken yet?" checks, and recording for those who couldn't attend.

Result: Within six months, our engagement survey showed remote members' "I feel included in decisions" score rose from 2.9 to 4.2. We reduced meeting hours by 30% while improving clarity. Two remote engineers were promoted. I learned that distributed work requires intentional design—defaulting to async and reserving sync for connection and collaboration, not status.