Tes engineering blog

Back in September 2019 we decided to host a Global Day of Coderetreat event. Since we’re a remote first digital education company, this event would also be conducted remotely. The event would be globally available and would include people inside and outside of TES. A few questions you may have 🤷🏽‍♀️ What is a Coderetreat? Originated at the Codemash Conference in January 2009 by Gary Bernhardt, Patrick Welsh, Nayan Hajratwala and Corey Haines.

My colleague, Federico, and I have done a lot of pair-programming recently - remotely, of course. He’s in Milan and I was working between the UK, Germany and Singapore. We tried several different tools, so I thought I’d write a review of our experience.

You’ve all heard the old adage: There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team’. Teamwork would be much easier if we were working with clones! But we are all unique so we have to find a way to figure out how to work with other people who don’t think like us. Remember, we travelled different paths to reach the current point in our career and picked up different skills along the way.

Our working culture at Tes emphasises a “remote first” approach. This means that any team member can work from any location. It’s awesome and it allows us to work with lots of lovely colleagues based around the world. It also means that if you want to go off and travel while working, you can go - no questions asked. Or if you want to come to our London office every day, that’s totally fine too.

The fact is, it’s just easier to work remotely with people you’ve met in so-called “real-life” - folks you’ve shared laughs and meals with.¹

One of the best things about working on a remote team is getting together in real life. Tes Engineering Week happens once a year in October. This year was the second edition after a successful trial in 2017.

Individual teams get together fairly frequently; however Engineering Week is one week in the year when all the engineers come together to bond. This is a significant investment of time and money for Tes but is worth it for both the shared experiences and trust that is established during the week.