This is how I lead my remote teams, and how you can join too

Hey,

I'm Sergio Pereira, and this is the Remote Work newsletter 👋

Last week I dove into the data proving that remote work is thriving, with offices in the US getting emptier than ever. In fact, startups are now remote by default, as I'm observing from my first row seat, talking with Founders every week.

Today I'm fleshing out my interview with Aakash Gupta, on his podcast. In this 2-hour interview I expand on my management principles, how I hire remote workers, how I build tech products and how I help startups as a Fractional CTO. I think it's one of my best interviews to date, in case you want to dig in.

Aakash is a great interviewer, and he got me to expand a lot on remote work principles, nuances and caveats. This makes up for a blueprint on how I hire and manage my remote teams, so I'm expanding on it below.

If you're a manager of remote teams, you can use these principles in your own job. If you're a remote employee, you'll find lots of touchpoints that you can apply.

In case you're on the market looking for a remote job, I'm actually hiring quite aggressively right now, so you can find some open roles at the end of this newsletter. FYI, since the start of 2025 I've hired 4 readers of this newsletter into my teams, it's already my best channel. Very exciting times ahead!

So, here's some principles and processes that I use in my daily work as a Remote CTO: 

1/ Startups are remote-by-default because it's more financially efficient

Most U.S. startups can’t afford local salaries, so they look overseas. There are good and experienced Software Engineers everywhere: LATAM, Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, I've personally been hiring remote workers in all these places for the last decade, mostly to work at US startups. And it’s a win-win: companies have a less expensive engineering team, and great professionals around the world land jobs that pay well above their local salaries. 

For early-stage startups, hiring remotely is actually a survival mechanism. Remote means not paying expensive office space. Also, no geographic limitations. means much faster time-to-hire and usually much lower salary costs than in the US. Same applies to other high cost locations, like UK, Switzerland, and most of Europe.

2/ The evolution of hiring/onboarding remote team members

A few trends I'm seeing in remote work, and applying first hand in my own teams:

• Shorter hands-on interviews
Forget the 7-round whiteboard interviews. The best remote teams today use small trial projects instead. For example, pay a new software engineer for a month to work on a product flow. If it works out, extend an offer to continue longer term. Less time wasted, more real-world evaluation.

• Fractional and part-time Hiring
Many startups are hiring people on part-time or fractional contracts before committing to full-time. This is great for both sides, companies can hire experienced folks on these flexible arrangements, and employees can test the waters before committing.

• The "ghost employees", as Aakash asked
These stories of over-employment (people working two or more full-time remote jobs in parallel) make some people have trust issues in remote work. I'm quite suspicious of this practise, though. In my opinion such thing might go unnoticed in a big company, but in small startup teams of 5-15 people, it’s impossible to hide, if you’re not delivering, the whole team feels it within days.

All these things have one principle in common: outcome-based management. As in: I don’t care if you use AI tools or work at weird hours or work part time. If you consistently deliver good work on time, we’re good. If things slip, we’re not good.

3/ Managing time zones and meetings

One of the biggest concerns about remote teams is: “How do we replace that in-office magic?” - As Aakash asked.

My answer was to use remote-first processes and make them async-first whenever possible. Such as:

• Using Miro boards to replicate a shared whiteboard. Everyone can add sticky notes, diagrams, and comments.

• Replace daily standups with asynchronous Slack/Notion updates, no need to force 9am calls across time zones.

• Keep meetings purposeful and rare. If you force daily standups across wildly different time zones, you’ll burn people out. I prefer fewer, higher-impact sync calls that are actually relevant.

4/ The (apparent) return-to-office trend

I say apparent because last week we saw that offices are actually emptier than ever. Still, may big tech companies like Amazon and Google are forcing people back to the office. Their official reasoning is“Better collaboration”. However, the actual real reasons are often:

• They have massive office leases to fill.

• They want some employees to quit voluntarily rather than relocate.

• They’re testing different ways to control company culture

From my experience, remote work is just as productive (if not more) than being in an office. The key is to adapt processes and goals accordingly and build a remote culture around those.

5/ My take on mental health in remote work

One real challenge of remote work is isolation. When you work in an office, social interactions happen automatically. When you’re remote, you need to be intentional about it.

But here’s the thing: your employer shouldn’t be your social life. If your only friendships come from work, that’s a bigger issue. Hear me out loud and clear:

• The fact that people have delegated their social life on their workplace for decades is a bug, not a feature.

Building a community outside of work is a key responsibility of any human being. You're accountable to make friends, take hobbies, practise sports and take care of your health. You should never delegate that to your employer, regardless if you're remote or in the office.

I think this was mostly it. I'll be diving deeper into each of these topics in future newsletters and on X and Linkedin, as usual.

Opportunities to work with me

• Backend Engineer (Python), preferably with Fintech background and good AWS experience - Fully remote - Fractional now, Full time in a few months

• AI Engineer, with experience in LangChain agents and RAG pipelines - Fully remote - 2 opportunities: 1 Project based + 1 Fractional

• Mobile Engineer (iOS) - Fully remote - Fractional

• Blockchain Engineer (Solidity) - Fully remote - Fractional

• Frontend Engineer (React) - Full remote (preference for LATAM timezone) - Fractional 

If you're interested in any of these roles, simply drop me your CV/linkedin and a quick intro paragraph, as a reply to this newsletter email (or a DM on X/Linkedin). 

In case you're looking for a new job, have a look into JobsCopilot and the Remote Jobs Braintrust. Hundreds of people are using my tools to find jobs, and I'm happy to help as many people as possible. 

Thanks for reading this newsletter until the end. You can read all past editions here. Make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues so they can read it too.

See you next Friday,

Sergio Pereira, 
Startup CTO & Remote Work Lover