Growing the Team Without Rewriting the Rules
By mid-2022, our team had something we hadn’t had in a while: an open seat. We were growing again.
Back then, we were six engineers—three backend, one full-stack, and two frontend. And Santhosh Balakrishnan was joining as our second frontend engineer. It had been almost a year since our last hire.
Since early 2021, we had been using a remote-first onboarding process. We hired a full-stack engineer in January, a frontend engineer in September, and built everything around digital collaboration.
Even though the office had reopened, we didn’t change our approach. We knew what worked for us: a remote-first setup, built on clear rituals, async-first processes, and trust.
The Foundation Was Already There
That was the most important part.
Throughout the pandemic, our previous manager Iryna Kulakova did an incredible job setting the foundation. Together—with her guidance, and through contributions from the whole team—we kept things focused and consistent.
Later in 2021, after a few months of experimentation and learning together, I stepped into the engineering manager role in September. And from there, we just kept evolving what we had already started:
- Delivering fintech products that brought peace of mind to travelers.
- Designing pricing strategies to help Omio grow again.
- Building trust, empathy, and autonomy into our way of working.
That kind of clarity doesn’t come from policy. It comes from shared experience.
When Santhosh joined, we didn’t have to reinvent anything. He was simply joining a team that already had its systems in place—ones we trusted and improved over time.
The Connecting Onboard Experience
We didn’t just invite Santhosh to Slack and hand him a checklist.
We ran our Connecting Onboard session—a framework I had developed inside the Monetization tribe. It’s structured, adaptable, and focused on people.
Using a Figjam board, we explored:
- How each person prefers to communicate.
- What kind of support the new joiner expects.
- What growth means for them.
- How we can create psychological safety early on.
One of our engineers stepped up to be his buddy—someone who wanted to learn by helping, and grow through mentorship.
Together, they built the onboarding flow, week by week, with shared expectations and clear steps.
A Hybrid Welcome, Still Remote-First
Thanks to my experience at ThoughtWorks, I knew the power of early in-person bonding—so I worked with the company to make it possible for Santhosh to spend two weeks in Berlin.
It was timed around Spark 2022, our company’s first in-person event post-lockdowns. The new office. The energy. The faces behind the Slack handles. It was the perfect moment.
But we didn’t abandon our rituals. Even in-person, we stayed remote-first:
- Everyone joined meetings from their laptops.
- Slack updates and Confluence docs remained the source of truth.
- Facilitations and ceremonies stayed inclusive, structured, and async-friendly.
We didn’t make exceptions—we reinforced our standards.
Feedback That Mattered
This week, Santhosh shared this:
“I’ve never felt so supported in an onboarding. I knew how to contribute from day one—and I had the help to do it.”
That’s the kind of feedback that validates everything. You don’t need to be in the same room to feel seen, guided, and empowered. You just need intention.