“Dov is a concept; we never see him, but he’s watching” – Adlin. This has to top the meme scale of the many anecdotes from colleagues who have joined Stampede without ever having seen or met Dov, our Tech Lead and co-founder in person. People keep tabs as if it’s a record to break.

Stampede has been fully remote since day one, thanks to our early beginnings with clients primarily from Europe, United States and Australia. We take great care of our people and promote a healthy remote culture, enabling people to do great work together despite the distance.

Going against the grain

While working remotely is the norm in many jobs today, the same cannot be said when we began in 2006. Despite internet penetration already being high in most countries, the shift towards remote work was slow.

One of the more vocal proponents for remote work, Jason Fried of 37 Signals even argued that working from an office was counterproductive on his TED Talk: Why work doesn’t happen at work | Jason Fried

Iwan, a longtime member of the Stampede team since 2010, recently reminisced about the early days of remote work. Back then, programming was done without Git and calls and meetings were handled through Skype. An internet speed of 8Mbps was considered sufficient at the time as most work was done offline, with occasional online uploads and calls. According to Iwan, working from home did not feel deficient compared to working in the office, but it did require a higher level of self-discipline due to the absence of physical supervision.

As technology improved, new tools such as Git, Figma, and Slack emerged, which Stampede adopted after allowing them to mature first. Iwan also recalled that remote work was less common back then, and some people had a hard time grasping the concept of working from home. All that changed overnight though, as know it, with COVID-19.

Our remote culture

Being remote has allowed us to tap into the pool of talent and capabilities unlimited by location. It is astounding how many talents and wonderful people have joined our rank thanks to this conscious decision to treat location as a strategic tool (we still do plenty of on-site at client locations) but not a necessity.

But having a fully remote team is just the beginning. In the next edition, we will look into what makes Stampede’s remote culture, the true workhorse of our success.