On building faster webpages and global remote teams: a conversation with Shogun's Jyoti Puri

I spoke with @jyoti, developer at Shogun, a company that empowers brands to create unique eCommerce experiences by easily building and optimizing online stores. Jyoti started college thinking she would major in biology, but her brother encouraged her to pursue computer science, so she took a course and found she really enjoyed it. She ended up majoring in computer science instead and worked in technical roles following graduation at companies including McKinsey and Atlassian before starting at Shogun. Jyoti joined Shogun because she wanted to work at a relatively smaller company where she could get more exposure and take on more challenging and impactful work. Working for Shogun was rewarding as she could see how her work is directly impacting the e-commerce end users.Tools developed by Shogun are especially well-known for its impact on eCommerce page load speeds. A few milliseconds faster page speeds lead to substantial bottom line impact for these companies. The Shogun team effectively identifies how the page performs on various devices and different networks. This involves identifying heavy resources on the page like offline images, videos,page size, scripts blocking load, etc. The tools subsequently minimise the effect of these resources on page load time using techniques like lazy loading, optimizing bundle size, etc. Jyoti shared her advice and learnings on building an innovative team building process and working in a global and fully remote team. Have a trial period as a part of the application process. At Shogun, after interviews, prospective team members can go through a trial period where they work with Shogun partime or fulltime depending on their availability. The program usually spans a few weeks, low pressure experience where applicants work closely with other engineers and receive feedback on their work. Through this period, applicants can get a better sense of the Shogun work culture and style, and similarly, Shogun can better understand applicants before they are officially brought onto the team. Have a global support team. Shogun’s support team is internationally distributed so that there is someone available to help customers and team members at all times. Shogun users get assistance and help about using the product whenever they need.Organize teams based on geography. Shogun’s teams are organized partly by general geographic locations so that team members have time overlap and are able to schedule meetings etc move conveniently.Leverage industry best practices, like Scrum. Shogun’s teams use scaled agile techniques, such as Scrum, to develop, deliver, and grow products on their team. Such methodologies help them work more efficiently while being collectively remote. With the remote structure of the team, Shogun is able to bring on great engineers from around the world and is currently hiring in the US, UK, Ireland, and Canada. Shogun has also focused specifically on hiring more women to create a more inclusive and gender balanced organization. Shogun’s remote structure truly exemplifies the fact that talent is universal but opportunity is not. Through their remote team, Shogun is able to find and bring on the most talented people regardless of who or where they are.

On building faster webpages and global remote teams: a conversation with Shogun's Jyoti PuriFeatured

On building faster webpages and global remote teams: a conversation with Shogun's Jyoti PuriFeatured