| A Path to Team Success in Virtual Times |
“We win or lose as a team,” said Andy Babcock, COO of Covax Data. Our company is built of a team scattered around the United States in a fully remote workforce. Our team has grown tremendously over the last year to create our flagship product, Covax Polymer. As our leadership hired each person, we all knew we would work together to make something amazing. It isn’t every day that you have such a fantastic opportunity to work with so many people you have never met in person. We had a deadline of Jan 1, 2021, to complete the latest version of our Covax Polymer. Here’s how we did it.
My name is Dawn, and I started at the company in June of 2020 on the development side of the house. At this time, I was only the eighth person here. We had five developers, and two were “C” level with other responsibilities. During the first few months of working here, the application was rewritten and redesigned several times. We went through many use cases and usability issues as they came up. We were training and interviewing new people while testing and adding processes. It was a bit overwhelming at times, with a deadline quickly approaching. We knew that the next version’s development needed to be ready to test by the end of November, and half of the engineering team was still getting up to speed. The excitement of the new application and the pressure of the deadline brought much motivation. Everyone who was hired jumped in with gusto and contributed faster than I have ever seen in a company.
We have learned as a team that listening to each other, taking time to solve issues, and giving and getting feedback is imperative to success. As a fully remote company, the hours in which everyone works vary depending on time zones. You have to be flexible and willing to jump in and work earlier or later to get questions answered. During some of the late hour calls with coworkers, we were reminded, “we win or lose as a team.” We help each other succeed, and as more people are hired, it’s a theme we hold onto and pass on.
With any company, there will be successes and challenges. But when you have a motivated team, willing to step up and help each other, where we all want to be part of something new, success happens – it feels very special to be a part of Covax Data. There is no way we could have done all the work we did without each person’s willingness to go outside the norm and be flexible. And we all look forward to building on that experience and making a big difference in the cybersecurity world!
Originally Posted On: February 23, 2021