Remote Teams: How We Learned to Get it Right
Seventeen years ago, remote work was an anomaly. In our London office, asking to work from home was treated like asking for extra holiday. But when Magento developer rates hit £800 per day, we faced a choice: adapt our model or stop growing.
David Wain-Heapy and Bachir Smahi, Co-Founders of Prodigi, spent the next 14 years perfecting a global agency model that eventually led to a successful exit. Their secret? Realizing that outsourcing and offshoring are two entirely different things.
The Fatal Mistake: Outsourcing vs. Offshoring
Many agencies fail at remote work because they treat offshore hires as outsourcers—handing over entire projects and saying, "Come back when it's done." This leads to inconsistent quality and broken communication.
True offshoring means hiring people who work for you, just from a different location.
Integration is Key: Same recruitment standards, same onboarding, and same access to Jira, sprints, and retrospectives.
One Team: If you join in Serbia or Romania, you get the same experience as joining in London.
Dropping the Control Illusion
You can't watch 45 people simultaneously, even in a physical office. Proximity is a false proxy for productivity. What actually matters are systems that create visibility without micromanagement:
Hire for Independence: Technical ability is the baseline, but self-direction is the multiplier.
Onboard Properly: Full system access from day one. The first week sets the tone for the entire tenure.
Manage Through Systems: Use sprint rituals, project dashboards, and weekly 1:1s to track success visibly.
The Business Impact
By shifting to an integrated remote model, David and Bachir saw margins improve and team engagement soar. It allowed the agency to scale projects without proportionally scaling overhead costs.
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