As an engineering leader, your name is on the quality of the product. With a distributed team, a natural question arises: How do I ensure our engineering standards remain high when we’re not all in the same room?
It’s a valid concern, but it’s built on a false premise. Code quality is not about physical proximity. It’s about system design. When you build clear standards, reinforce them with rigorous processes, and hire engineers who live those standards, location becomes irrelevant.
This article outlines the three pillars of code quality in remote teams — standards, review, and hiring — and shows how Howdy.com helps leaders build distributed teams that don’t just maintain quality, but raise the bar.
Step 1: Codify your standards
You cannot enforce what you haven’t defined."Good code" must be objective and documented.
- Create a living style guide: Document formatting, naming, and language-specific conventions. Use automated tools like ESLint or Prettier.
- Define"Definition of Done": Set clear criteria for completion, including tests, documentation, and peer reviews.
- Establish architectural principles: Provide guidance for building new features in alignment with your existing systems.
Codified standards turn subjective opinions into enforceable, scalable practices.
Step 2: Implement a rigorous review process
The pull request (PR) is the most important quality checkpoint in a remote environment. A strong PR culture is non-negotiable.
- Mandatory reviews: Require at least one or two approvals before merging code.
- Constructive feedback: Treat reviews as collective improvement, not personal critique.
- Automated checks: Integrate unit and integration testing, plus code analysis, into your CI/CD pipeline.
Done right, PRs prevent bugs, level up skills across the team, and enforce accountability.
Step 3: Hire for quality, not just skill
Processes and tools only work if the people using them value quality. The best engineers don’t just ship code — they ship clean, maintainable, tested code.
Here’s how Howdy.com vets for quality:
- Live paired programming: Candidates solve real-world challenges while we observe their problem-solving, coding habits, and responsiveness to feedback.
- Emphasis on testing: We evaluate their understanding of testing as part of development, not an afterthought.
- Communication and collaboration: We select engineers who articulate decisions clearly and contribute constructively in reviews.
This ensures you hire people who already care about craftsmanship — not those you need to convince later.
Conclusion
Maintaining high engineering standards in a remote team isn’t about hope — it’s about design. By codifying your standards, enforcing them through rigorous reviews, and hiring engineers committed to quality from day one, you can build a distributed team that consistently delivers excellence.
At Howdy.com, we do the hard part for you. Our vetting process surfaces engineers who value quality as deeply as you do, so your team doesn’t just maintain standards — it elevates them.