Tariq Rauf

• Tell us a little bit about your company and mission.

Qatalog is an entirely new way of using, thinking about, and building software for work. It’s a Work Hub that allows companies to connect the dots between its people, teams, projects, goals, documentation and processes. Our mission is to help unlock the collective potential of teams.

• Where is your team located? Are you all remote or do you maintain an office?

Our headquarters are technically in London, but we are a distributed team, with people spread across 12 countries and four continents, including India, Nigeria, Poland, Turkey, and Canada, to name a few. The majority work entirely remotely, although we do have a small office in London that anyone can use.

• What is your approach to async communication vs. synchronous meetings?

Asynchronous communication is the default. We run our company on Qatalog, which is specifically designed to facilitate this, so that helps! Synchronous meetings are used intentionally for specific use cases, often for social activities, team demos, or when we want to consolidate work done asynchronously.

• Do you maintain set working hours or do you let employees manage their own schedules?

The era of clock watching is dead. Output is what matters and we trust people to get their work done and structure their time however they choose.

‍• What are the top two perks you offer your team?‍

1. We do offsites twice a year, where we will get everyone in the company together to have fun. As a remote-first company, this is crucial, giving everyone time to build meaningful connections and a sense of collective identity. The last two have been in Barcelona and London and positive feedback has been incredible.
2. I could also point to things like health insurance and £500 to improve your WFH setup, but I actually think the more significant perk is true autonomy in your role. We trust people with significant areas of the business and the responsibility to make the right choice for the customer and team.

• What's your favourite tool for remote collaboration?

If we’re excluding Qatalog, then I would have to say Zoom.

• Can you share one prediction for the future of work?

Software for work will be radically redesigned and reimagined. Despite all the big Silicon Valley success stories, innovation in this space has stagnated, as most products have barely evolved from their first iteration. In the next five years we will see a shift as companies wake up to this reality and search for alternatives that actually deliver on their promise to make work better. We’re going to witness seismic shifts and innovation in how remote work, and work in general, is tooled.