How Snyk Staff Engineer thinks about scaling remote teams, leadership, and rituals with Ben Grohbiel

How do feedback loops shape high-performing engineering teams?

In this episode of the Distributed podcast, host Jack Hannah talks with Ben Grohbiel, Staff Engineer at Snyk, about the interplay between leadership, technical excellence, and collaboration in remote teams. Ben shares his journey from running a web dev shop to leading platform teams and eventually transitioning from engineering management back to an individual contributor role.

Ben also discusses the habits and rituals that help teams stay aligned, the importance of feedback loops in decision-making, and how structuring remote teams for success requires more than just good tooling—it’s about fostering the right culture.

Highlights:

• Transitioning from engineering manager to staff engineer: what changed and why
• The role of SpeedBacks and pairing in driving continuous team improvement
• How Snyk structures its remote teams for collaboration and efficiency
• The debate around remote vs. hybrid vs. in-person setups—and what really matters
• Navigating autonomy and accountability in startups vs. scale-ups

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) – Kicking things off with Ben Grohbiel

(03:39) – Transition from engineering management to staff engineer

(04:27) – Challenges of managing a large remote team

(07:10) – The importance of feedback loops in high-performing teams

(10:40) – "Speedbacks": A unique approach to rapid peer feedback

(14:09) – Effective communication between teams through pairing

(17:17) – A startup experience where everything clicked

(23:00) – The very first team experience on Snyk

(27:09) – The debate around remote, hybrid, and in-office work

(30:18) – Driving effective information flow in remote teams

(34:14) – The future of remote work: Unanswered question

Where to connect further:

Connect with Ben Grohbiel on LinkedIn and check out Snyk

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Want to hear more? Check out distributed.fm

Connect with Jack Hannah