Remote Work Practices and Collaboration Model at Tubi Beijing Team

At the start of 2020, the COVID‑19 pandemic prompted the Chinese government to extend the Spring Festival holiday, and many internet companies, including Tubi, quickly adopted remote‑working options. The Beijing team, already accustomed to long‑term remote collaboration with its U.S. counterpart, compiled a set of best‑practice guidelines to help newcomers succeed in a work‑from‑home environment.

Remote Work Programming Model – By Chiyu Zhong, Tubi Backend Engineer

The Beijing team faces typical distributed‑team challenges such as communication latency, lack of trust, misunderstandings, and feelings of isolation. These issues mirror those found in distributed systems, where nodes are independent, do not share state, remote calls are slower, and messages can be unreliable.

To mitigate high latency, Tubi uses asynchronous communication: both sender and receiver maintain a message queue and handle timeouts, errors, and retries. Slack and Email serve as the primary channels, allowing recipients to process messages at a convenient time rather than responding immediately.

For example, a Slack message can be delayed using the platform’s reminder feature, enabling the receiver to address it later without interrupting current tasks.

The team treats each pending Slack message as a task in a personal queue, prioritizing and completing them before notifying the sender of the outcome. When a task cannot be finished within its TTL, the receiver must promptly inform the sender.

Task‑queue maintenance is done by forwarding actionable items to Email, GitHub, or Google Calendar, keeping only essential emails in the inbox to avoid “too many emails = no email.”

Slack reminders are used to schedule future processing of messages.

To reduce state divergence (anti‑entropy), remote workers spend a week each month at the Beijing headquarters and the Beijing team visits the U.S. headquarters regularly. Social activities such as Texas‑themed games, werewolf, table football, and movie nights further build trust.

How to Collaborate with Product, Design, and QA Teams – By Kobee Wang, Tubi Android Engineer

Effective cross‑department remote collaboration requires clear problem statements, data‑driven explanations, and visual aids. When multiple interpretations exist, list them all and discuss each. Adopt a proactive, ownership‑mindset, proposing solutions rather than merely asking for requirements.

An example from the Android team shows how an accessibility feature (TalkBack) was clarified by presenting a concrete implementation plan, which streamlined communication with product and QA.

Partners should engage early, break large features into smaller, testable increments, and allocate buffer time for QA. Reducing bugs minimizes unnecessary back‑and‑forth.

When issues arise, address them promptly, be flexible, and involve leaders in Slack groups if response times are slow.

Leverage multiple communication tools—Email, Slack, Zoom, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Clubhouse—to maintain efficient remote interactions.

Efficient Participation in Project Meetings – By Chang She, Tubi VP of Engineering

Several illustrative images (omitted here for brevity) demonstrate meeting structures, note‑taking, and decision‑making processes used by the team.

In the foreword of 37Signals’ book Remote , it is noted that technology now makes global collaboration effortless, yet people’s mindset must evolve. Tubi’s experience shows that self‑driven employees, a culture of trust, and a robust toolset significantly boost happiness and overall efficiency.

As living standards rise in China, more professionals seek work‑life balance, making remote work a viable and attractive model nationwide. The article hopes to help readers understand and implement remote‑working practices effectively.

Technology has arrived, making communication and collaboration across locations easier than ever, but a fundamental human issue remains—people’s thinking needs an upgrade.

Finally, the author wishes everyone a healthy, productive remote‑working experience.