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Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

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Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#41

Post by aantix »

jbuss wrote: post #13

I joined my startup 2 years ago on-site. After my wife and I had a baby it became very difficult to live in the bay area. Housing is obviously ridiculous there and I had to live an hour away from the office. I told my manager that we would be moving and I was interviewing for remote jobs. They ended up allowing me to work remotely, and I have been for almost two months now. The whole transition has been much smoother…

Have you tried Slack's Screenhero integration? Being able to type

/hero @username

and start pair programming in seconds (with audio!) is a huge productivity increase.

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#42

Post by kerbalspacepro »

jbuss wrote: post #13

I joined my startup 2 years ago on-site. After my wife and I had a baby it became very difficult to live in the bay area. Housing is obviously ridiculous there and I had to live an hour away from the office. I told my manager that we would be moving and I was interviewing for remote jobs. They ended up allowing me to work remotely, and I have been for almost two months now. The whole transition has been much smoother…

how often do you go into the office now?

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#43

Post by ryanmarsh »

mccolin wrote: post #11
jcadam wrote: post #8

Several months ago I interviewed for a remote position with a startup based in NYC. The technical screening consisted of a project and of course a couple of phone interviews. After I did well on all of that, I was flown up to NYC for a 'culture-fit' interview. Which I failed, apparently. As a mid-30s guy who was raised in the mid-west, I felt like I had very little in common with the 20-something urbanites with whom…

This is definitely something that happens. It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit, but the go should not be hiring a team of "sames." In a recent batch of interviews (four opportunities local, three remote), I was put through a specific culture fit step of the interview process at all but one company, and it was part of all remote hiring processes.

> It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit

I'm not sure what culture fit means. I have been passed over for culture fit and seen others passed over for culture fit and I have never seen it be because someone couldn't be productive with their peers. It seems, anecdotally, to just be based upon affinity, which seems stupid to me unless you're a lifestyle brand, like FitStar.

In the Army I learned culture can be taught. All of these groups who hire for culture fit seem like they want to hang out with other people like them. People who are nothing like me have been my best hires. I've indoctrinated them into our values, and only on rare occasions has that not worked out.

If culture fit isn't a "bro test" then why test at all? Why not just teach people your culture? Do companies expect people to come in off the street serendipitously sharing the same values? That smells to me like a leadership vacuum.

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#45

Post by jbuss »

aantix wrote: post #41
jbuss wrote: post #13

I joined my startup 2 years ago on-site. After my wife and I had a baby it became very difficult to live in the bay area. Housing is obviously ridiculous there and I had to live an hour away from the office. I told my manager that we would be moving and I was interviewing for remote jobs. They ended up allowing me to work remotely, and I have been for almost two months now. The whole transition has been much smoother…

Have you tried Slack's Screenhero integration? Being able to type /hero @username and start pair programming in seconds (with audio!) is a huge productivity increase.

We don't do a ton of pair programming at our company, but yes I have definitely used it. Very helpful!

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#46

Post by jbuss »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #42
jbuss wrote: post #13

I joined my startup 2 years ago on-site. After my wife and I had a baby it became very difficult to live in the bay area. Housing is obviously ridiculous there and I had to live an hour away from the office. I told my manager that we would be moving and I was interviewing for remote jobs. They ended up allowing me to work remotely, and I have been for almost two months now. The whole transition has been much smoother…

how often do you go into the office now?

The plan is to go once per quarter for a week. We try to plan it around product kickoffs or team (for fun) off-sites.

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#48

Post by soulnothing »

in_me_i_trust wrote: post #36
soulnothing wrote: post #28

I've worked partially remote for the past two years. I had one horrid stint fully remote where they thought remote == 24 hour work days. There are pros and cons to remote. It depends on your team and their culture. Some teams need a whiteboard and planning sessions. Others can just do a screen share and work on a flow chart together. If your team and culture is capable of remote it's a really nice perk for employees.…

"I.E. coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in for a meeting." I'm curious whether you find hipchat / slack to actually be less intrusive. In my experience, working from home can result in protracted text conversations causing me to stay less focused for longer periods of time. In the office, I can usually stop, take off the headphones, resolve their problem, refill my coffee and then ge…

Yes and no, it goes to the culture. My current team, where that quote is apt, has slack. But it's rarely used.

On a prior role when we had discussions exceed the HipChat/Slack medium we did a quick google hangout/skype session. Doing face to face, and with a screen share. I can't really think of a time where we didn't get something resolved in under an hour, more likely I would say under 30 minutes.

Face to face can resolve slightly quicker, but with the amount of interruptions it provides. I'll take the bit of extra time resolving something via HipChat/Slack -> Video conference for more uninterrupted work time.

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#49

Post by Klathmon »

67726e wrote: post #40
Klathmon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that also works remote, it's not all roses and daisies. Communication can be very hard at times without someone there to manage it, keep everyone in the loop, and make sure nobody is left out. We go into the office once a week, and i've found that on those days, just being in the office lets me overhear conversations about things that I can offer a solution to, or having a few people in the same area shoot…

> As someone that also works remote, it's not all roses and daisies. I spent the past two years working remote, and at this point I don't think I would ever want to do it again. Something I don't think I've ever really seen mentioned about working from home is that it can be incredibly isolating and overall mentally unhealthy. The isolation, lack of separation of work and home environment (in the physical sense), and…

The isolation never bothered me. I have a few close friends, and a wonderful wife, and i tend to be "introverted" in the sense that it's really draining for me to be in a social setting for too long, so working from home has been perfect for all these years.

That being said, the "you work from home so you should be able to handle X" really gets to me. I actually have less flexibility than it sounds like you do, it was never explicitly said, but most of us work 9-ish to 5-ish monday-ish through friday-ish.

It was something that my wife and I needed to work out on our own, because she would expect me to be able to run out and pick up prescriptions during the week, or would ask me frequently to go to the store to grab something for dinner. And I'd feel like an ass for saying no, because on some level she is right, I do have the ability, and it is easier for me, but it still impacts my day a lot to interrupt my work to run to the store.

We have found a good medium now, but it was a common argument for a while.

Re: Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture

#50

Post by vonmoltke »

endswapper wrote: post #34
vonmoltke wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit I don't really agree. I come from a traditional engineering background and consider myself a professional. As such, I expect to be judged on issues of professional decorum (i.e. what I would term an "asshole test"). That is part of culture, I suppose, but beyond that there should be no "fit" determination. This is especially true since this in…

There is a major difference between "culture fit" and the ability to adapt. Both serve a distinct purpose and both are valid. Someone's ability to adapt shows tactical proficiency. Particularly in an engineering environment I would put a high premium on tactical proficiency because the objectives are typically explicit and linear. Culture fit speaks to traits like open-mindedness, inclusion and confidence in leadersh…

> Simply, if you are seeking to optimize an entire organization for the best possible results in working towards your objectives, culture fit is relevant.

My opinion, hinted at in another post in this discussion, is that this optimization is a fool's errand, particularly for a larger team. If the decision is between a New York startup hiring a technically-competent Midwesterner or waiting six months to find that optimal East Coast fit, it makes no sense to choose the latter.

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