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Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#121

Post by myrle »

germanier wrote: post #116
itronitron wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

asking for a friend... what if you hire someone 'Alex', a resident of Washington State and then they move to Germany because their spouse is relocated for employment to Germany, where they both receive benefits but are required to remain US Citizens (and return to the US each year)... in that case are you paying Alex as if they are a Washington State resident or are you legally required to pay them as if they are a G…

As soon as you start working on German soil, German employment laws apply fully. Citizenship, prior residence, etc. are almost completely irrelevant. There is a social security agreement between the US and Germany which might exempt the person from German pension contributions but nothing more. (If the spouse is working for the US military there are NATO agreements which might make German employment law inapplicable…

Make sure and include a "Gerichtsstand" in the employment contract. This is basically the name of the city in Germany where legal processes related to the contract will be conducted. This will save you a good deal of unpleasantness later, should any employment issue come before a court of law in Germany.

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#122

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

randycupertino wrote: post #120
Benjammer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd add that this culture-setting rolls down from management -- if they aren't setting a good example, others will falter and the remote-supporting culture will fall apart. As someone who works at HQ for a local-first company with a significant contingent of remote workers in two satellite offices, it's _exhausting_ to be the developer in the corning who has to say "can we make sure the remote guys can hear OK" or "…

But why should the local team all have to suffer and endure this hassle just so a few randos can enjoy their life being digital nomads? remote workers chose their bed, they knew the risks, they should deal with it.

Or, those employees are good, they are strong part of the company and with your life-threatening sacrifice you can... Pass the damn microphone around and get everyone included. Including people who are (not) digital nomads, live in the same city as yours but decided that growing up their kids rather than dropping them at childcare brings more value to society than the next meeting where a company care so much about you that they don't even bother passing around a microphone?

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#123

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

I'm confused by people saying they have problems communicating across the internet due to conference software. Gamers have been running 40-people fully-coordinated real time raids and a company can't manage to run a meeting online?

How people have problems every day with the conference software? If you do, buy a dumb hardware that you use only for conferences (I think a raspberry could work too?). Or join 2 minutes earlier than your meeting and run a sanity check.

Connection will drop once every 10 meetings, but so people will get distracted, or sick.

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#124

Post by akshayKMR »

akshayKMR wrote: post #74
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #30

IMO one of the least-solved problems is communication. Two areas in particular: (1) lack of a shared real whiteboard, and (2) video-call quality. These are two areas where good solutions may exist at reasonable price-points, but if so that information isn't widely known. Not sure if it fits with your business model, but it would be extremely helpful for someone to carefully evaluate the effectiveness of various techn…

I made a quick colloboration app with video chat and more features including a simple whiteboard. Check it out https://oorja.io

I don't understand the downvotes. I just felt excited sharing an app I built that also has a simple whiteboard. :(

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#125

Post by eddiejaoude »

mitchellh wrote: post #39

I'm the founder of a company that is ~250 people, remote first, and still fully remote. We do have an office in SF, but ~10% of our employees are present, almost no full teams are centralized, and all our processes revolve around remote work. Important to note that we're a US-founded company (this comes along later). I'm going to use this comment as a way to talk about remote hiring generally, rather than respond dir…

Great post! Thanks. Contractors FTW :)

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#126

Post by st1ck »

gnulinux wrote: post #118
jlisam13 wrote: post #94

I have been working at GitHub for almost a year, which is a remote first company. I would say challenges include: - Solitude (at first it's not an issue) - Asynchronous communication. Learning to read and write effectively. - Team collaboration work (designing/brainstorming). It's very difficult to explain ideas through . To solve for this, GitHub allows employees to meet each other as long as there is a business nee…

> To solve for this, GitHub allows employees to meet each other as long as there is a business need. What do you mean by "allow". Is it, in general, not allowed for employees to meet each other in remote-first companies, but GitHub notably allows it? Or did you say it that way to emphasize they must meet only for business needs and not for anything else. If so, why? Would you be able elaborate on that sentence?

They probably mean that GitHub arranges meetings and pays for expenses.

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#127

Post by st1ck »

macinjosh wrote: post #4

I'd say #4. I am remote and my company has a hard time providing, tracking, maintaining, and upgrading the gear employees need to do their job. It currently involves a lot of manual data entry, trips to the UPS store by both HQ staff and remote employees. Especially an issue when the person who is ordering gear doesn't understand the gear or the needs of the employee.

The gear is not computers, right?

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#128

Post by jroper »

mitchellh wrote: post #39

I'm the founder of a company that is ~250 people, remote first, and still fully remote. We do have an office in SF, but ~10% of our employees are present, almost no full teams are centralized, and all our processes revolve around remote work. Important to note that we're a US-founded company (this comes along later). I'm going to use this comment as a way to talk about remote hiring generally, rather than respond dir…

My company hires engineers wherever they are. We're only incorporated in a few countries, the way we work is to engage a firm whose business it is to be incorporated in many countries so that they can hire people in those countries as full time employees, and contract them to our company. This firm charges a flat fee per person per year, and it's not a lot. I've been told that we'd have to have at least 5 people in a single country before incorporating in that country would cost the same as using this firm. They handle all the local obligations, payroll, entitlements, tax, superannuation, etc. I don't know how it works, but we even are able to get stock options, and I've never heard of any problems with that from any of my coworkers in any other countries. Other things like leave - our local job contracts conform to local law for leave allowances, and then we just work it out with our managers - we have an HR system that seems to be able to easily handle different leave policies for each employee, and if there's any problems, you just tell your manager and it gets sorted, no big deal.

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#129

Post by vram22 »

ecwilson wrote: post #107
vram22 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Others have mentioned this to some extent, but what I've found the most challenging is when a company tries to do both local and remote, but was not remote-first. I'm interested in this, as a person who does remote work, and has experienced some of these issues. So, what are some good remote-first companies? I know of a few that may be: Automattic, Scrapinghub. What others? Asking all here, not just the parent comme…

Look into Jason Friend -- he literally wrote the book on remote work. https://basecamp.com/books/remote As for your actual question, I don't yet know of a great resource for understanding which companies are truly remote-first, but would love it if someone had one to share.

Thanks, I will.

Re: Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

#130

Post by barroyo »

mitchellh wrote: post #39

I'm the founder of a company that is ~250 people, remote first, and still fully remote. We do have an office in SF, but ~10% of our employees are present, almost no full teams are centralized, and all our processes revolve around remote work. Important to note that we're a US-founded company (this comes along later). I'm going to use this comment as a way to talk about remote hiring generally, rather than respond dir…

very interesting post, would mind sharing your top 10 countries to hire remotely
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