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InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

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211–220 of 231 posts

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#211

The average age of developers is increasing. A generation is leaving SF to start families in other cities. Fewer people want to come to SF due to costs and low quality of living, and startups are no longer expected to be in the Bay. Coding schools are graduating new developers all over the country (and the world). The future is remote. I have a contrarian viewpoint: I think employment doesn't work with remote work at…

Thanks but no thanks. Contract work overwhelming benefits the employer. Also, spam.

Please be respectful.

It's not spam for an HN user to link to their work in a relevant context. If he were doing it in lots of threads it would be a different story, but that's not the case here.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#212
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get it straight: You are increasing potential hires pool tenfolds, save a fortune by not playing the real-estate bubble game, effectively double your work day to almost 24 hours by spreading over timezones, and likely enjoy a 6-days work week - and VCs are worried about your ability to scale ? This is just astonishing to hear.

A lot of people don't work well remotely. Me, for example. I found that out the hard way. > likely enjoy a 6-days work week Wait, what? Are remote workers expected to work Saturdays or something?

Maybe because of international date lines, one person's Saturday is another's Friday, so different days means someone is always working?

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#213
post #67

700 employees? That sounds like an awful lot for a product like InVision. Bohemian Coding, the company behind Sketch, employs a few dozen people. Also, I don't think the web is ready for UI/UX design tools. The ones I've tried feel really slow on my 5K iMac. Maybe in 5-10 years when web assembly is polished and related tool chains...

they are close to releasing desktop based application.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#214
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be a challenge for me as my investors already feel the company has the potential to be an acquisition target for one of the big guys and feels we should be building it that way. We’re also based in the U.K. and am not sure how many Saas platform tech companies become public.

You will have to get to a liquidity event, 99% of the time this is an acquisition or going public. It is not very motivating for you and the team to build for an acquisition. If you want to go that route be careful how much you raise, every pounds has to paid back 3 to 10 times.

Which is why I have a slight headache. I’m really impressed and what you guys have done and am extremely interested in your journey so far.

Would you be able to spare me 10 mins for a quick chat? I’m a first time founder and really want to learn as much as I can so I don’t screw it all up.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is remote such highly requested? I work remote but, not cause I HAVE to. My team is just all fully remote.

Honestly, saving 1-4 hours of commute every single day equates to an absurd amount of extra time. People underestimate how long commuting takes away from your day. Just the time you take getting ready, waking up early to get breakfast first or even getting out to eat lunch. Normally people don't add those times to the commute total and count only the actual car/bus/metro time. No matter small those are, they add up a…

Your experience is atypical. The median commute time in the United States is 25.4 minutes each way. The HN zeitgeist's insistence on living in major cities and taking public transit has a drastic cost in terms of commute time as well as money, one that most Americans do not pay.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#216
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s sad to hear given as I’m looking to raise funds but also hoping to build a distributed team given the abundance of worldwide talent. Does this change your strategy somewhat in that it limits your access to capital which forces you to look at profitability sooner?

> That’s sad to hear given as I’m looking to raise funds but also hoping to build a distributed team given the abundance of worldwide talent. Are you looking for VC funding or angel funding? If you have the ability to use foreign teams, you are probably better off taking angel funding and bootstrapping. Remember, VC's want "up or out". "Cheap remote workers" isn't really relevant to that to a first approximation. In…

Good "cheap workers" either remote or in office don't exist anymore, and it is normal to be like that. You have to change your thinking.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#217
any good tips/reference/book/whatever that explains/teach how to manage a distributed team? maybe something learned during the time. i've read the gitlab handbook so far, sounds good, but I would love to have something for the owner of a remote company on how to manage people and work (and how to find the right people)

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#218
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get it straight: You are increasing potential hires pool tenfolds, save a fortune by not playing the real-estate bubble game, effectively double your work day to almost 24 hours by spreading over timezones, and likely enjoy a 6-days work week - and VCs are worried about your ability to scale ? This is just astonishing to hear.

A lot of people don't work well remotely. Me, for example. I found that out the hard way. > likely enjoy a 6-days work week Wait, what? Are remote workers expected to work Saturdays or something?

"weekdays" are not globally Mon-Fri.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#219

The average age of developers is increasing. A generation is leaving SF to start families in other cities. Fewer people want to come to SF due to costs and low quality of living, and startups are no longer expected to be in the Bay. Coding schools are graduating new developers all over the country (and the world). The future is remote. I have a contrarian viewpoint: I think employment doesn't work with remote work at…

> That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce.

Look, Snow Crash is not a utopia.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#220
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which collaborative whiteboard solutions do you like?

We use https://www.notion.so/ for notes, tasks, wiki and project management. Google Docs for quick stuff or formal writeups. Occasionally we'll use OneNote online or https://awwapp.com/ which has more freeform drawing if we need it, but otherwise it's usually just typing stuff out in lists. This is all on peoples computers, no fancy video-conferencing setups. Those are almost always a waste of money and never work we…

Hrm. None of these really seem like whiteboarding though.
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