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Quora goes permanently remote-first

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Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#151

Post by C1sc0cat »

csunbird wrote: post #149
C1sc0cat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd pay the local salary of course - this move to remote is a hr/accountings wet dream to reduce to amount spent on pay.

I wonder if there is a way of projecting this as discrimination (e.g. accusing the company to be a racist, because you pay less to your Indian/Non U.S. employees) and get activists attention.

Its paid by location.

Having said that if you audited any of the FANGS US employees you would find discrimination on grounds of Sex, Disability and Race (and I suspect Caste )

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#153

Post by AdrianB1 »

swyx wrote: post #47
AdrianB1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is a miracle they still exist, their revenue is not so good.

citation needed?

It is almost impossible to find clear data, but in 2017 they were still raising funding and in 2018 they closed the Top Write program, the one that was giving minor benefits. Since then, there is no reason to believe their revenue grew significantly, while the quality of new content is horrible. I followed the situation for the past ~ 4 years, this is what it looks like.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#154

Post by Leszek »

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned:

> We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12am across most of Europe

I know that I wouldn't work for them from Europe if those were the conditions.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#155

Post by Havoc »

Leszek wrote: post #154

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned: > We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12…

That’s a pretty insane expectation given that their physical office presumably don’t require working at midnight. (Good luck getting that one past European regulators)

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#156

Post by wastedhours »

ryanSrich wrote: post #64
threeseed wrote: post #13

There's an insightful series of comments from Sid, CEO of Gitlab about why this is not likely to work over the long term: https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1264341436138270720 It might be different for Quora given that their CEO and SLT will be remote. But I still believe that whenever you have an office you are creating a community of employees who will have a different relationship to those who are working remotely…

I'm as big of a remote work supporter as you'll find. I'm often crucified for how anti-office I am. Having said that, a hybrid model is absolutely not remote work. It's not distributed. It's a nightmare. Every single person in the company, including executives, needs to be remote.

I used to work somewhere where you could work wherever you wanted to, but we had an office. Most people rolled in and out several days per week - you solved for it by creating habits and systems.

The single most important thing is that everyone has the option. You don't really need to sell the office to make it work, but that everyone from the CEO to even (perhaps surprisingly, the front of house team) has the same freedom to work from wherever suits.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#157

Post by wastedhours »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #132
aeternum wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it suck? We try to ensure that everyone's voice is heard plus remote members have some advantage in that people in the room can see them unmute as an indicator that they have something to say. Some also use the text chat attached to the meeting allowing them to raise a point without verbally interrupting the person speaking (although this is more rare). Seems pretty extreme to require everyone to dial-in eve…

The dynamic is just different for those dialling in. People are simply not on the same level than those on site who have a clear advantage. I saw this working relatively well when the person remote is some senior person coming with a lot of experience to insert himself in the conversation. It's maybe even better because others may now have the chance to say something (lol) Generally speaking, this works well, when th…

I guess it also depends on the company and the style of the employees you work with - in my old organisation we made it work because it was embedded, but also everyone was just genuinely nice and not trying to score little political points here and there.

Even with over 500 employees, the lack of a career ladder as such meant there's little to gain by being the loudest in the room or trying to work the room. Perhaps that's also an ingredient - it might be easier to minimise others' egos when you're also in the room?

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#158

Post by mirekrusin »

Havoc wrote: post #155
Leszek wrote: post #154

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned: > We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12…

That’s a pretty insane expectation given that their physical office presumably don’t require working at midnight. (Good luck getting that one past European regulators)

I used to work from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a company in Sydney, Australia for few years. Interesting dynamics working for the company on the other side of the globe, I think it was 13h difference. Some aspects were good, you were basically left to do your job without interruptions for the day. You/they wake up to the updates on the other side.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#159

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

Austin_Conlon wrote: post #109
dantheman wrote: post #20

I can't believe this site still exists, who goes there?

Why does it surprise you (and the many dismissive commenters in this thread)? The way I personally get the most value out of it is by asking questions from people who are active and have clear expertise. Some examples are questions about the Swift compiler and standard library from people who worked on it, or from Alan Kay about the history of computing.

Most of my interaction is from seeing it in a web search, clicking on it and seeing an objectively incorrect answer.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#160

Post by miracle2k »

Havoc wrote: post #155
Leszek wrote: post #154

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned: > We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12…

That’s a pretty insane expectation given that their physical office presumably don’t require working at midnight. (Good luck getting that one past European regulators)

Why would regulators be involved in setting employees working hours?
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