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70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

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Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#91

Post by flog »

sanderjd wrote: post #42
flog wrote: post #38

Remote is such an overloaded term. Is it US/North America only? Is it equal work for equal pay globally? I was someone who took the opportunity to relocate back to my home country when Covid struck, but had to take a near 50% pay cut to do so, despite doing the same work. I'm surprised this hasn't become more of a hot button issue within the community.

I don't think it is an overloaded term... It just means that there is no office you are expected to go into. Those things you identified are just other dimensions that are also important.

I guess what I was hinting at was the difficulty in filtering "remote" roles

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#92

Post by cm2012 »

nostrebored wrote: post #53
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #40

I honestly don't understand how any startup can even hope to compete if they don't offer remote options. Hiring is incredibly tight right now, and I'm sure glad my options are "anybody within ~2 timezones" over basically only people within a 15 mile radius of my office because traffic is horrendous in my city. Not to mention, how have companies not realized how to build robust remote company cultures over the past 2…

Because everyone who seriously invests money in businesses knows that there’s a performance hit you take as a remote company. People haven’t been paying for offices for the last ten years for no reason. Engineering is one segment where this penalty seems to be lower. However, engineers seem to be unable to understand that every other function functions better in person. The tradeoff you’re hoping to make is that the…

Marketing works better remote, and most agencies will be remote moving forward forever.

Source: I know many agency owners, also am one. Also, most marketers I've been trying to recruit have said their agency's are remote indefinitely now.

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#93

Post by MattGaiser »

cm2012 wrote: post #92
nostrebored wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone who seriously invests money in businesses knows that there’s a performance hit you take as a remote company. People haven’t been paying for offices for the last ten years for no reason. Engineering is one segment where this penalty seems to be lower. However, engineers seem to be unable to understand that every other function functions better in person. The tradeoff you’re hoping to make is that the…

Marketing works better remote, and most agencies will be remote moving forward forever. Source: I know many agency owners, also am one. Also, most marketers I've been trying to recruit have said their agency's are remote indefinitely now.

This is very interesting, as marketing is usually cited as one of the ones that is "impossible" to do remotely due to the high level of collaboration on very visual elements.

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#95

Post by zuhayeer »

woodpanel wrote: post #44
zuhayeer wrote: post #26

Even within remote companies there are distinctions between the way different teams practice remote. For example, a lot of companies that transitioned to remote out of necessity come from the perspective of copy / pasting in-office activities online (ie meetings, happy hours, etc) whereas natively remote companies think about things from a more original and untethered view (async, writing, Looms). Be careful to spot…

Please, would love to hear more about your point about "(async, writing, Looms)" :-) I'd just had the pleasure to work at a unicorn which started during the pandemic, but for whatever reason wanted to open actual offices mid-term. The result being that some teams were working more async-y than others. And I immediatly felt, there's a need to explore how to sync teams in an async way, including many yet-to-exist tech-…

The GitLab Handbook is a great start. They have an awesome guide to remote work: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/

Strong written communication is a given, but they have some good advice here: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/effectiv...

If you aren't familiar, Loom (https://www.loom.com/) is a great tool for screen recordings and narrations to explain things asynchronously without having to book time with someone else. Particularly useful if you have a distributed team across the world. And also neat that it can be indexed like a document if someone has a similar query in the future, they can find this video instead of having to message you.

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#96

Post by Apocryphon »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #75
Natsu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer full WFH myself, but I think a lot depends on the family situation, too. Some people have small kids and it's hard for them to WFH, though people are more understanding if some little kid walks into an online meeting yelling about something these days. Other people just like the structure of it or they have a good desk setup at work and not as good a place to work from at home.

I've seen people Work From Someone Else's Home. I think that would be the best of both worlds for me. I'd set up a second workstation in my 'office' for colleagues that are also friends.

This could be WeWork's saving throw.

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#97

Post by engmgrmgr »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #40

I honestly don't understand how any startup can even hope to compete if they don't offer remote options. Hiring is incredibly tight right now, and I'm sure glad my options are "anybody within ~2 timezones" over basically only people within a 15 mile radius of my office because traffic is horrendous in my city. Not to mention, how have companies not realized how to build robust remote company cultures over the past 2…

A company with a few people vs. a company with a lot of people are two different beasts. If things are not rigidly defined, it can be a lot more effective for people to be around each other, especially in the phase of spontaneous brainstorming or kitchen conversation or happy hour drinks. Most new companies aren’t hiring super experienced engineers to grind out a high risk venture, and maybe those are the people least affected by remote. Much harder to train or onboard someone who’s remote if you’re starting from 0.

Maturity is correlated with age, but age isn’t as strongly correlated with talent. Just because a team is just as capable working remotely doesn’t mean they’re as generally capable as a different team that’s more effective in person.

How do you reach the same level of effectiveness teaching or debugging math problems on a whiteboard without investing a lot of time asynchronously?

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#98

Post by avidphantasm »

I get why remote work is popular, and for some tasks/jobs I think it can work well. However, I think in-person interaction is critical for breaking new ground, starting new initiatives, etc. So far, nothing replaces being in the same room hashing out ideas on the whiteboard, etc.

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#99

Post by ThalesX »

jono_wilson wrote: post #25
keithnz wrote: post #14

Be interesting to know for the "remotes" how remote is remote. Some are localish remotes, some are world wide remotes, and some somewhere in-between. One of the problems seems to be ( and I'm sure some start up will try to solve this) is employing people worldwide has a lot of legal issues with regards to local employment laws and payment issues.

Yeah, I'm sure it can vary widely; we try to stick with US timezones, which at least brings all of South America into play. Deel is really great for the legal issues of onboarding international folks.

Not affiliated but onboarded with Deel and it was truly a breeze... on the contractor side.

Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows

#100

Post by vultour »

r00fus wrote: post #60
flog wrote: post #38

Remote is such an overloaded term. Is it US/North America only? Is it equal work for equal pay globally? I was someone who took the opportunity to relocate back to my home country when Covid struck, but had to take a near 50% pay cut to do so, despite doing the same work. I'm surprised this hasn't become more of a hot button issue within the community.

Timezone and management capabilities of your organization could have been an issue in why the pay was so different. Especially for startups, managing payroll in another country could be challenging. Also the latency on communications for daylight working hours could be bad - back and forth discussions leading to swift actions are hamper by a 9+hr timezone difference.

They don't need to manage payroll in another country. Everybody working overseas does so as a contractor which means it's just another expense for the employer.
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