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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

#171
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep on saying this but it's just not obviously true. > People haven’t been paying for offices for the last ten years for no reason. Companies do so many suboptimal things that this argument isn't credible. We've seen how many organizations can barely limp through a "digital transformation", so why should we expect them to be operating anywhere near optimally along other axes? They could just as easily be payi…

> People keep on saying this but it's just not obviously true. How is it obviously not true? I mean. I love remote work. I started working remotely way before it was mainstream and I'm advocate for it. I've managed remote teams for many years too. Even so, I can't claim there's no performance hit. I just think the performance hit is small enough that in most cases the benefits for people and businesses outweigh it.

Obviously not true != not obviously true.

I think you’ve misunderstood the comment you’re replying to.

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

#172
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.

It's so much easier to just hire someone in the same country. No visa/sponsorship, no timezone worries, no language/culture barriers. It's just so much easier.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People keep on saying this but it's just not obviously true. How is it obviously not true? I mean. I love remote work. I started working remotely way before it was mainstream and I'm advocate for it. I've managed remote teams for many years too. Even so, I can't claim there's no performance hit. I just think the performance hit is small enough that in most cases the benefits for people and businesses outweigh it.

How do you balance that against the performance hit of working on-prem? You can't just hand-wave away the unpaid labor and risk to your life that you undertake with every trip to and from the office. You can't ignore the drive-by conversations you get roped into when you're trying to do head-down work or the overall noise in an office. Yes, in ideal conditions your office might approach what you get working at home,…

Drive by conversations are a feature not a bug, assuming a high functioning environment.

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

#174
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.

Payment in remote countries is a solved issue, by the likes of GlobalizationPartners or via.work

I've been working for US companies while living in Mexico for years. 100% legally hired in my country, with all the benefits and even equity from the USA startups

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

#175
post #147
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprisingly hard to consistently find startups willing to pay over $140k - some offers are low key insulting. However, if I cared less about having any semblance of a social life I'd leave new york immediately. $200k+ full remote, I'd never go back.

It's funny you mention staying in New York to have a social life. I found it to be the worst place I've lived in the US for socializing. People are mistrustful of strangers, extremely busy, and often separated by absurd travel times (it can easily take 20 min to travel 1 mile without a car). For those reasons, I wasn't able to make new friends outside of work, couldn't see my friends on weekdays, and generally felt l…

New York is the worst! There's nothing to do if you don't like drinking, concerts, going to the park, visiting museums, touring galleries, eating every type of cuisine known to man, hanging out at the beach, skateboarding, bicycle riding, dance classes, heavy metal, reggaeton, nightclubs, techno raves, rock climbing gyms, Tinder dates, playing speedchess for money, listening to buskers, riding the subway, vintage clothing stores, reading books at the cafe, getting brunch with your friends, playing frisbee, cocktail bars, pizza, bagels, tech meetups, high technology jobs, working on Wall Street, exploring historical landmarks dating back to pre-Revolutionary times, urban exploration, fishing, hot pot, listening to old Chinese men play the zither, rollerblading, high fashion, recreational drug use, recreational sex, visiting immigrant flophouses, Japanese ex-pat izakayas, wandering around in the wee small hours of the morning ...

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

#176
post #127

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…

> Because everyone who seriously invests money in businesses You're right, so let's follow the money... I regularly work with investors who acquire businesses (AUMs are typically ~$1B, I guess that is serious enough?). > knows that there’s a performance hit you take as a remote company. - I don't know a single one who deliberately has said "there is a performance hit if they are remote, we should switch to in office…

> I don't know a single one who deliberately has said "there is a performance hit if they are remote, we should switch to in office to increase performance".

Because you can’t. The decision to go remote is a one way door.

> People have also have been enforcing 40 hour weeks and argue open offices are better for performance.

Open offices are a management trend and hardly universal among successful companies. Whereas remote work is an extreme aberration from the norm.

I have been at three companies since the pandemic started, all of whom you would know. All of them struggle with performance management and output of remote teams, regardless of if they are public about it.

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

#177
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of part time but realistically you have to spend loads of time outside regular hours just to keep up to date.

I have a hard time believing this for most software roles (which is just basic web development, scaling issues aside). I can easily envision myself working part time on a react application or creating a spring app. Not exactly ground breaking stuff here.

Programming is the easy part. It’s the collaboration and communication that get you. Working part time means a higher ratio of your time is spent communicating and syncing up rather than doing “actual work”.

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

#179

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…

This doesn't pass the sniff test. For a basic non-engineering example, think about B2B sales. How much of a typical B2B sales cycle involves phone calls and emails and video meetings versus how much involves in-person meetings? Hasn't the first part of that more or less been "remote" since well before the virus? To an extent, I think a large part of this view, as other comments have noted, might involve things like e…

I have done B2B sales since the shift to remote work.

The nature of the work actually highly lends itself to being in person. Even remote workers will be on some physical location the majority of the time.

COVID changed this, and not for the better. It is much harder to do remote.

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

#180
post #21

Startups are going to either need to start paying a lot more or giving more serious equity stakes if they want to hire anyone who isn't straight out of college or already wealthy.

Those aren't the only levers. Imagine a three day work week. Or part time work, letting you also maintain your FANGA job.

Yeah, I don't ever see a FANGA company letting you work at a startup while a FT employee.
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