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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

#181

Post by xtracto »

Salgat wrote: post #172
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.

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.

I work (from Mexico) with people in the US, which has 4 time zones for mainland. My time zone lands in CT, Which is convenient both for ET and PT. I didn't require a sponsorship and I am able to communicate pretty well with my American peers.

And I'm between 50% and 70% cheaper than hiring someone in the US at the same level (PhD, 10+ years of industry experience, Executive level experience, startup experience, highly technical , etc etc).

And I know several people with a profile similar to mine.

Companies that discover this are getting an "unfair advantage "

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

#182

Post by teaearlgraycold »

nso95 wrote: post #146
toomanyrichies wrote: post #122

I see a ton of comments from people on both sides of the issue, saying that either a) "I can't stand remote work" or b) "I'll only ever work remote from now on". This seems to imply that employees at non-remote-friendly companies will gradually leave to work at remote-friendly ones, and vice-versa. If that's true, over time we can expect company cultures to start becoming more homogenous (and therefore more strident)…

Or, you know, just let your employees choose

As an all remote guy - I don't know if it makes sense to be in the office if half of the most important people in a meeting are on a screen.

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

#183

Post by cableshaft »

RationPhantoms wrote: post #39
askonomm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just realized how spoiled us dev folk are. If only my grandmother would know the cushy life I get to live while still complaining about it she would slap me.

I still wonder why I peruse HN for this reason (as a non-SWE). It's incredible how the business world panders to software engineers.

They pander to whoever brings in the money. Salespeople at my wife's job get away with much worse bullshit than I ever got away with at any coding job. Like one guy at her job brings in like 40% of the company's total revenue, which their total revenue was apparently around 60 million last year, so he brings in about 24 million.

Apparently other people complain that he doesn't really do anything the vast majority of the time, and doesn't do anything coworkers ask them to do that's part of the job description for other salespeople, and the execs won't do anything about it (and apparently are very scared of him leaving since they think he'll take all those clients with him).

...which I agree with the execs not doing anything, by the way. That revenue is way more important than making sure that employee is "putting in a solid 8 hour work day" or "being a team player".

Software engineers get some slack from the business but not that much slack. If I could have a few short conversations a year with the computer and it spat out software that generated millions in revenue I absolutely would, but no, I have to do the research and design and development to make sure the software does what it needs to do. And then it helps generate millions of dollars, of which I get a comparatively tiny fraction compared to what I bet that salesperson gets.

Most of us are still getting a raw deal compared to salespeople (well, effective salespeople, at least).

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

#184

Post by shagie »

snicker7 wrote: post #177
azemetre wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

This also may suffer from an explosion of Brook's Law. So, now you're working less on "actual work" which means that for the organization to get similar amounts of stuff done, they need to hire more people... which means that a larger portion of the time is spent communicating and syncing up.

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

#185

Post by itake »

nso95 wrote: post #146
toomanyrichies wrote: post #122

I see a ton of comments from people on both sides of the issue, saying that either a) "I can't stand remote work" or b) "I'll only ever work remote from now on". This seems to imply that employees at non-remote-friendly companies will gradually leave to work at remote-friendly ones, and vice-versa. If that's true, over time we can expect company cultures to start becoming more homogenous (and therefore more strident)…

Or, you know, just let your employees choose

I've worked on teams where everyone else was in-office and I was remote. I was constantly missing important "water cooler" conversations and my role slowly shifted into "code-monkey" since I no longer had the relevant business context.

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

#186

Post by smt88 »

ipnon wrote: post #175
smt88 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 clo…

> working on Wall Street

I worked on Wall Street. It was a horrendous combination of boring, stressful, and full of assholes.

Almost all of the other things you listed are available in other cities that are cheaper, easier to get around in, friendlier, cleaner, and warmer.

And you can't do any of those things with your friends if you don't have friends, if your friends work the typical NYC 8am-8pm (including commute), or if you're too tired from all the bullshit you have to do just to survive on a day to day basis.

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

#187

Post by legerdemain »

indymike wrote: post #149
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…

> The tradeoff you’re hoping to make is that the increase in talent pool outweighs the decrease in productivity. No, the trade-off is being able to hire the best people possible instead of the best people who will work in the office. Honestly, the office has been dying since 4G and high speed internet got everywhere. Offices should be optional - there if you need it, there for meetings, team work sessions and present…

Meanwhile in Palo Alto, I was spending hours every workday trying to get a Terraform apply to complete without crashing out thanks to my apartment's crappy, crappy internet connection. Hell yeah, remote work!

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

#188

Post by colordrops »

digitalsushi wrote: post #130

I've been wondering if my employer will eventually need to abandon its 5-tier city cost-of-living scale. For the same exact job titles and functions, those of us living in rural areas are paid up to 12% less than people living in cities. I agree that cities have a higher cost of living, but the people trying to pull me away from my current employer into new remote work don't seem to need to make that distinction!

It's more than a 12% difference for many companies.

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

#189

Post by mulmen »

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…

There is a precisely zero percent chance that customer service works better in person. I have done it personally. My mom did it for over a decade from home. Engineering is not the only task that can be done remotely.
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