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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

#191

Post by tdeck »

andrew_ wrote: post #84
62951413 wrote: post #71

Is it conceivable that the attraction of the Bay Area will steadily decline as a result? Or most people here still expect it to recover once offices are open again and life is back to normal? I love the climate myself. But on this very forum every other day people from CA discuss things which don't exactly justify 10% of income lost. In addition to the usual RE prices, AP classes, and surge in crime anecdata I see cu…

I intentionally avoid companies based in the Bay Area (SF) even being remote. The hoops that the State of CA makes employees jump through yearly is annoying at best.

> The hoops that the State of CA makes employees jump through yearly is annoying at best.

What hoops are these? Tax related or something else?

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

#192

Post by mulmen »

nostrebored wrote: post #173
mullingitover wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So I am low functioning because I have a human brain? Task switching is not free.

I have never been a member of an organization with more than three people who didn't have at least one member incapable of understanding headphones mean "don't talk to me".

Informal conversations happen in team chat now so it can be asynchronous, I never miss overhearing something relevant in the team room because I am away at a meeting, I can sync up at my convenience.

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

#193

Post by midrus »

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…

Not my experience at all.

The last two companies I've worked for where 100% remote, in both of these places engineering was a lot more productive. I personally invested less total time in work (about 7 or 8 hours total) and got a lot more done.

Both of these companies had a culture of writing things down, so everything was documented, an all important conversations where posted in the open for anyone to see. Everything is searchable.

For the kind of work I do (web development) in-person interactions are only good for middle managers that enjoy micro managing as a way to justify their job.

What does not work is to try to keep doing the same things you did in the office in a remote way. You need to adapt to the new context.

If your company went remote and suddenly you have 5 video calls a day, you're doing it wrong. Of course it will be worse and less productive.

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

#194

Post by mulmen »

nostrebored wrote: post #179
zebraflask wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no reason for the sales staff to be in the same room as eachother. Plenty of B2B deals happen remotely, even pre-covid. I don't recall any customers coming on site at my last B2B company and there's no way sales had a travel budget. Remote workers are equally or better suited to occasional visits to customer locations anyway.

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

#195

Post by midrus »

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)…

Agree. This is what I've been saying to all my friends/coworkers. You like remote and your company doesn't? switch jobs. You like being in the office and your company went remote? Switch jobs. Problem solved... not everyone is the same and not everyone enjoys the same way of working.

There is no enough money in this world to make me go back to 2~3 hours a day commute in a crowded bus.

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

#196

Post by midrus »

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

Mixed environments (within a team) don't work well. People at the office will have conversations that won't get written down anywhere, so remote workers are in disadvantage all the time.

In my experience, either the entire team is in a single place or all of them are remote. Now having teams some teams in the office and some others 100% remote, that could work, but I'm skeptical too.

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

#197

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mullingitover wrote: post #129
moises_silva wrote: post #113

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,…

>Yes, in ideal conditions your office might approach what you get working at home,

In my experience I am more productive in office, lots of other people seem to feel the same. I guess I'm just lucky to have worked in lots of more than ideal offices, or, as seems more likely people's home conditions vary to such an extent that you can't make a blanket statement.

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

#198

Post by it_does_follow »

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…

Even if all of this were true (which I don't think anyone seriously believes anymore), there is still no way startups can compete right now without remote offerings.

The only reason I would consider working in an office full time (and I already live within commuting distance of a major tech-hiring metro) would be for $450K total comp or higher. Plenty of big companies can offer that these days, but startups are still going to mostly pay $200k as an upper limit (since they have no RSUs to throw on the pile).

There are plenty of companies that offer remote and total comp in that former range, there is absolutely no way you're going to hire any talent as startup now without remote as an option, even if remote were sub-optimal for your long term development.

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

#199

Post by mulmen »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #89
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…

There’s also the mechanical money aspect behind it, if you pay bay area money to someone who lives in Idaho Falls, at some point they’ll be like “well my house is paid off my retirement money is full and life costs nothing here and I already live here, why would I work here 60 hours a week when I could enjoy life?”. Doesn’t happen the same with your bay area employees.

I plan on working well past retirement age if I can continue to be remote. I actually enjoy a lot of what I do at work, especially now that the most painful parts are mitigated or eliminated. My career path now is just to work fewer hours and be picky about where I do work to keep doing what I enjoy. I can't see myself going into the office in my 60s but I could definitely imagine doing part time remote work.

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

#200

Post by warkdarrior »

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!

> 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!

You should move to these other employers, as this is the only way your current stingy employer will learn.

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