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70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
211–220 of 332 posts
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#212Earlier 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. As someone who works remotely and loves it, I’ve observed this on HN for years. It’s like engineers can’t (or won’t?) acknowledge that other roles in an organization go beyond staring at lines of code on a computer screen. Hell, even product managers I know like coming in to an office to collaborate on the big whiteboard wall they can’t fit inside their home.
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Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#213I 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.
Why ? Working remote , never being late to a meeting , never having to commute, vastly outweighs all that. I have an odd feeling many people like in person work so they can socialize. We have bars and concerts for that. We somehow went from COVID will kill us all if we dare step into an office to shut up and get back to work. Stop wasting money on office space. Let people live wherever ( assuming your in the same cou…
I think the inability to see how they rebound off of others in their thinking and communication is a problem.
Mentorship, communications, even just basic professional behaviour.
All of this is learned, and you're learning all the time.
But ideas even, discussions, blackboards ... they don't happen over Zoom, especially without an appointment.
We don't get enough 'alone time' at the office, but 'group time' is incredibly important for all aspects of our work.
For some kinds of things, like 'going deep' for a few days, being alone is a godsend but it comes with a heavy price.
Also - just being around other professionals, putting on a pair of clothes designed for professional appearance, thinking about what you are going to say, i.e. 'being a professional' makes us almost all better people. It has it's drawbacks, but mostly it's good.
I think we're going to have to find the right, blended approach.
That said, what remote work does do is enable a kind of role-fitting that was never possible before. We have yet to contemplate the economic advantage of that - but that one comes along with a massive White Elephant: that everyone reading this will be displaced by someone working in a 'poor country' who is super sharp and who will work for 1/2 the salary.
Soft. Devs. think they are important until management can hire fully offshore for 1/3 the cost.
The arguments that a lot of people make against offshore apply almost as much to remote.
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#214I live in a smaller city in Europe where wages aren’t anywhere close to what you often see mentioned on HN, with the shift to remote, should I start considering a full-remote position? How do you find these positions? Any advice on this topic would be appreciated. (For context I have 2 YOE, mostly backend, kubernetes, aws and I currently earn around €50k a year which not a bad salary for my area)
But that 50K probably gets you healthcare, education and safe, clean functioning society? In other country you have to pay for this stuff separately since the governments/systems are dumb or corrupt. So I'd say the 50K is reasonable.
Another thing to look at is the ratio of between how much you per month after all taxes and how much 2/3 bedroom houses cost.
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#215I live in a smaller city in Europe where wages aren’t anywhere close to what you often see mentioned on HN, with the shift to remote, should I start considering a full-remote position? How do you find these positions? Any advice on this topic would be appreciated. (For context I have 2 YOE, mostly backend, kubernetes, aws and I currently earn around €50k a year which not a bad salary for my area)
> For context I have 2 YOE
People with relatively little experience are some of the worst candidates for remote positions. Not saying anything about you in particular, but they tend to need more guidance and get stuck more easily. Not only that, there's a lot of learning though osmosis that won't happen when they're not near other people.
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#216I still see a lot of bait and switch with HR messaging me with offers tagged as remote and then describing the job as 3x days remote 2 days on-site or something along those lines.
Even in platforms that have the additional tag of 'hybrid' instead of remote (e.g. Linkedin).
Very frustrating lack of transparency if you ask me.
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#217I 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…
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Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Startups are way too greedy with equity. And this has gotten worse. During the .com explosion, the war for talent saw younger engineers (<= 5 years of experience) were getting 1%-3% in companies that had already received VC funding, while also getting raises from other firms. Compared to the grants on offer today, the risk/reward is completely inverted.
The valuations today are just so much higher though. Pets.com, the poster child of dotcom era excess IPO'd at a $250mm valuation. Companies today are raising 2x or 3x that in their series C these days! 1Password picked up $620mm in their series C just the other day.
This means the early employees today are producing more economic value for shareholders and are being paid less for creating more value! (Unless early team sizes have changed substantially, which I don't believe to be the case.)
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#219I 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…
everyone who seriously invests money in businesses knows that there’s a performance hit you take as a remote company
That's an interesting opinion, and very different to my experience, because investors were the first group of people I encountered who really embraced remote work. Two decades ago I worked for a company that had remote meetings with investors, remote board meetings, and that did work remotely. We had full time remote staff hundreds of miles away. The company paid for video conferencing hardware and ISDN lines for some of the staff. Most investors I've met since, including ones who invested in things I did, had no issue with remote work and understood the economics of it very well. I definitely don't think any of them believed fully remote companies were less effective, and I'm pretty sure they were happy money wasn't being spent on fancy offices (although I never grew a business enough to really get to that point to be fair).
I'd be very surprised to hear that the idea of remote work being less effective was coming from serious investors.
Re: 70% of startups offer remote work options as hiring heats up, YC data shows
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In my opinion mixed environments can absolutely work but are _extremely_ dependent on managers experience/maturity. If the rest of the team sees the management culture treating remote workers as first class citizens (in meetings, in communications, in documentation), then the rest of the team follows suit.
I agree that there is a network effect that is lost for the remote workers but it also depends on your ambitions, I would argue (and maybe I am projecting my preferences) that most of the people with remote preferences are IC's who love the technical work and have no interest in leadership roles (for which the network aspect would more vital).