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

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

#221

Post by kortilla » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 7:50 AM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #176

mbesto wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

> Whereas remote work is an extreme aberration from the norm.

No it’s not, it’s just new to you so it seems scary. Companies have been dealing with this for decades with branch offices, contractors, etc.

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

#222

Post by kortilla » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 7:54 AM UTC

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…

Don’t forget the sensitive egos!

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

#223

Post by chii » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:01 AM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #204

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's interesting to me how everyone seems to agree that remote school and college are huge failures and students are falling behind, but when it comes to their remote jobs, they'll go to great lengths to deny any reduction in efficiency, collaboration, or productivity.

remote learning and colleges remove the element of physical social interaction between students (and to a degree, teachers). This element is important for learning imho.

remote working removes this very same element, but because nobody cares that an employee doesn't learn, it is irrelevant.

But certainly remote working affects on-boarding new people, and not just knowledge wise, but also team cohesion and ability to align together. However, i am willing to give all that up, because i do prefer remote working myself - purely selfishly, because those problems it causes aren't mine.

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

#224

Post by chii » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:04 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #219

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…

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 f…

it's possible that remote meetings are effective for those investors because they have a narrow band of requirements from such meetings (gathering information and analysis etc), but effective for long term employees who would benefit from physical close-proximity (the water-cooler style propagation of ideas for example).

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

#225

Post by the_gipsy » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:05 AM UTC

vgeek wrote: post #152

MattGaiser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious why nobody tries to build a workforce for non urgent projects out of this group. I see charities scrimping and saving to pay for highly skilled people that they really do not need on a full time basis and must scratch my head and wonder why. You could pay 60,000 for a not great dev. Or you could pay 30,000 for a part time dev and could easily land someone who regularly earns 150K.

I've pondered the same exact thing. I've had jobs where my superiors could see my immediate impact and it was still impossible to take a reduced salary to have a 3/4 day week-- "it wouldn't be fair to everyone else" or "we'd like to have you here every day" even after my disclosing that there weren't really 40 hours of productive tasks I could do each week after automating most of my day to day. I've tried both with…

Maybe this "working less" undertone of remote should be taken seriously, from both sides of the argument.

As you say, it's nearly impossible to negotiate for less working hours. The only real possibility I see is freelancing/contracting, and the best bet is taking some months off (or a sabattical) - not working less days per week.

With high salaries in IT naturally there came perks like flexible hours. This meant that nobody really checks if you work 8, 7, or 6 hours in a day anymore. Of course, if you'd consistently come in say for ~4h a day, then there would be trouble because Jerry over there clocks in his 8h and that wouldn't be fair.

Now with remote work, the "hours worked" are mostly invisible and barely guessable by your peers and managers.

The bottom line, personally, is that we want to work less time. I take a salary that is lower than FAANG in a remote startup, but I and my peers work less hours, yet our boss is happy.

If I could work for 4h/d (or 3 days/week) at some corp, in office, I would do it. But that's just not gonna happen right now. And here is my hot take: I think that big corps are just too successful in squeezing out so much time from their employees, especially with the american mindset of "working hard" / crazy 80+h weeks.

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

#226

Post by AlchemistCamp » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:08 AM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #204

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's interesting to me how everyone seems to agree that remote school and college are huge failures and students are falling behind, but when it comes to their remote jobs, they'll go to great lengths to deny any reduction in efficiency, collaboration, or productivity.

I don't think remote college is a failure at all. Remote school for 6 year-olds is, though.

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

#227

Post by ycombobreaker » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:08 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #223

missedthecue wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me how everyone seems to agree that remote school and college are huge failures and students are falling behind, but when it comes to their remote jobs, they'll go to great lengths to deny any reduction in efficiency, collaboration, or productivity.

remote learning and colleges remove the element of physical social interaction between students (and to a degree, teachers). This element is important for learning imho. remote working removes this very same element, but because nobody cares that an employee doesn't learn, it is irrelevant. But certainly remote working affects on-boarding new people, and not just knowledge wise, but also team cohesion and ability to…

> nobody cares that an employee doesn't learn, it is irrelevant.

I have learned shitloads as an employee, and that's why I get paid more now than ten years ago. If you aren't learning at work, something is wrong.

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

#228

Post by hi_im_miles » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:26 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #213

999900000999 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incred…

My experience with remote work has been the opposite of this. My team is in a call for the day, and most of my time is spent collaborating with my coworkers. I find this experience to be far superior actually, as we can do things like: use our own drawing tablets at the same time, screenshare rather than look over shoulders, adjust volume for quiet speakers (huge for me), turn on closed captioning, mute chitchat when trying to focus, etc etc.

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

#229

Post by YetAnotherNick » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:41 AM UTC

Cwizard wrote: post #208

I 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)

Most remote companies don't pay by the country the company's office is located in but they pay by the countries employees are residing in.

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

#230

Post by raverbashing » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:42 AM UTC

moises_silva wrote: post #113

tikhonj wrote: 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.

"Performance hit", sure, you know what else is a performance hit?

- Commuting

- Office noise and distractions

- Need to fit office hours

Might I even argue those are even bigger hits than just the remote hit