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Remote startups will win the war for top talent

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Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#71

Post by KerrAvon »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #36
bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

How do you replicate water cooler talk in a fully remote environment? Do people do work while tuned in to a meeting where anyone can drop in and talk to them?

If I want to talk about what happened on Johnny Carson last night I get in my DeLorean and rev it up to 88 mph. WTF have we become.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#72

Post by icare_1er »

bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

Have you made good friends amongst your colleagues in your remote company, during the remote-work era ?

All the trustworthy people i know from work were people i socialized with in person, at the office, around coffe-breaks, post-work drinks, etc. I don't see something similar happening over Zoom meetings and my guess is that 95% of people are like me in that regards.

Now, this may not be a big deal over the short-term but I believe that an actual company culture need actual tangible human bonds over the long-term.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#73

Post by danwee »

Big win for working 100% remote, at least for me, is that it suddenly makes it possible for me to potentially work for any IT company in my entire country without having to switch cities or commuting. That's the deal for me. The moment a job description says 4 days remote, 1 day at the office... that already kills it (e.g., imaging living in Frankfurt and working for a Berlin-based company... or living in Seville and working for a Barcelona-based company)

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#74

Post by cube2222 »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #38
TOMDM wrote: post #22

Okay, how about a tad more nuance though. The better headline would be "Remote Startups will win the war for top talent among employees who prefer to work remotely" Not quite so sexy. Sure some; probably even most software devs prefer remote/hybrid work, but there are still plenty of incredibly talented people out there who prefer being in the office every day.

I worked for 2 years in Silicon Valley with a WFH policy that I used maybe 2 days total (once for a package and the other for apartment maintenance). If you live close to work commuting isn't so bad. I need physical space in my life. Ideally every day of the week would have a commute to a different location.

As a contrary point, I lived 5 minutes on foot from the office and still greatly preferred staying at home (even though I didn't expect that to be true before I switched to remote).

The ergonomics of an office workplace can't compare to the extent I can customize my at-home office and kitchen supplies to suite my exact needs.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#75

Post by andrewingram »

rngname22 wrote: post #37
bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…

Right.

During my somewhat passive job search, I've only been considering companies that have an office local to me (i.e. Central London). I've been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, and I simply don't like it. Sure, I don't miss having to commute or offices with bad noise pollution controls, but I miss everything else.

Most of all, I miss being in town at the end of the day and being able to pop to the pub with colleagues if one of us needs to vent, or go to a salsa party nearby. I basically don't go out anymore; yes, this is a me thing, but it's also always been a me thing. I've always found it easier to have a social life on weeknights rather than weekends because I struggle to overcome the inertia of being at home.

This preference means some very exciting companies are effectively off-limits to me, and that's hugely frustrating; but I also know what I need.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#76

Post by danwee »

rngname22 wrote: post #37
bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…

> It's OK for there to not be a one-size fits all solution.

Funny, because before COVID, like 90% of the IT companies out there were using a "one-size fits all" solution (i.e., 100% office-based work).

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#77

Post by didgetmaster »

I think it really depends on what kind of 'worker' you are. Some people can take a task, go off by themselves, and work independently for hours or days at a time to complete it with little or no interaction with others. These people are highly productive in a remote setting.

Others require constant interaction with others in order to accomplish much of anything. They need a barrage of ideas and help coming at them constantly and in every direction. While modern remote tools can help with this, an in-person office seems more ideal for this kind of worker.

In the late 90s, I worked for a startup making disk utilities (PartitionMagic). I got married and my wife was doing a residency program in another state. I was able to negotiate a remote work arrangement with my company, even though dial-up connections at the time made things hard to collaborate.

They gave me a new project to design and implement (Drive Image - a disk backup program). I would fly back to the office every couple of months and show them the latest version that I had completed. I did this for almost 2 years and was very, very productive. It helped that I was the only one on the team for most of that time (they didn't assign someone to help me until sales of the product reached several million $).

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#78

Post by wppick »

mrkurt wrote: post #12
weakwire wrote: post #2

Remote startups may win the war for top talent (in the short term) but who will win on productivity and by extension revenue? I guess we will all see that in the next 24 months.

I'm not sure productivity maps that directly to revenue. People are wildly productive when they work remotely. What's harder is sharing context and tackling large problems with other people.

Remote vs. in office has no difference in productivity from what I've seen. Most of in office communication is still over slack/chat. When collaboration is needed usually a tv screen is needed to screen share since two people sitting at one laptop is uncomfortable, and video chat screen share is better for that anyways. On top of that you don't have to wait for a meeting room that may be booked at the moment you want to collaborate.

Another big thing is the psychological effect of being a chair warmer. Sitting in an office environment, and being "seen" gives the impressing of working. Imagine seeing someone in their chair before and after you leave each day. It gives the impression that they are "working hard". With remote only there is no chair warming, you have to show results.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#79

Post by vladvasiliu »

lm28469 wrote: post #53
bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

> Meanwhile we have had no problem sourcing candidates since we can pull from anywhere in the world, we have some incredible people all over the world that we would not have gotten otherwise. How do you handle taxes ? For example in Europe a German company can't hire a French dev if the german company doesn't have a legal entity in France, it quickly gets out of control both in term of paperwork and cost. The dev can…

I have a friend who's physically in the UK and works for a US company. I was interviewing for a remote job in the UK while being physically in France.

In both situations, the setup is a local company (possibly self-owned) that bills the actual company. So you're not UsCorp's employee, you're an YourOwnCorp employee, and UsCorp is YourOwnCorp's client.

This way, all taxes and related issues are handled locally. Sure, there's overhead, but from what I've seen it's worth it.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#80

Post by ghaff »

mooreds wrote: post #31

The $1M question in my mind is: Will wages in, say, Lagos or Buenos Aires rise to SF/NYC levels? Or will the reverse happen? Economics says that it depends on the value of the labor, but cost of living matters too (or at least, has in the past within say, the USA). I think this essay https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... shows evidence that says the answer is "yes", that we'll see a weird fr…

Culture, language, timezones, etc. will still be a factor.

What I think you can probably safely say is that, within the US say, you'll probably have some degree of normalization of salaries over time. You'll probably still have outliers with the biggest/best-paying tech companies, some areas of finance, particularly well-funded startups, etc. But, as was already the case before, a lot of companies simply won't even try to match the top-tier salary bands. And mostly they'll be fine because hiring practices are simply random enough that no one really skims the cream with their processes.

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