91–100 of 492 posts
They might win the war for the best “talent” (whatever that means). Remote only may lose the war for building the best products.
Which of those two employee types do you think will have have better work output? I'm have a pretty good idea, but am not totally sure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Communications and collaboration is very important. However, "socializing" through Slack is simply just not the same as going out to lunch with a coworker, for example. Permanent remote work has a very detached feel to it, at least for me.
I don't get this. If you have a coworker that enjoy having lunch with you... what's stopping you both doing so? I mean, even if you both work from home, you could still schedule a lunch together in the city, right? If you both live in different cities, well, I guess before COVID you weren't having lunch together that frequently. 100% remote doesn't dictate how (or with who) you eat lunch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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,…
Sounds like a massive headache
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…
Communications and collaboration is very important. However, "socializing" through Slack is simply just not the same as going out to lunch with a coworker, for example. Permanent remote work has a very detached feel to it, at least for me.
That might be true, but this is probably the beginning of sharply declining developer salaries. If you're going remote, a developer in California is going to be competing with devleopers in Kansas, not to mention overseas. The era of people fresh out of a developer bootcamp getting six figure salaries is all but done.
My company pays SF-payscale salaries no matter where the employee lives. That's how we attract and retain the best talent.
EDIT: There you go. I found one job description that says "Remote anywhere in US". It doesn't say anywhere in the world:
https://boards.greenhouse.io/recur/jobs/4171929004
I also found examples of hiring remote but specifically in Asia Pacific. Are you saying those people are getting paid SF level salary ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
We use a service called Deel, but we are US entity and that helps in many cases. Essentially they have companies in most countries and you pay them (deel) directly and then they payout to your staff. This also simplifies benefits for healthcare, taxes, retirement. If you find it helpful, heres my referral code https://deel.com/referrals/Michael-n53jPEZJ
I was quite spoiled to experience what would become the norm after a pandemic.
I wrote a blog on my experiences of being "remote first". Funny enough, it includes this author's tweet that went a bit viral.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
We use a service called Deel, but we are US entity and that helps in many cases. Essentially they have companies in most countries and you pay them (deel) directly and then they payout to your staff. This also simplifies benefits for healthcare, taxes, retirement. If you find it helpful, heres my referral code https://deel.com/referrals/Michael-n53jPEZJ
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.
Colocated employees clearly cost more in the form of office space. They can also command higher salaries than similarly-skilled remote workers because they constitute a significantly smaller labor pool.
Despite the counter-arguments in the article I do find it plausible colocated employees (ed: or maybe organizations) may be, on average, more productive.
But because there are so many confounding variables I think it'll take many years of evidence before we can empirically answer the question of whether the increase in productivity generally exceeds the costs of being in-person.
(For the record my guess is that it will be dependent on the industry and role. I think winner-take-all markets and roles like R&D and startup founders may be worth the added in-person tax, and everyone else will eventually be remote.)
"A study conducted on the main campus of a Fortune 500 company found that just 10 percent of all communications occurred between employees whose desks were more than 500 meters apart. This suggests that once companies span multiple floors, buildings, or campuses, they’ve already lost much of the collaborative value of being “in the office” together." This point often seems to get missed. If you're at a large company,…
This cuts both ways though. Working from home my "circle of communication" has gotten much smaller than it ever was before, because I don't run in to people.
But today even if I were in my local office, almost no one I work with would be in that office even if they weren't WFH anyway.