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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

#191

Post by jrgoff »

ghaff wrote: post #26

"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,…

My (somewhat limited) experience working at semi-large tech companies (several thousand employees) was that my team and closely related teams were mostly located close together (same floor, often same area of the floor). I imagine certain roles need to collaborate across a broader number of teams and so maybe they derived less value from being in the office together, but it seemed like for most of engineering we were mostly well situated for in-office collaboration.

Do really large companies tend to forgo locating related teams closely together?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#192

Post by [deleted] »

asoneth wrote: post #99
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.

This is the crucial question. 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 con…

[deleted]

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#193

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

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…

Nobody is actually stopping people from forming inofficial "local" offices. As in meet remote workers near you and try to hire at there company. After that, everyone hosts the office at his/her flat once a week.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#194

Post by uxp100 »

danwee wrote: post #76
rngname22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I think it was less available, but less than 90%, which is phrased a little akwardly, but basically, I worked remotely for 5 years before covid (hated it, but also hated the office and like the California salary outside California) and it was not available to new hires at all, but there were a lot of us who basically said, I’m moving for personal reasons, why can you do for me, and HR made it work.

It did involve flights and hotels for the around 10 weeks a year I was working in more of a lab situation, which I can see not wanting to do for 300 people instead of a few dozen.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#195

Post by asoneth »

ekianjo wrote: post #21
benreesman wrote: post #10

It’s possible that some companies will pay significantly more to keep all of their employees in office all of the time. But they’ll be paying 2-3 times: higher TCO, more expensive real-estate, and more scope for the (fortunately few) “I’m have people skills damnit” careerist middle managers without technical chops (higher payroll and worse mechanism design). The A16Z model sounds about right to me: flex work with low…

You can pay as much as you want but after a certain threshold having the possibility to work from home is paying for itself in many ways. No stress from commuting, more flexibility and more focus.

> You can pay as much as you want but after a certain threshold

I'm curious if there is a multiplier a company could pay you personally to convince you to endure the commuting stress and inflexibility of an in-person office?

I.e. would you go back to a commute for 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x, or 3x your current salary?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#196

Post by winternett »

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…

We really need more 6 hour work days on remote though. 8 hours on remote can often be just as tedious as being in office with productivity monitoring that companies do.

At this point Slack should be running with full "voice to text capability... Even TikTok can transcribe audio. Too many things are just tedious and time consuming to do within modern companies. The pandemic gave so many a break to realize that for many roles, remote works better, yet productivity tools haven't innovated much to ease the transition.

Companies will save tons of money on real estate and office equipment alone on a move to remote work, and the ability to hire independent of physical location is a big benefit of normalizing remote work. My biggest concerns in the evolution of remote work are usually security and authenticity, which always prove to be quickly evolving threats.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#197

Post by tjr225 »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #145
andrewingram wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> yes, this is a me thing, but it's also always been a me thing I feel like picking jobs off of a desire to live a social life and feel like part of a community is extremely normal and valid. Remote work is essentially accepting that the primary way you'll engage with your colleagues and labor is through a screen, and that is an uncomfortable feeling (to some people at least)

There will be a reckoning when we collectively realize that putting more and more, and eventually all, of our lives on the internet is not good for us.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#198

Post by mattgperry »

enlyth wrote: post #168
andrewingram wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

But the fact that you don't go out is because you don't put any effort into it. I work remotely from Kent, we also have an office in Central London but I made the effort to make local friends with whom I go out all the time, even week nights. I prefer this to spending £40 for the train to then drink £8 pints in overfilled London pubs while standing outside and shouting over each other. I actually don't want to spend…

"I" "I" "I"

This works great for you but for many it doesn't. Both are valid perspectives.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#199

Post by ipaddr »

km3r wrote: post #163
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if those personality differences get considered when they throw everyone into a single room with a few low cubicle walls. I wonder if the market gives a shit about being fair to those who have personalities that thrive in said cubicles. Thirdly, I wonder if those who thrive in remote give a shit about being fair after having dealt with cubicle farms for so many years.

That's entirely unfair. The ability to do most of these jobs remote wasn't even really possible until a decade ago, and interia of in office work kept it that way for most existing enterprises. Yet still, plenty of startups in 2019 chose to be remote, and plenty chose to be in person. Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due t…

The ability to work remote has been around longer than that. I was working remotely in 2003/2004, 2007..

Most people didn't know remote was possible until 2019

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#200

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

km3r wrote: post #163
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if those personality differences get considered when they throw everyone into a single room with a few low cubicle walls. I wonder if the market gives a shit about being fair to those who have personalities that thrive in said cubicles. Thirdly, I wonder if those who thrive in remote give a shit about being fair after having dealt with cubicle farms for so many years.

That's entirely unfair. The ability to do most of these jobs remote wasn't even really possible until a decade ago, and interia of in office work kept it that way for most existing enterprises. Yet still, plenty of startups in 2019 chose to be remote, and plenty chose to be in person. Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due t…

Perhaps only "anywhere in the world" remote has only become possible in the last decade but I have coworker programmers that have been fully remote or what we would now call "hybrid" since the 90s.
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