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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

#261

Post by ghaff »

dont__panic wrote: post #227
jrgoff wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my anecdotal experience, anything above 1000 employees and it just isn't possible to colocate anymore. You might be able to colocate certain specific teams, but if you work on a team that works across domains... good luck. You'll spend all of your time in video calls anyway! The video conference room environment is so unpleasant (always craning my neck; crappy video quality; speakers with poor balance that frequen…

I generally agree. In my experience, pre-pandemic companies did sometimes try to co-locate small engineering teams especially if, for historical reasons, they were mostly already clustered in one specific location. But companies also don't necessarily want to restrict their hiring to an hour radius of a given office, people want to move for various reasons, and some degree of collaboration with other groups is needed in any case. And, once you're distributed at all, you pretty much have to act like everyone is remote anyway.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#262

Post by TrackerFF »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #206
TrackerFF wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why they would need to do that. If they open up the doors to that market, the supply greatly outnumbers the demand. You will have equally qualified candidates do the same job for WAY less. If you pay a top programmer in the Philippines, say $45k/year, that's 10x more than the average dev. salary in Philippines. It would be like offering $1M in salary to someone in the US. You could pick and choose between…

$45k in the Philippines is not even close to $1M in the US. There's a fallacy to consider that CoL increases linearly. At best it's a fixed offset of $XXk. A few thousands more in rent, a few hundreds more in food, and that's basically it. Real estate is crazy in most capital of the world. Consumer products have a fixed price worldwide, and it's often cheaper in the US, imagine that! Also third world country savings…

Point was that $45k (from my very brief googling 20 mins ago) seems to be 10x of average annual programmer salary in the Philippines. I admit I do not know the COL - like purchasing a home in the Philippines, but that could vary very much from country to country. I used Philippines because it's a country with very low salaries.

But then again, purchasing a home in SF or NYC is very expensive.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#263

Post by trention »

time_to_smile wrote: post #244
trention wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no scenario in which tech declines without the US entering a recession and when the US enters a recession, the "cheap money" is going to be coming back. There is no way the dotcom crash is repeated because today IT is integrated inside every aspect of every business. It will be just another regular recession. The biggest threat to programming jobs in the US is outsourcing (and, in the longer term - automatio…

I'll make sure to check back on this comment in 6 months, certainly hoping that I do so laughing about how much I was overreacting.

If you think you will be able to tell by looking at a period of 6 months whether a contraction (that hasn't actually even started yet in terms of total employment) is just a regular recession or the apocalypse you prophesize, I have a brooklyn bridge to sell you.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#264

Post by tensor »

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…

If socializing worked for your group you are by FAR the exception. I can tell you that my company tried everything over the years to get a solid socializing experience for remote workers.

It. Just. Didn't. Work. It's far too different and people just didn't want to go to remote socializing events. Sure, there were pockets of people that played online games together or other niche activities, but these are not inclusive.

Speaking of people from all over the world, at scale timezone differences also become a huge problem. No, not everyone wants to attend work meetings or social events either after local work hours or extremely early in the morning.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#266

Post by juve1996 »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #66

"Your remote team is my company's opportunity." Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, but at my company we have some people who work in an office and lots more that work remotely. The in office staff contribute more ideas, work, fixes, and functional software than the remote teams by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. Those are hard numbers right out of our project m…

> by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times.

These are very specific numbers - how do you measure this?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#267

Post by dogman144 »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #103
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…

I think one thing noone wants to admit is that a significant part of your team don't even want to "socialize" with coworkers outside of work. They want to just do their work, go home, and socialize with their friends/family.

Exactly this in my opinion. There is a galaxy of op-eds, federal govt weigh-in, angry debates all largely hinging on this premise being true or not but not admitting to it.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#268

Post by mym1990 »

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…

My leaderships idea of improving remote work culture is playing bingo at the all-hands. That's not even sarcasm.

I don't feel like I particularly thrive in a remote environment, and you're right, I didn't really have to put thought into work social events(which I enjoyed), it was kind of an added perk. But I also recognize the benefits of it, and am certainly not complaining!

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#269

Post by FalconSensei »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #128
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…

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.

> levels of need of social interaction

That's what your personal life is for.

Related: https://archive.ph/Ji4nM (WSJ - Americans Are Breaking Up With Their Work Friends)

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#270

Post by cpursley »

bamboozled wrote: post #179
cpursley wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why non-remote employees are commuting (in anger), remote employees are spending time with their family, exercising, working on their hobbies. 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.

I worked in an office for a lot of years and I almost never, ever remember "commuting in anger". I basically did a comp-sci degree on the train to and from work, contributed to opensource software, caught up on work, read books , talked to colleagues, napped etc. It was actually pretty productive alone time for me. Forced quiet time for 3 hours a day. I was young and I had a 1.5 train trip each way to work. I built m…

> on the train

> 30 minute cycle

The vast majority of Americans don't have this option (unfortunately)

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