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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

#391

Post by throwaway2037 »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #287
jofer wrote: post #141

I've been working 100% remotely for about 6.5 years now. Overall I love it. However, there are very real drawbacks that have taken me awhile to fully realize. For me, the primary one is that it's _way_ too easy for everyone to get deeply frustrated with each other. Social interactions and chit-chat lead to a better understanding of people and a more accurate mental model of what people actually mean when they say som…

Follow the Hacker News guidelines at work. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

This only works in a small team or a small company -- "high trust scenario". As soon as your team grows to medium/large (or company same) -- "low(er) trust scenario", then politics really matters. This rule can be thrown out the window. People will show one face to you and another to their manager.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#392

Post by esel2k »

danwee wrote: post #73

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…

I had a Berlin offer and live at the other end of the country. I was able to negotiate a 3-4per month presence but at the end I got a more competitive offer. Out of interest: Is this something that you have seen working in Germany ?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#393

Post by throwaway2037 »

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…

Holy sh-t. This is exactly my experience during COVID-19 crisis. Will it pay in 5 years when WFH is the normal? I don't know.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#394

Post by bad416f1f5a2 »

kixiQu wrote: post #293
bad416f1f5a2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I have always seen “work as community” to offer an illusory connection at best. At its worst it is exploited by employers. My coworkers are my colleagues. I don’t mind sharing a beer with them once in a while, but apart from “work” we have different interests, values, and experiences. That doesn’t lead to community, it leads to having acquaintances. And if you doubt that, ask yourself how many of your “work fr…

> ask yourself how many of your “work friends” from a job you’ve had more than a year ago do you still interact with? I still interact a lot with people I was on a team with >1 yr ago – the ones I met before we went remote. Can't say the same about the ones I was never in the office with, even though they seem like equally good people. > but apart from “work” we have different interests, values, and experiences. That…

> I'm also kind of curious what you mean by "parasocial" outside of the context of media.

I actually went back and forth on using it - even considering a hedge with a "quasi-" prefix. But it felt apt: plenty of my past "work friends" exist as little beyond a persona that I interact with via LinkedIn. I give a thumbs-up for their job change, we exchange polite offers to get a coffee that we both know neither will accept, and we go on.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#395

Post by thehappypm »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #189
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…

Whenever I see this sort of comment I feel bad for the remote workers because it's always an indicator that the company doesn't properly involve or support their remote workforce. If the in-person members are vastly more productive, it's because the team has processes and culture that makes it harder for the remote employees to be productive.

Bingo, but it’s much more that hybrid is REALLY hard to get right. The remote employees are always at a disadvantage.. dealing with this now at my new job, I’m not remote, but my local office is not where most of my specific teammates are.

“Top talent” getting diluted by remote-ness may be not worth it. Hiring local to work in-person may be better if the less talented team can really communicate and get shit done.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#396

Post by throwaway2037 »

wpietri wrote: post #158
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…

I'm on an all-remote team right now and I totally miss the level of ambient information I used to have when working with a collocated team in a good environment. On the other hand, a lot of collocated teams, especially at larger companies, have bad enough environments that they're essentially remote workers as far as communication goes. I've visited plenty of teams in open-office environments where all the coders are…

You wrote: "ambient information"

This is a brilliant term. I never heard it before this post. (Thank you!) My whole career is working next to traders and sales at global investment banks.

Everytime I hear someone say: "Sales & traders can all work from home / [low cost] country X,Y,Z", I cringe. They fundamentally do not understand "ambient information".

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#397

Post by asoneth »

benttoothpaste wrote: post #292
asoneth wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has been nearly the exact opposite of my experience. As one advisor put it: researchers who prefer to keep their door closed often publish more papers over the course of a year, but researchers who keep their door open often publish more impactful research over the course of their lifetime.

That statement about open vs closed door was commonly used to justify open plan offices. Now it is being repurposed to justify in-office work in general. Interesting.

Interesting, I haven't heard the statement used in that way, seems like taking things a bit past their logical conclusion -- after all, the presence of a door implies that the researchers had actual offices.

(My prior job was the first time I've worked in an open plan office so one of my hard requirements in my prior job search was no open plan offices.)

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#398

Post by vladvasiliu »

tomduncalf wrote: post #360
vladvasiliu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

In the UK we have IR35 and AFAIK in other countries there are similar laws in place to prevent people working as contractors for their own limited company when they "should" be an employee (determined by various factors), and as far as I know it applies regardless of whether both entities are in the same country or not. Of course, you can be careful with contracts and working conditions etc. to try to avoid this, but…

According to [0], this seems concerned with "taxation fairness"; basically making sure you don't take advantage of some possible lower tax rates (I suppose, I don't live in the UK) levied on companies instead of workers.

It's my understanding that, basically, if you're an "outsourced employee", you have to pay the same things as if you were an actual employee: so salary, income tax, whatever else HMRC requires, rather than milking the dividends... It doesn't seem to me that the actual setup is illegal.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-workin...

---

edit: In France, I'm not aware of a similar law in regard to taxation. However, there's a "worker protection" law that says that if you're only working for a client, you are subordinate to them, and basically the only difference between an actual employee and you is that you're outsourced, you can then sue the company to be "promoted" to an internal employee, and you're basically guaranteed to win.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#399

Post by adverbly »

jofer wrote: post #141

I've been working 100% remotely for about 6.5 years now. Overall I love it. However, there are very real drawbacks that have taken me awhile to fully realize. For me, the primary one is that it's _way_ too easy for everyone to get deeply frustrated with each other. Social interactions and chit-chat lead to a better understanding of people and a more accurate mental model of what people actually mean when they say som…

> Written text is the majority of remote communication.

It's the majority of office comms too...

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#400

Post by throwaway2037 »

wpietri wrote: post #158
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…

I'm on an all-remote team right now and I totally miss the level of ambient information I used to have when working with a collocated team in a good environment. On the other hand, a lot of collocated teams, especially at larger companies, have bad enough environments that they're essentially remote workers as far as communication goes. I've visited plenty of teams in open-office environments where all the coders are…

Hi. Great post. Thank you to raise the important topic of relevant ambient information. If you are pure tech writing new features for sales, you might want to sit right next to them. (Listen to how they use my software / interesting business problems.)

However, if you are working on credit card payment settlement, you do not give a sh-t about sales team golf scores / "amazing" drinking stories. It is a bother / nuisance. But maybe sitting next to the account team makes good sense!

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