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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

#421

Post by throwaway2037 »

jcims wrote: post #225
lm28469 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I pay fees/taxes into some virtual substrate The thing is that you're supposed to be tax where you live to finance the public infrastructure you use, pension schemes of locals, &c. I know a few of wantrepreneurs who live abroad, bill under an Estonian "e company" , don't pay taxes locally and on top of that illegally get unemployment benefits from their home country This trend has to cease and with the new "r…

Sure that happens today, in part because it's so painful to 'do the right thing'. I stayed in San Diego for a month last year and didn't pay a single penny of income tax to the city. Meanwhile my home city was paid for my income and I was a lightweight customer during that month. I think the idea would be something along the lines of creating virtual citizens that live in the locality and meet all of the obligations…

You wrote: >

Where is your citizenship?

If you had young children who attended local schools (even for one month), do you think that is fair? (Assume pay low/zero tax.)

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#422

Post by throwaway2037 »

cossatot wrote: post #295
lm28469 wrote: post #53

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 work for an Italian nonprofit from the US, after I moved back from Italy for family reasons. I'm a full-time contractor. I (or my 'employer') have to prove to the Italian government that I am a US taxpayer, but beyond that it's fine, and at least from my perspective much easier than dealing with the Italian government otherwise (those who know the language and system may feel different of course). I am very happy n…

You wrote:

I disagree. Why do you think the Italian pension system needs to adapt to you / your situtation?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#423

Post by mym1990 »

dogman144 wrote: post #368
mym1990 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No where did I see OP ask for others to center their life around work for socialization. They admitted that many companies are cut off from their job search as a result, BUT ALSO THAT THEY ARE OKAY WITH THAT. You're twisting it completely.

No, see what I mean in another thread. Return-to-office is in large part steered by public opinion and commercial real estate issues. For every bold company that leans into remote, the majority rest check the public temperature and do what seems in line pending open revolt form their employees or competitors offering remote. So much of the public temperature around remote work is oriented around heavy support from pu…

So you are advocating for the censorship of someone who supports return to office based on the fact that it would create a sweeping effect across the industry that would force you back into a cubicle? Yeah, no thanks.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#424

Post by [deleted] »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #220
tjr225 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, I'm expected to put in 8 hours a day, most of which staring at a screen, either way. Only difference being now I get to use the hours spent commuting to do other things. The argument would be a lot stronger if most office work wasn't perpetually online to begin with.

[deleted]

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#425

Post by s1artibartfast »

bart_spoon wrote: post #283
tjr225 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People spend 95% of the time in the office in front of a screen anyways. Perhaps there is a problem with too much of our lives being spent online, but switching from in office to remote work isn't even enough of a difference in that respect to register.

I think the problem is that there's a lot of people where that 5% non-screen time at work is the difference between a job they like and one that they don't

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#426

Post by librish »

dogman144 wrote: post #407
librish wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those seem like fairly arbitrary lines to draw. If I told you that the worst case scenario for your board game night is that you offend someone to the point where they pull out a gun and shoot you you would probably tell me that's an event that's so unlikely it's not worth considering. Similarly I feel like choosing to not socialize in a normal way at work because someone might get you fired, while not as unlikely as…

Well risk is about likelihood vs impact, and work interactions are shaped by risk. It’s a low likelihood but high impact event to be shot by your board game buddy. It’s a med or high likelihood and high impact event that your career will suffer bc of a misstep in a social sphere at work, or imo more accurately it’s a medium/high likelihood and high impact reward that by navigating work socialization correctly and as…

You can reach whatever conclusion you want by assigning "high risk" to the things you don't want to do and "low risk" to the things you want to do but that doesn't make it more objective.

My experience is that the risk-adjusted expected value of being a sociable person at work is positive, both for your career and your overall happiness. I gather you think it's negative, which is fine, but let's not pretend one of us is more objectively correct than the other.

I haven't read The Organization Man (summary says it's a set of interviews with CEOs, does not seem too relevant for normal employees). I have read the Gervais principle. It's fun, and contextualizing it with your own experiences is valuable, but it is very loosely correlated to reality based on my own experience.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#427

Post by koonsolo »

bko wrote: post #32

One interesting spin on this is the question "what new competitor would you be most afraid of? 100% remote, hybrid or in person team?" The poll I saw overwhelmingly had "in person team" as the competitor that is most dangerous. Talent isn't just about hiring the right people, but getting the most out of them. With 100% remote you're also selecting for people that want to be more comfortable or unsupervised. It could…

If it's a small company, definitely the in person team. Information just flows way faster, and if you get to keep your employees, you don't need to "waste" too much on documentation, since everyone knows everything.

For a big company, if you are wel organized, I think the remote team can be way more productive. But it should be made up of mainly seniors.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#428

Post by throwaway2037 »

dont__panic wrote: post #238
dfadsadsf wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are virtually no engineers in Lagos and very few in Buenos Aires who compete with engineers in SF/NYC (the one getting SF/NYC salary) in terms of skill set. One thing that many people overestimate is number of competent engineers outside of well known tech hubs. I know that it was big surprise for FB and other big tier 1 companies when they started to hire remotely was that it was not actually easier to hire re…

> FB and other big tier 1 companies when they started to hire remotely All of the big tier 1 companies have serious strings attached for remote work. I've interviewed at several in the last year or two, and they all advertised remote work but also had weird requirements like "must be within 150 miles of an office" and "for certain positions" and "based on seniority." Perhaps the reason they are struggling to hire rem…

Why do you think they have these restrictions? One word: Collaboration.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#429

Post by paulcole »

dboreham wrote: post #87
paulcole wrote: post #6

I always think this is a funny argument because most companies don't need top talent. For nearly every business, good enough is definitely good enough. So the question to me is for average to slightly above average employees, will remote companies "win"?

I'm not sure it's a question of having top talent. What I see happening is that any given organization has a minimum acceptable level of skill and experience for developers in order to be acceptable for hire. There's no concept of "well we'll hire this kind of crappy person for the open job because that's all we can get". What remote work has done is to make the pool of available candidates that exceed the competence…

In the US for W2 employees, there are significant costs (money, time, and effort – both upfront and ongoing) that go into hiring an employee in a state where you currently don't have any employees. These costs are most significant to small businesses because larger companies have either dealt with them in the past or have the resources/knowledge/experience to deal with them.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#430

Post by UncleOxidant »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
ajaym0 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open floor plans can be a double edge sword buddy

Yes, exactly. When you sit right next to your business users and listen to their day-to-day activities or phone calls, it is priceless "ambient information". However, if you sit next to completely unrelated, but noisy team, it is hell! The trick is floor layout. The best companies in my experience obsess about floor layout to get relevant teams close!

In my experience as a software dev the "ambient information" that has tended to be most valuable was information about how the product was doing financially. I worked in an environment where we all had offices with doors and it was great but the "ambient information" I missed was that the sales of the product weren't going all that great and there were layoffs on the way. In a cube environment I think I would've heard a lot of chatter about layoffs coming weeks to months earlier. In this case I was pretty much blindsided.
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