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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

#481

Post by lm28469 »

badpun wrote: post #443
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…

> 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. They can - they just have him as a contractor, not a permanent employee. Source: I'm a Polish contractor contracting for a German startup.

But then you have no job security, pension, &c. which is like half of the benefit of working for a wester EU country

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#482

Post by badpun »

lm28469 wrote: post #481
badpun wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They can - they just have him as a contractor, not a permanent employee. Source: I'm a Polish contractor contracting for a German startup.

But then you have no job security, pension, &c. which is like half of the benefit of working for a wester EU country

As an entrepreneur (contractor) in Poland, you get free state-provided healthcare. You're also paying mandatory contributions to state-provided pensions (equivalent of US social security). It's true there is no job security, but in return you pay 17% in total tax burden on your income and not 40-50% you pay in Germany. The rates are also much higher than full time salaries, so in the end you take home probably twice what your German colleagues take, while having a fraction of their costs of living. Do that for 10 years and you end up with $1 million in the bank, which is enough to retire early in Poland.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#483

Post by eropple »

rowanajmarshall wrote: post #281
eropple wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you made good friends amongst your colleagues in your remote company, during the remote-work era ? Not the OP, but I certainly have. It takes some effort, but it's not particularly difficult if you know and understand how to communicate effectively over a remote medium. It requires an understanding of how communications attenuate over a screen--you need to project! , in-person-normal levels of reservation tend…

> It takes some effort, but it's not particularly difficult if you know and understand how to communicate effectively over a remote medium So I've got zero doubt you _can_ do that, I did over lockdown. But if we make socialising systemically harder across the board, we're basically setting ourselves up to be a lonelier, more isolated society.

You aren't wrong, but I don't necessarily think people should be deriving the majority of their social interactions from work in the first place.

This probably suggests that we should be working less, generally speaking, and doing more in our communities. I'm not religious, but I do wonder how much of this "be in the office so I can get social interaction" is because the office has replaced the church and the community center. That, to me, is the engine of loneliness; even if you make good friends at work you do lose significant shared context with them when you or they move on.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#484

Post by Joel_Mckay »

ebjaas_2022 wrote: post #480
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, most of the hard problems were solved in 1960 to 1980, and modern libraries cover 99.999% of use-cases. If people are focused on Research and Development in a large commercial project, it will often catch the ire of people responsible for risk mitigation.

> most of the hard problems were solved in 1960 to 1980 Yes, if you're talking about sorting algorithms and similar. But there are, of course, still many, many even harder problems waiting to be solved. Harder, because they are compound, and more complex. There's still need for top talent. But it's true that most "ordinary" businesses do not need those types of programmers.

True Scientific inquiry is unpredictably random, and while someone will often eagerly publish a paper on a subject to boost perceived relevance... many rarely credit upstream sources outside academic contexts. Patents are also nice, as you often get to sue people who forgot to cite your work properly.

It is astonishingly impressive anything relevant, generalizable, and repeatable actually makes it back into the public domain. Like watching your dog eat 1kg of cheese... impressive for all the wrong reasons... lol =)

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#485

Post by juve1996 »

origin_path wrote: post #456
juve1996 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Their post says this already. It's metrics from their project management system i.e. tickets.

So really a nothing statement - we have no idea how this system works or what "tickets" actually means.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#486

Post by chrisfosterelli »

thehappypm wrote: post #395
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I agree. Hybrid is the hardest version of remote work to do right and unfortunately the one more frequently chosen by orgs that don't want to properly invest in remote but don't want to demand in person, so it's a double whammy.

I do think it's a false dichotomy though to compare "top talent diluted by remote-ness" with "less talented in-person team that can communicate well". I agree with that direct comparison, but it's not the only option. Remote can be done well. With proper investment in remote, a team can have "top talent that can communicate well" instead of picking one of two bad options.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#487

Post by therealdrag0 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #419
whatever1 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If work is obvious then I don’t need to pay one 6 figures to do it. Or to put it better, if work is obvious, someone has already done the work for you

> if work is obvious, someone has already done the work for you I wish that was true. A lot of work is obvious but undone. A lot of issues go unresolved or are chalked up as "unimportant". Let me use your product for five minutes and I will give you the work that needs to be done.

And lots of work is obvious to some not other engineers who need mentoring or docs to do it because they’re new to the company or field or tech. White board situations are far and few between ime.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#488

Post by dcreager »

brundolf wrote: post #280
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…

This is a big one that it took me a while to fully appreciate I've found that even just turning my camera on in Zoom meetings makes a difference. Joining the standup call a little early, having "face to face" chitchat, builds up a small buffer of rapport that significantly improves empathy and perceived intent Especially if you need to have a conversation where there might be some existing friction/tension/frustratio…

> having "face to face" chitchat, builds up a small buffer of rapport that significantly improves empathy and perceived intent

On my team we have a weekly 30-minute meeting for non-work-related updates. A chance to talk about whatever you did in the past week outside of work, or about anything else that currently interests you. It typically prompts a lot of follow-on conversations in Slack afterwards.

It might be nicer if this happened organically, and didn't require an explicitly scheduled meeting. But we consider it important enough that we carve out the time to make it clear that it's a team norm.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#489

Post by RobKohr »

Also, local startups will win the war for top talent too.

Some people like to work remote and some like to work in office.

One thing that doesn't work well (usually), is hybrid where a team is a mix of remote and in office.

In the end, I could see some companies or groups in companies going full remote, and some being fully on site, and individual devs migrate to wherever they are happy.

One benefit of covid is it created a giant social experiment where we got a chance to taste what full remote work companies would be like, and now it is no longer something theoretical. As someone who went full remote way before covid, this is great as now their is more opportunity to stay fully remote where I am most happy.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#490

Post by ekianjo »

asoneth wrote: post #195
ekianjo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

First nobody is going to pay me 3x for the same job in an office so this kind of question hardly makes sense. However even in reality it would be possible to get 1.5x which is already a strecth i dont think i would forego the convenience of working from home.
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