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Remote

robertgreiner.com

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Re: Remote

#2
The main problem is finding companies allowing remote (and by remote I mean "outside of the US" type of remote, there are not THAT many.

Re: Remote

#3
post #2

The main problem is finding companies allowing remote (and by remote I mean "outside of the US" type of remote, there are not THAT many.

Yeah, Keats. You are 100% right. Remote covered this briefly, I think in the "Beware the dragons" chapter.

I don't understand the legal side of the situation completely, but if you have enough people working out of a given international city, it could create a Nexus and require you to set up an office, etc.

Remote's advice here is to hire international workers as contractors, but to treat them like full-time employees. Not ideal.

Hopefully, this will get easier as time goes on.

Re: Remote

#4
post #2

The main problem is finding companies allowing remote (and by remote I mean "outside of the US" type of remote, there are not THAT many.

I would suspect no remote work hire is a cold hire. Most of the times it is someone which has previously worked on-site and shown to be trustworthy enough to manage themselves when working remotely.

So yes, getting companies who don't know you, and will hire you for remote work based on an interview only is rare.

Re: Remote

#6
post #2

The main problem is finding companies allowing remote (and by remote I mean "outside of the US" type of remote, there are not THAT many.

I would suspect no remote work hire is a cold hire. Most of the times it is someone which has previously worked on-site and shown to be trustworthy enough to manage themselves when working remotely. So yes, getting companies who don't know you, and will hire you for remote work based on an interview only is rare.

As someone who's worked about 50% remote in the past year, this is not true. I've worked for companies in the US, Mexico, the UK, while based in the Netherlands. One common factor though is they were mostly people already in my network, so there is definitely a trust element - but not a "face to face" trust element necessarily.

Re: Remote

#7
post #2

The main problem is finding companies allowing remote (and by remote I mean "outside of the US" type of remote, there are not THAT many.

I would suspect no remote work hire is a cold hire. Most of the times it is someone which has previously worked on-site and shown to be trustworthy enough to manage themselves when working remotely. So yes, getting companies who don't know you, and will hire you for remote work based on an interview only is rare.

It is rare, but it does happen. Over the last 4 years I've help to build up a 10 person development team (from 3) having never met any of the candidates before hiring them.

I didn't meet anyone else from the company until a year after I had already been working here.

The interview process is just needs to be fairly rigorous. Our preference is to hire within Canada because of:

* Timezones * Government incentives * Payment/Tax/Accounting hassles have already been sorted

But that doesn't mean we'll pass up great candidates in other locations.

We're hiring Modern Perl developers right now :

http://jobs.perl.org/job/18026

Re: Remote

#8
I should probably read this book but also, I wonder if I could have written it. We've fully embraced remote working and it's fantastic. It has allowed us to hire above our weight class as a small startup, finding and keeping some truly fantastic developers.

I agree completely that communication is key. You really have to over communicate, to the point almost of being annoying to avoid very simple but costly mistakes. I also find that teams can suffer from the low fidelity of text communication with regard to sentiment and emotional content. It's just too easy to assume someone has a voice they do not and to harbor resentment or whatever silently -- especially among introverted developers.

We host occasional Skype lunches with no agenda except to catch up and chat on peoples lives.

Re: Remote

#9

I should probably read this book but also, I wonder if I could have written it. We've fully embraced remote working and it's fantastic. It has allowed us to hire above our weight class as a small startup, finding and keeping some truly fantastic developers. I agree completely that communication is key. You really have to over communicate, to the point almost of being annoying to avoid very simple but costly mistakes.…

That's really great. I'm glad to hear of another company that has benefited from an all-in approach to remote workers. I think reading the book would be time well spent. You can knock it out in a single day.
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