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$1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

forbes.com

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Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#11

Post by Xcelerate »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Isn’t that the wrong metric to look at? You are looking for massive successes from the very small number of remote companies to compare with the massive successes out of all companies. A better (but still somewhat flawed approach) would be to take a random sample of non-remote companies equivalent in size to the number of remote-only companies and compare the distributions of their success.

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#12

Post by Nowyouknow »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Check out AffinityX. Likely not the largest, but profitable and growing.

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#13

Post by ng7j5d9 »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #4
ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

If you're not trying to be snarky avoid stuff like "dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire". I think you can look at subsets of companies for precedent. - Regional sales staff are very frequently distributed by territory (obviously not remote in customer contact, usually) and work out of their homes. This is common across many companies in and out of tech. - Distributed teams where you have smaller satellite…

> If you're not trying to be snarky avoid stuff like "dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire"

Haha, that's fair. To be clear, I believe remote work is generally more productive and represents the future of most knowledge work. I was trying to put words into the mouth of an imaginary conservative executive who is afraid to go the remote path there.

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#14

Post by rwmj »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Red Hat is about 50% remote, and was plenty profitable before being acquired by IBM last year.

Edit: And is still profitable now. It sounds like I was saying it was only profitable before being acquired :-)

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#15

Post by throwaway5752 »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #13
throwaway5752 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not trying to be snarky avoid stuff like "dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire". I think you can look at subsets of companies for precedent. - Regional sales staff are very frequently distributed by territory (obviously not remote in customer contact, usually) and work out of their homes. This is common across many companies in and out of tech. - Distributed teams where you have smaller satellite…

> If you're not trying to be snarky avoid stuff like "dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire" Haha, that's fair. To be clear, I believe remote work is generally more productive and represents the future of most knowledge work. I was trying to put words into the mouth of an imaginary conservative executive who is afraid to go the remote path there.

I did take your comment in the intended spirit! My response were answers in that same spirit (points you might give that executive to say "we're a remote organization already").

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#16

Post by teunispeters »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

I work for one Or at least one where remote-only is quite common. Side effect : I have no idea how many coworkers I have, just know the team I work with normally and a few outside. It's a tech company, but it's an manufacturing one.

I think one of the important questions though is how does the hiring/firing and maintenance of relationships between employees (including management) be handled when face-to-face is over video conferencing only, usually? How do you measure who's doing well - and encourage them to continue? And nudge ones not doing well - and let them go if they're really not fitting?

And of course maintaining work/life balances is hard....

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#17

Post by Irishsteve »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Zapier.

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#18

Post by pawelk »

ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Toptal is profitable and 100% remote, not a single office anywhere. Not sure if largest, but quite big at ~500 employees.

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#19

Post by [deleted] »

pawelk wrote: post #18
ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Toptal is profitable and 100% remote, not a single office anywhere. Not sure if largest, but quite big at ~500 employees.

[deleted]

Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

#20

Post by sirjonathan »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #5
ng7j5d9 wrote: post #2

Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…

Automattic ? https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

Automattician here. Over 1000 employees, fully distributed (with the exception of Tumblr, which has an office space).
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