Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 231 posts

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#101

Post by afroboy »

marmaduke wrote: post #98
pixelmonkey wrote: post #79

Perhaps more interesting is that Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, just IPO'ed on NYSE, and they, too, have a fully distributed team of over 700 -- might even be trending toward 1000 by now. Zapier is another one at multi-hundred-person scale, and is a YC company. A couple other scaled-up ones on this model include Automattic (company behind Wordpress), DataStax (company behind Cassandra). There is also Wiki…

> less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS Doesn’t this aspect make them even more interesting?

Most non profit communities and FOSS are mostly have no headquarter so maybe that's why.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#102

Post by pixelmonkey »

marmaduke wrote: post #98
pixelmonkey wrote: post #79

Perhaps more interesting is that Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, just IPO'ed on NYSE, and they, too, have a fully distributed team of over 700 -- might even be trending toward 1000 by now. Zapier is another one at multi-hundred-person scale, and is a YC company. A couple other scaled-up ones on this model include Automattic (company behind Wordpress), DataStax (company behind Cassandra). There is also Wiki…

> less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS Doesn’t this aspect make them even more interesting?

Oh, yes, in many ways, yes!

What I meant by that: these three examples might feel, to VCs and founders, like anomalies rather than examples of an alternative scaling model for high-growth software/tech enterprises operating on a startup-to-IPO trajectory. Elastic, Automattic, InVision, Zapier, by contrast, are "traditional high-growth startups" in every respect, but where the founders simply chose fully distributed as the scaling/hiring model.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#103

Post by coldcode »

pier25 wrote: post #67

700 employees? That sounds like an awful lot for a product like InVision. Bohemian Coding, the company behind Sketch, employs a few dozen people. Also, I don't think the web is ready for UI/UX design tools. The ones I've tried feel really slow on my 5K iMac. Maybe in 5-10 years when web assembly is polished and related tool chains...

I get spam emails at work from some sales person at InVision several times a week. Perhaps many of those folks are in sales?

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#104

Post by pc86 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #96
anoncoward111 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some points in response to this: I keep nearly all of my gross because of the standard deduction and the nature of cash tips. My rent is $650 a month whereas most people in the bay or in Boston are paying $2200 for equivalent quality. I dont spend 2 hours stuck in traffic or a hot subway every day-- most days I ride my moped which gets 90mpg and uses a hilariously cheap blend of oil and fuel from the hardware store.…

>I keep nearly all of my gross because of the standard deduction and the nature of cash tips. Instead of the "nature of cash tips", it would be more accurate to state "the nature of people to evade taxes (or do other bad things as defined by society) when chances of being caught are sufficiently low". Also why I always use credit card and tip with credit card.

Always amazing that the people outraged over tax fraud from someone making $100k. a year have no problem with tax fraud from someone making $30k. They're the same thing. If you get $N in tips and declare And for what it's worth I don't think tipping on the card changes anything. When I waited tables we never got any report or anything from the credit card sales.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#105

Post by chiefalchemist »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #79

Perhaps more interesting is that Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, just IPO'ed on NYSE, and they, too, have a fully distributed team of over 700 -- might even be trending toward 1000 by now. Zapier is another one at multi-hundred-person scale, and is a YC company. A couple other scaled-up ones on this model include Automattic (company behind Wordpress), DataStax (company behind Cassandra). There is also Wiki…

re: " These days we also have an NYC office, but we refer to it as "the Internet cafe", about 20 of our 70 people "so happen" to work out of there regularly..."

It would be interesting to know:

- How many other distributed companies have a similar arrangement (i.e., a non-distributed "HQ")?

- Does this make employees more productive and/or satisfied?

- When on the journey does it make sense to transition from centralized to distributed?

- Are distributed orgs more (or less) likely to outsource commodity-esque (e.g., bookkeeping) services?

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#106

Post by pixelmonkey »

amyjess wrote: post #100
pixelmonkey wrote: post #79

Perhaps more interesting is that Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, just IPO'ed on NYSE, and they, too, have a fully distributed team of over 700 -- might even be trending toward 1000 by now. Zapier is another one at multi-hundred-person scale, and is a YC company. A couple other scaled-up ones on this model include Automattic (company behind Wordpress), DataStax (company behind Cassandra). There is also Wiki…

> There is also Wikimedia, Canonical, and Mozilla -- perhaps those 3 are less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS. Canonical is a for-profit company. They're also not fully distributed, either; I have a friend who moved to the UK a couple of years ago to work out of Canonical's headquarters.

That's interesting. My mistake, then. I had cited it from memory of talking to some Canonical staff during my own interview processes, where it seemed to me that it was fully distributed and driven by a non-profit mission (namely: sustaining salaries for F/OSS contributors).

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#107

Post by pc86 »

xivzgrev wrote: post #64
pc86 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to run the numbers for everyone, this is $31,200 assuming no vacation all year. So making less money gross as a waiter than you're able to put into a savings account (after taxes and all expenses) as a software developer. I don't think that will be surprising information for anyone here. I've waited tables before and I'd rather be a software developer for half the median software developer salary than a waiter f…

Life is what you make of it. If he feels happy doing job X at 31200, then so be it. No need to look down on it. In fact be happy for him, there's already too much suffering in the world, so someone finding something they enjoy is a blessing. Also he was in software SALES not dev, so not an accurate comparison.

I didn't think anything in my comment was condescending or "looking down" on the profession or him. Just stating that this is an astronomical difference in earnings potential and savings rate. And is $110k as a software sales rep and $110k as a software developer any different really? The important part is going from banking $35k in savings to earning $31k or less.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#108

Post by saudioger »

pier25 wrote: post #67

700 employees? That sounds like an awful lot for a product like InVision. Bohemian Coding, the company behind Sketch, employs a few dozen people. Also, I don't think the web is ready for UI/UX design tools. The ones I've tried feel really slow on my 5K iMac. Maybe in 5-10 years when web assembly is polished and related tool chains...

Guessing they're mostly sales/service related employees. When you get on their enterprise plan the service is fairly personal.

Invision also has a wider breadth of tools than what Sketch does (though Sketch does what they do in a much deeper way).

Sketch doesn't do personalized enterprise-level service plans (or Basecamp, for a similar example)... so they can be a lot leaner.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#109

Post by eeZah7Ux »

imglorp wrote: post #3
kowdermeister wrote: post #2

I underestimated how high the competition is for remote work. All my attempts failed so far despite having well customized application materials. I didn't submit to hundreds maybe around 20. Most of the time I never even reached a technical test at these companies which I thought would be the hardest part.

You're not competing with your locality but with an entire country, or more. You need to stand out somehow.

Certainly more than an entire country.

Yet, you can receive offers from the whole world.

Re: InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

#110

Post by strikelaserclaw »

ParanoidShroom wrote: post #13
kowdermeister wrote: post #2

I underestimated how high the competition is for remote work. All my attempts failed so far despite having well customized application materials. I didn't submit to hundreds maybe around 20. Most of the time I never even reached a technical test at these companies which I thought would be the hardest part.

Why is remote such highly requested? I work remote but, not cause I HAVE to. My team is just all fully remote.

Personally, I've done remote and decided after a while i didn't enjoy full time remote. The advantages? Getting to choose where i live, freedom in working my own schedule as long as deadlines are met, working in my boxers ?
Post reply on HN