Remote startups will win the war for top talent • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#171

Post by shmatt » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #26

"A study conducted on the main campus of a Fortune 500 company found that just 10 percent of all communications occurred between employees whose desks were more than 500 meters apart. This suggests that once companies span multiple floors, buildings, or campuses, they’ve already lost much of the collaborative value of being “in the office” together." This point often seems to get missed. If you're at a large company,…

This hits home for me for a completely different reason. I'm currently hybrid and notice some issues do get fixed faster in the office following that same 90% rule

In the office people don't mind tapping their neighbor on the shoulder 10 times a day to ask how to find/do something. On Slack they feel self conscious about zooming/slacking with someone 10 times in 1 day with questions. It's more about being in your head and feeling like a nuisance online vs. in office, than office being better than remote

This also makes our office days pretty dead in terms of actual progress on projects. Our stronger engineers work much more efficiently at home

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#172

Post by grogenaut » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

lakomen wrote: post #48

weakwire wrote: post #2

Remote startups may win the war for top talent (in the short term) but who will win on productivity and by extension revenue? I guess we will all see that in the next 24 months.

I'm not more productive when monitored and have to waste 2-4 hours a day getting to and from the workplace.

where are you living with a 4 hour commute?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#173

Post by dogman144 » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

rngname22 wrote: post #37

bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…

Have you considered that the those different personalities are ultimately asking for a friend group in-office composed of people that largely don’t want to be those forced-friends and by extension commute/sacrifice finances/family time to do it and then just zoom-call and slack in office anyway?

That’s the nonsensical aspect of all this. Everyone mentioning that the office was a key community or some higher ideal to spend time on for meaning forget that you can have that socialization and significantly more intrinsically valuable meaning-making with (a) family, (b) friends outside of work, (c) community involvement. All of which don’t require commutes, work lunches, losing family time for something that doesn’t matter in the long run. Instead, let’s hang out and support the extroverts who somehow don’t know how to make friends outside of those they helped launch a product with? Totally nonsensical.

Edit: I’m at a negative downvote and dropping fast, so fwiw one day everyone gets families of some kind and also stops working, even if that’s not understood now. what connections are left over after work stops are what will power you, and most people understand that eventually.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#174

Post by insane_dreamer » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

spaniard89277 wrote: post #30

Remote work is not perfect, but it's better than going to my office without windows (yeah, you heard right). I don't do creative work or programming, as I work in HelpDesk, so I don't see the reason for going back to my bunker. It seems most of my coworkers have the same beliefs because as my company started threatening with going back to the office previous to thos summer, people left, and many became pretty hostile…

Agree that WFH is ideal for cases such as yours where you're not working on the actual construction aspect (where more interaction is helpful for solving problems and/or better ideas).

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#175

Post by CousinMicks » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

nend wrote: post #144

redleggedfrog wrote: post #66

"Your remote team is my company's opportunity." Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, but at my company we have some people who work in an office and lots more that work remotely. The in office staff contribute more ideas, work, fixes, and functional software than the remote teams by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. Those are hard numbers right out of our project m…

I wouldn't assume the in office workers get more done because they go to the office, correlation != causation. It seems just as likely to me that the most dedicated, hard working employees are the ones willing to commute in to the office in the first place, and they would get more work done than others regardless of where they work.

Good point. I'm curious if there's a relationship between those who work-to-live/live-to-work and work remote/work in office, respectively.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#176

Post by devmunchies » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

danwee wrote: post #86

icedchai wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communications and collaboration is very important. However, "socializing" through Slack is simply just not the same as going out to lunch with a coworker, for example. Permanent remote work has a very detached feel to it, at least for me.

I don't get this. If you have a coworker that enjoy having lunch with you... what's stopping you both doing so? I mean, even if you both work from home, you could still schedule a lunch together in the city, right? If you both live in different cities, well, I guess before COVID you weren't having lunch together that frequently. 100% remote doesn't dictate how (or with who) you eat lunch.

Just based on basic behavioral science and statistics, every desired action from pt A to pt B (e.g. visit website -> buy a product) is a collection of smaller actions that comprise a funnel.

For example, in the funnel of a customer visiting amazon to finally buying a product, amazon loses millions of dollars when initial page load times are 300ms slower within that funnel.

Any added friction between stages in a funnel will reduce the result at the end of the funnel. You add scheduling complexity, physical driving, distributed workforces, etc, and the number of shared lunches are going to drop super fast. Hell, you put 2 onsite employees in 2 different buildings on campus and their chance at a lunch together will drop.

If you or your company cares about in-person collaboration or socializing, you had better foster that behavior and not count on raw willpower to break out of the mold.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#177

Post by silisili » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

frankfrank13 wrote: post #70

Idk why but I can't help but think remote-first feels so dystopian. I joined and left a job that was 100% remote, and tbh I barely remember working there. I can barely remember names or anything I did. It was like Severance. Now I'm hybrid, and feel way more "connected" (whatever that means).

I've been remote for a decade now and -still- feel that way.

Ultimately, I think I've decided I probably prefer a hybrid approach. Like T/Th in office. But that only works if everyone is on board - that is, what's the point of me going in on Tuesday if I'm the only one there?

That said, I live in the middle of nowhere in a non-tech city, so that's just a pipe dream anyways for now...

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#178

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

wowokay wrote: post #84

rngname22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…

True, I think the rhetoric and The article are focused on killing the negative concepts around remote. To the extreme in pointing out that most of the common tropes are not accurate. The problem is I don’t think anti-remote people understand that in some cases there whole team may want to be remote 100% of the time, and that it’s not right to be in the mindset that those team members should be forced to come into an…

A lot of people have. There is a reason remote only job postings have such a high number of applicants. In a lot of ways, remote already won. The question for me is really as to whether that means that anyone worth their salt will stay at non-remote places and whether old corps will suffer a brain drain.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#179

Post by bamboozled » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #91

bamboozled wrote: post #47

They might win the war for the best “talent” (whatever that means). Remote only may lose the war for building the best products.

Why non-remote employees are commuting (in anger), remote employees are spending time with their family, exercising, working on their hobbies. Which of those two employee types do you think will have have better work output? I'm have a pretty good idea, but am not totally sure.

I worked in an office for a lot of years and I almost never, ever remember "commuting in anger".

I basically did a comp-sci degree on the train to and from work, contributed to opensource software, caught up on work, read books , talked to colleagues, napped etc. It was actually pretty productive alone time for me. Forced quiet time for 3 hours a day. I was young and I had a 1.5 train trip each way to work.

I built my career further and could afford to live closer to my office, but it was still a 30 minute cycle each way, that was still beautiful, my more recent office job, it was a 10 minute ride in a beautiful city.

I work remote now, while I think my personal life is for sure better, I'm not sure we're functioning as well as a group.

The spending time with the family bit, sounds good, but I'm honestly still working insane hours remotely. Had to sacrifice a lot of personal time of late to my work. I'm probably working harder and longer hours know than almost anytime I remember. It's 6am meetings, 9pm meetings. That never used to happen for me.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#180

Post by randomdata » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

rngname22 wrote: post #37

bearjaws wrote: post #16

I never really understood why people say productivity and socializing is difficult remote. It's difficult because people aren't putting thought into it. At my last big-co job the leadership just kept waiting for 'covid to be over' and not improving our remote work culture. Hybrid models will always struggle and 1/3/1 is going to be probably the best you can do. My company is fully remote, we embraced the GitLab model…

Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…

> that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment?

Remote doesn't specify where you work, though. In my 20 years of working remotely, I've worked from home, from cars, hotels, cafes, offices, out in the middle of a field, you name it I've probably done it. 100% remote working conditions can mean working in an office environment every single day, if that's your preference. Remote is a euphemism for "work wherever you please".

The actual differentiation here is whether or not an employer dictates a working location. Are you, perhaps, suggesting that there is strong overlap between those who prefer working in offices (which does no preclude 100% remote) and having a controlling power dictate how they live?