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

How Paul Graham Is Wrong

ma.tt

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 206 posts

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#21

Post by kenrikm »

jamiemchale wrote: post #13

Isn't there a tremendous upside to being physically co-located? Even if the teams are remote, are the founders not usually located in a 'tech hub' city (SF, NY, etc.)? Matt says to let people 'live someplace remarkable', but for most of the world that want to work in technology SF is someplace remarkable. The benefits of using group collaboration tools are still available, but you have other people working on overlap…

The Bay Area is pretty awesome however the housing prices are not, I would say it's the single biggest issue here. I've been told my $2000/mo Rent for a 500Sqft 1Br Apartment in San Mateo is a "good deal".. to contrast that the mortgage on my 2000Sqft house back in Miami (not far from the beach) is $650/mo including Taxes and Insurance.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#22

Post by kylec »

Vekz wrote: post #12
jfaucett wrote: post #10

The author is forgetting that this is very unattractive for remote developers. Maybe not so bad if you live in a country without decent health insurance and retirement, but for others you'd lose these benefits by becoming a contractor. EDIT: being more explicit I was specifically thinking of remote workers from other countries when writing this statement. Obviously, remote work within the U.S. wouldn't make you a con…

The article didn't say anything explicitly about remote contractors. The two companies it did reference Automattic and Github have remote full time employees.

Another commenter in this thread said that Automattic workers outside the US and Canada are contractors:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811183

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#23

Post by photomatt »

It's worth repeating that I absolutely believe we should improve and dramatically open up immigration in the US, and applaud PG's and other's work there, but in the meantime you don't have to handicap your company because of the current politics around this issue.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#24

Post by jweir »

Remote workers present challenges.

Which is worth more a company with 5 employed engineers or 5 oversea contractors?

Managing developers across time zones can be a big problem. If the developer in the Ukraine has a question for a manger asleep in California, he has to wait.

There is no casual connection between people - no going to a bar to talk things over, no stepping away from the computer to talk. All communication is filtered down through the pipes.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#25

Post by vinceguidry »

ryanSrich wrote: post #7
tptacek wrote: post #2

The idea that remote work is a solution to immigration is also a meme on Twitter. I'm not sure I understand it. A San Francisco tech company can employ developers in Krakow to work remotely without dealing with visas. But those developers either need to be 1099 contractors, or loaned out from an outsourcing firm. Both options are poor. Outsourcing firms for obvious reasons (introducing a middleman that serves no purp…

Remote work isn't a solution to immigration, and I'm not sure that was the point of the article. For me remote is the solution to the so called talent shortage in the Valley. If companies were really interested in hiring the best developers they'd drop their archaic view of remote work and remove location-dicated working.

In all fairness, it would require a major sea change for, say, Microsoft, to get to where they could make remote workers a significant portion of their development staff.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#26

Post by trustfundbaby »

> In a region that prides itself on disruption and working from first principles, San Francisco’s scaling problem is pretty humorous if you look at it from the outside: otherwise smart and inventive founders continue to set up offices and try to hire or move people in the most overheated environment since there were carphones in Cadillac Allantes

This is the best rebuttal to the more-immigration-so-we-can-haz-programmers I've read in a long time. And its so true. The way the current work visa (h1-b) is setup makes it far more likely that good programmers get tied to stodgy plodding firms and not smaller innovative ones that tech needs them to work for. Remote work and rewriting the current h1-b laws to make it so that h1-bs can more easily transfer their work permits and work for whoever they like, whenever they like ... remotely as well ... just like their American contemporaries would open up lots of supply.

but what the big firms really want is more pliant programmers who will work within the rigid confines they set up. Thats why we're not talking more about the mechanics of the work visa and the green card process which is currently set up pretty restrictively.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#27

Post by YuriNiyazov »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The idea that remote work is a solution to immigration is also a meme on Twitter. I'm not sure I understand it. A San Francisco tech company can employ developers in Krakow to work remotely without dealing with visas. But those developers either need to be 1099 contractors, or loaned out from an outsourcing firm. Both options are poor. Outsourcing firms for obvious reasons (introducing a middleman that serves no purp…

Fine distinctions get lost on Twitter, unfortunately. Your points about hiring people in other countries are valid. Remote work is also an alternative to moving everyone in the US to Chicago, NYC, or San Francisco; I understand that PG's essay was about immigration, but PG is an on-going advocate of people working in the same office due to the "great ideas happen in chance meetings, and those are hard to replicate", which means that that only does he want great programmers to move to the USA, he also wants them to move to cities that are tech hubs.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#28

Post by walshemj »

Oh dear sorry to rain on your parade experience shows that the way to get the best performance is collocated teams of developers ideally coloacted with the end customer.

I know this isn't what a lot of HN readers want to hear but I bet Paul and many other VC's would bear me out.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#29

Post by mbesto »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The idea that remote work is a solution to immigration is also a meme on Twitter. I'm not sure I understand it. A San Francisco tech company can employ developers in Krakow to work remotely without dealing with visas. But those developers either need to be 1099 contractors, or loaned out from an outsourcing firm. Both options are poor. Outsourcing firms for obvious reasons (introducing a middleman that serves no purp…

> 1099 because (a) it creates a second class of employee

Care to elaborate why this is so bad? As far as I can tell, most employee (FTE) related laws in the US are suited for, well, people living in the US.

Re: How Paul Graham Is Wrong

#30

Post by ryanSrich »

untothebreach wrote: post #15

So much this. I have pretty much stopped clicking on the HN posts from HN companies looking for employees, because almost none of them offer remote work. Which is too bad, because there are quite a few HN companies that I would love to work for.

I highly suspect that it's a consequence of being a YC company. The president of YC has even publicly denounced allowing remote work.

> As a side note, avoid remote employees in the early days. As a culture is still gelling, it’s important to have everyone in the same building. [1]

1. http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire

Post reply on HN