To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in other peoples' work.
Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
211–220 of 277 posts
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#212To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in othe…
What do you do all day then? Does no one ever try to get in contact with you?
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#213Any companies that requires in-house engineering is bad. A good culture doesn't depend on location between participants.
"In-house" typically refers to work performed by direct employees of the company, in contrast to outsourced work. I think you mean "on-site", which refers to work performed by people in offices occupied by the company, in contrast to remote work.
Yeah, it's what i mean. Thanks for reminding ! Edited.
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#214To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in othe…
What do you do all day then? Does no one ever try to get in contact with you?
Very seldom and when they do it's something really trivial to fix/answer (which I can often do on my phone if I'm out doing... leisure stuff). I more or less have a permanent paid vacation.
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#215Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)? I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes? Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote wo…
What stops a person from lying (within a reasonable time difference) about where they live?
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are compensated according to locale. Our Google sheet of offer anecdata contains a few entries for Stripe, some remote and some SF. I’ve seen a salary difference of 30%. I don’t know the people who entered them personally so I can’t speak to how well they performed during the interview, so take that with a grain of salt.
I just don't understand this. If a company knows how to get choose a USD200k engineer in SF and get a good return for the company off that engineer, then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas? USD200k is a good carrot where I live, so you would be able to attract the best engineers living here (with far less competition and far less churn). I get it that SF has network effects, but good remote engineers also tap…
In addition to what kossae said, overpaying for the market is not good for Stripe. The flip side of massively reducing churn is that it also means people wont leave even when they want to, because of the golden handcuffs. Stripe doesn't want demotivated employees who are only staying because they'll have to take a 50k pay cut to work anywhere else.
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean “why is this even a question?”? It’s a question that frequently comes up in remote worn discussions. Stripe being a big company, and now making a big commitment to remote work, is likely to be an example other companies draw from.
Can you name a single company that pays Remote Employees SF/Bay Area salaries? Edit: Fair enough. There are companies that pay everyone SF level salaries but you can also find companies like Gitlab - 100% Remote but they explicitly downscale from SF salaries based on location. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
Expensify! I work as a remote engineer, but we have remote employees all over the world (Europe, Asia, North America, Australia) that don't have their salaries adjusted for COL.
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean “why is this even a question?”? It’s a question that frequently comes up in remote worn discussions. Stripe being a big company, and now making a big commitment to remote work, is likely to be an example other companies draw from.
Can you name a single company that pays Remote Employees SF/Bay Area salaries? Edit: Fair enough. There are companies that pay everyone SF level salaries but you can also find companies like Gitlab - 100% Remote but they explicitly downscale from SF salaries based on location. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
I don't really want or need an SF salary, but I do expect a company to compensate fairly and not based on where I live at any given time. I can understand a reasonable adjustment based on the different compliance costs and payroll expenses for a given political jurisdiction.
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#219Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)? I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes? Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote wo…
What stops a person from lying (within a reasonable time difference) about where they live?
Ethics? Fear of voiding the employment contract if based on false information?
I also don't think it's practical.
Here in Germany at least, the address of residency is used in so many contexts (health insurance, pension schemes, tax things etc.) that I doubt this would go unnoticed very long.
For example the city you live in determines which regional tax office handles your income tax, and I'm pretty sure it's easy to notice for a company if some of the income tax goes to an address that doesn't match the employee's city.
Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
#220This is such a smart move. I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "ev…
"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc." I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?
I attend a lot more meetups and coffee meetings, myself.