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Quora goes permanently remote-first

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Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#251
post #154

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned: > We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12…

Timezones matter. London is a financial hub because it's able to work with both the US east coast (NY) and also most of Asia-Pacific. NY and Asia-Pacific though is doable but tougher (12-13h difference).

The toughest is when you need to include folks from SF, London and HK [1]. There's just no good overlap. Either you rotate the suffering or you get disgruntled employees.

One solution is to decide which timezone is most important to you, and then restricting hiring +/- 6 hours from that timezone. Or split up synchronous meetings to two different sessions for two different sides of the world (this might lead to content bifurcation but may work in some instances).

It's a serious quality of life issue that employers ignore or downplay at their peril -- by not respecting timezones, employers are signaling they don't care. Employees on the short end of the stick with respect to timezone feel unimportant and excluded (first hand knowledge of this), especially if it's imposed from above without consultation.

Even small timezone differences are annoying -- I'm in Central Time and people in Eastern Time keep scheduling meetings around my lunchtime. The only way to get around this is to add fake calendar items around lunch time to block off that time.

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#252
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I managed teams with flex hours, several parents explicitly preferred to work 4PM to midnight because they could spend the morning with their kids while their spouse worked their day job. If the working hours are presented up front and agreed upon by all, I don’t see why this is any more problematic than any other shift work. There are a lot of programmers out there who are naturally night owls and would prefer…

People complain about this. People would complain if they said they only hire in North American timezones. That said, a big window of synchronous communications between US West Coast and Europe is tough. East Coast to Europe is much more doable on a day-to-day basis. I was actually having a conversation with someone I know in the UK about this a while back. His feeling was that it was a something of an advantage for…

> East Coast-based for this reason.

Or anywhere east of Chicago roughly (a large chunk of US/Canada is in Eastern time).

Even Chicago (Central Time) isn't too bad.

It starts getting iffy with Pacific and Mountain Time zones and CET.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#253
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're being dismissive, but that still sounds great. It would lead to many small, livable communities with opportunity dotting the country. As opposed to everyone living in suburbs and and making long commutes to a small number of massive urban centers.

You ever try living in SF? You seem to have described it in a sense. Also see this great South Park clip for an analogy: https://youtu.be/a3ezyTXFgYM

I don't follow. What part of my post described SF, and what is the analogy with that South park clip?

What I said was that if small communities spring up around places where remote workers converge, that is a good thing. It doesn't defeat the purpose of remote work.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#254
post #202
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s basically the model IBM was actively pursuing in the 90s-00s (no idea whether they still do). They ran a bunch of studies in the previous decades, showing the various trade-offs involved into office locations; eventually they decided the best overall policy was to prefer mid-size offices in suburban settings, away from business districts and other high-density areas. At one point I think they had an outright b…

HQ is in Armonk which is Westchester County. Somers (since sold) and Poughkeepsie are there as well as is IBM Research at Yoktown Heights. Raleigh is in an industrial park (RTP). I'm by no means familiar with all of IBM's locations but, yes, many of them are suburban. IBM also sold their building in Manhattan in the 90s though they may still have some space there; they did when I last visited but that was quite a whi…

I’m not sure RTP qualifies as “an industrial park” but suburban, sure

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get supplies to the houses? Presumably you aren't going to want delivery vans driving over the nice grass. Pneumatic tubes (not sarcastic)? What about when someone needs a new mattress?

You'd be surprised what you can accomplish with a cargo bike.

Fair. And I think that would work for the day to day stuff. You would probably still need a central depot (basically a wal-mart) to get things in to town efficiently. It would probably need a road, but we could limit things fairly well.

But that's why I brought up mattresses.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#256
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not particularly prophetic when it comes to how businesses play out, but I remember thinking that quora was a cool idea on a small scale but knew that it would turn to garbage as soon as it got popular. For the entrepreneurs out there: Everything doesn't have to be social. Sometimes you can build a business around great, curated content and it can be beautiful.

> For the entrepreneurs out there: Everything doesn't have to be social. Sometimes you can build a business around great, curated content and it can be beautiful. Examples? I can't actually think of a curated content business that has no social features. Social is textual gold. People love interacting with other people. Certainly not an information content business. Perhaps curated physical products.

Quartz.com, Wired.com, NYTimes.com, (although it seems that nytimes does allow comments on some articles).

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#257
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to suggest a wording for it?

Discuss substance, not presentation, unless presentation is the topic of the story. Comments about web design and readability are off-topic. Advice for authors is best delivered through a polite private email.

Just to calibrate: would you say "this site breaks the back button fuck I fucking hate that" should be under this umbrella?

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#258
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discuss substance, not presentation, unless presentation is the topic of the story. Comments about web design and readability are off-topic. Advice for authors is best delivered through a polite private email.

Just to calibrate: would you say "this site breaks the back button fuck I fucking hate that" should be under this umbrella?

Extremely yes. Sites that break the back button aren't going to stop doing that because HN complains about it, right?

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#259
post #58

It really is amazing that Quora still exists. In the very early days it was interesting, now it just seems like Yahoo Answers 2.0.

Yeah, seems like now half the questions on there are someone pushing some random agenda with "Why is [statement that isn't true]?"

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#260

With so many companies going WFH permanently even after COVID, how will this impact Uber/Lyft revenue?

I think they will do just fine. Uber has Eats which many people who WFH use. Also, remote companies mean lots of travel as employees need to meet in person at least twice a year. Uber and Lyft benefit greatly from business travel.

Uber Eats is a dumpster fire burning cash, so I don’t think it helps Uber’s bottom line very much to increase that side of their business.
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