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Remote startups will win the war for top talent

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Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#471

Post by redleggedfrog »

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'm replying to myself here - might be a bit gauche, but I read all the replies carefully and most were quite reasoned and thought provoking. Thank you! Hacker News for the win.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#472

Post by gilbetron »

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…

My mileage does vary - in my experience, I often wonder what non-remote people are even doing. Remote is blowing them out of the water. I think on-prem workers tend to chit chat more, go to lunch, come in a bit late, leave a bit early, do happy hours, and generally socialize a lot more (not to mention commutes!). I see largely the opposite as you, with remote workers doing the bulk of the work.

On prem might get the bulk of the credit though - politics are ... evolving with remote workers.

But your experience doesn't match mine at all.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#473

Post by redleggedfrog »

CousinMicks wrote: post #175
nend wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good question to an angle I hadn't considered. The in-office people are strict 8 to 5ers and none of us work from home that often - just the random voluntary thing when something is interesting. The remote workers work more hours to be certain. Most voluntarily with some of the tech people being roped in on weekends. The core in-office engineers have spent years insisting on strong work-life balance that sadly has not propagated to other teams as much.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#474

Post by emptyparadise »

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 find myself feeling that way in the office as well, so I prefer remote.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#475

Post by mulmen »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #233
UncleOxidant wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after having dealt with cubicle farms for so many years. Or worse, open floor plans.

Yeah, until I started working from home I hadn't had walls for a decade.

I had an office for a short time. We were moving to a new building and got to pick our seating arrangements by seniority. I was toward the end of the list but nobody had picked the lone office in our area so I did. My manager immediately had the walls torn down.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#476

Post by trention »

time_to_smile wrote: post #466
trention wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think your hunch is about as correct as your rationale for posting the M1 graphic without reading the note below it or noticing that it jumped 4-fold in a single month.

I'm well aware of both the note and the jump. If you think that increase is merely an artifact of a change in methodology then you should spend a bit more time researching on what you're looking at. The jump is quite real. There's actually a good stack exchange post covering this: https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/45886/has-ther... As well as the FRED itself release and explanation: https://fredblog.stlou…

If you are well-aware, why didn't you use a more adequate money supply measure like M2 or M3? Is it maybe because the growth there was nothing out of the ordinary looking at the past 10 years?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#477

Post by danwee »

esel2k wrote: post #392
danwee wrote: post #73

Big win for working 100% remote, at least for me, is that it suddenly makes it possible for me to potentially work for any IT company in my entire country without having to switch cities or commuting. That's the deal for me. The moment a job description says 4 days remote, 1 day at the office... that already kills it (e.g., imaging living in Frankfurt and working for a Berlin-based company... or living in Seville and…

I had a Berlin offer and live at the other end of the country. I was able to negotiate a 3-4per month presence but at the end I got a more competitive offer. Out of interest: Is this something that you have seen working in Germany ?

I've seen offers for hybrid approach in Germany, The Netherlands, France,... I don't apply to such offers, but their amount is not negligible.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#478

Post by AdrianB1 »

biomcgary wrote: post #387
AdrianB1 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am working remotely for 15 years, but from time to time I go to the local office; when I go to lunch, I just socialize with anyone that I see there and I either have an informal affinity (calling them friends may be too much) or I want to discuss a light business matter that does not require a formal meeting, but can be discussed over lunch. Also I have a coworker in my team that is in the same city, but the opposi…

Zero additional cost. You each pay 2 hours a day in commuting to get to the office. Take those two hours that you get back EVERY DAY and make friends within walking distance.

It is not about making friends, it is about relations with the people I work with. More than 10 years ago I saved someone's job just by simply clearing a serious misunderstanding with people I knew.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#479

Post by asdadsdad »

enlyth wrote: post #168
andrewingram wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. During my somewhat passive job search, I've only been considering companies that have an office local to me (i.e. Central London). I've been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, and I simply don't like it. Sure, I don't miss having to commute or offices with bad noise pollution controls, but I miss everything else. Most of all, I miss being in town at the end of the day and being able to pop to th…

But the fact that you don't go out is because you don't put any effort into it. I work remotely from Kent, we also have an office in Central London but I made the effort to make local friends with whom I go out all the time, even week nights. I prefer this to spending £40 for the train to then drink £8 pints in overfilled London pubs while standing outside and shouting over each other. I actually don't want to spend…

I think there's tremendous loss to working remote-only, specially for young people. I've found me and all my young colleagues would much rather be in an office everyday than having the "freedom" to WFH. When you're young you're meant to live in shitty apartments in big, noisy cities. To be with other people all day, to go out and have dinner, and drinks after-work. Idk, it just feels like I'm wasting my life waking up and opening my computer at home every day. I've tried coworking, and while it helps a bit, it's akin to going to a bar alone to try to meet people.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#480

Post by ebjaas_2022 »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #25
paulcole wrote: post #6

I always think this is a funny argument because most companies don't need top talent. For nearly every business, good enough is definitely good enough. So the question to me is for average to slightly above average employees, will remote companies "win"?

Yup, most of the hard problems were solved in 1960 to 1980, and modern libraries cover 99.999% of use-cases. If people are focused on Research and Development in a large commercial project, it will often catch the ire of people responsible for risk mitigation.

> most of the hard problems were solved in 1960 to 1980

Yes, if you're talking about sorting algorithms and similar. But there are, of course, still many, many even harder problems waiting to be solved. Harder, because they are compound, and more complex. There's still need for top talent. But it's true that most "ordinary" businesses do not need those types of programmers.

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