$1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
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Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#2Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company?
Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK.
Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dismiss remote-only as a dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire?
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#3If the majority are remote then it can work. Don’t be remote where the company is otherwise geo-located. Hallway conversations often make decisions.
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#4Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…
If you're not trying to be snarky avoid stuff like "dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire".
I think you can look at subsets of companies for precedent.
- Regional sales staff are very frequently distributed by territory (obviously not remote in customer contact, usually) and work out of their homes. This is common across many companies in and out of tech.
- Distributed teams where you have smaller satellite offices where cross-team functions are remote and coordinated across time zones, which have to be remotely coordinated. This is almost universal in tech in my experience, and widespread outside of tech.
- Hybrid companies where some staff are fully remote or people have a certain number of days per week that can be remote. This is so common as to be universal in tech, in my experience (particularly for support rotation/SRE work).
Fully remote work, to me, seems just minor extension of all of those existing practices.
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#5Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…
Automattic?
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#6If the majority are remote then it can work. Don’t be remote where the company is otherwise geo-located. Hallway conversations often make decisions.
Seconded. I've had a fabulous experience at an all-remote company, and a pretty lousy experience where I was the only remote worker.
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#7Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…
[deleted]
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#8It really looks like this guy found his calling, good for him! I'm impressed his managed to keep his organization healthy with 700 remote employees, that takes some real business/management talent.
In my own business, we are a remote team of 6 and we do pretty well. The way we've made it work so far is by doing very little collaboration, and instead opting to each have our own focus with little overlap. There are times when I'd really love to have some other engineers to whiteboard with and collaborate on difficult problems, but that seems impossible to do remotely. At least very easily.
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#9Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…
If you're not trying to be snarky avoid stuff like "dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire". I think you can look at subsets of companies for precedent. - Regional sales staff are very frequently distributed by territory (obviously not remote in customer contact, usually) and work out of their homes. This is common across many companies in and out of tech. - Distributed teams where you have smaller satellite…
"Not trying to be snarky" is a sarcastic warning that snark is, indeed, incoming
Re: $1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)
#10Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company? Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK. Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dis…
Buffer and Basecamp come to mind, plus they are more efficient: they pay significantly more while managing to turn impressive revenue/profit vs the headcount.