8 ms·

Why Coinbase is now hiring remote engineers

75 points by barmstrong 11y ago

drawkbox 11y ago
But in the past year we’ve had a few engineers who needed to move (due to various life events). We didn’t want to lose them, so they became remote employees on our team. In some cases it worked really well. Remote work is a big part of the future in development. It is a big favorite of developers who are self starters, good communicators and deliverers. Over time it will take longer to build bigger things and people do indeed move in some cases every couple years for many reasons, doesn't mean they aren't as committed because they can't be within 2 hours of an office. Remote works biggest benefit is keeping a team of professionals on the team even if lives change and locations move, might even be a big advantage to those currently that can do it well. Every remote capable organization has better communication virtually and better external views of themselves. This is also key for working with clients/customers (almost always remote) and other offices (again remote offices in the same company). Remote work can even improve intra-office communication/information flow as many times even though you go to the office, you work with many people in the building or the building over remotely just closer in vicinity.
phantom_oracle 11y ago
Kudos to you for embracing the remote culture (partially). However, you should take it a step further and not "fly them out to visit HQ" but instead: Take the entire team out for some team-building and working from a different locale (you can stick to the US - as most remote-first companies do). Your company is not exactly the same as the next advertising-eyeballs SV startup, so perhaps getting out of the Silicon Valley hype-train and "pat each other on the back" environment, exploring a different area/wilderness will open your team up to greater innovation and lateral thinking. See Automattic for a reference-point of how to do it.
sanatgersappa 11y ago
Great move. Love the 'self-starter' bit. People who need to be constantly monitored and told what to do aren't worth it, even if they're easier to hire.
shadow0 11y ago
Interesting. I interviewed with them once. Their interview process was pretty strange: after a technical round they wanted me to work full-time for them for a week as a next step. Wat? How do I do that if I have a job? Plus, it seemed like they pay their engineers way below the average. Not surprising they are having hard time hiring and had to move on to hiring remote workers.
- jph 11y ago
  I concur. I've had interactions with that team, and they've all been strange. The engineering and security are buggy and poor, and attempts to get to the bottom of issues are stonewalled and shunted.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - RightWingRabble 11y ago
    Is it so strange? If their engineering and security are poor, they wouldn't want that fact exposed by somebody outside the company. A reputation for poor engineering is the touch of death for a startup. Especially a bitcoin startup.
- colordrops 11y ago
  I also interviewed with them, and they gave me the same offer. I told them that was disrespectful to seasoned engineers, and that they could bone off, and I ended up getting a job at a much more interesting company, so it worked out in the end.
  - tvon 11y ago
    That sounds like relatively inexperienced technical people attempting to hire more experienced technical people, to over-simplify a bit. If you want to build a house and you're not sure how to best build a house you're going to be very cautious hiring someone to build a house because you don't know if their way of building a house is any good, because you don't know how to build a house. That is a tough problem for a group to solve.
ruffrey 11y ago
I've had nothing but success working remotely on projects. It's all about having communicative remote people, having the onsite team use the same chat/screenshare/video systems. I can get so much done with absolute focus yet still come out for big meetings a few times per year. It gives flexibility to the onsite people to work from home occasionally, too. On a team with poor cohesion or a lot of strong introverts, it might not work.
mpermar 11y ago
In my view, onsite work is only good for two things: 1. Team building. There is no doubt being around the office is good for socialising and creating stronger bounds. 2. Stronger junior people or people that need direction. Many, many, many developers are only good when they have the superstars around. It's people that need direction and help. Having the stronger workers around make these other average workers stronger. If your team is made of superstars/hyper-professionals then there is no obvious reason not to be doing remote work. If on the other hand your team is mostly made of regular 9-5 workers, well, not doing remote work must just be the excuse for hiding some other bigger issue in the organisation.
- colmvp 11y ago
  I do remote work and I honestly miss the team building. There's an incalculable benefit to me to socialize on a daily basis with a consistent group of people. A great deal of ex-coworkers from non-remote work jobs are still good friends of mine who I communicate on a weekly basis. And it came from gradual and steady interactions. Being remote has made it very hard to build closeness with a lot of the people within the company, especially the newcomers. It's arguable whether or not closeness or friendship is important to a team, but I'll say that I perform better when I personally care about the people I'm working with. Furthermore, by not being there (while others are) I also miss out on spontaneous information sharing that happens between people in moments like sitting away from the computer, having lunch together, or lining up to wait for something. It's also difficult to participate with small groups who go on-site to observe customer behavior. I'm not against remote work because the benefits largely outweigh the negatives. It's just after over two years of doing so, I've gradually moved to the belief that I really prefer a split solution where I come into the office once every few days to energize/adjust my connection with the team.
iopq 11y ago
"If you have a passion for bitcoin, a computer science degree, or experience with one of the languages we use" Doesn't mention which languages in the post. Am I supposed to know this?
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  Here's what they use: http://stackshare.io/coinbase/stacks http://stackshare.io/coinbase/stacks
shawnps 11y ago
I've worked remotely for the past year and it has by far been the most productive year of my career as a software engineer. I'm not sure if I will ever want to work in an office again. In my experience, when working in an office environment, people will interrupt you while you're in the middle of writing code. You'll be asked to attend meetings that are ultimately pointless. You'll feel bad about wanting to work from home or from a cafe. The amount of freedom and the feeling of finally being treated like a responsible adult that comes with working remotely is addictive to someone like me who just wants to code all day.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  I started working onsite a couple of months ago, after working remotely for two years, and yes it is as bad as you remember. As I'm a contractor I don't even have proper equipment, so I'm stuck with and old broken chair, an old broken table and my 13" laptop vs my setup at home. I understand how for some people remote just doesn't work, but I think that's mainly because the company doesn't know how to work with remote engineers. The best company I've worked with in terms of remoteness had teams in India (+5.5), Greece (+2), London (+0) and LA (-8).
millstone 11y ago
I dislike working with remote engineers: 1. Time zone differences are very real. A 14 hour difference only allowed for a brief window of reasonable real-time communication. Latency went from seconds to half a day. 2. My project had a hardware component, and we could not easily assist each other with electrical or mechanical issues, or even things like firmware (e.g. "why won't this board boot?") 3. Meetings were worse. Video conferencing often had technical problems, and we'd waste time trying to get it to work. Normal human interaction (body language, nonverbal cues, etc.) was lost. Remotes frequently interrupted, through no fault of their own. 4. I came to resent the remotes for enjoying this unequal perk, one that inflicts a cost on the rest of the team. Why don't they have to sit in traffic and then in this noisy room with the rest of us? What makes them special?
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Those are all very bad reasons to dislike remote engineers. "Remote" doesn't necessarily mean on the other side of the globe; obviously you wouldn't hire remotes for hardware projects; some video conferencing software is better than other; and if you're so jealous of remote workers, maybe you should try your hand at it.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  In regards to 1 & 3 it sounds like the problems are more your company than the remote engineers. First of all due to the timezone differences I will assume you are US based and outsourced to somewhere in Asia - this alone without the remote working has its own set of challenges (n.b. there is a good comedy TV show "Outsourced" about this). As an example, if someone in India gets stuck doing something they are unlikely to speak up about it until you ask then about it, this isn't because they are lazy or whatever but just because their culture is a lot different to the West. The way you need to work with a team here is a lot different to how you would work with a team in the West - this alone can be the cause of a good chunk of problems that occur when outsourcing. As your team is remote you can't ask them a question and expect an answer in 10 minutes, but you shouldn't expect this of a onsite engineer either as you'll just ruin their flow. Have daily stand ups at times that work for both teams and discuss any issues after that. In regards to the communication just use Skype (audio) and get a good microphone. If you don't have a good internet connection or it's not working, just call them on the phone. Companies have been working with distributed teams long before Skype was even invented... As to 4, well sorry but that's your problem. No one is stopping you from getting a remote job except yourself :)
navinp1912 11y ago
Can someone give similar hackerrank/job challenge + resume links for other orgs ?
zhte415 11y ago
This hiring practice far more suits an outsourced development system than hiring for a week per time.

75 points by barmstrong 11y ago

But in the past year we’ve had a few engineers who needed to move (due to various life events). We didn’t want to lose them, so they became remote employees on our team. In some cases it worked really well. Remote work is a big part of the future in development. It is a big favorite of developers who are self starters, good communicators and deliverers. Over time it will take longer to build bigger things and people do indeed move in some cases every couple years for many reasons, doesn't mean they aren't as committed because they can't be within 2 hours of an office. Remote works biggest benefit is keeping a team of professionals on the team even if lives change and locations move, might even be a big advantage to those currently that can do it well. Every remote capable organization has better communication virtually and better external views of themselves. This is also key for working with clients/customers (almost always remote) and other offices (again remote offices in the same company). Remote work can even improve intra-office communication/information flow as many times even though you go to the office, you work with many people in the building or the building over remotely just closer in vicinity.

phantom_oracle 11y ago

Kudos to you for embracing the remote culture (partially). However, you should take it a step further and not "fly them out to visit HQ" but instead: Take the entire team out for some team-building and working from a different locale (you can stick to the US - as most remote-first companies do). Your company is not exactly the same as the next advertising-eyeballs SV startup, so perhaps getting out of the Silicon Valley hype-train and "pat each other on the back" environment, exploring a different area/wilderness will open your team up to greater innovation and lateral thinking. See Automattic for a reference-point of how to do it.

sanatgersappa 11y ago

Great move. Love the 'self-starter' bit. People who need to be constantly monitored and told what to do aren't worth it, even if they're easier to hire.

shadow0 11y ago

Interesting. I interviewed with them once. Their interview process was pretty strange: after a technical round they wanted me to work full-time for them for a week as a next step. Wat? How do I do that if I have a job? Plus, it seemed like they pay their engineers way below the average. Not surprising they are having hard time hiring and had to move on to hiring remote workers.

jph 11y ago
I concur. I've had interactions with that team, and they've all been strange. The engineering and security are buggy and poor, and attempts to get to the bottom of issues are stonewalled and shunted.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- RightWingRabble 11y ago
  Is it so strange? If their engineering and security are poor, they wouldn't want that fact exposed by somebody outside the company. A reputation for poor engineering is the touch of death for a startup. Especially a bitcoin startup.
colordrops 11y ago
I also interviewed with them, and they gave me the same offer. I told them that was disrespectful to seasoned engineers, and that they could bone off, and I ended up getting a job at a much more interesting company, so it worked out in the end.
- tvon 11y ago
  That sounds like relatively inexperienced technical people attempting to hire more experienced technical people, to over-simplify a bit. If you want to build a house and you're not sure how to best build a house you're going to be very cautious hiring someone to build a house because you don't know if their way of building a house is any good, because you don't know how to build a house. That is a tough problem for a group to solve.

ruffrey 11y ago

I've had nothing but success working remotely on projects. It's all about having communicative remote people, having the onsite team use the same chat/screenshare/video systems. I can get so much done with absolute focus yet still come out for big meetings a few times per year. It gives flexibility to the onsite people to work from home occasionally, too. On a team with poor cohesion or a lot of strong introverts, it might not work.

mpermar 11y ago

In my view, onsite work is only good for two things: 1. Team building. There is no doubt being around the office is good for socialising and creating stronger bounds. 2. Stronger junior people or people that need direction. Many, many, many developers are only good when they have the superstars around. It's people that need direction and help. Having the stronger workers around make these other average workers stronger. If your team is made of superstars/hyper-professionals then there is no obvious reason not to be doing remote work. If on the other hand your team is mostly made of regular 9-5 workers, well, not doing remote work must just be the excuse for hiding some other bigger issue in the organisation.

colmvp 11y ago
I do remote work and I honestly miss the team building. There's an incalculable benefit to me to socialize on a daily basis with a consistent group of people. A great deal of ex-coworkers from non-remote work jobs are still good friends of mine who I communicate on a weekly basis. And it came from gradual and steady interactions. Being remote has made it very hard to build closeness with a lot of the people within the company, especially the newcomers. It's arguable whether or not closeness or friendship is important to a team, but I'll say that I perform better when I personally care about the people I'm working with. Furthermore, by not being there (while others are) I also miss out on spontaneous information sharing that happens between people in moments like sitting away from the computer, having lunch together, or lining up to wait for something. It's also difficult to participate with small groups who go on-site to observe customer behavior. I'm not against remote work because the benefits largely outweigh the negatives. It's just after over two years of doing so, I've gradually moved to the belief that I really prefer a split solution where I come into the office once every few days to energize/adjust my connection with the team.

iopq 11y ago

"If you have a passion for bitcoin, a computer science degree, or experience with one of the languages we use" Doesn't mention which languages in the post. Am I supposed to know this?

sergiotapia 11y ago
Here's what they use: http://stackshare.io/coinbase/stacks http://stackshare.io/coinbase/stacks

shawnps 11y ago

I've worked remotely for the past year and it has by far been the most productive year of my career as a software engineer. I'm not sure if I will ever want to work in an office again. In my experience, when working in an office environment, people will interrupt you while you're in the middle of writing code. You'll be asked to attend meetings that are ultimately pointless. You'll feel bad about wanting to work from home or from a cafe. The amount of freedom and the feeling of finally being treated like a responsible adult that comes with working remotely is addictive to someone like me who just wants to code all day.

lucaspiller 11y ago
I started working onsite a couple of months ago, after working remotely for two years, and yes it is as bad as you remember. As I'm a contractor I don't even have proper equipment, so I'm stuck with and old broken chair, an old broken table and my 13" laptop vs my setup at home. I understand how for some people remote just doesn't work, but I think that's mainly because the company doesn't know how to work with remote engineers. The best company I've worked with in terms of remoteness had teams in India (+5.5), Greece (+2), London (+0) and LA (-8).

millstone 11y ago

I dislike working with remote engineers: 1. Time zone differences are very real. A 14 hour difference only allowed for a brief window of reasonable real-time communication. Latency went from seconds to half a day. 2. My project had a hardware component, and we could not easily assist each other with electrical or mechanical issues, or even things like firmware (e.g. "why won't this board boot?") 3. Meetings were worse. Video conferencing often had technical problems, and we'd waste time trying to get it to work. Normal human interaction (body language, nonverbal cues, etc.) was lost. Remotes frequently interrupted, through no fault of their own. 4. I came to resent the remotes for enjoying this unequal perk, one that inflicts a cost on the rest of the team. Why don't they have to sit in traffic and then in this noisy room with the rest of us? What makes them special?

scrollaway 11y ago
Those are all very bad reasons to dislike remote engineers. "Remote" doesn't necessarily mean on the other side of the globe; obviously you wouldn't hire remotes for hardware projects; some video conferencing software is better than other; and if you're so jealous of remote workers, maybe you should try your hand at it.
lucaspiller 11y ago
In regards to 1 & 3 it sounds like the problems are more your company than the remote engineers. First of all due to the timezone differences I will assume you are US based and outsourced to somewhere in Asia - this alone without the remote working has its own set of challenges (n.b. there is a good comedy TV show "Outsourced" about this). As an example, if someone in India gets stuck doing something they are unlikely to speak up about it until you ask then about it, this isn't because they are lazy or whatever but just because their culture is a lot different to the West. The way you need to work with a team here is a lot different to how you would work with a team in the West - this alone can be the cause of a good chunk of problems that occur when outsourcing. As your team is remote you can't ask them a question and expect an answer in 10 minutes, but you shouldn't expect this of a onsite engineer either as you'll just ruin their flow. Have daily stand ups at times that work for both teams and discuss any issues after that. In regards to the communication just use Skype (audio) and get a good microphone. If you don't have a good internet connection or it's not working, just call them on the phone. Companies have been working with distributed teams long before Skype was even invented... As to 4, well sorry but that's your problem. No one is stopping you from getting a remote job except yourself :)

navinp1912 11y ago

Can someone give similar hackerrank/job challenge + resume links for other orgs ?

zhte415 11y ago

This hiring practice far more suits an outsourced development system than hiring for a week per time.