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Guide to Remote Work

747 points by colinscape 10y ago

corbinpage 10y ago
I help run a distributed company with folks in NY, CA, VA, and NC. Content like this from Zapier or other successful remote-first companies provides an excellent source of ideas to apply to my own team and also helps to slowly remove the stigma against remote work. Appreciate you guys publishing these types of articles!
mark_l_watson 10y ago
I just downloaded the eBook and spent 15 minutes reading two chapters. Useful material, thanks! Except for working as a contractor at Google, I have been working remotely since 1998, when my wife and I moved to the mountains of Central Arizona. I frequently read articles on remote work, and I find Zapier's eBook on the subject to be better than most material I have seen on this subject.
jacknews 10y ago
Good, but could add some some foundation pieces, which are often glossed over or just assumed to be in place, but when they aren't, none of the other 'cultural' points matter much. ie what is a team? A group of people working toward a common vision/goal. So have one clearly defined. Why are team members working at all? Because they expect some kind of reward. So ensure sure they have a stake in the success of the endeavor, even if it's only "be part of this cool project".
keriOJ 10y ago
Another remote first company that is sharing some knowledge: https://teleport.org/remote/ https://teleport.org/remote/ Eating their own dog-food as company who builds products for people who move around.
mohsinr 10y ago
Great ebook thank you. One thing I may suggest that allowing people to get ebook without signup as it is going to help this guide get into hands of many more people and will help Zapier in many ways, more prospective clients, employees, partnerships and goodwill in general.
markdog12 10y ago
Gitlab's handbook also has some good remote working tips: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/
intro-b 10y ago
what's the response to an undergrad senior (CS major, typical software dev internships, portfolio) interested in working remotely after graduation? i assume the typical route is getting a full-time position and then transitioning—is it too arrogant/presumptuous to think startups would be interested in a new grad hire for remote positions?
- dtnewman 10y ago
  Just giving my honest opinion here and it may not be what you want to hear, but I personally think you might have a hard time pulling this off. As a junior dev, you are likely to have a lot of questions that are simply easier to answer in person. Sure, you can do video chats and share screens, but people will have an easier time answering your questions in person. If you are able to find something local, you will probably be better off for it when you are first starting out and then you can transition to something remote after you have some more experience under your belt. I'd be curious to see if others who work remotely feel differently.
  - afarrell 10y ago
    The time I've seen this work well was basically where I and a more junior dev hung out on https://appear.in https://appear.in. Most people don't feel comfortable just being on an hours-long video chat work-along though.
- sdtransier 10y ago
  My older brother taught himself programming during college and was hired on remotely by a company based in SF to do basic dev for them. It wasn't with a major tech firm, but there are definitely remote possibilities out there for a junior dev.
- scarecrowbob 10y ago
  IMO, the remote work that you can get with little actual experience may be very unfun ($15/hr to mess with WP templates). That wasn't bad for me... I bailed on a PhD in English and was able to spin that up to a stable, decent career in about 5 years and I live 2 hours into the sticks outside of Austin, TX. But if I had a CS degree and wanted to do work that you can get with that degree moving to a city and getting on on site job would have been a far easier and rational choice.
herpderpherpder 10y ago
Ugh. Another one of these. The only thing I take away from these "sign up to get our ebook" bits is that you don't have enough confidence in your material to believe I'd subscribe after reading it.
- WadeF 10y ago
  You can read it free here: https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/ https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-workin... Can also get it on Amazon free here: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebook/dp/B00VDQ280A https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebo... No email required.
  - troydavis 10y ago
    How about adding a direct link to the PDF (or any other single document that exists) on https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/ https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-workin...?
- twodots 10y ago
  10minutemail.com, thank me later.
- etjossem 10y ago
  PDF: https://zapier.com/goto/?payload=.eJwdjUsOgzAQQ69SzboQKJQCl6nymUBEyKBkEGpR796Ipe1n-wQjWcJ4QvL7BCPwjMXu2a2SsZh2Z7BgKiKulPVBcXFhgjtYipnI_GYs_O6wYkpywmygIlrGm6EjeJIms96FJQcz85ZGIb5ycxhLLfWM1n_KgCwSU8x14VHG8L4mksDWKlR9bV-drnTdqGc_aNMMlVZd-6hUeX3_AeFkQp8:1c1cwS:V_wXFc_f_4UOj4OWXwxl10yp8qo https://zapier.com/goto/?payload=.eJwdjUsOgzAQQ69SzboQKJQCl6...
- j2bax 10y ago
  It's almost as if their sole purpose isn't to give you free stuff that they took the time to produce. I would think most people on this forum would be understanding and respectful of that...
WadeF 10y ago
Hi HN! Co-founder & CEO of Zapier here. We wrote this book a little over a year ago. It's mostly up-to-date though there's a few things I need to update. I'm unavailable for about ~2 hours but you can AMA and I'll respond later. :-)
- tjbarbour 10y ago
  Hi Wade, Love how outspoken you guys are about Remote work! I'm actually starting a podcast to help others learn about Remote development by interviewing developers that work remotely and sharing their experiences. Would any developers at Zapier be interested in coming on? Find me as tjbarbour on twitter or Gmail. Thanks!
  - jeffthespasm 10y ago
    I'd listen to this for sure. Is following on Twitter the best way to stay updated on the podcast?
    - tjbarbour 10y ago
      Hi! We're just getting started, so yeah you can follow https://twitter.com/wayoffsite https://twitter.com/wayoffsite
      - alexeiDarmin 10y ago
        I'm also interested in a podcast about remote work, followed
        tjbarbour 10y ago
        Thank you!
  - ukd1 10y ago
    We have 20 remote engineers, lmk if you wanna talk to some of them :)
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Bahamut 10y ago
My company is a heavily remote company (1/4-1/3 of the company or so is remote), and one tool that has helped us massively is Sococo - it has a notion of virtual rooms and virtual conference rooms, so it makes it pretty painless to set up a meeting with the people needed that also supports screensharing and webcams.
- dhd415 10y ago
  I would agree. One of the things I felt when I first moved to working remotely was a sense of isolation due partly to losing the awareness of what other people or teams were working on that you have when working in an office due to just seeing them meeting or talking together. Sococo gives that back to you because you can see other people and teams meeting in the "virtual conference rooms". There's been more than one instance where I've dropped in on a meeting to assist with a production issue or a development question that came up because I could see those conversations were happening, something is more difficult if a chat tool such as Slack is your primary or sole form of communication.
- phmagic 10y ago
  sococo looks pretty cool, may I follow up with you about how you use it? I'm looking for a solution for my team. I am phmagic on gmail.
martinshen 10y ago
This is a great guide but my biggest question is around compensation which was not covered by this guide. Do you hire and pay the 60th percentile at approx. local market rates? Do you hire the best remote people at SFBay market rates? How do you handle equity? How is payroll and benefits handled?
- johnm1019 10y ago
  > Do you hire and pay the 60th percentile at approx. local market rates? Do you hire the best remote people at SFBay market rates? The business owner in me says start low and raise your rates until you get the talent you're happy with. I would offer uniform base pay as typically lower costs of living come with other tradeoffs. If someone wants to make that work let them (but make it clear that it's their responsibility to make sure the electricity and internet are flowing when it's time to get to work) > How is payroll and benefits handled? I would suggest doing it like the oil companies, you setup a company and banking in the caribbean somewhere, and then pay folks salary into bank accounts there for them as well. Make it their problem to move/repatriate money. Don't withhold any taxes and factor in a fixed rate for any bennies you want to offer (unless legally prohibited in specific jurisdictions of course, IANAL). Let them optimize the money. I know this is how big oil companies pay most of their workers who are on rigs in various locales in the world (and not just offshore!).
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  I'm not the author but our company is remote and our comp is handled employee by employee. There isn't a "we offer 60% of market" it's a negotiation between me and the person I'm recruiting. So for example a Computer Vision engineer living in SF and one living in Edmonton with the same skills and background would get the same pay.
  - reneherse 10y ago
    Note that the OP is referring to a "60th percentile" rule, not "60%" rule. Results in a much different number within a given market. I was confused initially, as "60% of market rate" salary would be very much on the exploitive side of things :)
mmaunder 10y ago
This is awesome. I wish I had more time to do something like this myself. We're a team of 14 full-timers, 23 total with contractors, all remote. We describe trust as a core value in our company and it goes both ways. We trust our team to do a great job, help each other when needed, be transparent, etc. They trust me and our execs to be open, honest, etc and I've gone above and beyond in that department. So I love the focus on trust in the 'running a remote team' section. I'd also add: If you're planning on doing this as a founder/exec, expect to spend time and money dealing with different jurisdictions. Our team is mostly in the USA and for full-timers we have to file corporate taxes in every state where we have an employee. We have a team of accountants and HR folks that help us now, but it's still a lot of work and if it wasn't for my amazing co-founder, this would have been impossible to wade through. For international domains, we have worked with or are working with people in Sweden, Greece, Paraguay and I think a few others. In general we reach out to our local law firm who connect us with counsel in those countries to figure out NDA's etc. It's not cheap. Also had to work with local legislation in some countries that deal with workers comp type stuff and number of hours worked each week, government benefits - the list is long. But the benefits are that we have an amazing, talented, diverse team who bring cultural influences from around the world and the USA and are able to live and work anywhere in the world they want to. In terms of tools: VoiP is still ridiculously unreliable. I specifically include Skype and Slack in this criticism. As the team grew we discovered a secret weapon for super reliable voip calls: Teamspeak. It's AWESOME. It has push-to-talk which is great for big team meetings and you can see packet loss on a per user basis. You can also isolate yourself and your team to a single server so you're not load sharing with other teams during peak. It's been a real life saver. Also, we don't do video. I know many remote teams do. We don't. What I love about it is that it really levels the playing field in terms of who is more charismatic on video. It also removes the distraction, frees up desktop space and reduces bandwidth usage for international team mates. When another company wants to do a hangout etc, we sometimes just tell them we don't do video and it's great. I can stand in my office staring out the window, really listening to what someone is saying, rather than having to think about whether I look good or watch them. Voice only for remote teams is awesome IMHO. Thanks again to @WadeF and Zapier for doing this. I still find it absurd that remote work isn't the default for tech teams. One day we'll look back and wonder if perhaps lack of trust was the only reason big tech companies don't feel comfortable having everyone work remotely.
fermigier 10y ago
Not a single mention of "child" or "children" in the text. Nor in this discussion so far. I'm wondering how many of the people advocating working at home have children and how they deal with them.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  I'm glad you said that. I worked from home frequently when my son was 1-2 years old. Now he's 4, and forget about it... there's no way he could stay away from dada all day!
- tylermac1 10y ago
  Are you asking about watching children while you work? I would imagine most would go to daycare during the work week (our 1 year old does on days when my wife works).
  - fermigier 10y ago
    Not necessarily watching children, but having them around can be in my own experience a bit disturbing, specially when you're living in an apartment and when they are between 1 and 5.
    - deleted 10y ago
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- WadeF 10y ago
  Great question. Another section of the book we need to update. We have quite a few folks with kids (maybe half?) and a 14 week parental leave when you have a kid or adopt a kid. We've learned a decent amount on making kids and working at home a good experience.
- Jgrubb 10y ago
  I work at home since July, have 3 boys aged 4, 6, and 8. We homeschool. I have an office in my basement that's about the most isolated place in the house. They come see me a few times each day but for the most part it's not a problem at all, which is a lot less of a problem than I thought it was going to be. Maybe it's easier because we have multiple and they keep each other busy, I dunno. Unrelated bonus - I've gone from filling up my car about once a week to about once a month, have lost 10 pounds, and went from ~$60 for lunch per week to basically $10 or so. edit: it's a globally distributed team, so no matter what time there's folks working on something. This means that what used to be my old "coffee and HN time" in the morning before going to the office has become "go ahead and get stuff done" time. I go running mid-day. The whole schedule just gets a lot more flexible in a pretty nice way.
sdepablos 10y ago
Interesting document, but it's there any way to get an ePub version? I tend to read in my Kindle and PDFs are a pain in the a.. ;)
- WadeF 10y ago
  Yep! Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebook/dp/B00VDQ280A https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebo...
aerovistae 10y ago
I have a question for anyone to answer who feels qualified to do so. I'm a dev who's been working for about 5 years, degree in CS, focus on JS front-end. I would love to do remote and skip the commute, but I'm afraid to, mostly because impostor syndrome: while I'm a good coder, I tend to run into roadblocks involving the code written by other people (e.g. "I can't see where this is getting called from; I tried searching the codebase and don't see it anywhere...what is it for?" or else with the toolchain / build system (e.g. "The wiki really does not explain how to get this running locally at all, and these components are not compatible and I'm getting a version error from this, I'm really not sure what to do; tried googling extensively with no luck.") I always seem to be the only one who has these problems. While I tend to do well in person by being nice and asking a lot of questions, I'm concerned I may be a poor fit for a remote role as it requires a high degree of autonomy. What do you think? Have you encountered these problems and still succeeded at remote work?
- brandon272 10y ago
  I think increased autonomy is the wrong way to look at it. Typically you will still be part of a team and will be encouraged and required to collaborate with coworkers to solve problems and get questions answered. You'll just be doing it over Skype or Slack or whatever other communication tools are there instead of in person.
  - tkhoven 10y ago
    Agreed - I've been in a fully remote team collaborating pretty intensively with other team members, screen sharing and pair programming over Skype/Screenhero/TeamViewer or whatever the designated tool is. Asking questions through irc/Slack means that communication is a little more asynchronous than face to face but we'd use short Skype sessions when we needed to be a little more involved. Increased autonomy can be part of it but it really depends on your workplace.
- lazypenguin 10y ago
  I can provide my anecdotal current experience. I just started a new role in a remote position with less "work experience" (vs. personal projects) than you and I can say that the autonomy is not an issue. I'm working on a complex, undocumented, "created-here" and over-engineered C++ code base left behind by a senior programmer and have found there to not be an issue. Granted there is a bit of a ramp-up time as I'm learning the code base but I ask questions in our chat application whenever I get stuck and my teammates are pretty responsive. I've actually found that I'm more productive/learn the code base more when I'm remote than when I visit and work in the office. In the office I use the other programmers as a crutch and they end up spoon-feeding me the solutions because it's easier for them. Remote, I make more of an effort to understand the components independently. I wouldn't be too worried about "getting stuck" in the code. The larger and uglier the project, the slower it is to learn the components but I've learned to embrace getting stuck. It's part of the process and once you've figured it out you know that small part of the code base a little better.
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phantom_oracle 10y ago
I have a question concerning actual remote work vs. what is shown in "Who is Hiring?" threads. For example, how do full-time, actual remote (eg. you are in Japan and your company is in Belgium) employees feel/interpret job-postings like: > Somewhere, USA | X-Company | ONSITE / REMOTE | Full-time From my understanding/seeing of so many of these types of postings, they always have hidden gotchas like: - only for extremely senior positions - remote (at your home, which is 20 minutes from the office) once a week only - not actually remote, but just using the word as keyword-optimization As my question above says, how do actual remote employees interpret such job-ads?
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
  >>For example, how do full-time, actual remote (eg. you are in Japan and your company is in Belgium) working from let's say Iowa for a company in SF is remote in my book, doesn't have to be international (even though personally I worked remote for a EU-based company at one point). who's hiring postings - I've spoken to a couple of hiring managers- nothing clicked but those gigs were 100% remote work from home positions.
- eloff 10y ago
  I personally ignore anything that says onsite or remote. Largely they turn out to be domestic USA only, or one day a week remote or some such nonsense. Not worth the time to investigate further when there are lots of less ambiguous job postings. The second reason you want to ignore those is a remote worker for an onsite team can often get cut out of the loop. A lot of communication will happen in person, and the remote guy will miss out. Eventually people will trust him less, share less with him, and pass him over for promotions. You're much better off working for an all remote team, or a remote first team where communication is mandated to be via a medium that all workers have access to.
- tkhoven 10y ago
  I mentally filter out those ads - they're almost always looking for US-based, sometimes even only their city. Others like remote "for the right candidate" give the impression that they'll take on remote workers only as a last resort, which seems unlikely to work out if that's their mindset. The best results tend to mention "remote-first" or "international" - to me this says they have a culture of remote work, properly understand where it does and doesn't work and know how to get around or mitigate its limitations. The most annoying for keyword filtering are, of course, "no remote".
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techno_modus 10y ago
I liked this book from 37signals (the authors of Getting Real): Remote Office not required: https://37signals.com/remote https://37signals.com/remote It is also available as an audio book.
radarsat1 10y ago
Any info or tips on how to start remote working if you're not a "web guy"? I'm more of a scientist / engineer, i.e. I work on somewhere in between writing numerical methods, simulation, control, and gluing them to more useful interfaces. I don't do UI, but I can handle it; I certainly don't do web front- or back-ends, but I know something about databases; I like statistics, but I'm not a machine learning expert, although I know how to set up and use TensorFlow; I enjoy working on low-level code, embedded and real-time systems, audio, signal processing and control and robotics. At the same time I'm willing to sacrifice some of the "hands on" stuff I like to do (working with mechanical systems) and be more of a software guy if it means I can travel and work remotely. However, short of starting my own consultancy, which I'm not sure I want to do (I have no idea about business), I don't know how to get it going. I feel forever doomed to haunt the lab/office, because I have no idea how to find freelance contracts for this sort of thing.
blokeish 10y ago
Perused that link a bit. Cool job on the guys writing all that up for others to read. Personally, I found GitLab's approach (also documented over at their site) more pertinent to my situation—starting with the fact that apart from remote, GitLab are also multicultural, which adds a whole other dimension. One remark: Zapier mention they use a website called HelloSign for electronic signatures. I have checked them out, and that's a total no-go. Although they claim to comply with EU law on electronic signatures, they most definitely do not: what they offer is a “paste a PNG of your handwritten scrawl on this box” kind of service, which not only does not come within a mile of being an advanced electronic signature, as per Regulation (EU) 910/2014, but also follows the inanely dangerous precedent set by, I think, Adobe, of affixing an image in the likeness of a hand-written signature or seal to a document. This causes people to just assume that if one such image is present, the document is valid, without actually checking the signature. So, although something like that HelloSign website might be fine for private contracts, at least in the EU those “signatures” have no public effect. Just thought I should mention.
- jobvandervoort 10y ago
  Our handbook [0]. We also use HelloSign. If anything, it's very convenient. I have zero legal knowledge on this, but I did see that they reference 910/2014 compliancy explicitly on their website. [1] [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ [1]: https://www.hellosign.com/info/legal https://www.hellosign.com/info/legal

747 points by colinscape 10y ago

I help run a distributed company with folks in NY, CA, VA, and NC. Content like this from Zapier or other successful remote-first companies provides an excellent source of ideas to apply to my own team and also helps to slowly remove the stigma against remote work. Appreciate you guys publishing these types of articles!

mark_l_watson 10y ago

I just downloaded the eBook and spent 15 minutes reading two chapters. Useful material, thanks! Except for working as a contractor at Google, I have been working remotely since 1998, when my wife and I moved to the mountains of Central Arizona. I frequently read articles on remote work, and I find Zapier's eBook on the subject to be better than most material I have seen on this subject.

jacknews 10y ago

Good, but could add some some foundation pieces, which are often glossed over or just assumed to be in place, but when they aren't, none of the other 'cultural' points matter much. ie what is a team? A group of people working toward a common vision/goal. So have one clearly defined. Why are team members working at all? Because they expect some kind of reward. So ensure sure they have a stake in the success of the endeavor, even if it's only "be part of this cool project".

keriOJ 10y ago

Another remote first company that is sharing some knowledge: https://teleport.org/remote/ https://teleport.org/remote/ Eating their own dog-food as company who builds products for people who move around.

mohsinr 10y ago

Great ebook thank you. One thing I may suggest that allowing people to get ebook without signup as it is going to help this guide get into hands of many more people and will help Zapier in many ways, more prospective clients, employees, partnerships and goodwill in general.

markdog12 10y ago

Gitlab's handbook also has some good remote working tips: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

intro-b 10y ago

what's the response to an undergrad senior (CS major, typical software dev internships, portfolio) interested in working remotely after graduation? i assume the typical route is getting a full-time position and then transitioning—is it too arrogant/presumptuous to think startups would be interested in a new grad hire for remote positions?

dtnewman 10y ago
Just giving my honest opinion here and it may not be what you want to hear, but I personally think you might have a hard time pulling this off. As a junior dev, you are likely to have a lot of questions that are simply easier to answer in person. Sure, you can do video chats and share screens, but people will have an easier time answering your questions in person. If you are able to find something local, you will probably be better off for it when you are first starting out and then you can transition to something remote after you have some more experience under your belt. I'd be curious to see if others who work remotely feel differently.
- afarrell 10y ago
  The time I've seen this work well was basically where I and a more junior dev hung out on https://appear.in https://appear.in. Most people don't feel comfortable just being on an hours-long video chat work-along though.
sdtransier 10y ago
My older brother taught himself programming during college and was hired on remotely by a company based in SF to do basic dev for them. It wasn't with a major tech firm, but there are definitely remote possibilities out there for a junior dev.
scarecrowbob 10y ago
IMO, the remote work that you can get with little actual experience may be very unfun ($15/hr to mess with WP templates). That wasn't bad for me... I bailed on a PhD in English and was able to spin that up to a stable, decent career in about 5 years and I live 2 hours into the sticks outside of Austin, TX. But if I had a CS degree and wanted to do work that you can get with that degree moving to a city and getting on on site job would have been a far easier and rational choice.

herpderpherpder 10y ago

Ugh. Another one of these. The only thing I take away from these "sign up to get our ebook" bits is that you don't have enough confidence in your material to believe I'd subscribe after reading it.

WadeF 10y ago
You can read it free here: https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/ https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-workin... Can also get it on Amazon free here: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebook/dp/B00VDQ280A https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebo... No email required.
- troydavis 10y ago
  How about adding a direct link to the PDF (or any other single document that exists) on https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/ https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-workin...?
twodots 10y ago
10minutemail.com, thank me later.
etjossem 10y ago
PDF: https://zapier.com/goto/?payload=.eJwdjUsOgzAQQ69SzboQKJQCl6nymUBEyKBkEGpR796Ipe1n-wQjWcJ4QvL7BCPwjMXu2a2SsZh2Z7BgKiKulPVBcXFhgjtYipnI_GYs_O6wYkpywmygIlrGm6EjeJIms96FJQcz85ZGIb5ycxhLLfWM1n_KgCwSU8x14VHG8L4mksDWKlR9bV-drnTdqGc_aNMMlVZd-6hUeX3_AeFkQp8:1c1cwS:V_wXFc_f_4UOj4OWXwxl10yp8qo https://zapier.com/goto/?payload=.eJwdjUsOgzAQQ69SzboQKJQCl6...
j2bax 10y ago
It's almost as if their sole purpose isn't to give you free stuff that they took the time to produce. I would think most people on this forum would be understanding and respectful of that...

WadeF 10y ago

Hi HN! Co-founder & CEO of Zapier here. We wrote this book a little over a year ago. It's mostly up-to-date though there's a few things I need to update. I'm unavailable for about ~2 hours but you can AMA and I'll respond later. :-)

tjbarbour 10y ago
Hi Wade, Love how outspoken you guys are about Remote work! I'm actually starting a podcast to help others learn about Remote development by interviewing developers that work remotely and sharing their experiences. Would any developers at Zapier be interested in coming on? Find me as tjbarbour on twitter or Gmail. Thanks!
- jeffthespasm 10y ago
  I'd listen to this for sure. Is following on Twitter the best way to stay updated on the podcast?
  - tjbarbour 10y ago
    Hi! We're just getting started, so yeah you can follow https://twitter.com/wayoffsite https://twitter.com/wayoffsite
    - alexeiDarmin 10y ago
      I'm also interested in a podcast about remote work, followed
      - tjbarbour 10y ago
        Thank you!
- ukd1 10y ago
  We have 20 remote engineers, lmk if you wanna talk to some of them :)

deleted 10y ago

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Bahamut 10y ago

My company is a heavily remote company (1/4-1/3 of the company or so is remote), and one tool that has helped us massively is Sococo - it has a notion of virtual rooms and virtual conference rooms, so it makes it pretty painless to set up a meeting with the people needed that also supports screensharing and webcams.

dhd415 10y ago
I would agree. One of the things I felt when I first moved to working remotely was a sense of isolation due partly to losing the awareness of what other people or teams were working on that you have when working in an office due to just seeing them meeting or talking together. Sococo gives that back to you because you can see other people and teams meeting in the "virtual conference rooms". There's been more than one instance where I've dropped in on a meeting to assist with a production issue or a development question that came up because I could see those conversations were happening, something is more difficult if a chat tool such as Slack is your primary or sole form of communication.
phmagic 10y ago
sococo looks pretty cool, may I follow up with you about how you use it? I'm looking for a solution for my team. I am phmagic on gmail.

martinshen 10y ago

This is a great guide but my biggest question is around compensation which was not covered by this guide. Do you hire and pay the 60th percentile at approx. local market rates? Do you hire the best remote people at SFBay market rates? How do you handle equity? How is payroll and benefits handled?

johnm1019 10y ago
> Do you hire and pay the 60th percentile at approx. local market rates? Do you hire the best remote people at SFBay market rates? The business owner in me says start low and raise your rates until you get the talent you're happy with. I would offer uniform base pay as typically lower costs of living come with other tradeoffs. If someone wants to make that work let them (but make it clear that it's their responsibility to make sure the electricity and internet are flowing when it's time to get to work) > How is payroll and benefits handled? I would suggest doing it like the oil companies, you setup a company and banking in the caribbean somewhere, and then pay folks salary into bank accounts there for them as well. Make it their problem to move/repatriate money. Don't withhold any taxes and factor in a fixed rate for any bennies you want to offer (unless legally prohibited in specific jurisdictions of course, IANAL). Let them optimize the money. I know this is how big oil companies pay most of their workers who are on rigs in various locales in the world (and not just offshore!).
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
I'm not the author but our company is remote and our comp is handled employee by employee. There isn't a "we offer 60% of market" it's a negotiation between me and the person I'm recruiting. So for example a Computer Vision engineer living in SF and one living in Edmonton with the same skills and background would get the same pay.
- reneherse 10y ago
  Note that the OP is referring to a "60th percentile" rule, not "60%" rule. Results in a much different number within a given market. I was confused initially, as "60% of market rate" salary would be very much on the exploitive side of things :)

mmaunder 10y ago

This is awesome. I wish I had more time to do something like this myself. We're a team of 14 full-timers, 23 total with contractors, all remote. We describe trust as a core value in our company and it goes both ways. We trust our team to do a great job, help each other when needed, be transparent, etc. They trust me and our execs to be open, honest, etc and I've gone above and beyond in that department. So I love the focus on trust in the 'running a remote team' section. I'd also add: If you're planning on doing this as a founder/exec, expect to spend time and money dealing with different jurisdictions. Our team is mostly in the USA and for full-timers we have to file corporate taxes in every state where we have an employee. We have a team of accountants and HR folks that help us now, but it's still a lot of work and if it wasn't for my amazing co-founder, this would have been impossible to wade through. For international domains, we have worked with or are working with people in Sweden, Greece, Paraguay and I think a few others. In general we reach out to our local law firm who connect us with counsel in those countries to figure out NDA's etc. It's not cheap. Also had to work with local legislation in some countries that deal with workers comp type stuff and number of hours worked each week, government benefits - the list is long. But the benefits are that we have an amazing, talented, diverse team who bring cultural influences from around the world and the USA and are able to live and work anywhere in the world they want to. In terms of tools: VoiP is still ridiculously unreliable. I specifically include Skype and Slack in this criticism. As the team grew we discovered a secret weapon for super reliable voip calls: Teamspeak. It's AWESOME. It has push-to-talk which is great for big team meetings and you can see packet loss on a per user basis. You can also isolate yourself and your team to a single server so you're not load sharing with other teams during peak. It's been a real life saver. Also, we don't do video. I know many remote teams do. We don't. What I love about it is that it really levels the playing field in terms of who is more charismatic on video. It also removes the distraction, frees up desktop space and reduces bandwidth usage for international team mates. When another company wants to do a hangout etc, we sometimes just tell them we don't do video and it's great. I can stand in my office staring out the window, really listening to what someone is saying, rather than having to think about whether I look good or watch them. Voice only for remote teams is awesome IMHO. Thanks again to @WadeF and Zapier for doing this. I still find it absurd that remote work isn't the default for tech teams. One day we'll look back and wonder if perhaps lack of trust was the only reason big tech companies don't feel comfortable having everyone work remotely.

fermigier 10y ago

Not a single mention of "child" or "children" in the text. Nor in this discussion so far. I'm wondering how many of the people advocating working at home have children and how they deal with them.

Spooky23 10y ago
I'm glad you said that. I worked from home frequently when my son was 1-2 years old. Now he's 4, and forget about it... there's no way he could stay away from dada all day!
tylermac1 10y ago
Are you asking about watching children while you work? I would imagine most would go to daycare during the work week (our 1 year old does on days when my wife works).
- fermigier 10y ago
  Not necessarily watching children, but having them around can be in my own experience a bit disturbing, specially when you're living in an apartment and when they are between 1 and 5.
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WadeF 10y ago
Great question. Another section of the book we need to update. We have quite a few folks with kids (maybe half?) and a 14 week parental leave when you have a kid or adopt a kid. We've learned a decent amount on making kids and working at home a good experience.
Jgrubb 10y ago
I work at home since July, have 3 boys aged 4, 6, and 8. We homeschool. I have an office in my basement that's about the most isolated place in the house. They come see me a few times each day but for the most part it's not a problem at all, which is a lot less of a problem than I thought it was going to be. Maybe it's easier because we have multiple and they keep each other busy, I dunno. Unrelated bonus - I've gone from filling up my car about once a week to about once a month, have lost 10 pounds, and went from ~$60 for lunch per week to basically $10 or so. edit: it's a globally distributed team, so no matter what time there's folks working on something. This means that what used to be my old "coffee and HN time" in the morning before going to the office has become "go ahead and get stuff done" time. I go running mid-day. The whole schedule just gets a lot more flexible in a pretty nice way.

sdepablos 10y ago

Interesting document, but it's there any way to get an ePub version? I tend to read in my Kindle and PDFs are a pain in the a.. ;)

WadeF 10y ago
Yep! Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebook/dp/B00VDQ280A https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Remote-Work-Manage-ebo...

aerovistae 10y ago

I have a question for anyone to answer who feels qualified to do so. I'm a dev who's been working for about 5 years, degree in CS, focus on JS front-end. I would love to do remote and skip the commute, but I'm afraid to, mostly because impostor syndrome: while I'm a good coder, I tend to run into roadblocks involving the code written by other people (e.g. "I can't see where this is getting called from; I tried searching the codebase and don't see it anywhere...what is it for?" or else with the toolchain / build system (e.g. "The wiki really does not explain how to get this running locally at all, and these components are not compatible and I'm getting a version error from this, I'm really not sure what to do; tried googling extensively with no luck.") I always seem to be the only one who has these problems. While I tend to do well in person by being nice and asking a lot of questions, I'm concerned I may be a poor fit for a remote role as it requires a high degree of autonomy. What do you think? Have you encountered these problems and still succeeded at remote work?

brandon272 10y ago
I think increased autonomy is the wrong way to look at it. Typically you will still be part of a team and will be encouraged and required to collaborate with coworkers to solve problems and get questions answered. You'll just be doing it over Skype or Slack or whatever other communication tools are there instead of in person.
- tkhoven 10y ago
  Agreed - I've been in a fully remote team collaborating pretty intensively with other team members, screen sharing and pair programming over Skype/Screenhero/TeamViewer or whatever the designated tool is. Asking questions through irc/Slack means that communication is a little more asynchronous than face to face but we'd use short Skype sessions when we needed to be a little more involved. Increased autonomy can be part of it but it really depends on your workplace.
lazypenguin 10y ago
I can provide my anecdotal current experience. I just started a new role in a remote position with less "work experience" (vs. personal projects) than you and I can say that the autonomy is not an issue. I'm working on a complex, undocumented, "created-here" and over-engineered C++ code base left behind by a senior programmer and have found there to not be an issue. Granted there is a bit of a ramp-up time as I'm learning the code base but I ask questions in our chat application whenever I get stuck and my teammates are pretty responsive. I've actually found that I'm more productive/learn the code base more when I'm remote than when I visit and work in the office. In the office I use the other programmers as a crutch and they end up spoon-feeding me the solutions because it's easier for them. Remote, I make more of an effort to understand the components independently. I wouldn't be too worried about "getting stuck" in the code. The larger and uglier the project, the slower it is to learn the components but I've learned to embrace getting stuck. It's part of the process and once you've figured it out you know that small part of the code base a little better.

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phantom_oracle 10y ago

I have a question concerning actual remote work vs. what is shown in "Who is Hiring?" threads. For example, how do full-time, actual remote (eg. you are in Japan and your company is in Belgium) employees feel/interpret job-postings like: > Somewhere, USA | X-Company | ONSITE / REMOTE | Full-time From my understanding/seeing of so many of these types of postings, they always have hidden gotchas like: - only for extremely senior positions - remote (at your home, which is 20 minutes from the office) once a week only - not actually remote, but just using the word as keyword-optimization As my question above says, how do actual remote employees interpret such job-ads?

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
>>For example, how do full-time, actual remote (eg. you are in Japan and your company is in Belgium) working from let's say Iowa for a company in SF is remote in my book, doesn't have to be international (even though personally I worked remote for a EU-based company at one point). who's hiring postings - I've spoken to a couple of hiring managers- nothing clicked but those gigs were 100% remote work from home positions.
eloff 10y ago
I personally ignore anything that says onsite or remote. Largely they turn out to be domestic USA only, or one day a week remote or some such nonsense. Not worth the time to investigate further when there are lots of less ambiguous job postings. The second reason you want to ignore those is a remote worker for an onsite team can often get cut out of the loop. A lot of communication will happen in person, and the remote guy will miss out. Eventually people will trust him less, share less with him, and pass him over for promotions. You're much better off working for an all remote team, or a remote first team where communication is mandated to be via a medium that all workers have access to.
tkhoven 10y ago
I mentally filter out those ads - they're almost always looking for US-based, sometimes even only their city. Others like remote "for the right candidate" give the impression that they'll take on remote workers only as a last resort, which seems unlikely to work out if that's their mindset. The best results tend to mention "remote-first" or "international" - to me this says they have a culture of remote work, properly understand where it does and doesn't work and know how to get around or mitigate its limitations. The most annoying for keyword filtering are, of course, "no remote".

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techno_modus 10y ago

I liked this book from 37signals (the authors of Getting Real): Remote Office not required: https://37signals.com/remote https://37signals.com/remote It is also available as an audio book.

radarsat1 10y ago

Any info or tips on how to start remote working if you're not a "web guy"? I'm more of a scientist / engineer, i.e. I work on somewhere in between writing numerical methods, simulation, control, and gluing them to more useful interfaces. I don't do UI, but I can handle it; I certainly don't do web front- or back-ends, but I know something about databases; I like statistics, but I'm not a machine learning expert, although I know how to set up and use TensorFlow; I enjoy working on low-level code, embedded and real-time systems, audio, signal processing and control and robotics. At the same time I'm willing to sacrifice some of the "hands on" stuff I like to do (working with mechanical systems) and be more of a software guy if it means I can travel and work remotely. However, short of starting my own consultancy, which I'm not sure I want to do (I have no idea about business), I don't know how to get it going. I feel forever doomed to haunt the lab/office, because I have no idea how to find freelance contracts for this sort of thing.

blokeish 10y ago

Perused that link a bit. Cool job on the guys writing all that up for others to read. Personally, I found GitLab's approach (also documented over at their site) more pertinent to my situation—starting with the fact that apart from remote, GitLab are also multicultural, which adds a whole other dimension. One remark: Zapier mention they use a website called HelloSign for electronic signatures. I have checked them out, and that's a total no-go. Although they claim to comply with EU law on electronic signatures, they most definitely do not: what they offer is a “paste a PNG of your handwritten scrawl on this box” kind of service, which not only does not come within a mile of being an advanced electronic signature, as per Regulation (EU) 910/2014, but also follows the inanely dangerous precedent set by, I think, Adobe, of affixing an image in the likeness of a hand-written signature or seal to a document. This causes people to just assume that if one such image is present, the document is valid, without actually checking the signature. So, although something like that HelloSign website might be fine for private contracts, at least in the EU those “signatures” have no public effect. Just thought I should mention.

jobvandervoort 10y ago
Our handbook [0]. We also use HelloSign. If anything, it's very convenient. I have zero legal knowledge on this, but I did see that they reference 910/2014 compliancy explicitly on their website. [1] [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ [1]: https://www.hellosign.com/info/legal https://www.hellosign.com/info/legal