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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 tr
by 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.
- e12e 10y agoInteresting note about Teamspeak (I've only used it for gaming). My current batch of students (~18-20 year olds) seem to swear by Discord. The main reason being that it is more convenient to manage "servers" (If I understand correctly these are all hosted by Discord - but are "equivalent" logically to TS servers - access control, rooms etc). But they are easier to manage and shift between on the client side (I've only briefly looked at the chat app). My personal intuition would be to try Mumble (as it's open source) - but if TS works, that's great. https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/ https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Running_Murmur https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Running_Murmur
- amlozano 10y agoHaving experience with all of them, Discord is the easiest one to get going with. For non-technical people especially. Having a browser app is a huge boon, you can get people into the chatroom without them having to download anything. Having the phone apps is also amazing, keep up with the room even when you are on the go.
- Taniwha 10y agoI work remotely from the US - technically I am a consultant, I have my own local corporation and pay my own PAYE - this means I pay tax where I live (ALL of you should do this it's where you use the services your taxes pay for, it's the right thing to do). Here in NZ it's pretty easy, 20 minutes a month for the paper work, and I get to write off the costs of doing business. For my US employer (who treats me as an employee), I'm relatively cheap - benefits that are extra in the US (medical etc) are included in my taxes, my marginal tax rates are 10% lower that I'd be paying in California (we don't have a military industrial complex and its associated pork to support)