7 ms·

A startup theme that I'm seeing more and more often is domestic outsourcing, where the executive/biz-side team is in SF and the engineering team is someplace mo

A startup theme that I'm seeing more and more often is domestic outsourcing, where the executive/biz-side team is in SF and the engineering team is someplace more economical, but still in the states. A tougher lift for sure, but you could potentially get the best of both worlds-- SF connections and cheaper labor elsewhere.

jlarocco 9y ago
It's strange that so few startups have tackled the problem of remote working. For software development, especially, there's really no reason a whole company couldn't be entirely "remote", except that the tooling around it isn't very good.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Software development for large enough projects is all about communication. A full remote team has a big handicap on that.
  - jlarocco 9y ago
    I don't think that's it, really. Email, chat, project management, source code hosting, video conferencing, phone/audio conferencing, etc. are all done on the web or in the cloud or whatever you want to call it. Practically every large open source project is coordinated over the internet with limited face to face time, so the concept works well at some level at least. Given that the model works in theory, it's surprising there aren't many startups trying to go the last mile to make remote working better for a general audience.
  - aantix 9y ago
    Linux kernel, Rails, pretty much any high profile open source project is fully distributed, yet them maintain code quality that is world class relative to most private projects?
    - taway_1212 9y ago
      I'm guessing in case of these projects you get lots of high caliber, motivated volunteers. In case of a startup you just have a couple people, and they would probably rather hack on the Linux kernel as well rather than on the founder's technically mundane app :)
      - watwut 9y ago
        That is basically saying that startups employees are irresponsible and lazy :). While some are truly like that, I think that majority really is not.
    - watwut 9y ago
      There are only few such projects, majority of open source projects do not grow big. Plenty of them simply fail or die out after a while. Not every open source project has high code quality. Also, the project lead in such project don't pay that distributed team and is not responsible for their effectivity nor turnover, hiring, promotions, salary negotiations etc. Majority of Linux kernel developers are paid for development, but they are paid by various third party organizations.
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      Both of those are in very well-understood domains, essentially commoditizing a market that's existed for at least a decade. You can build Linux with a distributed volunteer team, because people know how to build an OS, they started out just implementing the POSIX standard, and there's a large quantity of programmers familiar with OS fundamentals and recent research. You probably could not have built, say, AT&T UNIX with a distributed team. Similarly, web programming was over a decade old when Rails was started. You could build Rails as an open-source project. You couldn't build, say, LoudCloud, or Netscape, or Google, or ViaWeb, or any of the other web 1.0 companies where the process of building webapps was not well-understood. Virtually all profits in the tech industry are made by companies with a short-term monopoly on the technology involved. By the time a problem-domain is solved well by an open-source project, by definition, there is no money in it. Ergo, teams that want to make a lot of money will work on projects where communication costs make remote work very challenging.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    Isn't picking from a local pool of developers that share a monoculture potentially a handicap to communication?
  - walshemj 9y ago
    a project doesn't have to be very big to hit the problems
  - sjg007 9y ago
    You have to have agreement on being reachable at any time. It sucks and your manager can screw you but basically that is the deal.
- watwut 9y ago
  1.) Remote work is harder on management - you need to be much better organized and misunderstanding are more likely then in personal communication. Most startups don't have an experienced management making it even harder. It is not that management elsewhere would be super effective, but they tend to have basic processes in place which prevents worst chaos. Many startups live in that "worst chaos" situation. 2.) Remote work is easier when you have fixed analysis, easy to split into individual modules. Startups tend to be in more chaotic "figuring out what we are going to do", trying this and that to see what works phase - making it even more difficult. 3.) Major appeal of startups is lifestyle - ping pong table, staying together overnight, going to pub together and so on and so forth. Remote workers don't fit into that.
  - taway_1212 9y ago
    > 3.) Major appeal of startups is lifestyle - ping pong table I've seen a ping-pong table at a major bank (not to mention more relaxed companies). Right now, startups need to try harder in terms of "culture" perks - dog-friendly startup offices seem to be on the rise for example.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    Couldn't you address #1 and #2 with local tech leads, and maybe 75% of the team remote? #3: I've always been of the mindset that culture is a carrot to try to work down salary (I may be totally wrong.) I think there's a ton of developers out there who either don't care about those things or who that lifestyle is incompatible (say they have a family). I think it's ironic how the tech industry supposedly embraces diversity, so long as you're in your mid-twenties, without kids, and like craft beer.
    - watwut 9y ago
      Those local tech leads would have to amount to good management and experienced leadership. If you have such people and business situation allows for #2, sure. #3: I agree with you and see those perks as sign of workplace incompatible with family (or with having friends who are not colleagues). I also consider them incompatible with real meritocracy - your ability to be highly social is more important to your career then your ability to produce (including ability to communicate in work oriented situations). However, startups attract and want to attract different crowd of people, so I am acknowledging it as a reality. Edit: I also found it easier to explain things to juniors in person. A lot of learning (both ways) happened out random remarks or simple questions nobody would call about. The industry should have place for juniors too, for future sake.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Isn't one of the "advantages" of SF/SV the culture? Once you distill the work down to a Github repo, a Trello board, and an EC2 instance, wouldn't it start to lose its luster? However for startups willing to pay market or above (while still saving $ compared to SF/SV), there's no reason you can't go remote.
- lkrubner 9y ago
  I find that to make remote work, people need to be good at written communication. While people can obviously have as many video chats as they want, even 4 hours of video chat every day is not the same as being in the same room with a person, where you can simply turn to them and say, "Hey, can I ask you something?" And if you have people in different time zones, then the asynchronous nature of email becomes very useful. But people don't like to write. This initially surprised me because I love to write. But many people don't. Even people who went through great colleges and who must have written many papers -- they hate to write. I notice it most with salespeople, who are very extroverted. They are good talkers, they feel like they are at their weakest when writing. In many startups it is crucial that there be good communication between the sales team and the tech team. And if the salespeople feel they are best with verbal communication, then that is a good reason to get everyone into the same room together. Not every startup needs a sales team, but some do. If you have a product that will be sold to enterprises, then you need a sales team. And most of your feedback, about what the customer really wants, will come through the sales team. So the tech needs good communication with the sales team. So there are some problems with remote work which I don't think will ever be solved.

jlarocco 9y ago

It's strange that so few startups have tackled the problem of remote working. For software development, especially, there's really no reason a whole company couldn't be entirely "remote", except that the tooling around it isn't very good.

user5994461 9y ago
Software development for large enough projects is all about communication. A full remote team has a big handicap on that.
- jlarocco 9y ago
  I don't think that's it, really. Email, chat, project management, source code hosting, video conferencing, phone/audio conferencing, etc. are all done on the web or in the cloud or whatever you want to call it. Practically every large open source project is coordinated over the internet with limited face to face time, so the concept works well at some level at least. Given that the model works in theory, it's surprising there aren't many startups trying to go the last mile to make remote working better for a general audience.
- aantix 9y ago
  Linux kernel, Rails, pretty much any high profile open source project is fully distributed, yet them maintain code quality that is world class relative to most private projects?
  - taway_1212 9y ago
    I'm guessing in case of these projects you get lots of high caliber, motivated volunteers. In case of a startup you just have a couple people, and they would probably rather hack on the Linux kernel as well rather than on the founder's technically mundane app :)
    - watwut 9y ago
      That is basically saying that startups employees are irresponsible and lazy :). While some are truly like that, I think that majority really is not.
  - watwut 9y ago
    There are only few such projects, majority of open source projects do not grow big. Plenty of them simply fail or die out after a while. Not every open source project has high code quality. Also, the project lead in such project don't pay that distributed team and is not responsible for their effectivity nor turnover, hiring, promotions, salary negotiations etc. Majority of Linux kernel developers are paid for development, but they are paid by various third party organizations.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    Both of those are in very well-understood domains, essentially commoditizing a market that's existed for at least a decade. You can build Linux with a distributed volunteer team, because people know how to build an OS, they started out just implementing the POSIX standard, and there's a large quantity of programmers familiar with OS fundamentals and recent research. You probably could not have built, say, AT&T UNIX with a distributed team. Similarly, web programming was over a decade old when Rails was started. You could build Rails as an open-source project. You couldn't build, say, LoudCloud, or Netscape, or Google, or ViaWeb, or any of the other web 1.0 companies where the process of building webapps was not well-understood. Virtually all profits in the tech industry are made by companies with a short-term monopoly on the technology involved. By the time a problem-domain is solved well by an open-source project, by definition, there is no money in it. Ergo, teams that want to make a lot of money will work on projects where communication costs make remote work very challenging.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Isn't picking from a local pool of developers that share a monoculture potentially a handicap to communication?
- walshemj 9y ago
  a project doesn't have to be very big to hit the problems
- sjg007 9y ago
  You have to have agreement on being reachable at any time. It sucks and your manager can screw you but basically that is the deal.
watwut 9y ago
1.) Remote work is harder on management - you need to be much better organized and misunderstanding are more likely then in personal communication. Most startups don't have an experienced management making it even harder. It is not that management elsewhere would be super effective, but they tend to have basic processes in place which prevents worst chaos. Many startups live in that "worst chaos" situation. 2.) Remote work is easier when you have fixed analysis, easy to split into individual modules. Startups tend to be in more chaotic "figuring out what we are going to do", trying this and that to see what works phase - making it even more difficult. 3.) Major appeal of startups is lifestyle - ping pong table, staying together overnight, going to pub together and so on and so forth. Remote workers don't fit into that.
- taway_1212 9y ago
  > 3.) Major appeal of startups is lifestyle - ping pong table I've seen a ping-pong table at a major bank (not to mention more relaxed companies). Right now, startups need to try harder in terms of "culture" perks - dog-friendly startup offices seem to be on the rise for example.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Couldn't you address #1 and #2 with local tech leads, and maybe 75% of the team remote? #3: I've always been of the mindset that culture is a carrot to try to work down salary (I may be totally wrong.) I think there's a ton of developers out there who either don't care about those things or who that lifestyle is incompatible (say they have a family). I think it's ironic how the tech industry supposedly embraces diversity, so long as you're in your mid-twenties, without kids, and like craft beer.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Those local tech leads would have to amount to good management and experienced leadership. If you have such people and business situation allows for #2, sure. #3: I agree with you and see those perks as sign of workplace incompatible with family (or with having friends who are not colleagues). I also consider them incompatible with real meritocracy - your ability to be highly social is more important to your career then your ability to produce (including ability to communicate in work oriented situations). However, startups attract and want to attract different crowd of people, so I am acknowledging it as a reality. Edit: I also found it easier to explain things to juniors in person. A lot of learning (both ways) happened out random remarks or simple questions nobody would call about. The industry should have place for juniors too, for future sake.
bdcravens 9y ago
Isn't one of the "advantages" of SF/SV the culture? Once you distill the work down to a Github repo, a Trello board, and an EC2 instance, wouldn't it start to lose its luster? However for startups willing to pay market or above (while still saving $ compared to SF/SV), there's no reason you can't go remote.
lkrubner 9y ago
I find that to make remote work, people need to be good at written communication. While people can obviously have as many video chats as they want, even 4 hours of video chat every day is not the same as being in the same room with a person, where you can simply turn to them and say, "Hey, can I ask you something?" And if you have people in different time zones, then the asynchronous nature of email becomes very useful. But people don't like to write. This initially surprised me because I love to write. But many people don't. Even people who went through great colleges and who must have written many papers -- they hate to write. I notice it most with salespeople, who are very extroverted. They are good talkers, they feel like they are at their weakest when writing. In many startups it is crucial that there be good communication between the sales team and the tech team. And if the salespeople feel they are best with verbal communication, then that is a good reason to get everyone into the same room together. Not every startup needs a sales team, but some do. If you have a product that will be sold to enterprises, then you need a sales team. And most of your feedback, about what the customer really wants, will come through the sales team. So the tech needs good communication with the sales team. So there are some problems with remote work which I don't think will ever be solved.