18 ms·

InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely

482 points by aviv 8y ago

kowdermeister 8y ago
I underestimated how high the competition is for remote work. All my attempts failed so far despite having well customized application materials. I didn't submit to hundreds maybe around 20. Most of the time I never even reached a technical test at these companies which I thought would be the hardest part.
- imglorp 8y ago
  You're not competing with your locality but with an entire country, or more. You need to stand out somehow.
  - dubya123 8y ago
    How is this any different than a job at Big Tech in SF or NYC?
    - imglorp 8y ago
      Because there, you're _only_ competing with local SF/NYC applicants, within like 1h drive radius or whatever.
      - dubya123 8y ago
        SF and NYC attract the top talent from around the world.
        krupan 8y ago
        Not all of it, just the top talent that doesn't mind the living conditions in SF and NYC
        notoriousjpg 8y ago
        Exactly, not all talent is prepared to up and move country. Age and family all factor into it.
      - lazyasciiart 8y ago
        Everyone I know who lives in SF moved there when they got offered a job there.
  - jfroma 8y ago
    This. I'm from Argentina, what worked for me was to start a blog about the problems I was solving back then for my current job, worked in opensource stuff, responded questions for an opensource tool in a forum (there was no stackoverflow back then) and somehow built a "personal brand" for some niche technologies. It all happened like 10 years ago in the span of 3 months. I got my first remote job offer for an small software firm in Europe because they read a blogpost I wrote about solving a problem they had. I've worked since then for 3 different companies from Europe and the US. I wasn't looking for a remote job to be honest, but it happened. I honestly didn't know I could work for a company remotely back then, I was very young and had not idea about the paperwork, transactions, etc. There are a lot of players in this, some are just looking for cheap labor, but there are also companies that understand that talent is everywhere and they are looking for that.
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    Certainly more than an entire country. Yet, you can receive offers from the whole world.
- nicolashahn 8y ago
  I think the way to get a remote job is to start with a non-remote job and slowly convert it to remote. Haven't pulled it off successfully yet but it seems like a much easier path, so long as you're willing to put in the time.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    I want to warn against this. My biggest "issue" with remote working is always when there are differing amounts of remote work within teams. When you have half the engineers in office, and half remote, the 2 sides end up with communication issues. In-office meetings where a few are remoted in are awful unless the company spends the money on a real remote-conference setup, having co-workers that don't like to pick up the phone and call the remote guy ends up keeping remote workers away from the problems. I will never work at a remote company that isn't actively working on maintaining a remote workforce. Because even though I absolutely love remote work, it's not easy, even for those that are heavily invested in it.
    - pier25 8y ago
      This is absolutely true. I lead a dev remote team and I have to actively communicate with people on the office to know about things going on. There is a shitstorm happening and we don't know about it until they need something from us.
  - kokey 8y ago
    I've done it a few times. This works better since you get a lot of the relationships, culture and company knowledge established before you spend less time in the office and if you do it slowly you all learn and fix what needs to be put in place to make it work well. It doesn't work in all companies, but you can often work this out in advance. A good sign is obviously if some people already work remotely, but I have found where this works best is if the company already has teams spanning multiple locations and time zones and have the management structure and communication tools developed to do that properly.
- taternuts 8y ago
  Everyone is different but having actually worked for this company is the reason I won't ever work remotely ever again.
  - castlecrasher2 8y ago
    How come?
    - taternuts 8y ago
      High turnover, low loyalty, low pay. There's plenty of guys and gals there that are great there and not everyone was treated badly but I don't think it is the majority.
- ParanoidShroom 8y ago
  Why is remote such highly requested? I work remote but, not cause I HAVE to. My team is just all fully remote.
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    Working on great products, great money (compared to local offers) while I don't have to restart my life in a new country.
  - strikelaserclaw 8y ago
    Personally, I've done remote and decided after a while i didn't enjoy full time remote. The advantages? Getting to choose where i live, freedom in working my own schedule as long as deadlines are met, working in my boxers ?
  - anotheryou 8y ago
    I want to be able to move whenever I want. Especially as my partner might change cities a few times in the next years. On day-to-day basis I enjoy good coffee, self-made and more healthy food and the possibility to have a quick nap when really needed. I can also take a big break and stretch the workday a bit if I stay available and feel like it. edit: oh and I forgot: silence or good speakers.
  - Draiken 8y ago
    Honestly, saving 1-4 hours of commute every single day equates to an absurd amount of extra time. People underestimate how long commuting takes away from your day. Just the time you take getting ready, waking up early to get breakfast first or even getting out to eat lunch. Normally people don't add those times to the commute total and count only the actual car/bus/metro time. No matter small those are, they add up and you don't ever get that back. Even if you only take 1 hour a day commuting (rare in my experience) you will get at least 5 hours extra in a week that you can use to... live. Be it learning time, family time or even just relaxing time, it's 5 hours that seemingly come from out of thin air.
    - closeparen 8y ago
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  I've managed to get a remote gig at some point, and i'm sure i can go 100% remote at my present employer. Seems to be the best way like someone above mentioned is to get a non remote job, prove yourself to be a valuable asset and then negotiate remote, never failed in my case.
klohto 8y ago
While this is no doubt great I don't really believe a statement "But most importantly, Frein said, it helps InVision build a better product". Under what metric? I don't believe that people who are forced to cooperate with video and screen sharing options can deliver a better product than these, who can walk up to a colleague and ask them in person or use a whiteboard to explain their problem. In the end, remote workers are logically forced to spent much more time in meetings that their "in-office" counterparts. EDIT: You're very much all correct, but I still don't believe that I would be effective without any personal contact. Guess the experience is personal!
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I've remote worked for decades, and that isn't my experience. Video/screensharing meetings are far more productive in my experience, but only if everybody is using the tool. Its frustrating to hold an in-person meeting at the office, and try to add remote folks. The local ones shut out the 'voice on the phone' and start drawing on boards and paper and it breaks down. I spent 10 years in a company that had all meetings online, even if you were in the office. It was very productive, with all the automation tools at everyone's disposal at every meeting. Also with our tool, it took an average of 30 seconds to get a meeting started. Vs the 15-minutes-late average starting time of in-person meetings
  - beambot 8y ago
    > start drawing on boards and paper Sounds like important brainstorming activities. How do you deal with this when you're remote?
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      For me, Wacom tablets or tablet-with-stylus kinds of devices. Now it's not only a whiteboard, but I can take screenshots, collaborate with countless others, undo, search, zoom and pan infinitely, etc... And they can be had for around $100 or less.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
strittmatter 8y ago
I am all for the remote trend. I think InVision is doing a really good thing here and it looks like a lot of other companies are following suit. I hope it influences people to migrate from major tech hubs and help boost the economy in rural areas. I am from the rust belt area and it's been pretty unaffected by all of the tech growth. Most of the locals are still hoping for natural gas or coal to start booming again. I hope somehow remote work could help revitalize the area, although I'm not sure it's enough.
- hnaccy 8y ago
  The rust belt would just get undercut by programmers living in vastly cheaper locations around globe.
  - neuromantik8086 8y ago
    Not if programmers demanded the same salary universally, regardless of cost of living expenses- that's a big if though.
  - retor 8y ago
    Maybe. But time zones are difficult for remote teamwork, and crossing borders also have legal, language, culture and tax issues. Many remote positions on job boards are “US only”. Perhaps for these reasons.
  - destitude 8y ago
    There is some salary adjustment made for geographic location.
- 0xfeba 8y ago
  My goal right now is to do just that. Get a remote job and move away from the high CoL area I am in. I personally like living in more rural areas. My spouse, not so much, but she may end up with a great job at a university in a small-town. I really think as a knowledge worker there is no point to being limited to where you live for employment. But remote companies seem to be very picky about who they hire. I have not had much luck. Local places won't stop spamming me though.
anoncoward111 8y ago
I moved from the software sales industry to waiting tables in a rural area. I have a 10 minute commute by car or moped, I breathe fresh air, and I make enough money to support myself. My colleagues are my friends and my boss has never once slighted me on anything. There is something to be said about the perks of working remotely, but for once it is nice to work in a supportive, engaging environment that is close to my house.
- okmokmz 8y ago
  How much of a hit did you take on salary, and how much did your cost of living decrease? Would you do it again? I've thought about leaving my career to do something that wouldn't require a commute, and would allow me to live in a very remote area, but I'm not brave enough to take the plunge
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    Thank you so much for your questions. My high year in sales was 110k W2, 70k post tax, and 35k post expenses like food rent and car. My low year was 45k, aka just plain old base salary, and after taxes and expenses I broke even. I was living in a pretty expensive part of Boston. I'm sure I could have found a really nasty bedroom for like $650 if I wanted to haha. Right now as a waiter I'm making about $600 a week pre tax. I just came off of a $400 weekend working only 16 hours! My rent here is $650 in a very very nice new apartment and I'm 15 mins from the beach, forest, and farms. I absolutely would do it all over again. I thank my girlfriend every day for basically forcing us to move out here to Eastern Long Island NY for her medical job, because I never would have had the courage to make this move myself. And, I thought it would be really hard to find a job in software out here, so I just applied to literally anything and the restaurant I work at now was the first offer I received. I plunged headfirst and got lucky! Other restaurants are less of a family than we are. Life isn't perfect and you need a few thousand in savings to get this all started without going insolvent, but so far I'm loving my new location and new industry. If you do go for it, maintain contacts elsewhere just in case! :)
    - 8y ago
dyeje 8y ago
Remote team or not, their product is super slow.
- rehemiau 8y ago
  Really heavyweight for the browser, and definitely not optimized for Firefox.
djrogers 8y ago
Found it interesting, and likely a very good idea, that they have set ‘office hours’ which are the same for everyone globally. That might be very inconvenient if you’re in a locale where you wind up working nights, but it does give a level of predictability and ensures that everyone is available at a given time.
- simias 8y ago
  Clearly unworkable if you're on the other side of the globe though, unless you're willing to live at completely different hours as the rest of the society you're part of. I suppose if that ever becomes an issue they could settle on two or three time zones to try and accommodate almost everyone. It can be inconvenient but it can also sometimes be efficient for tasks that lend themselves to working in "shifts". Like you develop your software, you send a version for testing, you go home, you return next morning and people on the other side of the globe have had time to test it and give some feedback. Of course it can also easily lead to a huge waste of time if you're stuck and you need some feedback from people who won't be available until late in the afternoon in your timezone. It definitely requires very good logistics and planning.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Is it really unworkable though? Shift work has always been common in factories. Outsourced call centers in Asia sometimes work during US daytime hours.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      For most professionals? Yes. Now, if we're talking early morning and late night conference calls--even on a semi-regular basis, that's one thing. That's pretty common for a lot of co-workers I know. But day-to-day office hours that are in the middle of the night? Not so much. It's relatively straightforward to schedule some overlap between the Americas and most of Europe. But there's no way to also do APAC in a way that isn't really painful for someone.
- Draiken 8y ago
jasode 8y ago
I don't do UI design so I never heard of InVision before. I googled around and Crunchbase says they've gotten $235 million in funding[1]. A youtube channel shows some demos[2]. Is InVision considered the best of the design tools compared to competitors? [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invisionapp#section-locked-charts https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invisionapp#section-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCndfHdRdEiGOyCOgxQ4W9YQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCndfHdRdEiGOyCOgxQ4W9YQ
- 2to15characters 8y ago
  They used to be, they filled an unmet need in the design tools space (clickable prototypes) for years. Lately tools for interface design (Figma, Framer X, Quartz Composer, Origami, etc) have Invision’s main feature baked into their software (where the work is being created) so there‘s less need for designers to use it. Invision intended to get into the creation tools market, but suffered a poorly-managed rollout of their application, and has been floundering since.
  - bbarn 8y ago
    They also had a fairly drastic price increase that made our company scale licenses back to only designers, which has reduced the collaborative aspect it once had.
- Bahamut 8y ago
  Even UI developers often get exposed to Invision, especially if mobile is involved - it’s a very useful tool.
- ChristianBundy 8y ago
  I'm not working on much front-end these days, but as of 2/3 years ago InVision was the best option I was aware of.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- forkLding 8y ago
strikelaserclaw 8y ago
I think remote works well when the company caters to remote employees as a main priority (maybe through adoption of remote friendly processes). I've worked in teams where i was the only remote employee and everyone else was in the office, suffice to say that i missed out on a lot of important information.
- denimnerd 8y ago
  I'm in that situation now. Well kind of. I am in the only team member not colocated with the rest of the team. At the start it was really hard. They would all be in a room together and I could barely even hear them over the phone, much less speak up and say something over their rapid fire conversations. It's gotten better since I've brought these concerns up I'm only on week 4. We've setup twice a week cisco telepresence meetings and the plan is I fly out every few months for a week. I'm not too keen on this long term but at least the team is really experienced so I stand to learn a lot. I hope I can take what I learn to my own team soon.
  - riffraff 8y ago
    I've done this for a few years, flying in about once a month. It's feasible and I would do it again, but the problems you are facing now won't really change much, you'll always be a bit out of the loop (e.g. you will miss that common joke that came out at lunch). I've also been on the other side and noticed the same issue. How much this impacts you, is a very personal thing.
    - denimnerd 8y ago
      yeah it's still going to be a problem. fortunately I don't care all that much. my HR manager is here locally and there are other teams working on same project around me so I have a spot to jump to eventually. This team is way better than the local ones so I take what I can get :)
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    At a lot of companies, teleconferencing systems are astonishingly bad. Like, “why did they even consider buying this” bad. Often the first 10 minutes of a meeting will be spent figuring out how to use the conf system or rebooting it because it’s not working. Then figuring out which cable to plug into in order to project remotely. Then asking if everyone is here. Then telling Karen to mute her microphone because she’s apparently in a hurricane. Then Roger is 30 minutes late because he had the wrong dial-in code...
mr_tristan 8y ago
This is a little light on details - but it's good to see some more "happy words" on remote success stories. I've been remote for a couple of years and would like to stay that way. Puff pieces like this do help. What I've noticed: - When people write things down, communication is improved. - Ad-hoc communication is far easier with tools like Slack. My current company is about 1000 employees now. Communication is actually better then my last couple of companies, and I think it's mostly because we have fewer "gatekeepers" of information.
buboard 8y ago
I wonder if there are startups working on this space, helping setup remote companies. People seem to use a basket of various tools, none of which was explicitly made for remote work. My ideal setup would be a virtual space, like a game, where employees can virtually interact. Most communication is written, complemented by voice chat when needed. It gives an understanding that "there are other people out there" and not everyone working alone. It would also enable all kinds of functions that happen on the sidelines of "traditiona" office work. My biased opinion is that remote work is the natural way, and forcing people to go through traffic etc just to "talk" to screens all day is the absurd way. I believe business needs a revolutionary disruption to that direction, and we are now technically in a position where this can happen.
- BoysenberryPi 8y ago
  Isn't this essentially Discord? I mean it's not a game but it's a space you login where communication is largely text with voice and video when needed.
- carlosdp 8y ago
  Someone above mentioned this: https://www.sococo.com/ https://www.sococo.com/ which is video conferencing that gives a map of where everyone "is" in a virtual office and makes getting on chats lower-touch. Seems to solve part of that puzzle.
  - buboard 8y ago
    right , this is a good start. Not sure why this kind of gamification is not used more often. It creates a certain sense of being together more than simple email/slack, plus it can be more fun than just looking at pixellated webcams during meetings.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
pier25 8y ago
700 employees? That sounds like an awful lot for a product like InVision. Bohemian Coding, the company behind Sketch, employs a few dozen people. Also, I don't think the web is ready for UI/UX design tools. The ones I've tried feel really slow on my 5K iMac. Maybe in 5-10 years when web assembly is polished and related tool chains...
- hbosch 8y ago
  Do you feel the same way about Figma? I haven’t tried it on a 5K monitor, but I’ve heard good things.
  - flyosity 8y ago
    Friends of mine who switched to Figma from Sketch say regular actions are much snappier than Sketch like panning and zooming around huge artboards. I really need to give it a try as well
    - chrisdroukas 8y ago
      The most recent version of Sketch (52) seems to resolve a lot of the general slowness around large files. It's Metal-accelerated now. https://blog.sketchapp.com/dark-mode-data-a-brand-new-look-and-more-in-sketch-52-e462c8a64d00 https://blog.sketchapp.com/dark-mode-data-a-brand-new-look-a...
- coldcode 8y ago
  I get spam emails at work from some sales person at InVision several times a week. Perhaps many of those folks are in sales?
- saudioger 8y ago
  Guessing they're mostly sales/service related employees. When you get on their enterprise plan the service is fairly personal. Invision also has a wider breadth of tools than what Sketch does (though Sketch does what they do in a much deeper way). Sketch doesn't do personalized enterprise-level service plans (or Basecamp, for a similar example)... so they can be a lot leaner.
new_here 8y ago
How do employment / legal contracts work with employees in this case? Are they just anchored to the legal system where the company is registered? Do employees need visas to work for the company remotely and so on?
- pixelmonkey 8y ago
  If it is a US-based company, for US-based hires, your best option is to use a good PEO (note: all PEOs suck, but some suck less than others), which will have presence in all US states and thus be able to handle benefits, payroll, and local employment laws. For international staff, you need to hire a lawyer.
pixelmonkey 8y ago
Perhaps more interesting is that Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, just IPO'ed on NYSE, and they, too, have a fully distributed team of over 700 -- might even be trending toward 1000 by now. Zapier is another one at multi-hundred-person scale, and is a YC company. A couple other scaled-up ones on this model include Automattic (company behind Wordpress), DataStax (company behind Cassandra). There is also Wikimedia, Canonical, and Mozilla -- perhaps those 3 are less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS. It's worth mentioning that when I started my startup back in 2009 as a fully distributed team, VCs viewed that as a major -1 strike against the company. So much so that we chose not to mention it during initial pitches. We ended up finding Series A/B financing, and these days, those investors ask us to advise companies on how fully distributed teams work, so new portfolio companies can decide for themselves. They were early believers in the model, but they tell me they have noticed a major change in attitude among fellow VCs toward distributed teams. That is, they understand the tradeoffs (finally), and believe the model can scale. We now have a fully distributed staff of 70, over 400 customers, and millions in revenue. So 1/10 InVision scale, but it works well (and nicely!) at this scale. These days we also have an NYC office, but we refer to it as "the Internet cafe", about 20 of our 70 people "so happen" to work out of there regularly, with everyone else in home offices or co-working spaces. Our NYC office is also used for team gatherings, client events/visits, and board meetings. I wrote my initial views on the different scaling models for teams here in 2012: https://amontalenti.com/2012/05/14/distributed-teams https://amontalenti.com/2012/05/14/distributed-teams Also wrote a little about how the fully distributed team needs to be complemented, from time to time, with f2f interaction. This was in 2016 after several years of experience scaling hiring and organizing team retreats -- "Fully Remote, But Here For Each Other": https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/ https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/
- marmaduke 8y ago
  > less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS Doesn’t this aspect make them even more interesting?
  - afroboy 8y ago
SSLy 8y ago
This redirects to a 404 on a .pl domain. WTF, BI?
maxraz 8y ago
Nice to know this fact.
mcculley 8y ago
> "After all, when you walk down the aisles of a standard company these days, people are on YouTube, social media," he said. "The modern knowledge worker, the technical worker, is going to focus on what engages them." If you are not working, it doesn't matter where you are.
ArchTypical 8y ago
DeviantArt's development team is 100% remote, iirc I dunno about the rest of the company.
alexashka 8y ago
It looks like InVision is stuck between Sketch and Affinity Designer from the low-end, to Adobe at the high end. They'll be squeezed from both ends of the market, hard. Seeing how they already have 700 employees, I don't see any break-through technology coming from them, so they're stuck in a highly competitive, stingy market, with VCs, wanting billion dollar returns on investment. Yikes - unless their entire strategy is one of 500px - to get acquired, by Adobe in this case.
philip1209 8y ago
The average age of developers is increasing. A generation is leaving SF to start families in other cities. Fewer people want to come to SF due to costs and low quality of living, and startups are no longer expected to be in the Bay. Coding schools are graduating new developers all over the country (and the world). The future is remote. I have a contrarian viewpoint: I think employment doesn't work with remote work at scale. People want independence and flexibility. A 9-5 workday isn't great for at-home knowledge work, and people want exposure to a variety of projects. I think the future is contract-based. That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce. "Contract engineer" has negative connotations in most companies. But, if you can have a multi-month, ~40 hr/week relationship with a contractor, it's easy to get hard work done. Developers work on their terms. Companies get access to amazing people. Hiring takes days, not months. There's no bullshit of traditional employment - like open offices, limits on vacation, or dress codes. The hardest part of becoming a freelancer is the scarcity mindset - building a network, finding jobs, collecting invoices, and lining up your next job. We're solving that by basically becoming a talent agent. To make a freelance lifestyle sustainable, we need to solve other parts of this model - such as community and career advancement. But, we're working on it! It sounds aspirational. But, over half of Moonlight projects continue indefinitely. When companies like working with somebody, they don't stop. [1] https://www.moonlightwork.com https://www.moonlightwork.com
- matchbok 8y ago
  Thanks but no thanks. Contract work overwhelming benefits the employer. Also, spam.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please be respectful. It's not spam for an HN user to link to their work in a relevant context. If he were doing it in lots of threads it would be a different story, but that's not the case here.
- LaGrange 8y ago
  > That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce. Look, Snow Crash is not a utopia.
BadassFractal 8y ago
I really wish there were more case studies available out there to show whether the "always remote" startup approach can work. Having to be in the same room for many years at the very beginning of building a high-growth venture-backed startup is considered a law of the universe at this point, and it would be interesting to know how much not following it actually hurts you. Does this only work for people who really have their shit together and maybe have started / sold successful businesses before?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
OptionX 8y ago
Nice to see such a transition. Give more opportunities for developers by removing the geographical constraint. And on a more personal note, the part I hate the most from my job is the commute and it feels so much better when I get the opportunity to work from home.
esseti 8y ago
any good tips/reference/book/whatever that explains/teach how to manage a distributed team? maybe something learned during the time. i've read the gitlab handbook so far, sounds good, but I would love to have something for the owner of a remote company on how to manage people and work (and how to find the right people)
anon4lol 8y ago
I had an idea for a business idea that never got off the ground. However, before it flamed out, I wanted to hire some overseas people that I personally knew to help. However, I got conflicting advice about how to actually pay them. I wanted to do it the legit/legal way, so they would have taxable income and pay their withholding. I got advice from just pay them with PayPal to bank-to-bank-transfers to forming a back office in the foreign country. I strongly suspect these distributed teams are taking shortcuts. With contingent employees in the U.S., you can just 1099 them at the end of the year; W2 employees will require reporting and withholding depending on the state they live in. But what about foreign employees? I'd love to hear from anyone who has done this. How would this actually work in practice? Do bank to bank transfers, or are all of the workers simply contingent employees that invoice and paid in USD or local currency? I suspect they are avoiding paying payroll taxes and not reporting to the foreign taxing authorities.
- anon4lol 8y ago
  Never mind. I found the answer. The prevailing advice now is: call them valued employees, but pay them as contingent/contract workers. Some companies have "perks" that include reimbursement for accounting/tax preparation in the "employee's" host country -- they deal with the income reporting, health care, and tax issues.

482 points by aviv 8y ago

I underestimated how high the competition is for remote work. All my attempts failed so far despite having well customized application materials. I didn't submit to hundreds maybe around 20. Most of the time I never even reached a technical test at these companies which I thought would be the hardest part.

imglorp 8y ago
You're not competing with your locality but with an entire country, or more. You need to stand out somehow.
- dubya123 8y ago
  How is this any different than a job at Big Tech in SF or NYC?
  - imglorp 8y ago
    Because there, you're _only_ competing with local SF/NYC applicants, within like 1h drive radius or whatever.
    - dubya123 8y ago
      SF and NYC attract the top talent from around the world.
      - krupan 8y ago
        Not all of it, just the top talent that doesn't mind the living conditions in SF and NYC
        notoriousjpg 8y ago
        Exactly, not all talent is prepared to up and move country. Age and family all factor into it.
    - lazyasciiart 8y ago
      Everyone I know who lives in SF moved there when they got offered a job there.
- jfroma 8y ago
  This. I'm from Argentina, what worked for me was to start a blog about the problems I was solving back then for my current job, worked in opensource stuff, responded questions for an opensource tool in a forum (there was no stackoverflow back then) and somehow built a "personal brand" for some niche technologies. It all happened like 10 years ago in the span of 3 months. I got my first remote job offer for an small software firm in Europe because they read a blogpost I wrote about solving a problem they had. I've worked since then for 3 different companies from Europe and the US. I wasn't looking for a remote job to be honest, but it happened. I honestly didn't know I could work for a company remotely back then, I was very young and had not idea about the paperwork, transactions, etc. There are a lot of players in this, some are just looking for cheap labor, but there are also companies that understand that talent is everywhere and they are looking for that.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Certainly more than an entire country. Yet, you can receive offers from the whole world.
nicolashahn 8y ago
I think the way to get a remote job is to start with a non-remote job and slowly convert it to remote. Haven't pulled it off successfully yet but it seems like a much easier path, so long as you're willing to put in the time.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I want to warn against this. My biggest "issue" with remote working is always when there are differing amounts of remote work within teams. When you have half the engineers in office, and half remote, the 2 sides end up with communication issues. In-office meetings where a few are remoted in are awful unless the company spends the money on a real remote-conference setup, having co-workers that don't like to pick up the phone and call the remote guy ends up keeping remote workers away from the problems. I will never work at a remote company that isn't actively working on maintaining a remote workforce. Because even though I absolutely love remote work, it's not easy, even for those that are heavily invested in it.
  - pier25 8y ago
    This is absolutely true. I lead a dev remote team and I have to actively communicate with people on the office to know about things going on. There is a shitstorm happening and we don't know about it until they need something from us.
- kokey 8y ago
  I've done it a few times. This works better since you get a lot of the relationships, culture and company knowledge established before you spend less time in the office and if you do it slowly you all learn and fix what needs to be put in place to make it work well. It doesn't work in all companies, but you can often work this out in advance. A good sign is obviously if some people already work remotely, but I have found where this works best is if the company already has teams spanning multiple locations and time zones and have the management structure and communication tools developed to do that properly.
taternuts 8y ago
Everyone is different but having actually worked for this company is the reason I won't ever work remotely ever again.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  How come?
  - taternuts 8y ago
    High turnover, low loyalty, low pay. There's plenty of guys and gals there that are great there and not everyone was treated badly but I don't think it is the majority.
ParanoidShroom 8y ago
Why is remote such highly requested? I work remote but, not cause I HAVE to. My team is just all fully remote.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  Working on great products, great money (compared to local offers) while I don't have to restart my life in a new country.
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  Personally, I've done remote and decided after a while i didn't enjoy full time remote. The advantages? Getting to choose where i live, freedom in working my own schedule as long as deadlines are met, working in my boxers ?
- anotheryou 8y ago
  I want to be able to move whenever I want. Especially as my partner might change cities a few times in the next years. On day-to-day basis I enjoy good coffee, self-made and more healthy food and the possibility to have a quick nap when really needed. I can also take a big break and stretch the workday a bit if I stay available and feel like it. edit: oh and I forgot: silence or good speakers.
- Draiken 8y ago
  Honestly, saving 1-4 hours of commute every single day equates to an absurd amount of extra time. People underestimate how long commuting takes away from your day. Just the time you take getting ready, waking up early to get breakfast first or even getting out to eat lunch. Normally people don't add those times to the commute total and count only the actual car/bus/metro time. No matter small those are, they add up and you don't ever get that back. Even if you only take 1 hour a day commuting (rare in my experience) you will get at least 5 hours extra in a week that you can use to... live. Be it learning time, family time or even just relaxing time, it's 5 hours that seemingly come from out of thin air.
  - closeparen 8y ago
strikelaserclaw 8y ago
I've managed to get a remote gig at some point, and i'm sure i can go 100% remote at my present employer. Seems to be the best way like someone above mentioned is to get a non remote job, prove yourself to be a valuable asset and then negotiate remote, never failed in my case.

klohto 8y ago

While this is no doubt great I don't really believe a statement "But most importantly, Frein said, it helps InVision build a better product". Under what metric? I don't believe that people who are forced to cooperate with video and screen sharing options can deliver a better product than these, who can walk up to a colleague and ask them in person or use a whiteboard to explain their problem. In the end, remote workers are logically forced to spent much more time in meetings that their "in-office" counterparts. EDIT: You're very much all correct, but I still don't believe that I would be effective without any personal contact. Guess the experience is personal!

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I've remote worked for decades, and that isn't my experience. Video/screensharing meetings are far more productive in my experience, but only if everybody is using the tool. Its frustrating to hold an in-person meeting at the office, and try to add remote folks. The local ones shut out the 'voice on the phone' and start drawing on boards and paper and it breaks down. I spent 10 years in a company that had all meetings online, even if you were in the office. It was very productive, with all the automation tools at everyone's disposal at every meeting. Also with our tool, it took an average of 30 seconds to get a meeting started. Vs the 15-minutes-late average starting time of in-person meetings
- beambot 8y ago
  > start drawing on boards and paper Sounds like important brainstorming activities. How do you deal with this when you're remote?
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    For me, Wacom tablets or tablet-with-stylus kinds of devices. Now it's not only a whiteboard, but I can take screenshots, collaborate with countless others, undo, search, zoom and pan infinitely, etc... And they can be had for around $100 or less.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago

strittmatter 8y ago

I am all for the remote trend. I think InVision is doing a really good thing here and it looks like a lot of other companies are following suit. I hope it influences people to migrate from major tech hubs and help boost the economy in rural areas. I am from the rust belt area and it's been pretty unaffected by all of the tech growth. Most of the locals are still hoping for natural gas or coal to start booming again. I hope somehow remote work could help revitalize the area, although I'm not sure it's enough.

hnaccy 8y ago
The rust belt would just get undercut by programmers living in vastly cheaper locations around globe.
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  Not if programmers demanded the same salary universally, regardless of cost of living expenses- that's a big if though.
- retor 8y ago
  Maybe. But time zones are difficult for remote teamwork, and crossing borders also have legal, language, culture and tax issues. Many remote positions on job boards are “US only”. Perhaps for these reasons.
- destitude 8y ago
  There is some salary adjustment made for geographic location.
0xfeba 8y ago
My goal right now is to do just that. Get a remote job and move away from the high CoL area I am in. I personally like living in more rural areas. My spouse, not so much, but she may end up with a great job at a university in a small-town. I really think as a knowledge worker there is no point to being limited to where you live for employment. But remote companies seem to be very picky about who they hire. I have not had much luck. Local places won't stop spamming me though.

anoncoward111 8y ago

I moved from the software sales industry to waiting tables in a rural area. I have a 10 minute commute by car or moped, I breathe fresh air, and I make enough money to support myself. My colleagues are my friends and my boss has never once slighted me on anything. There is something to be said about the perks of working remotely, but for once it is nice to work in a supportive, engaging environment that is close to my house.

okmokmz 8y ago
How much of a hit did you take on salary, and how much did your cost of living decrease? Would you do it again? I've thought about leaving my career to do something that wouldn't require a commute, and would allow me to live in a very remote area, but I'm not brave enough to take the plunge
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Thank you so much for your questions. My high year in sales was 110k W2, 70k post tax, and 35k post expenses like food rent and car. My low year was 45k, aka just plain old base salary, and after taxes and expenses I broke even. I was living in a pretty expensive part of Boston. I'm sure I could have found a really nasty bedroom for like $650 if I wanted to haha. Right now as a waiter I'm making about $600 a week pre tax. I just came off of a $400 weekend working only 16 hours! My rent here is $650 in a very very nice new apartment and I'm 15 mins from the beach, forest, and farms. I absolutely would do it all over again. I thank my girlfriend every day for basically forcing us to move out here to Eastern Long Island NY for her medical job, because I never would have had the courage to make this move myself. And, I thought it would be really hard to find a job in software out here, so I just applied to literally anything and the restaurant I work at now was the first offer I received. I plunged headfirst and got lucky! Other restaurants are less of a family than we are. Life isn't perfect and you need a few thousand in savings to get this all started without going insolvent, but so far I'm loving my new location and new industry. If you do go for it, maintain contacts elsewhere just in case! :)
  - 8y ago

dyeje 8y ago

Remote team or not, their product is super slow.

rehemiau 8y ago
Really heavyweight for the browser, and definitely not optimized for Firefox.

djrogers 8y ago

Found it interesting, and likely a very good idea, that they have set ‘office hours’ which are the same for everyone globally. That might be very inconvenient if you’re in a locale where you wind up working nights, but it does give a level of predictability and ensures that everyone is available at a given time.

simias 8y ago
Clearly unworkable if you're on the other side of the globe though, unless you're willing to live at completely different hours as the rest of the society you're part of. I suppose if that ever becomes an issue they could settle on two or three time zones to try and accommodate almost everyone. It can be inconvenient but it can also sometimes be efficient for tasks that lend themselves to working in "shifts". Like you develop your software, you send a version for testing, you go home, you return next morning and people on the other side of the globe have had time to test it and give some feedback. Of course it can also easily lead to a huge waste of time if you're stuck and you need some feedback from people who won't be available until late in the afternoon in your timezone. It definitely requires very good logistics and planning.
- nradov 8y ago
  Is it really unworkable though? Shift work has always been common in factories. Outsourced call centers in Asia sometimes work during US daytime hours.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    For most professionals? Yes. Now, if we're talking early morning and late night conference calls--even on a semi-regular basis, that's one thing. That's pretty common for a lot of co-workers I know. But day-to-day office hours that are in the middle of the night? Not so much. It's relatively straightforward to schedule some overlap between the Americas and most of Europe. But there's no way to also do APAC in a way that isn't really painful for someone.
Draiken 8y ago

jasode 8y ago

I don't do UI design so I never heard of InVision before. I googled around and Crunchbase says they've gotten $235 million in funding[1]. A youtube channel shows some demos[2]. Is InVision considered the best of the design tools compared to competitors? [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invisionapp#section-locked-charts https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invisionapp#section-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCndfHdRdEiGOyCOgxQ4W9YQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCndfHdRdEiGOyCOgxQ4W9YQ

2to15characters 8y ago
They used to be, they filled an unmet need in the design tools space (clickable prototypes) for years. Lately tools for interface design (Figma, Framer X, Quartz Composer, Origami, etc) have Invision’s main feature baked into their software (where the work is being created) so there‘s less need for designers to use it. Invision intended to get into the creation tools market, but suffered a poorly-managed rollout of their application, and has been floundering since.
- bbarn 8y ago
  They also had a fairly drastic price increase that made our company scale licenses back to only designers, which has reduced the collaborative aspect it once had.
Bahamut 8y ago
Even UI developers often get exposed to Invision, especially if mobile is involved - it’s a very useful tool.
ChristianBundy 8y ago
I'm not working on much front-end these days, but as of 2/3 years ago InVision was the best option I was aware of.
deleted 8y ago
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forkLding 8y ago

strikelaserclaw 8y ago

I think remote works well when the company caters to remote employees as a main priority (maybe through adoption of remote friendly processes). I've worked in teams where i was the only remote employee and everyone else was in the office, suffice to say that i missed out on a lot of important information.

denimnerd 8y ago
I'm in that situation now. Well kind of. I am in the only team member not colocated with the rest of the team. At the start it was really hard. They would all be in a room together and I could barely even hear them over the phone, much less speak up and say something over their rapid fire conversations. It's gotten better since I've brought these concerns up I'm only on week 4. We've setup twice a week cisco telepresence meetings and the plan is I fly out every few months for a week. I'm not too keen on this long term but at least the team is really experienced so I stand to learn a lot. I hope I can take what I learn to my own team soon.
- riffraff 8y ago
  I've done this for a few years, flying in about once a month. It's feasible and I would do it again, but the problems you are facing now won't really change much, you'll always be a bit out of the loop (e.g. you will miss that common joke that came out at lunch). I've also been on the other side and noticed the same issue. How much this impacts you, is a very personal thing.
  - denimnerd 8y ago
    yeah it's still going to be a problem. fortunately I don't care all that much. my HR manager is here locally and there are other teams working on same project around me so I have a spot to jump to eventually. This team is way better than the local ones so I take what I can get :)
- ryandrake 8y ago
  At a lot of companies, teleconferencing systems are astonishingly bad. Like, “why did they even consider buying this” bad. Often the first 10 minutes of a meeting will be spent figuring out how to use the conf system or rebooting it because it’s not working. Then figuring out which cable to plug into in order to project remotely. Then asking if everyone is here. Then telling Karen to mute her microphone because she’s apparently in a hurricane. Then Roger is 30 minutes late because he had the wrong dial-in code...

mr_tristan 8y ago

This is a little light on details - but it's good to see some more "happy words" on remote success stories. I've been remote for a couple of years and would like to stay that way. Puff pieces like this do help. What I've noticed: - When people write things down, communication is improved. - Ad-hoc communication is far easier with tools like Slack. My current company is about 1000 employees now. Communication is actually better then my last couple of companies, and I think it's mostly because we have fewer "gatekeepers" of information.

buboard 8y ago

I wonder if there are startups working on this space, helping setup remote companies. People seem to use a basket of various tools, none of which was explicitly made for remote work. My ideal setup would be a virtual space, like a game, where employees can virtually interact. Most communication is written, complemented by voice chat when needed. It gives an understanding that "there are other people out there" and not everyone working alone. It would also enable all kinds of functions that happen on the sidelines of "traditiona" office work. My biased opinion is that remote work is the natural way, and forcing people to go through traffic etc just to "talk" to screens all day is the absurd way. I believe business needs a revolutionary disruption to that direction, and we are now technically in a position where this can happen.

BoysenberryPi 8y ago
Isn't this essentially Discord? I mean it's not a game but it's a space you login where communication is largely text with voice and video when needed.
carlosdp 8y ago
Someone above mentioned this: https://www.sococo.com/ https://www.sococo.com/ which is video conferencing that gives a map of where everyone "is" in a virtual office and makes getting on chats lower-touch. Seems to solve part of that puzzle.
- buboard 8y ago
  right , this is a good start. Not sure why this kind of gamification is not used more often. It creates a certain sense of being together more than simple email/slack, plus it can be more fun than just looking at pixellated webcams during meetings.
deleted 8y ago
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pier25 8y ago

700 employees? That sounds like an awful lot for a product like InVision. Bohemian Coding, the company behind Sketch, employs a few dozen people. Also, I don't think the web is ready for UI/UX design tools. The ones I've tried feel really slow on my 5K iMac. Maybe in 5-10 years when web assembly is polished and related tool chains...

hbosch 8y ago
Do you feel the same way about Figma? I haven’t tried it on a 5K monitor, but I’ve heard good things.
- flyosity 8y ago
  Friends of mine who switched to Figma from Sketch say regular actions are much snappier than Sketch like panning and zooming around huge artboards. I really need to give it a try as well
  - chrisdroukas 8y ago
    The most recent version of Sketch (52) seems to resolve a lot of the general slowness around large files. It's Metal-accelerated now. https://blog.sketchapp.com/dark-mode-data-a-brand-new-look-and-more-in-sketch-52-e462c8a64d00 https://blog.sketchapp.com/dark-mode-data-a-brand-new-look-a...
coldcode 8y ago
I get spam emails at work from some sales person at InVision several times a week. Perhaps many of those folks are in sales?
saudioger 8y ago
Guessing they're mostly sales/service related employees. When you get on their enterprise plan the service is fairly personal. Invision also has a wider breadth of tools than what Sketch does (though Sketch does what they do in a much deeper way). Sketch doesn't do personalized enterprise-level service plans (or Basecamp, for a similar example)... so they can be a lot leaner.

new_here 8y ago

How do employment / legal contracts work with employees in this case? Are they just anchored to the legal system where the company is registered? Do employees need visas to work for the company remotely and so on?

pixelmonkey 8y ago
If it is a US-based company, for US-based hires, your best option is to use a good PEO (note: all PEOs suck, but some suck less than others), which will have presence in all US states and thus be able to handle benefits, payroll, and local employment laws. For international staff, you need to hire a lawyer.

pixelmonkey 8y ago

Perhaps more interesting is that Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, just IPO'ed on NYSE, and they, too, have a fully distributed team of over 700 -- might even be trending toward 1000 by now. Zapier is another one at multi-hundred-person scale, and is a YC company. A couple other scaled-up ones on this model include Automattic (company behind Wordpress), DataStax (company behind Cassandra). There is also Wikimedia, Canonical, and Mozilla -- perhaps those 3 are less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS. It's worth mentioning that when I started my startup back in 2009 as a fully distributed team, VCs viewed that as a major -1 strike against the company. So much so that we chose not to mention it during initial pitches. We ended up finding Series A/B financing, and these days, those investors ask us to advise companies on how fully distributed teams work, so new portfolio companies can decide for themselves. They were early believers in the model, but they tell me they have noticed a major change in attitude among fellow VCs toward distributed teams. That is, they understand the tradeoffs (finally), and believe the model can scale. We now have a fully distributed staff of 70, over 400 customers, and millions in revenue. So 1/10 InVision scale, but it works well (and nicely!) at this scale. These days we also have an NYC office, but we refer to it as "the Internet cafe", about 20 of our 70 people "so happen" to work out of there regularly, with everyone else in home offices or co-working spaces. Our NYC office is also used for team gatherings, client events/visits, and board meetings. I wrote my initial views on the different scaling models for teams here in 2012: https://amontalenti.com/2012/05/14/distributed-teams https://amontalenti.com/2012/05/14/distributed-teams Also wrote a little about how the fully distributed team needs to be complemented, from time to time, with f2f interaction. This was in 2016 after several years of experience scaling hiring and organizing team retreats -- "Fully Remote, But Here For Each Other": https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/ https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/

marmaduke 8y ago
> less interesting since they have a non-profit mission tied to the internet-as-community and FOSS Doesn’t this aspect make them even more interesting?
- afroboy 8y ago

SSLy 8y ago

This redirects to a 404 on a .pl domain. WTF, BI?

maxraz 8y ago

Nice to know this fact.

mcculley 8y ago

> "After all, when you walk down the aisles of a standard company these days, people are on YouTube, social media," he said. "The modern knowledge worker, the technical worker, is going to focus on what engages them." If you are not working, it doesn't matter where you are.

ArchTypical 8y ago

DeviantArt's development team is 100% remote, iirc I dunno about the rest of the company.

alexashka 8y ago

It looks like InVision is stuck between Sketch and Affinity Designer from the low-end, to Adobe at the high end. They'll be squeezed from both ends of the market, hard. Seeing how they already have 700 employees, I don't see any break-through technology coming from them, so they're stuck in a highly competitive, stingy market, with VCs, wanting billion dollar returns on investment. Yikes - unless their entire strategy is one of 500px - to get acquired, by Adobe in this case.

philip1209 8y ago

The average age of developers is increasing. A generation is leaving SF to start families in other cities. Fewer people want to come to SF due to costs and low quality of living, and startups are no longer expected to be in the Bay. Coding schools are graduating new developers all over the country (and the world). The future is remote. I have a contrarian viewpoint: I think employment doesn't work with remote work at scale. People want independence and flexibility. A 9-5 workday isn't great for at-home knowledge work, and people want exposure to a variety of projects. I think the future is contract-based. That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce. "Contract engineer" has negative connotations in most companies. But, if you can have a multi-month, ~40 hr/week relationship with a contractor, it's easy to get hard work done. Developers work on their terms. Companies get access to amazing people. Hiring takes days, not months. There's no bullshit of traditional employment - like open offices, limits on vacation, or dress codes. The hardest part of becoming a freelancer is the scarcity mindset - building a network, finding jobs, collecting invoices, and lining up your next job. We're solving that by basically becoming a talent agent. To make a freelance lifestyle sustainable, we need to solve other parts of this model - such as community and career advancement. But, we're working on it! It sounds aspirational. But, over half of Moonlight projects continue indefinitely. When companies like working with somebody, they don't stop. [1] https://www.moonlightwork.com https://www.moonlightwork.com

matchbok 8y ago
Thanks but no thanks. Contract work overwhelming benefits the employer. Also, spam.
- dang 8y ago
  Please be respectful. It's not spam for an HN user to link to their work in a relevant context. If he were doing it in lots of threads it would be a different story, but that's not the case here.
LaGrange 8y ago
> That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce. Look, Snow Crash is not a utopia.

BadassFractal 8y ago

I really wish there were more case studies available out there to show whether the "always remote" startup approach can work. Having to be in the same room for many years at the very beginning of building a high-growth venture-backed startup is considered a law of the universe at this point, and it would be interesting to know how much not following it actually hurts you. Does this only work for people who really have their shit together and maybe have started / sold successful businesses before?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

OptionX 8y ago

Nice to see such a transition. Give more opportunities for developers by removing the geographical constraint. And on a more personal note, the part I hate the most from my job is the commute and it feels so much better when I get the opportunity to work from home.

esseti 8y ago

any good tips/reference/book/whatever that explains/teach how to manage a distributed team? maybe something learned during the time. i've read the gitlab handbook so far, sounds good, but I would love to have something for the owner of a remote company on how to manage people and work (and how to find the right people)

anon4lol 8y ago

I had an idea for a business idea that never got off the ground. However, before it flamed out, I wanted to hire some overseas people that I personally knew to help. However, I got conflicting advice about how to actually pay them. I wanted to do it the legit/legal way, so they would have taxable income and pay their withholding. I got advice from just pay them with PayPal to bank-to-bank-transfers to forming a back office in the foreign country. I strongly suspect these distributed teams are taking shortcuts. With contingent employees in the U.S., you can just 1099 them at the end of the year; W2 employees will require reporting and withholding depending on the state they live in. But what about foreign employees? I'd love to hear from anyone who has done this. How would this actually work in practice? Do bank to bank transfers, or are all of the workers simply contingent employees that invoice and paid in USD or local currency? I suspect they are avoiding paying payroll taxes and not reporting to the foreign taxing authorities.

anon4lol 8y ago
Never mind. I found the answer. The prevailing advice now is: call them valued employees, but pay them as contingent/contract workers. Some companies have "perks" that include reimbursement for accounting/tax preparation in the "employee's" host country -- they deal with the income reporting, health care, and tax issues.